The Marxist themes present in pop culture today many times show the oppressed groups in a society rising up to finally gain their equality against the oppressive groups. They look to the oppressive group as the ones guilty of their poor life and revolt. It's how the story goes, they revolt, they overcome and they seemingly live happily ever after. But the question that kept getting to me from these readings is what happens after the oppressed group 'lives happily ever after'? Animal Farm by George Orwell serves as a very anecdotal insight into what may happen after the oppressed group revolts and tries to fix the inequality present in their society. In Animal Farm the animals that originally lead the revolt go on to lead the others, and eventually morph right back into the animals that once caused all of the problems and oppressed them in the first place. It's a consistent cycle of the oppressed rising up, finding equality, then the power getting to them and before you know it they are now the oppressors.
An example in pop culture of this cycle of the 'lower class' wanting to defeat the 'higher class' in the name of equality only to turn into the 'higher class' themselves comes from the movie Mean Girls. In this movie the main character, Kady, moves to an all American high school after being raised in Africa. She is befriended by a group of girls called the Plastics, and after realizing how terrible they are and how they make life harder for the others in their high school, and her friend specifically, she decides she is going to infiltrate from within and take them down. As the movie goes on we see Kady slowly morphing into a Plastic herself and unable to remember the reason she wanted to take them down in the first place, instead she becomes all the things she didn't like about them in the first time.
These marxist themes always talk of the lower class defeating the higher class, but what do you think happens after the lower defeats the higher? Is it possible for true equality to exist or will the once lower class just become the new high class?
In my opinion, the thought of Marxism and classes is the cause of these unprecedented times. When groups are constantly told they are less than or in a lesser class, then told to rise up through pop culture social media, tv shows, or just the alter reality of pop culture in general. This alter realty develops a sense of entitlement in those that are told they are less than. this is a perfect recipe for conflict against perceived class separation.
ReplyDeleteI'd loved this example Sidney. I don't believe that there will ever be a time that marxism doesn't come in to play and that there will ever be a time where everyones looked at as equal. Most everyone roots for the underdog and we have been taught through pop culture that the wealthy and privilege are always the villain and need to be "taken down." Because of this I think that there will always be a lower class striving to be upper.
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