Class and Virtue

In class this week we read an essay entitled Class and Virtue written by Michael Parenti. In this essay Michael talks about how movies reinforce different classes in America. If you were to watch a movie you would definitely see the rich or upper class and the middle or working class. In order to notice things like this you need to pay attention to the main ideas in the movie but the little details as well. If you were to watch a movie the working class person always seems to have bad or old looking clothes, while the upper class character always has the superior clothes. For example in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead there wasn’t a subtle class distinction, there were totally two different worlds. In the lower/working class area they were literally living in the streets, people were all over the place and most had dirty old clothes. Now in the other hand all rich/upper class people lived in a beautiful gated community with nice up to date building and electric fences to keep all the zombies out. It seems to me that the people in the movie industry seem to think that people who are in the lower/working class are not as good as somebody who is wealthy, well it doesn’t matter how much money you have all that matters is what kind of person you are. Oh, and remember no matter how much money you have you will leave it behind for good one day.