Poshos
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:03 (thirteen years ago) link
Yarbles
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:04 (thirteen years ago) link
Tom D., I'd be interested to hear your case for that. But it seems clear to me that Alex is supposed to be an over-privileged little snot.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:05 (thirteen years ago) link
Repo Man
― Otherwise you're kinda being comp-lit in his racism. (kkvgz), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:06 (thirteen years ago) link
In fact, the whole movie takes place in this vaguely futuristic place where almost everyone is over-privileged, and if you're not, you're living in a tunnel waiting to get the shit kicked out of you by snots like Alex. It's kind of part of the plot. At any rate, it ain't blue collar.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:09 (thirteen years ago) link
Repo Man is excellent, yes.
Lives in a tower block. Parents seem fairly w/c. Northern accent. One of his friends is Warren Clarke!
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:10 (thirteen years ago) link
There are British-specific overtones that I do not understand, clearly.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:11 (thirteen years ago) link
In fact, the whole movie takes place in this vaguely futuristic place where almost everyone is over-privileged
Writers, intellectuals, politicians still more privileged though.
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:12 (thirteen years ago) link
Probably. The accent is quite important... though only Alex and his family have Northern accents, Dim + Georgie are Cockney.
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:14 (thirteen years ago) link
But Alex also speaks a made-up language that's half Russian.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:17 (thirteen years ago) link
argh beat me to Brazil
― Don't look at the finger (Ste), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:17 (thirteen years ago) link
At any rate, I do not believe that the intention was to portray Alex as economically put-upon.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:18 (thirteen years ago) link
I agree. You're probably right that he is relatively pampered and privileged but then that's what crusty social conservatives (like Anthony Burgess?) invariably said about juvenile delinquents in the 50s/ 60s
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Ok are you defending Alex? This ain't Rebel Without A Cause, dude's a dangerous sociopath.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:23 (thirteen years ago) link
LOL. He is the hero of the book after all!
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:25 (thirteen years ago) link
Yeah I never saw the droogs in CW as working class, tho tbh class wasnt really relevant in that film, but they did have a spot of educated cruelty about their persons.
― property-disrespecting Moroccan handjob (Trayce), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:26 (thirteen years ago) link
Dim? Educated?
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:29 (thirteen years ago) link
they did have a spot of educated cruelty about their persons.
Prep school rapists, yeah.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:30 (thirteen years ago) link
alex always felt like a bit of an aspirational dandy to me, pretensions that went beyond whatever small ambitions were harbored by his droogs - i.e. he was working class through and through
― The Clegg Effect (Tracer Hand), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:35 (thirteen years ago) link
Alex = classic Mod taken to its logical conclusion, tbh.
― Using an Aural Exciter in an Orgone Accumulator (Masonic Boom), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:36 (thirteen years ago) link
xp Yeah, I can see that, actually. It's the perfect makings of a bully, really.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:37 (thirteen years ago) link
Indeed, written before mods even existed!
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:37 (thirteen years ago) link
Well there just weren't as many zings back in those days, you didn't need mods
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Friday, 4 June 2010 11:48 (thirteen years ago) link
x-post Yeah just about every John Carpenter joint.
"Gattaca" is about class, isn't it?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 June 2010 11:59 (thirteen years ago) link
Almost more about eugenics, really?
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Friday, 4 June 2010 12:02 (thirteen years ago) link
Eugenics is about class.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 12:04 (thirteen years ago) link
But isn't Ethan Hawke a janitor or something who aspires to more?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 June 2010 12:48 (thirteen years ago) link
Stretching a point maybe, but Tetsuo is definitely examining Japanese middle-class identity, albeit through the medium of a white-collar guy's penis mutating into a giant rotating drill. I guess that's class-based sf though, rather than specifically blue-collar.
― A prog venn diagram for you to think about (Matt #2), Friday, 4 June 2010 12:52 (thirteen years ago) link
Fifth Mothertrucking Element
― Jarlrmai, Friday, 4 June 2010 12:57 (thirteen years ago) link
^ too often ignored
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:03 (thirteen years ago) link
Total Recall
Nah Ahnold is pure executive
― May be half naked, but knows a good headline when he sees it (darraghmac), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:05 (thirteen years ago) link
But Quaid is way gritty.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:05 (thirteen years ago) link
Dude... he's actually a
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:06 (thirteen years ago) link
CONSTRUCTION WORKER
(didn't mean for that to be two posts, oops.)
