Hope Siegel – The Wealth Barrier

Why Now?

In researching class barriers in romance we chose these movies because, for us, they were memorable. They were the movies we grew up with, and they shaped our understanding of romance both as a genre and as an aspect of our real lives. We weren’t sure what we’d find, and we sure as heck not thinking about why these movies existed when they did.

Our story starts, ironically, in the 1920’s–an era where eventual “great American novelist,” F. Scott. Fitzgerald would write one of American Literature’s best known tragic romances about two people dealing with the ever growing barrier of wealth: The Great Gatsby. Whether or not you like the book, or agree that Gatsby and Daisy’s story line in the book is actually a romance, Fitzgerald’s story was invariably connected to the wealth disbursement of his time. The poor were poor, but the rich were super rich.

The Great Depression came, creating a new wave of great American novels for 21st century teens to complain about reading, and with it came regulations to build up the middle class and slow the growth of monopolies.

And then WWII happened.

After WWII the american family went through an economic boom, as a result of the G.I. bill providing millions of veterans with college education and job training as well as subsidies allowing veterans to become homeowners, newly built interstates connecting the suburbs to the cities, and increasingly available credit. All the protections for the poor created in the Great Depression and the returning work force from WWII culminated in creating a strong American middle class which continued to build in the coming decades.

And now we finally get to the 80’s. According to a 1991 Washington Post article, “Economists now report that the boom years of the 1980s were a bust for fully half of all Americans. At the same time, the safety net of social programs for the nation’s poor was replaced by a safety net for the rich, speeding the decline of the middle class” (Morin). Like the 1920’s the rich were getting richer and the middle class was loosing ground once again. And it was already a visible problem in the 1990’s. According to the same article: “These trends are already influencing the politics of the 1990s. From Pennsylvania to Louisiana, and from Capitol Hill to the White House, politicians have suddenly discovered the plight of the increasingly beleaguered middle class” (Morin).

After years of a system working for the middle class and seemingly equal economic prosperity for all–culminating in the rise of mass-media–Americans were aware that the super rich were coming back. So it’s no wonder that media in the 90’s was interested in class barriers again. Gone were the days of social classes staggering the richest classes into tiers of status, and of princes and castles. Now the classes were income brackets and you couldn’t see it in the family name. It had to be shown through clothes and cars and other consumerist objects. The princes were executives and their castles were ultra-modern houses and apartments (which granted isn’t quite as sexy).

This is not to say that the makers of these movies wanted to make an ultra-political statement about the growing wealth of the super rich. No, this is still mass-produced consumerism and romance is still a “trashy genre for women.” But the population was interested in wealth and status again because it was coming back, and that meant it was profitable to make movies about it.

Works Cited:

Morin, Richard. “AMERICA’S MIDDLE-CLASS MELTDOWN.” Washington Post, 1 Dec. 1991, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/12/01/americas-middle-class-meltdown/5ed5f8b6-d9ac-4282-b3d8-166cf2c1e80a/?utm_term=.9f916d70597c. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018.

Roth, Mark. “The historic roots of the middle class.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 Nov. 2011, https://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2011/11/20/The-historic-roots-of-the-middle-class/stories/201111200308. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018.

“The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground” Pew Research Center, 9 Dec. 2015, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2018.

Crossing Borders, and the Importance of the Home

There’s a scene at the end of Pride and Prejudice where Lizzy is asked when she fell in love with Darcy:

“…how long have you loved him?”

“It has been coming on so gradually that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberly.” (280)

Now, of course Miss Lizzy Bennet is not talking about the fabulous decor or grand architecture. The scene where she sees Darcy’s home for the first time is about how reserved and intelligent the yard work was and how that revealed some truth Lizzy didn’t see before. The importance of the home is its unavoidable honesty about the characters that live there.

Nearly two centuries later, and the rich and poor are still falling in love with each other in the home. The Prince & Me has several scene section of Eddy visiting Paige’s farm/home, and a parallel latter in the movie when Paige flies to Denmark and lives in the palace for a while. Aladdin has Princess Jasmine slumming it in Aladdin’s hole in the wall and then Aladdin conning his way into the palace. Starstruck has a far less effective set of scenes where the two practically run through each other’s homes, not bothering to take in much of the sights as they’re chased by reporters.

Suffice to say, it’s a trope. But why? What is the fascination these movies have with the home?

Consider this scene from Geek Charming:

As two high school students, Dylan and Josh spend a majority of the movie at school or filming Josh’s documentary in public spaces such as malls, beaches, etc.. Prompted by their growing friendship, Josh invites her to his house for the first time about midway through the movie. It marks the second time they’ve entered each other’s homes. She enters into this new environment, the first time she has been anywhere that feels as though it belongs to a middle class person, and is immediately greeted by Josh’s mom with a smile who tells her to call her by her first name. It’s not a flashy space, but it’s a warm place with low ceilings and cream colored walls and counters covered in practical items and little knickknacks. And it’s a fun space, in which the main characters don’t hesitate to show that they’re having fun with each other.

