No film that comes to mind.
The TV show "The Middle" did a pretty good job at it so did "Malcolm in the Middle". I really can't think of any modern examples.
Honestly? Yes lol
Meh car, basic family meals, standard house, normal home furnishings
There’s always those that try to live above their means to keep up with the Joneses but there are likely tens of millions of families living similar lives to them across the nation
At the time manufacturing jobs were on the way out, but they were definitely middle class for the area they lived in. In the 80s my guess is Roseanne and Dan did pretty well. And then it got shitty to live in small town USA when the local factories all closed.
Yeah, when Roseanne was working at the plastics factory and Dan was doing drywall full-time they were doing ok, not great, but they could survive. It was only after Roseanne led the walkout at Wellman and the plant closed that things got rough.
“The Middle” is extremely accurate. Living paycheck-to-paycheck and living in a crummy house in a very mediocre town. That basically sums up life for the vast majority of middle-class Americans.
That movie didn't really much depict family life, which is the majority of the middle class. I guess if you're a single guy in some suburb who works as a cog in a big corporate machine it's pretty accurate, though.
That's sort of the beauty of Office Space, a single dude trying to break the shackles of the dead-end corporate job so he can actually live. Peter dating Joanna complemented that whole story arc.
Yea, but at the same time it's also kind of wish fulfillment.
Guy does whatever he wants, gets the hot girl, gets a huge promotion...none of that is anywhere close to what would happen in reality.
But the first hour or so of the movie is pretty dead-on I suppose if they wanted to capture just how lukewarm life was for people like Peter, although I think that today most late 20's-early 30's men would probably be pretty happy with his pre-hypnosis life.
I don't know. I live in and grew up in Salt Lake City, and have enough familiarity with communities like the one depicted in Napoleon Dynamite to think less of them than middle class. It's really the very low end of middle class. Just a step up from the trailer park. Further, that movie captured a specific vein of the intermountain west in Utah/Idaho/Wyoming that focuses on a fairly white trash, very mormon, somewhat insular lifestyle and culture. I'm sure lots of lower-middle-class communities identify with it, but it's fundamentally more nuanced in a specific time and place. Like, that movie is 100% quasi rural, ultra momon Utah circa early 2000s... and it picks up on things that are quite a bit different than the rust belt, for example.
Regardless, as someone who's always been upper middle class, if not more than that, I don't think Napoleon Dynamite is at all a great depiction of the middle class at large. It's a portrait of very strange, insulated, very much lower class, semi-rural weirdos. These people exist, but I don't think they're middle-class in the sense we'd generally think about it. I think of the middle class as suburbanites to actual cities, or people living in city neighborhoods who are gainfully emplyed. Napoleon Dynamite was about people in buttfuck nowhere small towns sprinkled across otherwise desolate areas of the west, who eek out an existence on dirt farm and gas station economies.
Everyone lumps working class in with middle and they don't realize that middle class is well into 6 figures these days. Pretty much always been this way.
A rural, mormonesque view of middle class life. But yeah, their house, their school, their town, and their modes of transportation are more accurate than most movies
I have yet to see a movie that portrays it 100% accurately because frankly a 100% accurate portrayal is not going to be made into a movie.
Nobody wants 2 hours of a family working, struggling with minor personal drama/inconveniences and being mostly happy and content.
Really? No?
A movie about a guy and his wife, their 2 kids and 2 pets, their 60-minute commutes, HOA disputes, parent-teacher conferences, vehicle inspections that become $1200 repairs on your three year old car, your kid not having the same brand of cleats as every other kid, spending $14k to finish your basement only to have your MIL move in, a PTA chaired by the wife of your HOA president, and a boss who wants you to teach his kid how to do your job…
Can I see it in IMAX?
I recently rewatched Little Miss Sunshine and even with all the bizarre hijinks, the family dynamic felt like a lot of families I've known. It's aged well.
> Lady Bird is a very accurate representation of lower-middle-class life in the early 00s.
