Classism and Working-Class Characters in Fandom

[alixtii]

This post by kattahj made me think about the intersection of racism and classism in deciding who gets written in fanfiction. Now, of course I think it is silly to say that "it is really just about class" or "it's really just about race"; the two work intersectionally in complicated ways. But if we agree with kattahj that CoC's are more likely to get written if

Comments

[stormwreath]

Interesting ideas! As far as your main point goes, I suspect that there's a heirarchy of differences in play: a white, middle-class writer would be presumably reluctant writing a black character, and reluctant writing a working-class character, and therefore doubly reluctant to write someone who's both. The next part of your analysis could be whether black middle-class characters (Season 5 Gunn, Dr Foreman, Martha Jones, etc) get written about the same, more, or less than the white working class ones you've looked at here...

A few minor points:

Buffy's ability to quote Sartre and Arthur Miller seemingly without effort disqualifies her from being working-class.
The 'working class intellectual' is itself an established stereotype, at least in Britain... traditionally such people would be pillars of the Labour movement, or in modern times avant-garde artists or similar. Buffy doesn't really fit eith of those categories, though (quite apart from all her other markers of being upper-middle-class).

Nonwhite racial cultures are (almost?)

[alixtii]

The 'working class intellectual' is itself an established stereotype, at least in Britain...

I can think of British media which reflects this, but I don't think American culture really has the equivalent. Other people might disagree with me, of course.

Nonwhite racial cultures are (almost?) automatically coded as working-class

I think this is more an American thing...

I think that's fair, at least to a point.

Hmm. I'd say he's firmly coded as skilled working classI'd agree that, in terms of occupation, he's still solidly working class. But by most of the other social markers, he isn't. I was mostly thinking of the way he might come off to a stranger outside of work, plus of course his home and circle of friends. (And Sunnydale is coded upper-middle class in general, but with the caveat that many of people can probably only affect the upper-middle-class lifestyle they adopt because the property values are so low, so sociological and economic class are already radically divorced

[heyiya]

I'll comment more to the main post, but (having just reread our conversation from last time and hey, I said some fairly smart stuff!) just wanted to add that the working-class intellectual as stereotype really gets to the heart of what I was saying. As you're accounting for class, it's an impossible position, no? And I think the availability of that position pretty much epitomizes the difference between what we're calling UK and US discourses of class. The working-class intellectual (which is a positionality made available historically by the period in which higher education was free and subsidized in the UK, as well as by cultures that valued autodidacticism) and also the genteel poor, which -- hmm -- is pretty much Giles when he's unemployed

[peasant_]

The working-class intellectual (which is a positionality made available historically by the period in which higher education was free and subsidized in the UK, as well as by cultures that valued autodidacticism) and also the genteel poor,

Yes, in the British class system intellectuals can be found at every level (and have been for well over a hundred years - think of Jude the Obscure for a nice example). However, I think that statement should not be allowed to distract from the weighting of intellectualism which is heavily biased towards the upper middle class. So that, when stereotyping, intellectualism will still be read as a middle class trait in the absence of other markers.

Not that there ever is an absence of other markers for Brits...

[thelana]

Where I come from education is pretty much its own category. If you have higher education chances are that you will be considered an intellectual even if you work in a menial job or have next to no money. Over here the the class lines also fall heavily into a urban vs. rural distinction (since infrastructure is much poorer in rural areas).

[alixtii]

In retrospect, the element I respond to in characters most powerfully isn't education as such--Buffy only finished about a year and a half of college but nonetheless displays an enviable cultural literacy concerning both highbrow and popular texts--but usually maps onto it in the nonfictional world. Since it's not education, exactly, I really didn't have any word for it than "class."

[alixtii]

Well, she's living in somebody else's house at their expense, and apparently they're getting most of their provisions by looting the abandoned town around them... not really that upwardly mobile.

But she has, to some degree, at least, assimilated into the group of women living at that house, which manifests a dominate middle-class culture regardless of how they're keeping themselves fed. Which doesn't quite make her middle-class, but . . . I think that the best analysis is that as a Slayer, she is a member of an underclass who shifts from displaying a purely working-class class culture to a more middle-class one, especially once she is required to assume the mantle of authority. And while I don't treat the comics as canon, and I haven't read No Future for You yet in any case, my understanding is that it complicates all that even more.