Representing Class

Introduction

Class is often called the hidden axis of British media — less explicitly discussed than gender or race, but pervasive in everything from soap operas to news coverage. For AQA A-Level Media Studies, you need to understand how working-class, middle-class, and upper-class identities are constructed in media texts, the concept of poverty porn, Owen Jones's critique in Chavs, and the role of class in news framing, advertising, and drama.

What Is Class?

Social class refers to structured inequalities based on economic position, cultural capital, and social power. Sociologists debate its definitions:

• Marxist: Class is defined by relation to the means of production (capitalists / workers).
• Weberian: Class is defined by economic position, status, and political power.
• Bourdieu: Class involves economic, cultural, and social capital; taste and cultural distinctions mark class boundaries.

For media analysis, class is a representational system as much as an economic fact. Media texts do not simply reflect class positions; they construct, judge, and stratify them.

Capital Type (Bourdieu)	Description	Media Marker
Economic	Money, property	Clothes, cars, housing
Cultural	Knowledge, taste	Reading, music, accent
Social	Networks, contacts	Circles, introductions
Symbolic	Recognition, prestige	Awards, titles

Working-Class Representation

Historically, the British working class has been represented in contradictory ways:

• Heroic labour (mid-20th century) — coal miners, factory workers as national backbone.
• Kitchen-sink realism (1960s) — Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Cathy Come Home — sympathetic but gritty.
• Decline narratives (1980s onwards) — post-industrial loss, social problems.
• "Chav" demonisation (2000s) — working-class youth as threat and spectacle.

Owen Jones and "Chavs"

Owen Jones's Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class (2011) argues that from the 1980s onwards, British media and politics increasingly portrayed the working class as feckless, criminal, and culturally bankrupt. Jones identifies:

• The stereotype of the "chav" — tracksuited, aggressive, unemployed, reproducing too many children.
• The media's role in giving the stereotype legitimacy.
• The political function: blaming poor communities for structural problems caused by deindustrialisation and policy.
• The erasure of the working class as workers — replaced by an image of the working class as "underclass".

Jones's critique is not that working-class people never struggle, but that media representation:

• Reduces a diverse class to a caricature
• Strips away agency and solidarity
• Justifies punitive welfare policy
• Erases structural causes in favour of personal blame

Poverty Porn

"Poverty porn" describes television programmes that present poor people's lives as spectacle for affluent audiences. Shows include:

• Benefits Street (Channel 4, 2014)
• The Jeremy Kyle Show (ITV, 2005-2019)
• Skint (Channel 4)
• On Benefits (Channel 5)

These programmes typically:

• Focus on conflict, addiction, and dysfunction
• Frame subjects as exotic specimens
• Use documentary conventions to claim authenticity
• Elide structural context (housing crisis, low wages, welfare cuts)

Critics argue poverty porn does not illuminate poverty; it entertains the non-poor with images of the poor, while reinforcing political narratives of personal failure.

flowchart TD
    A[Poverty Porn Conventions] --> B[Conflict-focused editing]
    A --> C[Handheld camerawork for authenticity]
    A --> D[Voiceover framing subjects]
    A --> E[Absence of structural context]
    B --> F[Reinforces 'personal failure' narrative]
    C --> F
    D --> F
    E --> F

Middle-Class Representation

The middle class dominates media representation in ways that often go unremarked. Middle-class life is frequently presented as the unspoken norm:

• Sitcoms set in pleasant suburban homes (Outnumbered)
• Dramas with professional protagonists (Doctor Foster, The Split)
• News programmes aimed at "Middle England"
• Lifestyle TV assumes middle-class disposable income

Middle-class representations rarely name themselves as class representations. This is analogous to whiteness as default (Lesson 5): class privilege is often invisible to those who hold it.

Key tropes in middle-class representation:

• Home ownership and property anxiety (Location, Location, Location)
• Parenting angst (Motherland)
• Career-versus-family balance
• Mild comic self-deprecation

Contemporary drama has increasingly interrogated middle-class hypocrisy and anxiety (The White Lotus, Big Little Lies), though often while still centring middle-class characters.

Upper-Class Representation

Upper-class representation is characterised by:

• Heritage television: Downton Abbey, The Crown, Bridgerton present the aristocracy and royalty with visual lushness and narrative sympathy.
• Satire: The Windsors, The Thick of It skewer the powerful.
• True crime: The upper class appears in scandals and fraud cases.