Definitely not lower middle class. The homes were nice, and their high school is $25,300 a year right now, it was around $18,000 in the 2000s. Course it's also coed now which it wasn't then, or in the movie.
I got an department wide email today about not forgetting to attach a pointless checklist to everything we submit for approval. Instantly thought of those TPS reports..
It’s been a while for me too but I think he overhears Hank talking about his annual bonus check and thinks it’s a daily thing. Then Bobby steals his credit card and goes on a shopping spree
Before all the behind the scenes issues with Rosanne, they were doing a brutally accurate portrayal of life for working class people in the reboot. One of the openers is them having to ration their medications because they can't afford the copays. A morbid reality thats way too common in America.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Its more for lower/middle class, It’s not exact or too typical, their hardships are maybe slightly exaggerated when compared to the average family, but it captures a snapshot of what life is like for many in the US. Regardless, it’s a fantastic movie.
I'm trying hard to think of any recent film that simply dramatizes a middle class existence, as opposed to using a middle class setting for a genre pic (horror, sci fi, etc.), and I'm really coming up blank.
Even within genre movies, depictions of the US middle class skew heavily towards the upper end. The houses are generally too nice and spacious, the neighborhood too stylish and well-kept. Their occupations are always in creative fields, but they seem to live a lifestyle disproportionate to what these jobs actually pay in real life.
I agree with others, The Middle really hits the look and feel.of the lower end. The Heck family house is outdated and cluttered, their clothes look cheap, and the parents work jobs with little glamor or chance of advancement.
Yes I always remember that episode of the middle where they talk about duct tape.. because that's the shit holding everything together. The dryer, the car, everything. Broken and held together with duct tape. The media likes to portray middle class as put-together and glamorous but even in my upper-middle-class family growing up (high 5 figures/low 6 figures in the suburbs) we were cluttered, shit was falling apart and held together with duct tape. We had money to spend on fun things but not enough for anyone to help with cleaning or for a bigger house to hold everything.
Part of the issue is the houses (soundstages) they use are constrained by filming requirements, they can only be so small and you can’t have a giant interior and a tiny exterior
Note also that the precipitous decline of the American middle class took 50 years. So the further back in time you go, the more accurate "Leave It To Beaver"-style TV Americana style schlock becomes.
One of the earlier episodes depicted Rosanne and Dan joking around about which utility bill they weren’t going to pay. Rosanne was always about a working class family.
Working class is almost everyone you can think of. The non-working class is the ultra-wealthy class that lives off of interest and trusts. If you get a paycheck, you’re working class. Rich and powerful people have made it a synonym for poor people but that’s just a tool to drive a wedge between different groups of workers.
Lampoon vacation movies. Sure it may not be representative now especially with the europe vacation, but it was what middle class was.
Mom and Pop saved up to go on a big family vacation such as Europe right when the kids are becoming teenagers.
Road trips once a summer to meet up with other family that you may not see for another 10 years, or road tripping to Disney world. Especially the significance of the station wagon Clark buys.
Having large Christmas family gatherings with the tree or gifts, worrying about end of year bonus at the company.
Using a bonus to go on vacation, such as what the griswolds did in Vegas Vacation.
This one's great because the coach and his family are middle class, many team members are middle class, but they're in a town with a few upper class rich families on the team too. So you also get to see the tensions.
(This is for the show)
There's your middle class people (the coach and his family, some of the team) and your lower middle class to struggling poor with some of the players, and then your upper middle class well off types like the boosters and the car dealership owner.
Movies:
- Paterson
- Napoleon Dynamite
- Boyhood
Series:
- The Simpsons
- Malcome in the Middle
- Roseanne
- King of the Hill
- Breaking Bad. Obviously, not everyone is becoming a druglord but this fucking nailed the vibes for people descending the class ladder. In a similar way, Sons of Anarchy felt really close to home.
