Working Class Representation in the media

What is the working class?

The google dictionary definition is the social group consisting of people who are employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work.
"the housing needs of the working classes"

The middle-class definition is: the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business people and their families.

Its already quite difficult to have a conversation about class since no one really knows the true definition of working, middle, and higher class. There is no income threshold to determine which class you're in, there are so many factors that go into it, social, economic, political, etc. In the last 40 years, the working class has become more demonized than ever, politicians claiming we live in a jobless Britain, the media presenting the working class as work-shy benefits scroungers and the entertainment industry furthering this narrative through shows like Jeremy Kyle and benefits street. A word that gets thrown around a lot surrounding the working class is "Chav". Chav has many different meanings, some think its an acronym for council house and violence, the word chav actually came from the Romani word for child. The "little book of chavs" describes a chav as a burgeoning underclass often working in supermarkets and fast-food chains or not at all, have children in their teens wear tracksuits, hang out in big groups on the street,  participating in antisocial behavior, drinking loads and taking drugs, are on benefits,  have a low IQ, are racist and will eventually end up in prison. The bashing of the working class is incredibly mainstream and a lot of people will happily bash them but would never dream of saying anything sexist, racist, or homophobic. So why? There are many factors such as Magret Thatcher and the deindustrialization of the UK, politics, media & entertainment, etc, the latter being what I have looked at.

Within right-wing tabloids there seems to be no in-between, you're either middle class or you are part of the benefit hogging, work-shy underclass. Journalists especially push this narrative out because the majority of them have had little to no contact with the working class.

A case that demonstrates the tabloids bias towards the middle class is that of Shannon Matthews. Eight months after 3-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing in a Portuguese holiday resort, 9-year-old Shannon Matthews vanished in West Yorkshire. Both cases very similar, young girls that disappeared without a trace, leaving behind their grief-stricken mothers doing tv interviews with their cuddling toys pleading for the publics' help. After two weeks Madeleine McCann had over 1100 news articles written about her disappearance and a £2.6 million reward for anyone who could return her safely. Whilst Shannon only received a third of the media coverage Madeleine got and only a £50,000 reward. This is very telling of how little coverage Madeleine McCann's case got compared to Shannons. Madeleine's parents were upper-middle class, both doctors, university-educated living in a nice area. This brought about this kind of solidarity within the middle class, of this sort of thing doesn't happen to people like us.

 You could also tell this from the complete lack of scrutiny at the time towards the parents for leaving their 3 infant children in an unlocked room in a foreign country whilst drinking and eating at a tapas bar, 180 ft away, deciding against babysitters they could more than afford. Shannon, on the other hand, grew up on an impoverished estate in West Yorkshire, in one of the many towns that were affected by deindustrialization (brought about under Margret Thatcher). Her mother Karen

Shannon Matthews - Karen Matthews

Matthews had 7 children from 5 different men, she was unemployed and her partner was a supermarket fishmonger. And when she did most of her tv appearances she was usually wearing a baseball cap and a tracksuit, as expected Shannon's disappearance didn't envoke the same solidarity in the middle class as Madeleine did. People who weren't from the same background as Shannon really struggled to sympathize with Karen because of how far removed the middle class is from the realities of poverty. The Shannon Matthews case actually took an extremely unexpected turn with Shannon being found safe in Karen Matthews partners Uncles house, being planned by Karen as a way to get the reward money, because of this Karen Matthews became a representative of the working class, and right-wing tabloids and media saw it as fair game to rip into Karen Matthews community.

Journalist Melanie Phillips claimed that these are communities where "boys impregnate two, three four girls without a scarce thought" along with other completely ludicrous claims she had no evidence for. Conservative Councilor John Ward said, "there are increasingly strong cases for compulsory sterilization of those who have a second or third, or whatever whilst living off of benefits". And of course, the media did not mention at all about how the entire community came together to try and find Shannon, they went door to door with leaflets in the rain, organized coaches to go to and from Birmingham with multilingual leaflets to cater towards the high Muslim population, most lived in poverty yet a lot of them reached into their own pockets to try and help find Shannon.
But this didn't fit in with the media narrative. There was this idea that everyone from this community and the WC class community, in general, was just like Karen Matthews, even though Karen's neighbors were exemplary parents, the story of Shannon Matthews was used to further the narrative that the older working-class had died out and there was only the middle class and the "chavvy underclass" left.

 Then there's the case of Baby Peter a London toddler abused by his mother and boyfriend so severely he ended up passing away. Again his parents being used as representatives of the working class. They focused intensely on the parents, yet neglected the council and child protective services failing him. The media exploited the death of a toddler to further dehumanize the working class. Mick Philpott is another person used to represent the working class, he set his house on fire to frame his ex-girlfriend so he could get custody of his children, but the fire got out of control and killed his six children. Once again the right-wing media exploited the deaths of six children to further demonize the working class.  Don't get me wrong there are people in the working class that have deeply problematic lives like Mick and Karen but this is only an extremely small minority and is not representative at all, just as there are extremely problematic people in the middle and upper class who aren't representative.