There’s two scenes early on which set up the main characters’ houses with parallels that demonstrate the fact that these are both environments that the characters live in day to day. Josh enters his house and as soon as the door closes he’s holding a conversation with his mom and being greeted by his dog who follows him through the rest of the scene. Meanwhile Dylan comes how to an architectural marvel with glass walls, mirrors, empty counters, and furniture that looks more like it was picked by an interior designer than a family. She walks in the front door, pauses, and calls out for the housekeeper who’s left a note saying where she can find dinner. After a fiasco with a mall fountain the two protagonists’ priority is to put their soaked items in the drier. Josh jogs through the small hallways with his dog gleefully following behind, and tosses his shoes in the drier. Dylan walks through a series of wide shots to the drier, finally breaking the silence by talking to herself.

Josh is eventually invited to her house and upon seeing this house Josh is stupefied, and she tells him “Real inviting right?” Dylan doesn’t have an unhappy home life, but she’s often alone. The architecture of her house serves to exemplify this. The tall ceilings and untouched furniture, wide open spaces, they create a sense that Dylan is a visitor in her own house. It is a prop, a manifestation of the popular girl facade she maintains.

What I think is special about this movie is that her house doesn’t stay alien. As the movie goes on and we see more of Dylan’s geeky side, her home becomes more welcoming. She helps Josh film the first real candids for the movie, her dad appears and Josh and him are laughing while watching movies together, she has a casual dinner with her father and his girlfriend.

As the facade of wealth and popularity is broken down, so too is the unwelcoming home.

The home is an effective tool in getting us into the mind of the character. Homes are a space of familiarity, comfort, and privacy. Characters are most comfortable inside them and thus more easily let their guard down. And as it acts as a common ground, where the audience can see how, despite the differences in style, the rich protagonist is a person, who lives in their house like anyone else; the home can make the audience and the poor protagonist empathize with the rich protagonist in a way they couldn’t in any other scene. Dylan’s personality is a facade, so when she is in the public she acts a certain way to protect herself. When she comes home there are no prying eyes, she can be expressive in a way that the characters and the audience hasn’t seen before. So when Josh finally enters her home he gets to see the facade drop for the first time. Entering the home becomes a key narrative element in understanding the real Dylan and creating the attachment between the characters.

The barrier in these class based romances is about how the outside world and the societal ideas around wealth affect and impede the characters’ relationship, it makes sense that the writers would want to go into the home to help alleviate the burden of the societal barrier.

Poverty Porn: A Look into the Ways Romance Glorifies the Poor

In 1783 the then Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, tasked Richard Mique with the task of extending the gardens of Versailles. Her list of requests included the construction of a man-made lake and a model village with a working farm. She used this farm both as educational tool for the royal children and as a venue for small parties and relaxing walks.

Images provided by Chateau de Versailles

I start with this anecdote because there’s this idea when people hear titles like Crazy Rich Asians that romances with rich heroes and heroines is all about the spectacle for the audience. I think people think of these stories like they’re about to watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians or Jersey Shore, reality shows which center around the lives of the wealthy. And maybe there’s something too that. People fawned over the dresses and sets for the live action Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast movies, and Crazy Rich Asians has many scenes that linger a little more than it needed to on the spectacular displays of wealth. Certainly spectacle is something we want in our movies, but there’s something else these movies do with wealth. Much like Marie Antoinette when she brought a sanitized vision of poverty into her gardens, these movies glorify the humble spaces of the middle and lower classes as much as they show off the palaces of the wealthy.

Don’t Believe me? Well for starters let’s look at the portrayal of the spaces of the poor in Titanic:

Titanic has two parties. The Upper deck party is characterized by rich men mostly using the occasion to talk business with other rich men and showing off their new young wives and mistresses–of which the guests seem aware of and judge each other based on in quiet asides. Though the room is big, the enjoyment is contained, refined, and a tad boring. Party goers are encouraged to lie about their accomplishments, and there is humor in that Jack so easily passes amongst the snobbish rich people, as if the movie is saying they are no better than anyone else.

While Rose doesn’t seem actively upset at the upper deck party, she is so much happier below desk. They enter the party without so much as an acknowledgement of obvious status her dress and jewels give off. She is not asked to pass as one of them. There are no steps to the dances, and so no one to judge her for getting it wrong, she can . The movie juxtaposes the two parties, by cutting from Rose’s joyous laughter to the men lounging seriously and talking business back to an arm wrestling match happening in the loud unrestrained party below deck. This world is loud and crass and violent, but it is enjoyably so. When someone bumps into them and makes Jack pour beer on Rose, she laughs it off, never not faltering in her beaming enjoyment. The lower deck is portrayed as a place of freedom, an escape from the stuffy high society in which corruption is not only present, but outwardly known.

