Ferris Bueller's Day Off

The two films, Titanic and The Great Gatsby help understand the medium of socioeconomic class with the concept of inequality. A film as a media focuses on one subject at a time; conveying the message presented in the story. Also a film is easy to understand. Both the films are about class division and inequality. A class is an economic center in both the films. Through these two films, we get to see the conflict perspective.

The 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, follows teenage rebel Ferris Bueller and his group of friends as they ditch high school and venture off to spend the day in downtown Chicago. Main character, Ferris Bueller, is no stranger to missing a day of school. He has mastered the ways of faking sick and uses this to his advantage. Now on his ninth absence, sister Jeanie and principle Rooney are fed up and have the desire to catch him in his lies and expose him to his oblivious parents. Despite their efforts, Bueller is one step ahead and consistently finds ways to avoid any obstacle thrown at him. Through his persuasive personality, confidence, and brave behavior Ferris Bueller’s day off is one to remember. This crazy and adventurous film not only brings joy and laughter to viewers but illustrates two specific theories of communication: Shannon-Weaver’s Model of Communication and Interpersonal Deception.

This class division is painfully apparent throughout the novel.  In chapter five, some of the people at Gatsby's party are singing a popular tune of the 1920's, which includes the lyrics: "the rich are getting richer/and the poor are getting children/ain't we got fun?" (101).  The flippancy of the lyrics implies a general attitude of the upper classes toward the lower class.  Later in the novel, Gatsby describes a young Daisy, who appears "gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor" (157).  This sentence captures the main argument of Marx's The Communist Manifesto.  In the Manifesto, he describes the constant conflict between classes, but says that the real struggle is on the part of the lower class.  In this book, the upper class is portrayed as being extremely artificial and corrupt.  The reason that Gatsby works so hard to become a member of the upper class is to impress a girl who he places a market value on - and he becomes a member of that class through illegalities.  When Gatsby buys his house to impress Daisy, he is not simply purchasing property; he "thinks he is buying a dream." [ii]

Marx’s commodity theory is a two-category theory; objects become commodities when they have more use than their standard value. When commodities are traded they can either have exchange or sign exchange value. Exchange value occurs when monetary value is placed on an object and is traded and sign exchange value is when a commodity is exchanged social status is obtained (Tyson 62). As Tiana goes along her adventure to achieve her goal of buying a building to open her restaurant she, as well as other characters use their commodities in hopes to gain something in

Conspicuous consumption is a Marxist concept in which a consumer displays their wealth through items. This concept is displayed during the introduction of Percy Boyd Staunton “His parents were rich, his clothes were fine,and his mittens were of skin…”(Fifth Business 3). This description classes Percy’s family among the elite of society in comparison to Dunstan’s. Percy’s father a dentist, landowner and farmer was the capitalist of Deptford with a very limited economic vision. This upbringing created an adventure capitalist in which similar characteristics can be seen within Percy that can be seen as an addiction that will slowly warp Percy’s fate .

Teens are rebellious troublemakers. It’s just something that’s in their blood. Each one shows it in a different way. There are many movies that show teens coming of age and going through this phase. “Rebel Without A Cause”,“American Graffiti”,  “Breaking Away”, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” all show how teens are growing up.

The third social class demonstrated in the novel was the lower class, that included the workers and farmers who struggled to make ends meet. In to novel, the Cunningham’s is a good example of the lower working class. The Cunningham’s were farmers. Many people back than believed farmers were very poor, but it was the fact that the depression hit them the hardest that made them struggle so much financially, “Are we as poor as the Cunninghams? Not exactly. They Cunninghams are country folks, farmers, and the crash hit them the hardest” (Lee,

“It’s not what you own its what people think you own” (Ewen 183). Consumerism is fueling today’s “middle class”. Stewart Ewen’s “Chosen People” goes into detail about the rise of the materialistic middle class.

Chris shows his discontent for materialism as he reacts with futility and disgust when his father offers to buy him a new car. Chris exclaims that: “[This car] runs just fine!”, once again justifying his lack of care for materials. Holden similarly sees the human attachment for materialism in a comedic style when he observes his roommate’s actions as stated in this quotation: “The day after I put [my suitcase] under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack...he wanted people to think my bags were his” (Salinger, 108). What society fails to realize is that while materials might go away, wear out or disappear, happiness is something that will never expire. Thus in an attempt to show that materials are not advantageous to life, Chris and Holden abandon their homes and go on an adventure in search for something much greater; happiness.

Everyone enjoys material things, whether they want a brand new car or even a phone; these items do not provide any necessity for survival, yet they make people’s lives much easier, and even more

Conflict is a recurring struggle throughout The Great Gatsby and Ken Allen’s “Roaring Twenties”. In Fitzgerald’s nonfiction novel, class was one of the main conflicts and reasoning’s behind many of the actions from the characters. A major social issue was class socialization. Class socialization refers to the rich socializing with the rich and the poor socializing with the poor. Classes of people were divided by wealth. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy would not be with Gatsby due to his lack of money. Since Gatsby descended from a poor family, Daisy would not accept him as a lover although she was indeed in love with him. Gatsby’s lack of wealth led to many other conflicts sustaining from his drive to earn money to prove his worth of her affection. Another conflict in The Great Gatsby was the stock market crash. The stock market crash was a major event during the Roaring Twenties. When the market crashed, prices on goods soared due to the low quantity of products resulting with millions of people becoming poor. In Allen’s poem “Roaring Twenties”, socialism

This class, like the middle class, consists of sub-groups of people. These include the skilled, the semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Social mobility has, however, affected the number of people in this class. Many people born in this class have been able to rise to the middle class, and as a result, there exists a case of embourgeoisement.

Written in 1996, Fight Club expresses the issues of its time with Palahniuk using a Marxist lens to express the evils of capitalist society in relation to loss of identity in a society built on achieving relative gains with those at the top benefiting at the expense of those at the bottom. The 1990s was a decade of excess , where people became fixated on consumerism, which, characterised the period as one of social disconnection, recklessness and greed , destroying moral values and widening the gap between classes, as financially the “top 1% were worth as much as the combined worth of the bottom 90%” . Through homodiegetic narration, Palahniuk voices his frustrations of the struggle of an individual against repression from a capitalist society through the persistence of consumerism.

Hunger for luxury items and people’s strife for the brands and items they associate with being beyond reach is paramount for this system. It is this drive for items one can’t have that the author feels is one of the benefits of consumerism. He declares, “…the aspiration of the poor to

People always want what they don’t need. Some people want more than they can have. They want more than they can afford. These stories show different kinds of people; people that are greedy, people that are grateful, and people that value things other than money.