Journalists are so unbelievably out of touch with the working class, 50% of the top 100 journalists are privately educated, despite only 7% of the public being so. Many journalists have to do unpaid internships to get into the area of their career, the only way you can get through that with ease, is to come from families that can financially support you through it. It's absolutely ridiculous that people like Karen Matthews and Mick Phillpott are used as representatives of the working class, yet people such as middle-class doctor Harold Shipman, who killed nearly 250 of his patients, isn't used to represent the middle class or anything that's wrong with it.

In 2009, Sir Liam Donaldson set out new regulations and recommendations that those under the age of 15 should not drink at all. and that having a small glass of wine with a meal was a middle-class obsession. The Daily Telegraph journalist James Delingpole claimed that Donaldson was aiming this at the wrong class and that most binge drinking took place in the lower class areas and estates. Yet a study by the National Center of Social Research showed that people from affluent backgrounds were the biggest binge drinkers and those with unemployed parents were the most likely to have never drunk alcohol before. Just like in politics, the demonization and dehumanization of the working class within the media and in particular right-wing tabloids gives justification for why people are in poverty, making the public believe that those that deserve it.

Before the second world war, there was little to no representation of the working class, but afterward, the working class began to be discussed a bit more and represented more in books and plays.

Coronation Street aired its first episode in 1960 a soap about normal lives of normal working-class people, of course, the drama is added into it to make it more entertaining. Other shows started airing, portraying the working class such as Only Fools and Horses, Saturday Night & Sunday morning, and the likely lads. These portrayals weren't very realistic, often being romanticized and quite one dimensional, the never really showed the true realities of being working class and how people end up being there, but these shows didn't demonize them as shows do today, this shift in tone came about during Margret Thatcher's government.

photo from chavscum.com

The website chavscum was launched in 2003. a website where you could post pictures and memes about the working class or "chavs". The website described it as "Britain's peasant underclass that's taking over our towns and cities. The little book of chavs was published in 2004 by Lee Bok, and after the popularity of the book he released the Chav guide to life, both books obviously dug out the working class in the vilest ways possible. In the little book of chavs, there were listed occupations that were
chavvy: for women, or as Lee Bok called it Chavette, you were a trainee hairdresser or beautician, cleaner or barmaid. For men, you were either a builder, roofer, plumber, market stall worker, mechanic, or security guard. Bad mouthing the people who do their hair, or work on their cars for them.

Chav hating became more mainstream in 2004, telegraph journalist Jemima Lewis released an article called in defense of snobbery, where she defended the chav scum website by saying that working-class bashing was necessary to motivate them to change their situation. Her newest article was defended JK Rowling which is a tell-all. And once again, her article is an example of individualism, blaming people in poverty for being where they are, instead of the system which has been rigged against them since the day they were born.

And then there was the TV show wife swap, it's a show where two families switch wives for a week, a reoccurring theme was a middle-class family, and then a dysfunctional working-class family, ending up being more class swap. These shows appeal to middle-class audiences, with working-class families treated as jesters to be laughed at, also establishing the chav stereotype was "correct". Another example of this is the Jeremy Kyle Show. Exploiting intensely emotional situations like paternal testing and cheating, theft within a family, and drug addiction. A majority of their guests were working class, all this in the name of entertainment. The Jeremy Kyle show was canceled around a year ago after one of the people who were on it killed themselves. It's so unfortunate that it had to escalate that far to cancel a show that exploitative.

Vicky Pollard - Little Britain

Yet another show Little Britain and the character of Vicky Pollard, now we all know that Vicky was not the most problematic of Litlle Britain. She was a character who had like 10 kids, smoked all the time was aggressive, and has a low iq, this can be passed off as harmless fun if people understood that this is a character and isn't realistic. However, a survey taken at the 2006 Edinburgh film festival showed that a majority of people working in TV thought Vicky Pollard was an accurate representation of a single working-class mum. The public believes that Matt Lucas, a middle-class white man parading around like a "chavvy" working-class single mum is okay because they think the working class is genuinely like that which isn't true as it is such a small minority.

The last example is Shameless, which was autobiographical, being about the writer's upbringing working class, when he finished writing,  it turned out quite downbeat and depressing so it was rewritten as a comedy. The shameless audience is mostly middle class and because of this lack of contact with the working class they begin to see shameless as more of a documentary rather than a comedy, and it seems that there are no tv shows about the working class that's realistic and shows how they ended up in the place they are. Then there are shows like Can't pay we'll take it away, following around bay lifts, a lot of the time the people in these situations are in very tough circumstances and its filmed and put on the tv, somehow that's entertainment.

A lot of middle/ upper class have never even had a conversation with the working class so of course, they are going to believe these representations are accurate. If we look at middle-class representation in Uk media, there is Britains Dream Homes, Country House Rescue, A place in the sun, home or away, and location location location. I don't believe that the tv show shameless is offensive, especially since the writer was working class, I just think we need more tv shows and documentaries that better represent the working class so that there is more understanding between classes.

A sad but realistic portrayal is the film I, Daniel Blake. All about the corruption in the welfare system and how it's rigged against the lower class.