The Class Consciousness in the Movie “People Like Us” Essay

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The issue of class is so emotive in human societies to the extent that it has various definitions and models. However, only three forms of classes exist in society, including the rich, middle class and the poor. The poor are always left in the hands of the rich who mistreat them in all forms. The gap between the rich and the poor is ever increasing because the poor are getting poorer while the rich are becoming richer.

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While the poor languish in poverty, the rich have excess resources that they even use to subjugate and dominate the poor. The rich own everything, including the major social institutions such as the media and the polity. The opinions of the poor are never valued during any democratic process while the views of the rich are treated with due respect.

For instance, the media does not highlight the plight of the poor, but instead, it keeps on advertising goods and services. This benefits the rich because they own the means of production. The poor are never given a chance to achieve their goals because the government provides an enabling environment for the rich while the poor are frustrated using state machinery such as the police, the courts, and regulatory institutions.

From a personal standpoint, the class system is brought out in the movie because the owners of the means of production are seen to be above the law. This means that they can do something illegal yet no one is willing to engage them in legal suits.

In the movie, one of the owners of the means of production, who is Sam’s boss, instructs Sam to bribe the law enforcers to get his way out. This means that owners of the means of production will always ensure that they do not incur losses, but instead, losses are to be passed over to the proletariat. Sam is encouraged to bribe the law enforcers, yet he is not given the necessary funds to accomplish the mission.

I feel that class is understood to mean an amalgamation of objective and subjective factors. Sam, as well as his family, had nothing apart from his labor. His father Jerry had nothing in the bank because we see that the lawyer had nothing to hand to Sam after Jerry’s death. Sam and his father must sell their labor to earn a living (Pine, 2012).

In my view, the owners of the means of production do not engage in real production, but instead, they use workers to generate wealth. Sam makes a lot of profit for his boss yet he is not supported when he is faced with a legal suit. While attending his father burial, he is informed that the case would be worse in case he does not make an effort of attending it in time.

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In the class system, subjectivity plays out because members tend to share a common class consciousness, which implies that members would perceive their problems as common. Class consciousness allows members to come up with a common goal on how to improve their lives. Sam realizes that he is just like his mother, father, and his sister Frankie.

Moreover, his nephew Josh is headed in the same direction because his chances of success are minimal given the fact that his education is already in jeopardy (Pine, 2012). The poor in society will never acquire the level of education that would help them in the future. They only receive elementary training that would be needed in serving the interests of the rich.

The rich take their children to good schools, with modern facilities and infrastructure. The interest of the rich is to maintain the status quo while the poor class struggles to overthrow the existing class system. This shows that the rich will never do something that benefits the poor.

In my opinion, an individual’s diminutive socio-economic capability hurts his or her success in society. First, an individual’s education would always be under threat because of inadequate resources. For Sam, he is unable to secure a better job because of poor education. His parents could not take him to a better school because they had insufficient funds.

Children from upper classes have better chances of excelling in their studies as compared to those from humble backgrounds. Josh is headed in the same direction because his mother does not have the financial capacity to take him to school. Frankie is forced to engage in alcoholism and drug abuse because she does not have hopes of securing employment.

This is mainly caused by inadequate education. The kind of education provided to children from rich families is of high quality as compared to that given to the poor, apart from education, the poor access poor health services as compared to the rich. Sam’s mother is taken to a local hospital without adequate facilities because the family does not have finances. The poor cannot access quality medical care since the services are the reserve of the rich.

Reference

Pine, C. (2012). Welcome to People Now Titled People Like Us. New York: Collider.

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IvyPanda. (2020) 'The Class Consciousness in the Movie "People Like Us"'. 11 March.

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IvyPanda. 2020. "The Class Consciousness in the Movie "People Like Us"." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-class-consciousness-in-the-movie-people-like-us/.

1. IvyPanda. "The Class Consciousness in the Movie "People Like Us"." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-class-consciousness-in-the-movie-people-like-us/.


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IvyPanda. "The Class Consciousness in the Movie "People Like Us"." March 11, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-class-consciousness-in-the-movie-people-like-us/.

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