I grew up working class. We had a triple wide trailer, which made us lower class royalty. (One young girl made her money and came back and bought our family house which she and hers always called "the big house.") I needed to get out, and I did. I joined the Army, lived in Missouri, London, Massachusetts, LA, Vegas, traveled Europe, Mexico, the U.S., and eventually ended up in NYC. And ever since London, I've been surrounded by the upper middle class - kids who always knew they were going to college, kids whose parents had enough to bail them out of trouble, kids who had the glow of security and comfort that comes when you know that there is always a back-up plan if things get too bad.

I felt the patronizing stance my new friends had towards the poor, and the subtle superiority they felt - that their security was born out of hard work and not the lucky result of falling out of a well-off vagina.

I'm thinking about this because I just saw a slash-fic mash-up of the old Star Trek cartoon and William Shatner's version of Pulp's "Common People." Seriously. It's awesome and silly and funny and you should watch it (but it's probably old news to you).

This song hit me emotionally! I was completely surprised. Obviously, Shatner's voice is awful, and obviously the video is silly, but I never listened to the lyrics before!

For years I've heard the neutered version of the song and completely missed the original "fighting" version. The lyrics of "Common People" are pissed and up for a fucking fight. They're a nasty slap in the face and a complete fuck you, and they reminded me of how I felt as a dirt-poor young kid trying to figure out wealthy culture while living in London (and later in Massachusetts, and later in NYC).

Instead of the full song, I knew the video. It's bright and colorful and has a sugary bounce. But it attaches glamor to slumming, and suggests the song is simply about fucking some strange hot rich girl. The disdain is clear in the singer's voice, but it's coupled with narcissism and smugness, and in the video it seems more about the singer's predilection for pleasurable sexual conquest, and about his disdain of his one night stand.

But it's not that at all.

And I only found out because of Shatner's version. Shatner's voice is so wrong and he enunciates everything so clearly that I couldn't help but pay attention to the words and practically ignore the music.

And holy shit.

That song's lyrics (but not the song) gets the annoyance and anger I felt. I once tried to tell a friend that the parties in my hometown were some of the wildest I had ever experienced, even though I continued to be and out-of-control party kid and experienced some insane shit in London, Massachusetts, etc. But as I explained to my friends, I've never felt the nihilism I felt when I was growing up. Everyone fucked and got fucked up because there was no future, no hope. There was no college, no good jobs, no possibilities. I lucked out, of course, and will never go back, but yeah... Fuck tourism and fuck everyone who thinks they can "get it."



"Like a dog lying in a corner they will bite and never warn you. They'll tear your insides out, 'cos everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh. ... You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning, or control, and with nowhere else to go."

The lyrics aren't great, but I'm surprised I never really listened to them before. They would've spoke to a younger me. Hell, they still speak to the younger me, but I know all this shit now.

yeah, thats why ive always liked shatners version. i got that out of it right away, because of the voice and the delivery.

im not sure what class i was growing up, because while early on we were poor single mom crappy neighborhood and all that, my dad had been to university and my mom was working and going to school, and there was no question i would. but i was going to have to work my ass off and get scholarships to pay for it. a lot of the people around me, especially prior to high school werent going anywhere and even a lot of the people i went to university with were basically small town kids trying to get out (with more or less success). my stepdad is from a small town in upstate new york and my mom has always been more comfortable around working class, farmers, and that sort than with the Drs she has to work with. she started out nursing and kind of hates most of her current professional peers.

so i kind of feel like ive always been in between those, that i wanted and felt i deserved (red flag) to do something with my life, and always afraid that maybe deep down im not good enough or rich enough to ever actually have that. rich people make me really uncomfortable, for the most part, but i sure as hell dont romanticize poverty. on the other hand, while i can get along with them okay, i dont really have much in common with the people i work with, and generally spend my time with people who have been to university or at least read and think a lot.

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Maybe because of my early naivete, I'm comfortable with everyone, rich and poor - whoever can speak English. That doesn't mean I like anyone, just that I'm comfortable with them. And you had cultural capital, but no capital. That's kinda common with university kids.

I'm not sure about the larger stuff. I know I'm good enough to succeed, but am extremely uncomfortable with success. I like money, but hate the slavish devotion of running after it. Even my relationship to work is compromised, and that came from theory and university, since my parents worked their ass off - like 12 hours a day, every day.

