Common People: A lyrical discussion/dissection

Contenderizer, that part of your life described upthread recalls the plot of Metropolitan.

Goole has the best grasp of the song's background - it is the continuation of the concept of 'a cheap holiday in someone else's misery'. For those of you who may be interested in specifics, the Greek girl Jarvis refers to in the song is called Sophia (meaning: knowledge/wisdom, LOL) and is from a very wealthy/highbrow family of exiled Communists who live in one of the most beautiful streets in Rome. Her brother - who is now a town planner - was best friends with Nick Momus when both were students at Aberdeen (this, and discussion with Jarvis a few years back, is how I happen to know).

Jarvis grew up in a single-parent household when divorce was still stigmatized - his mum - a mod who is now a Tory councillor LOL - had gone to art college herself, but they had no money, were poor compared to most people in their part of Sheffield. He describes the conundrum of being 'the educated poor' all the time. Plus he has the Northern thing of suspecting that anyone Southern is most likely spoilt or pretentious until proven otherwise. One thing that no working to lower-middle class person from that time and place would be expecting to see in London is LARGE NUMBERS of amazingly stonking rich jet trash expats instead of one or two. Having said that, Jarvis went to St Martins with his best friend because both were accepted on the film MA in 1988 and lived in a shithole in Peckham, students were still just about living on grants and not paying fees, and people were bothered by classmates who got massive handouts from their parents (which is why some rich kids would try to hide it). Continental Europeans don't hide it in the same way.

Great topic. I haven't read through all the responses yet, so apologies if any of this is redundant or dumb or whatever, but I just love these lyrics and his delivery and how explicitly the lyric addresses class. I don't think I've listened to another Pulp song 1/1000th as much as this one.

"Pretend you got no money" / "You're so funny" is a great couplet. I can see him kinda leaning in to her ear as they are holding hands in the aisle and I can see her just vacantly looking at the stuff on the shelves and ignoring people.

"you'll never fail like common people / you'll never watch your life slide out of view" -- Oh man, these lines just kill me -- you've never seen your parents worry about how to provide the best they can for you or had to work or racked up a monster student loan for what you want to learn or attended a less than stellar school or even just had a care in the world and you still feel entitled to...more.

My wife and I had this conversation with an Art Institute of Chicago student from Manhattan that I remember every time I hear this song. It was infuriating. I still get pissed off thinking about it ten years later. Nothing was *enough* for her and she truly believed the world was her playground and that she deserved whatever/whenever. No sense of...reality -- or such a twisted one as to be unrecognizable to 99.99% of people who've ever lived. While the character in the song just seems oblivious, though (or maybe not), this girl seemed willfully ignorant and narcissistic.

Back to the song, I'm not sure his class is particularly relevant. It's her perspective on his class that matters.

the only consideration is financial - the likelihood of arrest/confiscation/explosion is significant

if yr meth cook has a secure income (safe lab and effective immunity from prosecution) then perhaps they can be considered as analogous

doesn't the fact that you have to create these baroque contrivances show that irl these things are usually fairly clear cut?

jarvis got into st martins by telling the admissions officer that if he didn't he'd have to resort to a life of prostitution, iirc.

many xp - I instinctively disagree with the idea that cops are "working class" (or related) FWIW. It's a professional government job with middle-class pay and good benefits.

A job which has, existed in large part to protect the other classes from the working class.

if you make substantially less than six figures, you're not probably not middle class at all, not even "lower middle class", regardless of your profession. you're working class, though that doesn't necessarily mean poor.

It's hard to port these things trans-Atlantically but as an academic in the UK, earning six figures in Dollars is where you can hope to be at the very end of a very successful career. However, calling academics "working class" throws out almost the entire set of attitudes and experiences that are taken to be signifiers determining or at least correlating with class in standard discourse. It's kind of the opposite of sarahel's drug dealer example.

Which is why splitting hairs based on "well, this hypothetical construction worker man makes X but this female office worker makes less -Y-, then..." is all sort of irrelevant to me.