Then we can look at the poor love interests who are almost always portrayed as charitable, hard-working, and honest (Paige in The Prince and Me, Tiana in The Princess and the Frog, Belle in The Beauty and the Beast, Josh in Geek Charming, arguably Jessica in Starstruck).Their foils are the rich protagonist pre-transformation, the fake friends standing around them, and the general perceived fake-ness of wealthy people. Poor people have the mothers like like Eudora from Princess and the Frog.

They’re there for them when they need them, and there is never too high an expectation put on them, in fact they encourage them to be happy. They don’t put their child’s dreams down, or say that they can’t do them.

And speaking of Princess and the Frog, she’s working day and night with barely a wink of sleep, but it’s not to make ends meet, it’s to get her dream of opening a restaurant. In a study by Jessi Streib, Miryea Ayala, and Colleen Wixted, found that Tiana was the only primary character that vocally
worries about money, “and her worry is about securing finances for upward mobility rather than for stability. None of the working-class characters worry about shelter, food, or health care” (8). While the poor are undeniably a working class, they’re monetary problems tend not to be too severe, and when they are–like Aladdin–they’re solutions aren’t begging. Aladdin’s monetary problems are summed up in one song number, in which high speed animation and slap-stick humor with the pursuing guards encourages the audience not to think of his stealing to survive as a sad problem. His survival isn’t a war, it’s a game he plays where he isn’t really ever in danger of getting hurt. And this is because Aladdin and movies like it are children’s movies. They don’t show extreme poverty because it’s a bummer and it drags down the story and rags to riches is an easy story to write and relate to. But what does this say about the poor?

Poverty in these stories is a character trait, and with the right romantic partner and enough hard work, you can pull yourself out of it. It doesn’t disproportionately affect minorities, it’s not cycle in which families can spend generations trying to pull themselves out of with less access to the resources that might allow them to do so. In these stories, if you work hard and keep your eyes open for opportunities, you too can rise into financial success. It’s the American dream, and if you’re poor it’s because you are lazy and deserve to be poor.

Poverty in romance is complicated. It relies heavily on the trope that the rich are all corrupted by their power and wealth, and the conditions of the working class generate the hard working, friendly, moral people. However, its sanitized portrayal of poverty and reliance on the American dream “rags-to-riches” story line indicates that poverty is a status that can be over turned by hard work and thus the good poor protagonist is a rare specimen. So one should both, aspire to live as free and honest as the poor, and aspire to work hard until you are recognized as worthy of wealth.

Thus I think romance doesn’t aspire to actual poverty, but the construction of poverty; a liminal space where one can have the benefits of wealth without the baggage of societal expectations and judgments. An Antionette’s Hamlet, if you will, where one can simplify the politics of class into a fight between good and bad.

Works Cited:

Galuppo, Mia. “Disney, Pixar Misrepresent Class Struggle in Children’s Films, Study Finds.” Hollywood Reporter, 11 Mar.2016. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disney-pixar-misrepresent-class-struggle-874781. Accessed 1 Dec 2018.

Streib, Jessi, et al. “Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies.” Journal of Poverty, Taylor & Francis, 16 Feb 2016. http://perrin.socsci.unc.edu/stuff/streib-benign-poverty-frames.pdf. Accessed 1 Dec 2018.

StarStruck (2010)

Synopsis

Jessica Olsen was expecting a normal trip to California with her family to visit her grandma. However, she agrees to join her older sister to find the famous pop star, Christopher Wilde.

Characters

Christopher Wilde: A 17 year-old pop sensation who struggles to balance his demanding girlfriend, his managers and parents’ expectations, and stay true to his fans. While trying to stay out of the tabloids to get a movie deal he doesn’t really want, Wilde hits Jessica in the head and is forced to run avoid being seen with her or risk scandal.
Jessica Olson: A bookish teenager, on a trip to visit her grandmother in California, is forced to stalk pop idol Christopher Wilde with her sister. She can’t stand the unrealistic life he leads and especially how girls like her sister fawn over him. She is forced to run around the press with Wilde and finds out that he’s not as fake as she thought.
Albert Joshua “Stubby” Stubbins: Wilde’s best friend since fourth grade, and driver.
Alexis Bender: Wilde’s demanding and camera hog girlfriend who doesn’t really seem to like him.
Sara Olson: Jessica’s mean older sister who’s obsessed with Christopher Wilde.

The Hardworking Poor

There’s a fear in this kind of trope that the poor love interest will come off as a gold digger. Why that fear exists is another topic entirely, but the consequence of this fear is the “Hardworking Poor” archetype. They are characterized by a disgust of wealth and often a charitable nature.