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I had no idea it was a cover. I love the Shatner version. The lyrics don't have all that much to do with my life, but it's hostile to the same people I'm hostile toward, so I like them.

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Really? That song was muy famouso when we were younger.

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Yeah, I'm white trash from North Carolina. Definitely feel ya on this.

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Represent!

Erikka too.

Just talked to an acquaintance who grew up in the LITTLE single wide, the ones that were smaller than the AirStreams, remember? But when she was an older little girl, her mom got married to a rich lawyer, so she moved straight to a massive house with a pool and a Porsche (and her own pony)! Crazy, right? But the step-dad and the pony both ended up being assholes, but she loved the vertical ascent.

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It's funny that it took you so long to get the point of that video.

I was just listening to that album today, I feel like I can relate to both sides of that song

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I had never heard the tune before, though I assume it was some indie band. Ever listen to "Blood for Blood?" That's music by my homeboys. It's a little self pitying for my tastes, but they capture the nihilism better than anything else I've heard yet.

Let's face it: upper middle class people, and those who try to be like them will always be torpid, soulless and cold compared to working class people. They're Eloi. If there were such a thing as working class Marxism a la Jack London (Martin Eden is a great read), I'd probably subscribe to it, just because I've met so many UMC weenies who would get out the calculator for a $20 check for Chinese food.

It's probably directly attributable to poor values inculcated in childhood. Some very wealthy people I have met have excellent character because their parents made them aware of how lucky they were, and made them do stuff to earn it.

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upper middle class people, and those who try to be like them will always be torpid, soulless and cold compared to working class people

Where I live, there's this bizarre, working-class "royalty" thing going on. A lot of my white trash neighbors opened lines of credit on their homes to buy monster trucks and boats and supermo'fugginhuge plasma TVs and jet-skis and all the other white trash working class status symbols. They'd brag about all their toys and try to rub it in our faces, oblivious to the fact that some of us don't play that ridiculous game.

They're all being foreclosed on and having to sell all that crap off.

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LOL Pulp as indie

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I only discovered Pulp last year on my coworker's iPod afterwhich he gave me a spare copy of the Best of CD. I think one of the things that really drew me into the band in the first place were their biting/sardonic lyrics. I have a tendency of enjoying pissed-off music that isn't hard core and/or doesn't take itself seriously. I'd never seen the video, but it seems so wrong for the song and nothing like the images in my head whenever I listened to it. That said, I did rather enjoy Shatner's rendition with the more upbeat vocals in the background.

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As you know I love hard core and love stuff that takes itself seriously!

For me, the other stuff is a problem. Like Simon and Garfunkle and The Zombies and XTC and countless others from various generations, when the music is sweet and the lyrics are not, I simply can't comprehend the lyrics.

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I've always been simultaneously embarrassed and happy to have been raised upper middle class.

I'm lower middle class now, so it's all very weird for me at the moment. I thought I could sort out what was upper middle class and what wasn't, but you really can't even begin that process until you're on the flip side.

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Why embarrassed? Why not just feel lucky?

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"I felt the patronizing stance my new friends had towards the poor, and the subtle superiority they felt"

...

"Fuck tourism and fuck everyone who thinks they can "get it.""

So if it's bad to be patronizing, and it's also bad to try and "get" what it means to be poor, what's your preferred stance for the upper middle class to have? Or is there no way to do it "right"?

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A tourist doesn't care about the reality - only about feeling better about their position. It's a selfish stance that doesn't open up the self to the possibility of "the other."

And there is a limit to understanding, which constantly needs to be recognized. Trying to understand is one thing, but claiming personal understanding is abhorrent.

Like you or me telling a black friend that we know what it's like to grow up black in the U.S., or a vet friend that we know what it's like to be in combat, or a "Lost Boy" that we know what it's like to have suffered genocide. I'm not claiming being poor is similar. It's not. But there are certain problems that are endemic to social groups that are not fully transferable or understandable. You can understand, but you can never get it, which I guess I'm equating to "live it."

As the lyrics said, for the rich girl the cockroach on the wall can be negated, at any time, with a phone call.

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I think my anger was always towards slumming and tourism. Patronizing attitudes piss me off, as does the belief that the class system in the U.S. reward the deserved (although that anger was not part of my upbringing - we believed it hook, line and sinker).

