Help me figure out what I mean by "social class"

[koganbot]

Help me write my next column figure out what I mean by the phrase "social class"!

--What do people mean when they say "class"?
--What do I mean when I say "class"?
--What should I mean when I say "class"?

I do not necessarily mind that my own and other people's use of the term is vague and inconsistent and contrary, but I do think I should be more specific about the various different species that my inconsistency and contrariness suggest and my vagueness covers up.

--Mapping one way of classifying stuff (stuff?) onto another. E.g., mapping musical genre ("rock 'n' roll") onto a group of people ("teenagers" or "working-class" or, um, black people? white people? Southerners? urban dwellers? hicks?)
--Do people belong to classes, or are classes just roles they play? Or some mixture? "White person" is supposedly a role I play 24/7, whether I want to or not, but is this true? What about roles I was playing ten years ago: "technical editor"? "Support staff"? "Office temp"? Twenty years ago I'd divided punks up into two broad categories: "office-temp punks" and "bike-messenger punks" (obv. each was a synecdoche (??) (er, metaphor) for a bunch of similar ways of earning money).
--You know, power and stuff: people who pay wages and earn profits as opposed to people who are paid wages and are told what to do. But actual roles don't divide up so easily. Anyway, most people are in the latter category (the category "are told what to do"), but the Get-Tolders, being the vast majority of human beings, divide up into classes themselves.
--Etc.
--Do you know any good books or articles I should read on this subject - not just that discuss "class" but that notice that the term is problematic?

Comments

Re: class is the elephant in the room? (Post Two)

[koganbot]

I have the opposite reaction to "Pieces of Me." It's the one song I always take for granted (and since it was her only big hit in the U.S., it's the only one I don't think of as "ours" but rather as belonging to the world) - and then when I hear it I'm always surprised by how good it is: the slightly jazzy, soft but strongly rhythmic chords in the verse, the slightly jittery singing, and then the full warm flow of the vocals in the verse. In a way it's absolutely crucial to the album, since it's the track where she's marveling at the fact that she can actually be fully completely loved. Is it the music that leaves you wanting more, or the words? It's true that she says she's moody and restless without giving any examples - but the countdown of the days at the beginning - "On a Monday I am waiting, Tuesday I am fading, and by Wednesday I can't sleep" - coupled with the guitar, sets up a mood of restlessness, which the chorus relieves. And then there's the pang of knowing the eventual real-life unhappy ending, that a year later she'll tell us that ultimately the (broken) pieces of her drove Ryan away.

Is it that the song doesn't reveal new surprises with each listen?

I may be underestimating the second album because it has more songs where only one thing seems to be going on. "Catch Me When I Fall" and "Eyes Wide Open" are powerful powerful tracks with strong singing but each song is a single mood. (But then I rarely concentrate and analyze when I listen to music, so maybe there's much more there to hear; maybe if I analyze the music rather than the words everything will come to feel richer. Not that it needs to for them to be good songs.)

As for social classes, the thing is if you define a social class by particular elements ("hourly wage workers" as opposed to "salaried professionals") then of course everyone in the class will have those elements, whereas if you take a group like the freaks, it's sort of analogous to people who show up at a party: not everyone goes for the same reason and not everyone behaves the same way. So you're a freak if you hang around other people who are considered freaks without being compelled to have particular things in common with all of them, though you might, and of course it's still useful to make generalizations about the class. Or, as I said in the Hero Story thread, it's possible for all students in a high school to decide that people aren't in social classes (as if the classes were a social habitation) but rather freaks and preps etc. are types that people cluster more or less near, act as magnets, forces, shape the social landscape without necessarily defining the people who inhabit the landscape.

Re: class is the elephant in the room? (Post Two)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Is it the music that leaves you wanting more, or the words?

It's basically the words in conjunction with how smoothly the tune goes down. "Better Off" might be its opposite (in my mind, the way I hear 'em), because its breeziness almost completely belies the ambivalence that makes me listen more intently (even now that I know it very well from repeat listens). I suppose as part of an arc it's about as necessary (and, now that I think about it, serves a somewhat similar purpose as) "In Another Life" on the second album, which is similarly wanting in the lyrics department. Although the "pieces of me" is a much more striking metaphor than "another life," which just reminds me of the worst worst worst X-Files episode (non-Mulder/Scully seasons excluded) ever ("The Field Where I Died").

"PoM" is important at track two, which is also the only place to put it and the album would suffer without it for several reasons, not least because, like you said, it's the one track I associate with major airplay and her actual popularity (as opposed to the weird nether-realm of pseudo-popularity she seems stuck in now...saw a lovely post-op summer pic in some magazine and there was zero recognition). Funny that those particular Mon/Tues/Wed lyrics, when you write them out like that, are much more anxious than they sound -- but for some reason the ticking off of those days on the album itself is too clean, too "calendar montage," it's SO pleasant that the anxiety can't quite overcome the serenity. You even get the real-life unhappy ending(s) in the album -- even when you know the real-world chronology, "Surrender" is an important late track that seems to uproot with a kind of righteous anger a lot of what's come before ("I may be sweet but I'm still on the vine/ You couldn't wait, no you had to take your bite"...makes you wonder what the hell was happening before this experience), and "Undiscovered" is elegaic -- "don't walk away" is a pretty brutal way to end an album in my book, since its how I'd probably end my autobiography, too. (And between them is "Nothing New," bitter and jaded -- maybe the most telling precursor to I Am Me? Never thought about it that way before, anyway. And then "Giving It All Away," which is more interesting/weirdly pessimistic the more I think about the incongruity of that final verse with the first trite verse).

Reading Marooned (the Stranded sequel) now and I'm thinking Autobiography might be my desert island album at this point, in part because of the myriad ways I can listen to it. When I want to think, I can think, when I want to "shut off my brain" and go for a walk (or turn it back on and go for a walk) I can do that, too. And there's so much promise in it.

Will stew s'more about yer classes, which seem like a productive spot to be putting my brain energies (hm, parties and magnets both excellent metaphors, actually, not sure why I'm still being so resistant since I've been following the column itself just fine!). Return of the slight musings on 'slebs-as-class coming up this or next month (expanded on "mini-bling"), basically arguing that the result of knee-jerk class-y reactions even within pop have led to more modest signifiers of wealth in music (my examples are somewhat lacking but the idea is interesting, and Hilary and P!nk are good for a full column on this topic, anyway), to sort of mirror the weirdly apocalyptic vibe happening at the industry level these days.

Re: class is the elephant in the room? (Post Two)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"it" in first parag is "Pieces of You," serves a similar purpose arcwise as "In Another Life."