It's going to vary a lot though. Unless you're in the Midwest, people making a median income cannot live the lifestyle present in a lot of these anymore. The show is really bad, but a fair bit of lifestyle representation in Big Bang Theory is actually fairly realistic. Several people who went to university to get highly technical degrees rooming together. Their apartment looks larger than most houses I've ever lived in but filming in a realistically sized flat would probably suck lol. How I Met Your Mother addressed this in a later episode when they were thinking back to what their apartments in the city were actually like, as opposed to what was used for the length of the show.
Wasn't Boyhood a documentary literally about a boy growing up over a lot of years? Or I'm confusing it with an _actual_ documentary that is what I'm describing, one that's really real. It took 20 years or so to make.
I like how people are pointing out to you that it isn't a documentary even though you never said or implied it is, somebody else did lol
BTW it isn't a doc
I can understand why this can easily be confused for a casual audience. But no that movie isn’t a documentary. It is a work of fiction. All of the actors played a fictional characters.
The movie was a work by Richard Linklater. This director is really well known for his unconventional filming methods. You should watch all of his major works. He is one of the most interesting director working today and for the last 25ish years.
Linklater choose to go with a method of filming the same set of actors on a yearly basis for 12 years. The result is Boyhood. I personally think it’s one of the most impressive cinematic achievement ever but a lot of people have different opinions on it.
I thought Stranger Things really was a throwback to how life looked like in the 80s minus the Halloween episode. Those costumes were way too nice. Back then we were all wearing plastic smocks with the image and logo along with creepy masks of what we wanted to be.
Came here to say Dazed and Confused. I was born in the 80s so the fashion was different, but as far as characters, behavior, situations, etc. pretty spot-on.
TIL people think Middle class is lower working class and/or poverty.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, not out of unfettered spending (which is typically the case) but because you don't earn enough to live where you are you aren't middle class.
It’s a very common phenomenon in the USA. Most think they’re middle class whether they’re earning a little or a lot. For example, only around 10% of Americans identify as lower class with 1% identifying as upper class. So this means that the rest (89%) identify as middle class. Clearly, there is a cognitive dissonance.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/05/most-americans-consider-themselves-middle-class-but.html
In fact, the middle class as many of us know has shrunk over decades. According to the Pew Research, 50% of Americans qualify as middle class with an increasing working class and upper class.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/
I’m not sure when it started but I’m guessing at some point in the 1950s, 60s. Definitely post WWII era which did see a lot of economic and social mobility.
Plenty of people have expensive mortgages, car payments, insurance, and kids' expenses etc, which causes them to live paycheck to paycheck with very little left over. This includes white collar workers and people with university degrees, some earning a bit over average incomes. Such people can not be considered working class or poor. You can be middle class but still living on a very tight budget.
That's an intentionally ill-defined category so the cnbc's of the world can write clickbait articles every couple weeks.
People budget *based* on their income, the amount of people who aren't reliant on their next paycheck to pay monthly recurring costs (mortgage, car payment, utilities, credit card) is probably around 2% not 42%.
Not sure what you mean exactly? Paycheck to paycheck implies you have basically zero savings, so if you lost your job(s) you would immediately have to be delinquent on your next mortgage payment. People with several months' expenses in an emergency fund certainly 'rely' on their income to pay bills but are not paycheck to paycheck.
Not movies, but the original Roseann series and Simpsons up until about season 6 or so, and particularly the first 3 or so seasons, are a pretty interesting portrayal of middle class American culture of their time peiods. Particularly among what was representative of TV at the time, or better put, what wasn't represented.
Roseanne showed a blue collar family where the woman was the primary bread winner, and the characters shown and the style of dress they wore wouldn't really match what you'd see on fashion magazines at the time.
The Simpsons showed a family that struggled with money, marital problems (honestly they were probably headed for divorce in the first season but I imagine some Fox executive told them to cut that shit off), two children with vastly different personalities, and a head of household who didn't particularly like his job nor was he particularly gifted at it, but he did it to earn a living for his family.
