Conservative Today, Liberal Tomorrow

During the 2008 election Obama caught some flak for remarks regarding working-class voters.

Obama argued that many had fallen through the economic cracks during the Bush and Clinton administrations and that they were angry because of job losses dating back 25 years, "It's not surprising then they get bitter . . . They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Both Clinton and McCain blasted Obama for being out of touch with the working class as well as his “breathtaking elitism,” yet Obama maintained, "I said something everybody knows is true . . . which is there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania — in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois — who are bitter. They are angry. They feel like they've been left behind."

Obama ultimately played down his characterization of the American working class as a population whose exploitation and victimization basically drives them to guns, racism, Jesus and meth, but his initial comments reflect a privileged liberal narrative. The dissenting voices of today perpetually represent the working class as victims: victims of a rich man’s war, victims of corporate America’s ceaseless campaign of consumption, victims of educational testing. . .

This narrative ironically resonates with Ross’ analysis of the conservative labor-capital films of the early 20th century in Working Class Hollywood. In these “conservative” films workers are represented as lawless and violent, but above all, as victims. “Conservative filmmakers repeatedly portrayed strikes and radical movements as led by a handful of foreign-born agitators who relied upon violence and duped good but naïve workers into serving their own corrupt needs.” Likewise, Ross affirms in the epilogue, “The most long-standing conservative image of the silent era is undoubtedly the depiction of working people as easily manipulated.”

Perhaps nowhere is this continuity with today’s liberal representations more apparent than the progressive, anti-war documentaries of the “War on Terror.” The Grounded Truth, Fahrenheit 9/11, Gunners Palace, Restrepo, and Occupation Dreamland all use the working class soldier as their primary object of representation in the telling of the modern war story. The soldiers are always depicted – with sympathy and condescension – as victims of their working class economic conditions, ignorance, or a combination of both. The prey of military recruiters, the human shrapnel of George Bush’s policies, the soldier of the liberal imagination does not know why he is in the Middle East and is helpless to change that. In the Grounded Truth one soldier stated, “There’s nothing we can do. We have to keep going.” Another soldier echoed, “I have no control over what put me in Iraq.” They have been duped and manipulated by government and big business – not by radical European union leaders, Reds, or simply corrupt agitators as was the working class of the conservative silent era film. Still, the working class is defined as a naïve victim (what was once manifestation of conservative ideology). It makes me question whether these modern accounts of war serve the progressive ends which they lay claim.

Last thought:
-Many directors of the silent era celebrated the “virtuous individual” over the “collective mob.” In The Scab (1911) the protagonist, a union leader, is condemned for making “his little family to suffer” due to his obstinate support of the union struggle. The working class protagonist concludes, “Family unions should not be sacrificed for labor unions.” Likewise the hero of The Strike at the ‘Little Jonny’ Mine convinces his fellow drunken and rowdy miners to stop their violent striking and achieves wage increases by working with the mine superintendent and the local sheriff and placidly negotiating. Today, we often see the working class celebrated and reinforced for being good husbands/wives and content/peaceful laborers who are never without a smile and always without ambition or vision that exceeds providing for their family and perhaps taking a vacation to their native country -UNDERCOVER BOSS!