CLASS AND STATUS ANNA AND HARVEY

UPPER CLASS

• wealthy• well spoken• elegantly dressed• high end properties• land owners• superior • intellectual • snobby

MIDDLE CLASS

• suburban • average• good income• owns some land• white collar workers• family centred

WORKING CLASS

• poor• restricted code• crime• benefits• council houses• state schooling• manual labour

TOP TIPS

• look at the mise-en-scene (what are they wearing? upper class will wear smart, expensive clothes whereas lower class will wear cheap, tacky clothing for example)

• listen to their voices (are they well-spoken? what is their accent? do they use colloquial vocabulary?)

• what’s the setting like? (are they subverting or adhering to the stereotypical setting for their class?)

EXAMPLE REPRESENTATION VIDEO

• Footballers' Wives• the clip portrays a very varied representation of class and status

due to the characters being of a low class yet high status; the mise-en-scene supporting the idea that celebrities (and especially footballers) such as the characters within the extract are very wealthy and arrogant, yet their interest in the tacky and flashy implying a working class upbringing. This notion is supported by the diegetic sounds used in the sequence. As such, the characters would be classed as members of the upper/middle class due to adhering to many stereotypes regarding such (wealth, arrogance, vanity, affluence), but having originated from a working class background due to subverting the remainder of upper/middle class stereotypes (accents, conversation topics, quality of clothing and interior design)