It's about money and opportunity to me. If you're stuck as an administrative assistant who's never going to make more than a living wage, if that, then you get to join me When The Revolution Comes. If you're ostensibly blue collar but exist primarily to order migrant workers to do work, up against the wall motherfucker.

i only created this baroque contrivance, because things aren't clear cut - like goole and horseshoe are arguing that the metaphorical bus driver and the community college prof are of the same class because they make the same money, and i disagree - the community college prof is of a higher class because of additional cultural capital, or at least, better working conditions and a higher status job

and if you make substantially less than six figures, you're not probably not middle class at all, not even "lower middle class", regardless of your profession. you're working class, though that doesn't necessarily mean poor.

The median household income in the US is well below six figures - and the curve falls off rapidly as you approach six figures.

milo otm

Yep - one crucial factor in the case of high-status low-income professions is that most people in those jobs *choose* to do them instead of something better paid.

using dollar amounts is pretty useless when making generalizations about class in America (except at the top and bottom ends) - $30k/yr is way different if you live in NYC, SF, maybe Seattle? - than say Memphis, Baltimore, or Kansas City

doesn't the fact that you have to create these baroque contrivances show that irl these things are usually fairly clear cut?

― nakhchivan, Friday, September 3, 2010 3:16 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

no. i agree with sarah here, though i don't think the drug dealer/computer programmer example works well. class is not a single thing, the product of income and that's that. class is a word we use to talk about a wide range of things that relate to wealth and social prestige, and though the lines can be made to seem fairly clear-cut when look at from on high, down in the muck of actual human social interaction, the gray areas are huge.

anyway, the designations here in the U.S. are way more arbitrary and fluid and debatable than it seems they are in the UK

The median household income in the US is well below six figures - and the curve falls off rapidly as you approach six figures.

― a cross between lily allen and fetal alcohol syndrome (milo z), Friday, September 3, 2010 3:21 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah. making median income doesn't make one middle class. that's an entirely different evaluation system. in most economies, making median income makes one a well-paid member of the working class. working class = most people. middle class = the not inconsiderable number who've begun to break away from working for a living. upper class = ur overloards.

middle class = the not inconsiderable number who've begun to break away from working for a living

huh?

Median household income in SF is only $10-15k more than the rest of the country, IIRC. So it's a little different - but even in those places where costs are very high, you don't need six figures to make you working class by any stretch.

yeah. making median income doesn't make one middle class.

yes it does.

srsly there is no utility to any of these designations if that doesn't hold

all i know is i meet a lot of people who move to the bay area from other places, and they look at how much rents are for rooms in shared apartments and shake their heads, trying to stifle moral indignation, and say, "what? i could rent an entire house with a yard for that back in (where they came from)"

the first part of your sentence explains the second

though the lines can be made to seem fairly clear-cut when look at from on high, down in the muck of actual human social interaction, the gray areas are huge.

― having taken an actual journalism class (contenderizer), Friday, 3 September 2010 23:27 (1 minute ago)

sure but as i said...

the differences between (some fom of) middle class and working class are complex but given enough exposition you'd probably agree w/ any given poster which group [random person] fell into

― nakhchivan, Friday, 3 September 2010 22:50 (38 minutes ago)

clearly only an extremely reductive materialism equates an inidigent country curate w/ a similarly starving peasant

the grey areas become huge when you get into the upper reaches (often narcissism of sd), the basic middle/working class dichotomy is seldom that cloudy

Totes true - that's why I don't live there now. Even if I could make what I make now, I couldn't afford a studio in the Tenderloin. An SRO maybe, but I have some small measure of pride left.

OTOH, in San Francisco I wouldn't need or want my truck, which saves me $427/month in insurance/loan (all my gas goes through work, thankfully, since I drive my own vehicle) - minus $50 or whatever it is for a MUNI monthly pass.

Coackroaches can be a thing of the past with the right bug spray (which can be purchased at an affordable price) iirc.

middle class = the not inconsiderable number who've begun to break away from working for a living.

lol whut?

