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Alonso Herrera Social Class Essay Assignment

Social class represents the wealth, power and prestige held by an individual within any given society and this idea is expanded upon by Gilbert as his description of the American social class being represented through families of people that are typically grouped and identified as one by sharing similar occupations and characteristic. The Upper-/capitalist, middle-, and lower-class are ranks found within the American social class system and films use these ranks in order to portray characteristics of those living within the given classes using a story. The Great Gatsby, Pleasantville, and Rocky respectively represent each rank by depicting various occupations, lifestyles, struggles and success held by the characters within each movie to portray American social class culture. The film “The Great Gatsby”, characters representing the levels of social class was a crucial aspect of the film that carried its theme throughout the story and was depicted significantly through the main character Gatsby. Gatsby and other characters such as the Buchannan’s, Jordan Baker represent the upper class within the movie using imagery and displays of wealth, luxury and festivities enjoyed by the upper-class characters. However, despite remaining within the same social class, the distinction between Gatsby and the others is their upbringings into wealth. Whereas Tom and Jordan are born into a life luxury, Gatsby was introduced to a life of poverty of two farmers and from this dissatisfaction of being seemingly bound to his parents’ misfortune he pursued his own career and empire to rise through the social ladder and become upper class material. Gatsby is a prime example of the American Dream, disregarding his roots of poverty and creating his own success and upward mobility into his position of the upper class. The film “Rocky”, depicts the story of Rocky Balboa, a debt collecting and upcoming boxing athlete living within an impoverished area of Philadelphia. The opening scene brings us to Rocky leaving

a recent boxing match competition passing through his town that is littered in trash on the streets and decaying buildings which shares similar qualities to his lack luster apartment he lives in once he arrives home. The theme of the film shows a man living within poverty with a dream he wishes to pursuit and eventually proving himself with his first major boxing event with famous boxer Apollo Creed. This film shows Rocky’s life chances through the opportunity he received to gain recognition through fighting Creed while also diving into the social living conditions of a lower income area. Lastly the film, “Pleasantville” gives us the story of a very mundane town that’s residents all share similar occupations, characteristics, personalities, and responsibilities. Main characters David and Jennifer explore the town of Pleasantville realize the amount of formality among the residents and seek to escape the town and from its repressive idyllic nature. The film itself demonstrates the functionalist perspective in sociology, using the town of Pleasantville as the example of an ideal society, roles are followed religiously and accurately. The repressive nature of the town shows the dysfunctional nature of an ideal society, lack of change or ability to differentiate one another creates an almost dystopian world. In conclusion, the three films accurately describe a certain aspect of each step of the American social class hierarchy. Character and story development carries the theme of each movie which we are able to dissect on a sociological level by analyzing what the occupations, motives, actions and beliefs of characters and how that contributes to certain sociological ideologies in the world. Through Gatsby’s origins based around the American Dream, Rocky’s use of life chances and seizing the opportunities available to him in order to succeed and Pleasantville depiction of the functionalist, boring perspective of the middle class we gathered an variety of information that allowed us to better understand the social class system of America through entertainment....