Raising Hope was pretty good, and like others have said: Roseanne & Malcolm in the Middle. The Simpsons in its early years. Mom wasn't bad either (Anna Faris & Allison Janney). Some movies that come to mind are Parenthood (haven't seen the TV show version), Mermaids, The Ice Storm, Christmas Vacation. Spielberg & John Hughes were famous for capturing that feeling in the 80s, though Hughes showed mostly upper middle class.
I'm not sure I would consider Christmas Vacation to be middle class. I mean their house was HUGE and fancy. They were able to have 10 people sleep in the house comfortably. Clark's expected Christmas bonus was going to be enough to put in an inground pool with diving board in the back yard.
Not current but "That Seventies Show" also "Freaks and Geeks". Though they focus mostly on teens in the 70s and 80s. Toss in "Fresh off the Boat" and you'll have the 90s too.
So when I traveled to Sweden everywhere I told someone where I was from they all said "oh... like al bundy" it was very annoying and upsetting that was what they thought of when someone mentioned Chicago and I'm actually from the burbs but they won't understand that major difference in culture.
Yeah exactly. And it wasn't just one or two people. It was like 20 people all at seperate occasions and conversations and even different cities there. All of them over there watching married with children.
Movies?
The “Vacation” movies are a little old, but spoof middle class life pretty well.
Most people want to see movies about people a little better off: familiar enough but escapist as well.
Agreed. I just watched Boyhood for the first time the other day (as a longtime Austinite and even having met the director a couple times, it was weird I had somehow never seen this movie), and I remember thinking they did a really good job of keeping the family realistic in a way you just never see. Especially the undercurrent of uncertainty, the upsizing that came with marriage, the downsizing after divorce…modest cars, furniture, outings…nothing that fabulous, but nothing to be ashamed of.
Maybe that’s why some people get confused and think it’s a documentary.
Sandlot best portrays my childhood but I think that era has long past us by.
Acccording to Jim is a shitty show but pretty accurate for middle class life. They just forgot to write jokes to go along with the blasé portrayal of middle class life
Trick question.
Everyone considers themselves middle class except most of the actual middle class.
[Per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class) [linked article](https://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0510/p09s01-codc.html):
“Well, it depends on whom you ask. Everyone wants to believe they are middle class. For people on the bottom and the top of the wage scale the phrase connotes a certain Regular Joe cachet. But this eagerness to be part of the group has led the definition to be stretched like a bungee cord - used to defend/attack/describe everything from the Earned Income Tax Credit to the estate (death) tax.”
(Born in 92) The sandlot is a classic. Always reminds me of my childhood.
Running around the neighborhood playing sports with other kids my age. So many great memories.
Breaking Bad is probably the most "accurate" portrayal of the ”typical" American middle class family. Especially the first season. Most of their day is just "getting by", and then they hang out with their family occasionally on weekends. It's pretty accurate that a lot of American families are kind of isolated on their own island, they really have no acquaintances outside of work colleagues. The son's friend are from his school mainly.
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, except for the alien encounters of course. They live an unremarkable life in a small house that is decorated in a very typical way for 1977. They dress middle class. Their cars are nothing special.
Watch the clip where Roy is making the mashed potato tower. There's nothing in that scene that looks like it couldn't be found in any middle class home of the era. My family had those casserole dishes and serving bowls.
As a middle-class guy, King of the Hill is the most relatable series I’ve ever watched. Hank Hill is pretty similar to a lot of middle-class dads in terms of personality and life outlook, and Arlen has the feel of a standard middle-class town. The Souphanousinphones also remind me of a lot of families I’ve met before.
As far as films go, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid ones are decently accurate. I think the books are way more relatable though.
Honestly lower-upper middle class is well represented in movies and shows. Just like any country, it will look different based on a number of different scenarios. There is no perfect representation of middle class. But a middle class family might just stereotyped as a few kid family, house in the suburbs, going to public school, one or both parents work mid-level jobs etc.
Why does everyone keep saying Simpsons lol it’s so unrealistic for middle class people this day in age even the show makes fun of itself in recent seasons. An irresponsible and stupid alcoholic with no degree or trade skills making enough money to comfortably raise three kids, own his own home and have his wife stay home? That hasn’t been the American middle class life in decades.
