Kontextmaschine

22nd August 2022

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 11 notes

kontextmaschine:

Caught an episode of Tanked at the bar last night. That thing where all the blues and oranges are supersaturated and everything else is desaturated bugged me at first, but it started to grow on me. [edit: I think the bar’s flatscreen just had its settings fucked]

All the middlebrow documentary channels in the 30s-50s range have turned into channels about the working class experience. But interestingly, working class in a cultural and not economic sense - a lot of these people seem to have higher-than-average incomes, actually, it’s just that they’ve got ribald, down-home personalities and biker beards instead of college degrees.

Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch might count as working class in a Marxian sense, I didn’t watch and I don’t know if any of the operators owned their trucks or boats - but when you get down to it a lot of these shows are about owners of small businesses (businesses that seem to require a reasonable bit of capital, actually), their office and sales workers, frequently family (the “Duck” doesn’t negate the “Dynasty”) and experienced artisan tradesmen. They mostly avoid coming off as white collar by the literalist expedient of wearing t-shirts.

It’s telling that there’s a subgenre of this stuff (Storage Wars, Pawn Stars, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Lizard Lick Towing) that valorizes people whose jobs are at the expense of - whose jobs, while they may be private sector are in a real sense to salvage from and discipline - the actually poor and marginal.

It’s super-telling that the one eviction-themed show is called “World’s Worst Tenants”, and it’s about people who discipline those who irritate small propertyholders. And not, say, lower-middle class types in foreclosure. That one would probably hit too close to home.

But hey, if you ever did create a show with a focused appeal to the truly poor, who would you sell ads to?

Tagged: rerunclassworking class