Classism and Working-Class Characters in Fandom

[alixtii]

This post by kattahj made me think about the intersection of racism and classism in deciding who gets written in fanfiction. Now, of course I think it is silly to say that "it is really just about class" or "it's really just about race"; the two work intersectionally in complicated ways. But if we agree with kattahj that CoC's are more likely to get written if they aren't coded as working class (and I've come to this conclusion about my own writing already long ago) then it'd be interesting to see if we tend not to write working-class white characters in the same way.

I'm not including the crew of Serenity at all in this analysis, since they exist within a completely constructed fictional socio-economic system created precisely for the purpose of making the main cast's lives seem interesting, but I think we certainly do respond differently to Simon than, say, Jayne (in my part, with identification with the former and almost complete disinterest with the latter). The Weasley family, were I even to know enough Harry Potter canon to speak intelligently about them, would probably be set apart under the same logic. Similarly, I'm not including vampires or other characters that are unable to participate in the normal socioeconomic structures because they are set apart as nonhuman.

I don't tend to watch shows with a lot of working-class characters, since they are less likely to provide me the type of wish-fulfillment I'm looking for in my entertainment (which is precisely the kind of dynamic I'm talking about here), so, um . . . it's a rather short list. Please help me add to it!

Notes
By "class" I mean the sociological something-or-other (I'm much less versed in class theory than I am in gender, queer, or even race theory) which is the cumulative result of economic status and a complex system of social markers (occupation, neighborhood of residence, accent, speech patterns, education, circle of friends, etc.). I'm assuming that fandom could[n't] care less what Rupert Giles' salary as a Watcher was, but that his education and breadth of knowledge make him attractive to write; Buffy's ability to quote Sartre and Arthur Miller seemingly without effort disqualifies her from being working-class. (And yes, this assumption is itself classist in fascinating and disturbing ways, ways which I wish I knew enough class theory to be able to problematize further.)

I'm taking it for granted that our source canons deal horribly with class issues (as they do with racial ones), but that there are objectively interesting working-class characters in our canons (in the way that there are interesting female characters and interesting characters of color).

Nonwhite racial cultures are (almost?) automatically coded as working-class. I feel this is important to mention despite the fact that since all of these characters are white, it doesn't apply to any of them. But this is a reason why even if classism seems a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color get written less, that classism would still in all probability be racially-motivated. The way we construct the class structure is itself racist.

Feel free to criticize any of my assumptions in the comments; I'm in over my head here.

Okay, now let's get to the list. . . .

Faith
It certainly cannot be argued that Faith does not get written in Buffy fandom, especially concerning her status as only being a recurring character to has nowhere near the screentime of an Anya or Tara. Now part of this just down to Eliza Dushku being Eliza Dushku. But if we look at her character, what do we see? A character whose working-class coding and Slayerness are so caught up in each other that they interact in interesting ways. While at the beginning of her arc Faith is living her life in a run-down motel, her Slaying provides her an outlet to escape from the very beginning, as she manifests the "want, take, have" mentality (she is effectively able to rely on her Slayer capabilities to produce cultural capital), and the overall structure of her story is ultimately one of upward mobility; by "Chosen" she is still coded as working-class in terms of social markers, but she is relatively free of economic concerns and so those social markers are able to be fetishized without playing any meaningful part in the actual life of the character.

Xander Harris
Like Faith, Xander gets a lot of fic. Not much written by me, but in m/m slash fandom I know he's commonly paired with Spike. Angel, and other men.

Now Xander's family is coded as poor and in some ways working-class (and this is uniformly portrayed as a negative), but I'd argue that while Xander is made to materially feel the effect of his family lower economic status, he is always coded as firmly middle-class in terms of social markers. As a geek figure, he is an easy and deliberate audience identification figure, and speaks a language which is coded in many ways as middle-class white male. Note also that like Faith he is upwardly mobile; by the end of the series he is, however implausible, solidly middle-class in terms of not only social but also economic indices.

Cindy Mackenzie
When Mac was introduced, her class issues dominated her character: she was the perpetrator of an elaborate con in an attempt to get back at the rich kids and to get money for a new car which she desperately needed. Then the show itself went on to seriously drop the ball on these issues, never bringing up money in regard to Mac again, focusing only on her solidly-coded-middle-class computer skills, having her date an 09er, and show up at college without a word as to how she was paying for it. Mac gets a decent amount of fic, being involved in several popular het and femslash pairings.

Veronica Mars
Everything above for Mac goes double for Veronica. Veronica was never meaningfully coded as lower-class, as she spent her childhood as a honorary 02er. As the eponymous character, she features in a large share of VMars fic.

Rose Tyler
Obviously, there is a whole lot of Rose fic, by virtue of her being the female lead of the first two seasons of new Who. Just as obviously, Rose is freed from the constraints of her working-class life when the Doctor rescues her from the shop where she works while retaining several of the relevant social markers (her accent being the most obvious, I believe? British culture is not my specialty).

Jackie Tyler
I don't know how the fic writers respond to Jackie, who unlike Rose maintains her class identification until the very very end (when she and alt!Pete get together). Obviously she is written less than Rose, but exactly how much so I have no clue.

Dean and Sam Winchester
I don't watch this show, and thus don't know anything about them (except that Sam makes a really hot girl--I do read the genderswap). I know, of course, that there's a massive amount of fic written about them.

Kendra, Normal, Sketchy, and Other Dark Angel Characters
Do these even get written at all? I'm not really familiar with the fandom, but my impression that the main white characters to get written were Logan--obviously not working-class--and Jensen's character (who probably falls under the nonhuman exemption). Lydeker's not exactly working-class either (although his coding is rather complicated).

Conclusion (tentative since the preliminary sample size is so small)
There does seem to be some interest in working with characters who still carry the social markers of a working-class identity, as in the cases of Faith and Rose Tyler. (How deep and accurate these social markers are, both in the source text and in fic, is a question I am not qualified to answer, although I think there are meaningful ways that both characters do begin to act in accord with a middle-class ideal as they become upwardly mobile economically.) Re-reading the comments to my March 2007 post linked above, it seems fandom is perfectly willing to play with characters who are coded as working-class in what heyiya calls a UK discourse of class, in which "class is experienced as written and performed in the body," but less eager to do so according to what she calls the American discourse in which class is more closely linked to cultural capacity and thus "is experienced as mobile: you get educated, you become middle class." (I'm condensing a lot of thought here; heyiya, is there something crucial I've missed or misrepresented?)

I do think that fandom is less likely to write working-class characters, in general, than middle-class (and upper-class) characters. My intellectual and emotional responses to how problematic this is are somewhat in contradiction.

Even if the true nature of their working-class status is in dispute, it does seem that enough working-class white characters do get written to be able to say that they get written more often than working-class characters of color, and thus classism in fandom is not a sufficient explanation for why working-class characters of color are not written as much as one would otherwise expect. This conclusion shocks approximately no one.

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying anything at all about the ways American or British seek to be upwardly mobile; I don't have the experiences to generalize and I'm in way over my head, but feel free to soak in as my knowledge as you can from the comments, as I am doing.

I do mention in my post heyiya's argument that British conceptions of class are less fluid than American ones, which I think led into someone making a comment similar to what you state above.

But mainly I was just trying to look at how fandom treats its working-class white characters. With rather spectacular unconclusive results. (If only there were more middle-class CoC's with which to compare them!)

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Danger: sweeping generalisations contained below, read at own risk...

My understanding, which I think is similar to heyiya's, is more or less like this:

Class in America tends to be defined mostly in economic terms, because of the national myths about "land of opportunity" and "free market where anybody can become a millionaire through hard work and effort." Becoming wealthy means you've succeeded and are therefore now higher class. Having a college education means you're able to earn a higher salary (in theory) and is therefore strongly correlated to being higher class.

While this success-oriented culture has its upsides, it can also mean that anybody who remains working class is assumed to do so because they're too lazy or stupid to succeed and don't deserve better. Being working class is something to be ashamed of, so everybody seeks to become middle-class.

Then you get race mixed into it too; if people from ethnic minorities are forced to stay in working-class jobs due to prejudice or historical disadvantages, then the 'stupid and lazy' prejudices applied to white working class people spill over onto them too.

In Britain, class is viewed much more as a cultural rather than economic thing. Money comes into it, of course, but it's not the determining factor. A plumber can earn far more than a teacher, but the plumber is working class and the teacher middle class. Your class is determined and signalled by your job (Do you work with your hands? Is your job repetitive and mechanical? Are you supervised closely or can you use your own initiative? Are you paid by the hour or by the month?); by where you live (rent or own?); by your accent; by where you went to school; by what sort of food you prefer to eat; by which sports you enjoy watching; by which newspapers you read, or which TV programmes you watch. (To be fair, a lot of the former class signifiers in British culture are being homogenised, and since the decline of manufacturing industry in the 80s more and more people are calling themselves middle class. But the old definitions still have a lot of influence.

What that means is that a British person from a working class family can go to university and get a highly paid job, but still regard themselves as working class because that's where they come form, that's who their friends are, and that's the sort of leisure activities they prefer. Of course, their working class mates may regard them with suspicion because they're no longer 'one of us'. Equally, they could embrace their new lifestyle and try to become middle class - and be regarded with suspicion by their new friends because they're really rather common and nouveau, don't you know?

In other words, while practical economic mobility may be equal, more or less in either country, (I wouldn't know) it seems to me that in the US, nobody cares where you come from; in Britain, where you came from will always mark you.

[pensnest]

(here via metafandom

In my first job, one of my colleagues stoutly insisted that he was working class, although he had been to a minor public school (on a scholarship, possibly?), worked in an office in the middle of London - to which he bicycled - and spent much of his spare time reading Dickens and listening to jazz. It never struck me as a very accurate description, but he was adamant.

My grandmother, born illegitimate in the East End, was always working class, but her son (my father) got a scholarship to the local public school and went into the Army as an officer. Basically, he 'upgraded' to middle class. There is fluidity, but there are so many subtleties...

Jilly Cooper wrote a surprisingly sharp book on class which among other things defined different grades of middle-classness. Samantha and Gideon Upward were the "wanting to behave like the upper class" people, making their kids say 'looking-glass' instead of 'mirror' and sending them to public schools if they possibly could. Jen Teale had net curtains and doilies, and insisted that serviettes be used.

Wrt the Who companions, I liked Rose but identified instantly with Martha. Definitely a class distinction.

NB Pls to be remembering that 'public school' in Britain is a place of privilege.