Here are two videos posted on youtube about people at Walmart. I think they fit with the piece of this week's reading that addresses classism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h48Uff3XD0s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghrDIQ-K8mg
and a short article on Honey Boo Boo reality show, which the author refers to as ‘the poverty voyeurism comedy tour!;
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/09/whats-wrong-with-honey-boo-boo/#.UEoQi-5vQpQ.email/
A little South Park, anyone?
ReplyDeleteThe only exposure I've received to Honey Boo Boo is on several South Park episodes that I've watched. I didn't quite understand the "joke" when I saw the episodes because I never saw Honey Boo Boo before that. I did laugh because the characters on South Park seemed so bizarre to me.
I found this video on youtube about the girl's mom calling South Park "trashy" for portraying them a certain way on the show. Which is interesting because South Park was essentially calling THEM trashy by portraying them in that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoli_9sQU8s
If you've never seen South Park before--- well, 1. what are you waiting for? and 2. be aware because the voices and characters are very strange when you watch it for the first time.
OH, and just for the record, I have no clue what the Dow Jones industrial average is. If he wants to prove a point (perhaps, that the "people of Walmart" are stupid-- a.k.a low class is stupid) he should probably pick a question that most members of the middle class would actually know the answer to. Maybe I'm just uneducated but I don't follow that type of economics very closely.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a history professor asking a class of 5th graders a question that not even his/her own students would know the answer to. It just doesn't prove anything.
Mark Dice could go to Stop and Shop or even Whole Foods and ask people the same question-- unless they follow stocks, they don't know the answer.
It implies that you're uneducated if you don't know simple questions about the stock market. I'm educated but I'm not an economist. I could ask him something about literature or history that he probably wouldn't know the answer to.
... and not that this matters but you can tell he's way into himself, which is annoying.
you are right. You could always key your questions to what the audience doesn't know. This makes it even more clear to me that his goal is to show working class people as inferior and stupid.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. The Walmart video actually made me a little mad. I think the way this guy went about it did nothing but enforce stereotypes about the working class that were already there. Any middle class people who were to watch this video would just take it as another reason to see the divide between the working class and themselves even though I guarantee if he were to ask the question about the Dow Jones in a more middle class store like say Target that he would get the same responses.
ReplyDeleteThe Wal-Mart videos were too funny. I had no idea what the dow jones average meant so I looked it up and was still a bit confused to why he was asking the shoppers what the average was. But of course it was to make working class citizens seem dumb. People like Mark Dice are so ignorant and should go fall in a ditch and never come out of it.
ReplyDeleteThis guy Dice is just a jerk. I a sure there was a number of people who knew what the Dow Jones average was but it wouldn't make for a "funny" video if he couldn't make it seem like everyone who shops at Walmart is a complete moron. I know what the Dow Jones is because of my 401k and the news on NBC 10 at 5:30am. That doesn't mean I'm better or smarter than those other people. My wife, who is extremely smart, does not pay attention to such things so if/when I ask her about anything to do with finances she has no clue.
ReplyDeleteThe people of Walmart videos/pics are always funny and entertaining but I don't know that they "prove" anything.
Honey Boo Boo should not be on the Learning Channel. What are we supposed to be learning here? I do think, just like with Jerry Springer, that the family is prompted to be "lower class" and that certain things are for the benefit of the camera.
I think the humor (or disgust) in watching the people in Walmart videos is associated with their working class status. They are working class in their presentation - loud colors and dress, tacky not refined, little sense of what is proper and appropriate in behavior or dress, not modest but showing off their bodies and selves..... what does everyone else think?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. When people see the "People of Walmart" video, I don't think they are associating them with the working class. I think they're thinking, "wow these people are so poor, trashy, and out of control" (so maybe lower class if anything).
ReplyDeleteBecause when people see these videos I don't think that they associate the people of Walmart with any type of work at all. I think they automatically think things like "food stamps" and "lazy".
so these kinds of behaviors and presentations are connected to the working poor? Isn't that still classism?
ReplyDeleteI'm saying I don't think people think "work" at all when they see the People of Walmart video. They do think poor. Yes, definitely still classism.
ReplyDeleteThey think, "wow this is America's lower class. Uneducated, poor, lazy (like, half the people in the video are on one of those scooter things), etc."..... totally classism.
And if you want to look at it from a political perspective, I bet people watch these videos and think things like, "well, there goes my tax money. To support lazy, crazy people like that at Walmart." (meaning government assistance, food stamps, etc.) Which is a major problem-- it creates class tension and more of a social divide. You might think comments like these are a stretch (and of course, they are a stretch) but people make these types of comments when confronted with the lower class. It goes right along with individualism-- that they need to blame someone for America's problems-- and of course, all of our problems are the fault of these people at Walmart.
The middle and upper class are essentially playing it safe by posting and commenting about videos like this one. They make sure, in a sense (whether consciously or unconsciously) that the inferior lower class is to blame.
Now I'm just ranting but I think I made some connections.
Good comments may often arise from rants
ReplyDelete