Out with the Class, in with the Sass

ILLUSTRATION BY GRACELYNN WAN C’22

SASSY COMMENTARY COMBATS CLASSISM ON THE BIG SCREEN ( KIND OF )

BY: EMILY LIU C’22

Think about the biggest movement in Hollywood in the last decade: what comes to mind? There’s a high chance most people would say the #MeToo Movement. It seems that Hollywood has started to actively call out the triple “-ism”s: sexism (not really), racism (to an extent) and classism. But one -ism that they’ve truly turned a critical eye towards is classism. We now find that more and more movies providing scathing commentary on class divisions are hitting the big screen and scoring major awards. Renewed attention towards classism gained traction after the 2008 financial crisis, the worst recession since the Great Depression, when millions became jobless. The poor became poorer, and the rich became richer, creating an income gap that is incredibly hard to close. In fact, this is something that is reflected here at Penn, with about 70% of the student population being in the top 20% income bracket. The film industry is no stranger to this trend either.

In both foreign and domestic films alike, we see similar depictions of the wealthy; epithets such as “leeches”, “self-serving”, and “wolves” have been thrown around freely (for good reason, if you ask me). In Todd Phillips’s 2019 hit Joker, a key focus of the film is the growing frustration against the upper class as the city of Gotham becomes dingy, dirty and desolate. Anger mounts and a riot ensues, with chaos and screams of “Eat the rich!” This seems revolutionary until you think about who directed, produced, and marketed the film— white men, and not just any white men, rich white men— the same rich white men that Joker denounces. In fact, news outlets praised Warner Bros. Studios for spending a “modest” $62.5 million to make this movie and earning back a much higher return.

It all seems a bit disingenuous that the rich are writing about hating rich people when money is at the core of every movie. Not to mention that it exploits workingclass issues and portrays the same one-dimensional narrative, over and over and over. Constantly, we are given images of wealthy actors dressed down for the part of a working-class man, struggling to earn enough money to support their families in a perennial unhappy state. This perpetuates a narrative that money and morality are interconnected and that a person’s value is defined by the value of their belongings. It’s fueling a sense of economic despair that ultimately leads to a sense of inferiority in those unable to reach a certain level of economic success. The rich, especially the people who fund these movies, are exploiting the feelings of the lower classes and making a quick buck out of it.

But that’s the thing about the film industry; if there’s an issue, they’ll monetize it and milk it for all its worth. Even the darling of the 2020 award circuit, Parasite, can’t fully escape from this. Director Bong Joon Ho creates a beautifully written satire about the relationship between the rich Park family and the impoverished Kim family, calling out the parasitic nature of wealth. But the irony is that the arts always require a patron. The movie industry cannot escape the call of money, and even Parasite had to

be funded by one of Korea’s largest conglomerates: the CJ Corporation. With its subsidiaries, CJ ENM and CJ E&M, the CJ Corporation has its hands in various industries such as food services, biotechnology and entertainment, totaling $62.9 billion in assets and placing 463rd on the list of 2018 Fortune 500 companies. Like with Joker and its Warner Bros., Parasite found its support in a company with the ability to invest the equivalent of $10.8 million USD into making the film. That may seem significantly less than Warner Bros. Studios and their $62.5 million, but $10.8 million is still a lot compared to low-budget indie films making their rounds at Sundance and other independent film festivals. In fact, a larger budget means more advertising and exposure, which can define the success of the film—making the success of Joker and Parasite much more predictable and explaining why we tend to know these big-name films over the smaller indie films.

Smaller indie films often have trouble finding funding and don’t usually end up on the Hollywood big screen, so they’re not as popular as box office hits. But, indie films have something that larger films don’t: creative freedom. In fact, they are often passion projects and are being produced for the sake of storytelling rather than for monetary value. They bring humanity back into filmmaking and fight the capitalist aspect of it, unencumbered by the restraints and demands of a major film studio. You see all kinds of representation in indie films: LGBTQ+, teen moms, controversial figures, and teenagers growing into their skins that larger films would decry on account of being too disputed and a cause for bad press.

But at the end of the day, the rich support the rich. The film industry has become such a place where wealth is used to create films that criticizes the “haves” to the “have-nots” in a bid to be “relatable” and “woke”. Instead, this becomes an endless loop where issues become commercialized, marketable and exploitable. But maybe films like Joker and Parasite have a point... maybe it’s time to “eat the rich”, but that’s a discussion for another day.