The Working Class in American Film: The Creation of Image and Cu ...

Jay describes. I am also asserting that the media has played a role in defining the “combatants” in this scenario and, in doing so, has served to exacerbate the tensions between these groups. Finally, I am positing that the films of the 1960s and 1970s played a significant role in this process.

For better or worse, film has the ability not only to define a segment of society for others but also to help create a self-identity for that group. Sociologists talk about “narrativity” and the way people form their identity through the stories told about them and through the stories that they pass down to each other. Sociologist Margaret R. Somers, for example, has pointed to the need to recognize “narrativity” as a means by which individuals come to know their social worlds and determine who they might be within those worlds: “We use ontological narratives to define who we are, not just to know what to do. Locating ourselves in narratives endows us with identities, however multiple, ambiguous, ephemeral or conflicting they may be (hence the term narrative identity)” (84).

These “narratives” are ubiquitous in the media. Turn on the news any night and you might see a report on the death of a young African American child caught in the crossfire of a drive-by, or a story about a miner’s wife mourning the loss of her husband, or a video of angry white protesters on a Washington, D.C., mall chanting, “We want our country back.” In prime time you might watch a television drama that exploits anger towards Wall Street, or you might see a reality show populated by underfed actresses who set an unrealistic standard of beauty for the masses of young women. Cinema is no different. It is fair to say that many people learn about who they are or who others are through portrayals on the big screen. Theorist and writer bell hooks puts it this way: