Asklemmy

I unironically love the description of one of the most successful and influential works of art ever created as a musical you once saw because your friend was in it. That's as working class as it gets.

Interesting, however sitcoms in general really aren't my cup of tea as well. It was mentioned in other places that Roseanne was one of the few shows to depict working class life somewhat accurately, and with some dignity. A lot of the time the working class is shown in a shallow, stereotypical depiction of what upper-class people imagine it's like.

Yes! Kids shows are particularly egregious about this. All the kids shows are about rich kids and their rich parents. That's not to say that kids shows need to explicitly put the problems of class society front and center (although, some small discussion of class and social relations would be nice) but consistently showing kids living out these hyper-capitalist consumerist fantasies is pretty cringe-worthy.

Exactly. The thing that repulses me the most is the fake-y, artificial looking life that is so often represented in entertainment, and then that is what is spun as "normal". Which I imagine is why these upper-class people even in real life look like the shallow Stepford Wives aesthetic that the movies and tv depict them as, life depicting art it seems.

In my initial short searches I did earlier, Antonio Gramsci comes up as addressing the issue of "cultural hegemony", where art and entertainment tends to represent the dominant bourgeois culture, which makes a lot of sense. I've heard of Gramsci in passing, but haven't read anything by him yet. I think it's a good place to begin regarding a critical analysis.

Although, even without a thorough critical analysis, it's pretty straightforward to realize that the economic barrier for art, entertainment and creating media in general leads to an over-representation of the wealthy since they have the money and means to create and distribute media to the masses, which in turn consolidates their dominance of the popular narrative.

What's particularly sad about this, is that people that grow up working-class are absorbing messages from media that marginalize their narrative, and cause them to internalize a narrative that leads them to being oblivious towards their class standing and even hostile towards it. The whole "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" concept that causes people to denigrate the poor and working class, even if they themselves are a part of it.