A Clockwork Orange the book strongly suggests that Alex's family is fairly comfortably off (can't recall exact details, but parents baffled cz they'd provided everything for him, think they bought him his shiny top-of-the-range hi-fi though maybe he, uh, acquired it). But, they do live in a small place in a giant towerblock and not a big-assed house like the mad old cat-lady's.
So he seems fairly well-off middle-class to me, but maybe a high-rise garret stuffed with a giant state-of-the-art stereo is the 60s-future equivalent of "why are these working class people not content when every council flat is full of DVD players and Playstations and in my day we only had (etc etc)"
Read the book a) first and b) again much more recently than the film, so not sure what the film implies.
(Sorry to go back to old subthread)
― atoms breaking heart (a passing spacecadet), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:08 (thirteen years ago) link
Salvage 1! (Andy Griffith as the Astronaut Sanford, builds a rocketship of out scraps in his junkyard)
― shugazi (herb albert), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:08 (thirteen years ago) link
Matrix!
― Don't look at the finger (Ste), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:09 (thirteen years ago) link
A "why are these working class people not content when every council flat is full of DVD players and Playstations and in my day we only had (etc etc)"
Well it's late 50s/ early 60s so it's more "Why is this generation, who have so much more money and freedom and opportunity than we had, so feckless and ungrateful and destructive?"
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:11 (thirteen years ago) link
So, yes, decent hard-working w/c parents baffled by delinquent offspring
― Wenlock & Mandelson (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:13 (thirteen years ago) link
maybe some of the later ones where zion is a utopian industrial disco for hard working free men with taut glistening muscles, but neo and trinity are str8 white collar.
― sent from my neural lace (ledge), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:14 (thirteen years ago) link
Starship Troopers is all about rejecting upper-class comforts and becoming a common grunt. Well, that and bug brains.
― Simon H., Friday, 4 June 2010 13:16 (thirteen years ago) link
Neo is busted down though from fake white collar programming job to real gritty resistance movement on board a bust up ship where all they eat is gruel.
― Jarlrmai, Friday, 4 June 2010 13:19 (thirteen years ago) link
he's a nerd who becomes the messiah
― sent from my neural lace (ledge), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:21 (thirteen years ago) link
Dozer RIP
― shugazi (herb albert), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:21 (thirteen years ago) link
Starship Troopers is all about rejecting upper-class comforts and becoming a common grunt.
Uh... so's fascism. Watch it again.
― Eighteen straight. I think that's a record. (kenan), Friday, 4 June 2010 13:21 (thirteen years ago) link
Yeah, man, Starship Troopers is a big sucker punch.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 June 2010 13:34 (thirteen years ago) link
Starship Troopers is all about if the Nazis won WW2
― Jarlrmai, Friday, 4 June 2010 13:42 (thirteen years ago) link
this was a solid thread, well done everyone
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 25 May 2012 19:26 (eleven years ago) link
"the island", while indefensibly shitty, was ultimately pretty working class
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 25 May 2012 19:27 (eleven years ago) link
"indefensibly shitty, was ultimately pretty working class"haha that's all of michael bay's movies.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 25 May 2012 19:32 (eleven years ago) link
Playing Borderlands 2 this weekend and realized that both this game and Guardians of the Galaxy(much like Starcraft I & II) had great depictions of sci-fi rednecks/hillbillies. Yet again, I posit that Michael Rooker will probably never get the full credit for what he contributes to GotG.
― Stephen King's Threaderstarter (kingfish), Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:28 (nine years ago) link
Ha, and I completely forgot this thread had this exchange:
Yeah, but C3PO is a "protocol droid", i.e. built for a white collar job. Can you imagine him doing manual work?"My last job was programming binary load-lifters, very similar to your vaporators!"
"My last job was programming binary load-lifters, very similar to your vaporators!"
― Stephen King's Threaderstarter (kingfish), Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:30 (nine years ago) link
I guess we can add Elysium / Total Recall(remake) to this list, and also Edge of Tomorrow, which pointedly highlights the contrast between grunt & pretty-boy officer
― Stephen King's Threaderstarter (kingfish), Saturday, 23 August 2014 22:33 (nine years ago) link
I'm watching Snowpiercer right now. Definitely counts.
― Scary Darey (dog latin), Sunday, 24 August 2014 02:39 (nine years ago) link
that repo men flick from a few years back. terrible, but working class, even trying to say something abt it.
― Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding (contenderizer), Sunday, 24 August 2014 07:51 (nine years ago) link