Who are they?

In order to escape scrutiny, the love interest must never be lazy. In fact, they love work and they have a great ambition, working their butt off to achieve their dream no matter how tired they may get. This also helps create conflict between the two characters, as the rich love interest is usually irresponsible, or is perceived to be irresponsible. The hardworking poor scoff at their high and mighty comrade and their entitlement (hmmph!), usually right before tossing the muckiest cleaning implement their way and watching irritated as they fail to do the simplest of tasks. And this should rub off on the wealthy, it’s inspiring how they keep fighting even with the world of bills and working through college weighing down on them.

They should not be understood to be heartless, the hardworking poor will step in when their love interest fails, or when the other richie riches call them entitled, or a failure, or below their position. Though they may not understand their love interest’s struggle (because there doesn’t seem to be one from where they’re standing), they know that 1) if their partner fails, then they fail with them and 2) that they can be the bigger person.

They’re an intellectual. Never naive, they know the ways of the world. They can tell when they’re being seduced, and they are having none of it. Who has time for such inane distractions? Not the hardworking poor. They’re strong and independent with no time for love when there is more important things at stakes.

They’re brutally honest, it’s a virtue they pride themself on even when it goes to their detriment. It’s the only power they hold over their rich companion, and they wield it with wit. They’re quick to put down their love interest’s usual games and tricks and they won’t sugar coat anything. When someone messes up, they won’t be like all the yes men, they’ll yell and kick and scream and you better believe this is the first time their companion has heard this from anyone.

Their big give away is gifts. Whenever gifts are involved, they say “it’s too much, really, I don’t need all this stuff.” They’re uncomfortable with grand displays of wealth, even when they’re benefiting. Fancy cars? Mine runs just fine, thank you. Big houses? They feel lonely and chauvinistic. Hanging out with celebrities? Are they really even your friends? The one thing they don’t seem to be able to resist is a make-over. Even if they protest at first, they’ll give in when they see the size of those jewels or get that haircut their partner’s been begging them to get. Maybe it’s that audiences like a good make-over montage, or that when we see diamond we just have to have that on our bodies, or maybe it’s an essential part of their transition from poor to rich; giving them confidence and showing that anyone can fit in if they have the right clothes. Whatever it is, the make-over is exempt from the no gift policy.

Where are they?

The “hardworking poor” archetype is common in these types of romances. Paige Morgan, in The Prince & Me, is a great example, but also Josh Rosen in Geek Charming, Vivian in Pretty Woman, and Tiana in The Princess and the Frog.

Why do we like them?

You’ll often find this archetype working in tandem with a statement about how poor(er) people are better, or have a more happy and fulfilling life which is often the driving force of a class difference barrier. In a romance the two characters have to fall in love, so the rich protagonist must inevitably feel fed up or disillusioned by wealthy society. Often this is just an inkling until they meet some one who is “real,” i.e. the hard-working, poor, love interest.

They’ve never met someone who can’t be swayed by their cheap tricks, gifts, and grand displays of wealth, but now they’re standing face to face with a challenge to their power. Life had been too easy, and it felt fake. And that’s where the brutal honesty comes in. Not only are they not swayed, but they’re confident enough to say the things no one else is willing to say: the truth. This challenge makes sure that the audience knows that the rich protagonist is in love with them as a person and not just a pretty face. Their honesty sets the poor protagonist apart from the others who fawn over the wealth and glamour.

We like the “hardworking poor” because they’re without hidden motive. They are incorruptible. They can dip into the world of wealth without loosing the virtues of poverty.

Geek Charming (2011)

Synopsis

To win a school popularity contest, a high school diva permits a film club classmate to record her popular life, but the film starts documenting her decline instead.

Characters

Dylan Schoenfield: The classic high school mean girl, who lives in a giant house with her busy dad and spends all day shopping. She dreams of winning “blossom queen,” their school’s version of a homecoming queen, to show how popular and great she is, but also to feel connected to her dead mother. Dylan is a Drama Queen, and almost ruins the Josh’s documentary by being too snobbish, but secretly she has a nerdy past and has a lot more in common with the so called Geeks than she wants people to know.
Josh Rosen: The film geek at school who wants hopes to win at a prestigious documentary competition with a film on popularity-Dylan’s popularity in particular. He thinks it’s gonna be straight forward, but soon finds that behind Dylan’s diva exterior is a human being just like him
Amy Loubalu: Dylan’s ex-best friend and Josh’s crush.
Asher Dumentz: Dylan’s popular boyfriend who doesn’t treat her right.
Nicole Patterson: Dylan’s rival/arch enemy for Blossom Queen. The head cheerleader at Woodlands Academy, she starts dating Asher soon after he breaks up with her.