Zip is the best. Bill Griffith is one of my favorite cartoonists.

Kudos. That got an unexpected, but much needed, hearty chuckle out of me :D

Excellent! I noticed that there seems to be a lot of UK stuff that is explicitly working-class versus American. Interesting to say the least. It seems like, for whatever reason, it's a little bit more prevalent in the UK. Maybe it's just the responses I've gotten so far, but I have noticed there seem to be a disproportionate amount.

Right on. The small snippet I read was intriguing. I look forward to it.

Will do, thanks for the reply!

Billy Elliot is one of those films I'd always meant to watch but never seem to finish when I start. I'll have to seek it out again sometime soon.

It's been awhile since I watched Firefly, so I can't recall the show's perspective on class, if any. I haven't seen it in years, so maybe I'll rewatch it. Although, I liked the show, I didn't feel as strongly about it's quality as others commonly do. I wonder if it's worth a watch for me because of that.

Comic recommends are always welcome, I'll take a look at Our Members.

Thanks for the suggestions ;)

Thanks! Those all look pretty interesting. I'll probably watch Vast of Night over the weekend.

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.

Makes sense. The Famicom AVs on Ebay were anywhere from $95-$125, while the NES toploader was at least $140-160. That's why I opted to get the Famicom AV instead.

The game you're thinking of is Bangai-O Spirits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits. It was a DS sequel to Bangai-O on the Sega Dreamcast (another excellent, and imho the superior version). I had the DS version as well and it was a great game. If you ever get the chance (emu or native) I'd highly recommend playing the original on Dreamcast. Pure Arcade shmup goodness.

Ah, that's a clever way to circumvent minutes. Signal can only call other Signal users, right? So, if I wanted to call my mom, for instance, she'd need to get Signal? It's been a sec since I used it.

Does KeepCalling have SMS included?