The only way I could see 'median income' not equalling 'middle class' is if it didn't provide some measure of opportunity just based on how much you make. Which may be close to happening, but AFAICT children of parents making $50-60k/year in middle America still have a good shot at going to a public school and grinding away at a miserable job for the rest of their lives in the hopes that THEIR kids can climb another quarter-rung up the class ladder

well yeah - i'm trying to figure out where contenderizer is coming from with that six figures comment - like, there is a significant disparity between the cost of living in different regions of the U.S.

middle class = the not inconsiderable number who've begun to break away from working for a living.

lol whut?

― i am legernd (history mayne), Friday, September 3, 2010 3:37 PM (20 seconds ago)

i lol whutted that earlier - lol! The only reason my middle class parents are beginning to break away from working for a living is because they're a year away from retirement age.

working class people who are terminally ill can be said to be "breaking away from working for a living" -- these are among our elites, arguably

haha

i think there are a lot of rap songs about "breaking away from working for a living" - i don't think the rappers are middle class though

think contenderizer may be trying to make middle class mean bourgeois, as in ownership of the means of production... these phrases are all p stupid and very approximate, but no-one else thinks of middle-class as meaning 'earns six figs, doesn't work for a living', and given the necessary intersubjectivity involved in linguistic acts... think contenderizer is off the money.

british class system-wise, jarvis doesn't bring up 'people on benefits' as part of the common people.

lsn peep dis i got more money than alla y'all but y'all don't see me spendin' them ends on somethin phat and swizzy and uploading jpgs of it for everyone to get jealous of rite?

fuk u all and ur class shit.

yeah - i think he's trying to emulate the bourgeois, petit bourgeois, prole taxonomy

there is no utility to any of these designations if that doesn't hold

― horseshoe, Friday, September 3, 2010 3:32 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

sure there is. if you wanna say "making median income", then just say that. we often use "middle class" in political rhetoric to talk about some imaginary "average american", but i think that's a lousy way to conceptualize it. i equate the middle class to marx's petit bourgeois, those who exist alongside the working classes but have begun to assume a quasi-upper-class relationship to personal wealth. business owners and wealthy professionals in marx's eyes, but he was overly attached to the idea of ownership, imo. the owner of a very small business is much more working class than an investment banker making high six figures.

i.e., yes, what i'm doing is exactly what others say - importing marxist taxonomy.

but i'm also trying to insist that far, far more americans are really "working class" than many people think. there are well-to-do working class people and desperately poor working class people, and i'd argue that the vast majority of americans fall into this spectrum somewhere.

This might be a bit flippant but maybe it explains the failure of communication here between US and UK: People in Britain understand class, and class relations, in their guts, the way Americans do race - its the open wound that needs to be kept open if you are to understand how stuff 'really' works. Whereas British people tend to be quite literal and guileless about race, the way Americans are about class.

lsn peep dis i got more money than alla y'all but y'all don't see me spendin' them ends on somethin phat and swizzy and uploading jpgs of it for everyone to get jealous of rite?

fuk u all and ur class shit.

― spidermark, Friday, September 3, 2010 3:41 PM (3 minutes ago)

A+++++

this confusion occurs cuz in american political rhetoric 'middle class' does usually mean something like median income

'the middle class' especially, literally those in the normal income distribution range, no marxist connotations no siree

median is just 50th percentile though - someone can be making the median national income in the US but living in NYC or SF and not enjoy the comfortable lifestyle of the middle class

if we say regional median, then yeah

i think the "middle class" = average american = "YOU, dear voter" rhetorical equation is lame and should be done away with

in America none of us are average, we are all special snowflakes

is cntndrzr doing that thing where he makes up new definitions to suit his arg?

he's using definitions that aren't the most relevant or appropriate to the discussion, but this one he got from Marx

okay, so maybe my terms are weird, but the middle = median = you thing just creates bogus high/low tension between the "lower" & blue-collar "working class" and the white-collar but still working & job-dependent "middle"

proposal

poor
working/middle class
rich

nobody disagrees with you about the bogus invocation of "middle class" by American politicians, i don't think

xp

it's just kind of irritating when working class people perceive themselves as that "middle class" voter and end up voting against their best economic interests because of weird class aspirations, and it's also irritating when people who grew up middle class are in denial about it - either positing that they are higher or lower than what they are.