Big Brother (Blog #5)

"They all deserve to die. Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why! Because in all of the whole human race, Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two. There's the one staying put in his proper place and one with his foot in the other one's face. Look at me, Mrs Lovett! Look at you! No, we all deserve to die... Even you, Mrs Lovett, even I!" (Sweeney Todd)

I could go on almost forever about the intimate relationship between class and race as portrayed by the media. However, I'll start by addressing Mantsios's article. The whole article is about reprimanding the rich for their hedonistic ways while at the same time regarding the lower class as a group of downtrodden innocents. He makes some valid points and backs them up. My favorite show to watch is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. At first, I thought that it equally represented class and race. It probably does in quantity. The problem, though, is the way it represents class and race together. An inordinate amount of the episodes concerning hispanics and blacks are in run-down neighborhoods when "most of the poor are white, not black or hispanic" (186). However, at the same time, I can think of at least one episode where there was an intellectual african-american man in a nice apartment. He's not down on his luck and he's not the victim. He's the perpetrator.

The last thing I want to touch on is this concept: "the wealthy are us" (187). It do not believe that this is true in the slightest. If it were then I could have had anything I wanted as a child, gone to any college, and spent my birthday money instead of depositing it. Take for instance Bravo's series of Real Houswives, specifically those of Atlanta. Part of their appeal is their peculiarity. They take up extremely expensive "hobbies" on a whim and seem to be associated with the upper classes of the Altanta community. However, while on camera, they act like trailer trash and hoot rats. Hmm...

Then there are programs like TLC's Say Yes to the Dress where anyone can be a princess. It's just a matter of a budget. And even if you can't stay within your budget, the consultant can find a way to drive down the price "just for you" so that you can have a dream wedding.

The point I'm trying to make is that Mantsios may or may not be correct. For every situation one can come up with that supports his there is invariably one that you can find to dispute it. I tried to make a list of possible shows that supported Mantsios's claims. There were none I could name that were definitively for or against his claims. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think that the media intends for its programs to come out this way. When readers noticed the slight discrepancy in the pictures' captions and began putting them together to show racial bias, "Yahoo News!" released this statement:

"In recent days, a number of readers of Yahoo! News have commented on differences in the language in two Hurricane Katrina-related photo captions (from two news services). Since the controversy began, the supplier of one of the photos has asked all its clients to remove the photo from their databases. Yahoo! News has complied with the AFP request." (Nowpublic.com)

I personally think that Mantsios has something against the rich the way he tries to state his beliefs as fact and explain any deviation from them away with corporate brainwashing as a safety-net. But if he's so wrong about it, then why are the news services not named? And, why were they so eager to get rid of all traces of their little faux pas?