Social class
Leal and Oliven (1988) examined how Brazilian families from different social classes gave different descriptions of a soap opera, Sol de Verao (“Summer รนท,,).6 In an ethnographic study, they watched an episode of the novela with informants (ten families from the working class, and ten from the upper class), in the families’ own homes. They analyzed each family’ร home, and the place of the television in it, as well as their reception of the soap opera. They asked the participants to tell them about the show. The participants varied by social class in their styles of narrative interpretation.7 Working-class respondents used a realistic frame and described the story as if it were real. For instance, they referred to the characters by their names in the stories. Upper-class
Upper Class: It’s a tiovela where the feminist issue IS presented in ad y
Th. rnrv fakes nlacc in a southsidc neighborhood of KJO dc
. The upper-class respondents were also aware that upper-class people were not “supposed” to like novelas (as they are seen as a form of working-class culture). Even though they watched, they kept a distance from the soap opera through their critical stance and ironic comments.
Press (1991) found that working-class respondents in America also employed a realistic frame in evaluating the television they consume. She studied the ways that both working-class and middle-class women talked about television, and how closely they identified with the characters. Press suggests that
middle-class women more often identify with television characters, in particular with their situations and dilemmas vis-a-vis family and other relationships, than do working-class women. Paradoxically,... middle-class women generally seem to like television less overall but to identify with Its characters and situations
more than working-class women Working-class women, on the other hand,
while overall claiming to value television more highly, are often critical both of television shows themselves and of the characters on them, primarily for their lack of realism. Working-class women’s lack of identification with television characters is perhaps not surprising when one considers the middle- or upper- class bias of most television content, (p. 175)
Press was also interested in how television might work, hegemonicaUy, to transmit dominant values to viewers. She argues that television provides messages that are based on capitalist and patriarchal values and that these values contribute to the oppression of women and the working class. Women do resist these messages, at least partly, in their viewing. However, Press finds evidence for both class-based and gender-based hegemony. Middle-class women were more susceptible to a gender-based hegemony in their reception
opera (p. 86):
. J /• -J docsn t talk, but lie. Working Class: In the soap opera there IS Abel พ o IS ** mixed from all the doesn't talk because of a problem and also there IS every « kn"พ why -
of television. For instance, they were “vulnerable in a deplorably direct way” to culturally prescribed notions of femininity (p. 96). They subscribed to presentations of how women should look and dress. Middle-class women also used television characters and situations to help understand the pressing issue of work-family conflict in their own lives. Working-class women, in contrast, were more susceptible to class-based hegemony. They did not find the depictions of working-class life realistic, but they accept portrayals of middle- and upper-class life, with all their material accoutrements, as accurate. In consequence, their “television watching may contribute... to a degree of alienation from the reality of their own material experience and .. . may con¬tribute to a sense of personal failure women experience for not achieving this media-defined norm and may thereby confound working-class women’s op-pression in our society” (p. 138).