POOR WHITES IN FILMS - SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS

 Another site had a short article on films that portray poor whites sympathetically.  I have seen none of the films mentioned in that article.  I did leave a comment, and repeat it here, wherein I mention 3 films that I thought included interesting portrayals of poor whites.  Hugh Murray

I saw it years ago, but "Th Outsiders" 1983, with all the young stud actors of the era is one example. The protagonists were not the wealthier ones. Poor, but sympathetic. Not the Okies of the 1930s trekking to California who might wrather wine to grapes.These Outsiders were Okies who were outsiders because they had little money, poor whites. The film helped make several of the players stars for a decade, or even longer.

Even the young Nick Cage film Valley Girl (also 1983) has some of the conflict between poor and mid-class whites, but it is far more romance than social commentary.

Two years later, 1985, from the UK, a surprisingly un-politically correct film was shown: My Beautiful Laundrette. Some have wealth, but they are immigrants from Pakistan. The whites are poor, all at some point skin-headish, some remain so. Daniel Day-Lewis plays one of the poor whites, who gets a job working for the immigrants, as he had been a school-chum with one of the young immigrant lads. These two become lovers. Day Lewis may even have a flirtation with one of the female Pakistanis too. Who exploits whom? Which community exploits the other? It is not the simple, p.c. answer. Which group is more lawless? Heartless? Surely, you will not find a film on race relations in America to be so nuanced.

On the other side, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and their derivatives depict totally unsympathetic poor whites.  I assume the new West Side Story portrays the white Jets in similar strokes to the Puerto Rican gang, but have not seen it.  Most Hollywood films portray middle-class and above.  Poor whites are not as glamourous according to the lords of film.  When I was young, decades ago, there were many films made by Republic Pictures and Monarch Pictures, westerns.  The heroes and villains of these films were middle class or poor.  But the Western genre that was still so popular on tv into the 1960s, has disappeared, except for a special once in a while, with different values, Broke Back Mountain, or now Power of the Dog.  Poor whites now are more likely PBS specials on drug addiction, crime, racism.

Another genre, particularly when I was young, was the war movie. Indeed, a real war hero, Audie Murphy starred in both war and western films. The war film did not center on class, and as most of the services during WWII had been segregated, blacks may not have appeared in these films. I saw them decades ago, but if blacks appeared, they were in unimportant roles. Class differences might be discussed, but as back-story, what they did before volunteering or being drafted. The back-story might have been merely oral, or it could have been a short visual to accompany the soldier's story. More common was the assimilation: the Italian, the Irish Catholic, the Jew, the Hispanic, and of course, the WASP. In these films, the melting pot melted the ethnicities into a fighting unit for the nation, as they de-emphasized their backgrounds, ethnicity, and class, thinking now of the next assault they would make against the enemy. Yet, of these early films, the one I recall most is From Here to Eternity, in which Frank Sinatra plays a boxer who does not want to continue fighting, while the sergeant wants him to fight and win for his unit. Not class, not race, not ethnicity, but a rebel heart, a maverick who rejects the sergeant's desires that he fight, win, and bring the unit a trophy. The sergeant punishes Sinatra sadistically. All this ends when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. In these war films, class was de-emphasized, race did not exist, and ethnicity rallied round the American flag.