Extra Credit: Ray Suarez

I found the cynical chapter by Ray Suarez was an excellent critique on how the media reinforces our conceptions on how class is structured in society. I believe that it is true that the media tells us the story we want to hear, one where the affluent are the “good” guys (oftentimes of a white background) and where the poor are the criminals and commonly depicted as racial minorities. Yet, why is this the story that puts us at ease? Suarez describes it best when he summarizes how the media is “a story told by high-status people about higher- and lower-status power to lower-status power” (363). That is, the stories in the media are constructed by the affluent to be shared among the less fortunate.

From this chapter, it becomes clear how conceptions of class become reproduced in society. It is interesting to note who gets to decide what class is, what kind of people compose the class, and characteristics of the class: it is the upper-classes. For example, as discussed in the chapter, when a member of the affluent class is murdered, it is sensationalized as the most sinful crime. Yet when a member of the lower class is violated (such as the case of Rodney King and the protests that arose from it), the situation is depicted as a scene of chaos. Through this dialogue, it appears that the controllers of media are insinuating that the upper-classes have a need to be protected and are a sacred class; they are the perfections of society. Meanwhile, the abhorrent lower-classes can only envy what they have, and even if they attain as much wealth as the affluent (such as by winning the lottery) they can still never be treated as equals because it is almost as if their lower-class identity is a racial identity that can never be altered no matter how hard they try to fit in.

The construction class is a cumulative project, but it appears to be most strongly influenced by the affluent. With their wealth and power, they are able to create for themselves a role that makes the rest of society almost worship them. This then becomes their strategy for remaining at the top of the hierarchy. This reality is incredibly tragic because it shows that even if efforts toward equality have been achieved, these stories are rarely exposed in the media.