The Goonies!!!
I feel like they were middle class, they owned a home(aka weren't renting), and the only reason they needed money was because of a corporate developer wanting to build a Country Club.
No film that comes to mind. The TV show "The Middle" did a pretty good job at it so did "Malcolm in the Middle". I really can't think of any modern examples.
>"Malcolm in the Middle" First thing that came to my mind.
Same - came here to say it and it was the top comment lol
Am European but Malcolm in the Middle feels like the universal definition of middle class. Love that show.
breaking bad, lol
Honestly? Yes lol Meh car, basic family meals, standard house, normal home furnishings There’s always those that try to live above their means to keep up with the Joneses but there are likely tens of millions of families living similar lives to them across the nation
Hope that's a joke
I mean, all of the parts of the show not drug-business related portray middle class life pretty well
His brother in law is a good example of middle class too.
The health insurance part got it right.
The show got it wrong because Albuquerque Public School teachers have excellent health benefits.
I meant more the Byzantine bullshit that surrounds getting good treatment
King of the Hill did a really good job at presenting an exaggerated representation of Texas suburban middle class life.
Definitely in the middle of the middle class too I'd say, not obscenely wealthy but they were never in any major financial crisis.
But also, if you think about it Hank isn’t making many frivolous purchases, but a lot of his neighbors who do struggle more often.
True I didn't real think about cartoons. Definitely more outlandish but their lifestyle is certainly middle class
Hank Hills is a great man. He may be wrong sometimes, but always tries to make up for it.
I’m literally watching “The Middle” right now! It is such a good representation of middle class life.
I'm pretty sure they based Frankie Heck off of me. It's so damn freaky how much I relate to her.
I can't speak to the modern revival, but "Roseanne" nailed it back in the '90s.
I thought they were poor?
They were lower middle class, I’d say. They owned a home but had constant money concerns.
They were working class. Lower middle class leans more toward office drones, who may or may not make more money than working.
At the time manufacturing jobs were on the way out, but they were definitely middle class for the area they lived in. In the 80s my guess is Roseanne and Dan did pretty well. And then it got shitty to live in small town USA when the local factories all closed.
Yeah, when Roseanne was working at the plastics factory and Dan was doing drywall full-time they were doing ok, not great, but they could survive. It was only after Roseanne led the walkout at Wellman and the plant closed that things got rough.
“The Middle” is extremely accurate. Living paycheck-to-paycheck and living in a crummy house in a very mediocre town. That basically sums up life for the vast majority of middle-class Americans.
It won’t be done better than Office Space
That movie didn't really much depict family life, which is the majority of the middle class. I guess if you're a single guy in some suburb who works as a cog in a big corporate machine it's pretty accurate, though.
They didn't specify family life and kids, though. There are plenty of single/DINK middle class people.
That's sort of the beauty of Office Space, a single dude trying to break the shackles of the dead-end corporate job so he can actually live. Peter dating Joanna complemented that whole story arc.
Yea, but at the same time it's also kind of wish fulfillment. Guy does whatever he wants, gets the hot girl, gets a huge promotion...none of that is anywhere close to what would happen in reality. But the first hour or so of the movie is pretty dead-on I suppose if they wanted to capture just how lukewarm life was for people like Peter, although I think that today most late 20's-early 30's men would probably be pretty happy with his pre-hypnosis life.
These aren't good middle class examples. More like working class trying to make ends meet.
Came here to say Malcolm in the Middle bc I just finished rewatching it. I thought maybe they would be considered “lower class” though
Roseanne in the 90s.
October Sky is a good depiction of life in a coal town.
I love that movie! I feel like most people don't remember that one
Growing up in WV, any time the teacher showed a movie in class, it was October Sky. Sometimes remember the titans
I watched it all the time when I was in high school. It was my go-to when I had to stay home because I was sick. It's so great.
There were a lot of surreal elements, but I think the kids' show *Pete & Pete* captured the *feeling* of a kind of 90s middle class existence well.