I appreciate anyone who lives cheaply in order to accomplish something not ensconced in our financial minded world - that's part of a long tradition of bohemianism, which is traditionally middle class living poor in order to do things in the province of the rich (and almost always artistic based, but also hipster based - the life of the dandy and flaneur).

Nothing wrong with trying to "get it," but the assumption that you "know what it's like" is silly.

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Ah classism.

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Class WAR!

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the thing I got kind of worked up about recently that made me think of this post was people who take tours to slums in brazil, or actually buy property in them and then get all psyched about the "authenticity" of it

do you distinguish between CULTURAL "tourism" of the kind the song and this post is describing, and CLASS tourism? are they the same, or just related? because it seem to me that all subcultures are co-opted as "tourist" attractions

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People buy property in the slums of Brazil? Wow. That's kinda crazy. I kinda respect that. Gentrification only happens in areas that are abandoned. The artists can move in and build a new community - it never happens in neighborhoods that are lived in - or almost never.

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first off-- and i'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet-- that pulp record (titled different class, appropriately enough) is chock-full of the sentiment you're describing, presented from a variety of wicked angles. i've always thought of it as sorta the album version of joseph losey's the servant.

as to the larger debate, i grew up upper middle class, and now i'm in that all-too-typical demographic where i scrape by on peanuts but could certainly be bailed out by my folks if the shit ever hit the fan. for me, i've tried increasingly to be honest about it-- i hate it when people who come from money play this evasive game about it. that shit used to drive me crazy in NYC, where i knew people without jobs who lived in manhattan, and guarded the economics of their situation quite carefully.

on the other hand, i think there's a really disingenous persecution complex that comes along with privilege (e.g. "stuff white people like", etc.), and i try to really avoid playing that game. like, i'd be the first to make fun of people i grew up with that are terrified of public transportation, etc... but i'm increasingly tired of eye-rolling about, say, recycling programs because they're so "white" or whatever.

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Huh. I guess I need to DL it and check it out. He's so pretty and swanky looking that I always thought he was a wealthy playboy.

And yeah, I'm not into generalizing behavior. That's a dumb idea. As I told Paul, I'm into systematic problems. And on the personal day-to-day level, I think everyone should be treated as an equal until proved an asshole. But individual thinking is problematic when thinking on any larger scale. I think that's the problem of a lot of conservatives, and vice versa for some liberals.

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I feel a mixture of resentment and pity for the kids who prance around with a false sense of entitlement. It's not really about being rich, it's about going around being a vapid douchebag about it.

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Completely.

And I just added you back. Cool journal. I like the story about your pyro dad. How did you find me?

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word

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i definitely grew up in a lower class home but had advantages of "higher up" bc of my dad's parents. it made me very aware of the have/have not's. and very aware of what i didn't have. the rich were not a fantasy world to me, i went to school with them. i saw how they lived. and now what i know is that they were just probably upper middle class with a few really rich kids. like when there was a field trip and i was the only kid who couldn't go bc my parents couldn't afford it....one of the teachers ended up paying for me to go. or when a friends mom paid for our house to be painted right after my parents divorced...and then proceeded to hold that over my mom's head and guilt her. my dad's parents grew up poor, both from farming families. as did my mother. my mom remember only seeing mayonnaise in the fridge and not knowing how they were going to eat their next meal. dresses for easter one year were made out of curtains.

that's why i don't dress up (aside from the fact that it's not very me and i'm uncomfortable) with work. i wear jeans most days. a lot of my families that i work with are very poor. i don't want them to feel like i'm not accessible. but yeah, great song.

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spock video is so beautiful to me

I favourited it

Salamat ho

--mza.

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Thanks for the link to my video. I'm really being shocked at some of the reactions to it, and yours is pretty awesome, because that's pretty much how I felt about it when I heard Shatner's version of the song. Shatner really impressed me with this album and this song in particular, as I rarely find covers better than the original, but while I quite liked Pulp's original version, this one did move me, like it did you. I grew up lower-class, below poverty line actually, and struggled to get past that.

I made this video for something to introduce the song to the geek population, and I'm very happy when I see it spread beyond that. It's something that should remind us all to be angry, at times. Your post really meant a lot to me, thank you.

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