Yes, it's very, very different in the US. I'd dicker a little with the original poster's class terminology for the US -- I'd split out "blue-collar working-class" as a separate type from "poor urban working-class". Gunn and Faith are the latter; both Xander and his family are the former. The latter is becoming a much smaller group in the US, and there's a huge amount of upheaval in some areas. Blue-collar working-class, if they don't lose their jobs in a recession, have stable and sufficient incomes; they can't live high on the horse but as long as they don't either do something stupid or have something bad happen, they're economically stable. The working poor class can't make ends meet. And what the OP is calling "middle-class" I might call upper-middle-class -- the class where everyone *tries* to send their kids to college, but might have trouble doing so.
I'd love to see more good portrayals of varied classes in US-based fandoms. Poor rural characters that aren't stereotypical hicks, and characters that stay in their class instead of having a Cinderella narrative.
(UKers, the US has classes; we just don't talk about them the same way at all, and they are a little more flexible -- if you get money, you can move; if you lose money, you will move, rather than be "genteel poor".)
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Date: 2008-02-27 04:09 pm (UTC)Yes, it's very, very different in the US. I'd dicker a little with the original poster's class terminology for the US -- I'd split out "blue-collar working-class" as a separate type from "poor urban working-class". Gunn and Faith are the latter; both Xander and his family are the former. The latter is becoming a much smaller group in the US, and there's a huge amount of upheaval in some areas. Blue-collar working-class, if they don't lose their jobs in a recession, have stable and sufficient incomes; they can't live high on the horse but as long as they don't either do something stupid or have something bad happen, they're economically stable. The working poor class can't make ends meet. And what the OP is calling "middle-class" I might call upper-middle-class -- the class where everyone *tries* to send their kids to college, but might have trouble doing so.
I'd love to see more good portrayals of varied classes in US-based fandoms. Poor rural characters that aren't stereotypical hicks, and characters that stay in their class instead of having a Cinderella narrative.
(UKers, the US has classes; we just don't talk about them the same way at all, and they are a little more flexible -- if you get money, you can move; if you lose money, you will move, rather than be "genteel poor".)