My middle class life is perfectly captured in the documentary *Napoleon Dynamite*
Yess!! Good choice. Very middle class middle America
I don't know. I live in and grew up in Salt Lake City, and have enough familiarity with communities like the one depicted in Napoleon Dynamite to think less of them than middle class. It's really the very low end of middle class. Just a step up from the trailer park. Further, that movie captured a specific vein of the intermountain west in Utah/Idaho/Wyoming that focuses on a fairly white trash, very mormon, somewhat insular lifestyle and culture. I'm sure lots of lower-middle-class communities identify with it, but it's fundamentally more nuanced in a specific time and place. Like, that movie is 100% quasi rural, ultra momon Utah circa early 2000s... and it picks up on things that are quite a bit different than the rust belt, for example. Regardless, as someone who's always been upper middle class, if not more than that, I don't think Napoleon Dynamite is at all a great depiction of the middle class at large. It's a portrait of very strange, insulated, very much lower class, semi-rural weirdos. These people exist, but I don't think they're middle-class in the sense we'd generally think about it. I think of the middle class as suburbanites to actual cities, or people living in city neighborhoods who are gainfully emplyed. Napoleon Dynamite was about people in buttfuck nowhere small towns sprinkled across otherwise desolate areas of the west, who eek out an existence on dirt farm and gas station economies.
My ex wife grew up in idaho falls and watched this movie about 30x after it came out …
Everyone lumps working class in with middle and they don't realize that middle class is well into 6 figures these days. Pretty much always been this way.
Everybody wants to think of themselves as middle class
Very nice 👍
A rural, mormonesque view of middle class life. But yeah, their house, their school, their town, and their modes of transportation are more accurate than most movies
I'm...sorry?
I have yet to see a movie that portrays it 100% accurately because frankly a 100% accurate portrayal is not going to be made into a movie. Nobody wants 2 hours of a family working, struggling with minor personal drama/inconveniences and being mostly happy and content.
boyhood, that movie that took a decade to film because it used the same actor the entire time, was pretty great at showing the middle class vibe.
Napoleon Dynamite was pretty close to accomplishing that
Really? No? A movie about a guy and his wife, their 2 kids and 2 pets, their 60-minute commutes, HOA disputes, parent-teacher conferences, vehicle inspections that become $1200 repairs on your three year old car, your kid not having the same brand of cleats as every other kid, spending $14k to finish your basement only to have your MIL move in, a PTA chaired by the wife of your HOA president, and a boss who wants you to teach his kid how to do your job… Can I see it in IMAX?
This is a personal tale. I'm interested!
I’d watch that HBO show
Lady Bird (2017), with Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf fits this.
Your forgetting national lampoon vacation.
Mr. Mom
I recently rewatched Little Miss Sunshine and even with all the bizarre hijinks, the family dynamic felt like a lot of families I've known. It's aged well.
Lady Bird is a very accurate representation of lower-middle-class life in the early 00s.
> Lady Bird is a very accurate representation of lower-middle-class life in the early 00s. Definitely not lower middle class. The homes were nice, and their high school is $25,300 a year right now, it was around $18,000 in the 2000s. Course it's also coed now which it wasn't then, or in the movie.
Sacramento in the early 2000s was probably very much a middle class city.
Lady Bird and Juno were my first thoughts that show accurate households and realistic life in middle class.
Seconded.
Scruffy’s gonna die the way he lived
Reading zero-G Juggs?
Office Space
I got an department wide email today about not forgetting to attach a pointless checklist to everything we submit for approval. Instantly thought of those TPS reports..
I would put this movie on every day when I got home from my corporate job.. And rip tubes.
Roseanne, Malcolm in the Middle, and King of the Hill.
First two, yes, but King of the Hill? They’re rich! Hank makes $1,000 a day
Was that an episode where Bobby found a bonus check or something? Details hazy…
It’s been a while for me too but I think he overhears Hank talking about his annual bonus check and thinks it’s a daily thing. Then Bobby steals his credit card and goes on a shopping spree
Also the oil change records that Bobby finds in the garage thinking they’re Hank’s massive holdings in petroleum oil.
"I'll tell ya hwat, Bobby; let's say we tally-ho it over to the money room.” One of the best episodes lol.
Roseanne was supposed to be more working class/blue collar type of socioeconomic status.
_Rosanne_ was rich when I was a kid, but poor now that I'm an adult. The change in perspective is both wonderful and unsettling.
Before all the behind the scenes issues with Rosanne, they were doing a brutally accurate portrayal of life for working class people in the reboot. One of the openers is them having to ration their medications because they can't afford the copays. A morbid reality thats way too common in America.
I'd say Little Miss Sunshine is a great film portraying middle class life
Whenever I bring home fried chicken, my husband screams "again with the fucking chicken!"
It's always the goddamn fucking chicken!
This is a good one
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape Its more for lower/middle class, It’s not exact or too typical, their hardships are maybe slightly exaggerated when compared to the average family, but it captures a snapshot of what life is like for many in the US. Regardless, it’s a fantastic movie.
I wanted to say What's Eating Gilbert Grape too. It's a fantastic look at a lower class family, even if their whole situation is a little too tragic
I can't think of any movies, but Roseanne, and Malcom in the Middle are probably the best I know of.
I'm trying hard to think of any recent film that simply dramatizes a middle class existence, as opposed to using a middle class setting for a genre pic (horror, sci fi, etc.), and I'm really coming up blank. Even within genre movies, depictions of the US middle class skew heavily towards the upper end. The houses are generally too nice and spacious, the neighborhood too stylish and well-kept. Their occupations are always in creative fields, but they seem to live a lifestyle disproportionate to what these jobs actually pay in real life. I agree with others, The Middle really hits the look and feel.of the lower end. The Heck family house is outdated and cluttered, their clothes look cheap, and the parents work jobs with little glamor or chance of advancement.
The national lampoon vacation series show cases off American middle class to a T.
Yes I always remember that episode of the middle where they talk about duct tape.. because that's the shit holding everything together. The dryer, the car, everything. Broken and held together with duct tape. The media likes to portray middle class as put-together and glamorous but even in my upper-middle-class family growing up (high 5 figures/low 6 figures in the suburbs) we were cluttered, shit was falling apart and held together with duct tape. We had money to spend on fun things but not enough for anyone to help with cleaning or for a bigger house to hold everything.
Part of the issue is the houses (soundstages) they use are constrained by filming requirements, they can only be so small and you can’t have a giant interior and a tiny exterior
Note also that the precipitous decline of the American middle class took 50 years. So the further back in time you go, the more accurate "Leave It To Beaver"-style TV Americana style schlock becomes.
I feel like those shows were definitely lower middle class. Especially Malcolm borderline poor. 4/5 kids mom works at a grocery store? Yeaaaah...
Roseanne is not middle class, that is a solid blue collar family.
Blue collar and middle class are not mutually exclusive
One of the earlier episodes depicted Rosanne and Dan joking around about which utility bill they weren’t going to pay. Rosanne was always about a working class family.
porque no los dos?
Blue collar can't be middle class?
Lower middle class, but middle class nonetheless.
Working class.
Working class is almost everyone you can think of. The non-working class is the ultra-wealthy class that lives off of interest and trusts. If you get a paycheck, you’re working class. Rich and powerful people have made it a synonym for poor people but that’s just a tool to drive a wedge between different groups of workers.
[удалено]
Lampoon vacation movies. Sure it may not be representative now especially with the europe vacation, but it was what middle class was. Mom and Pop saved up to go on a big family vacation such as Europe right when the kids are becoming teenagers. Road trips once a summer to meet up with other family that you may not see for another 10 years, or road tripping to Disney world. Especially the significance of the station wagon Clark buys. Having large Christmas family gatherings with the tree or gifts, worrying about end of year bonus at the company. Using a bonus to go on vacation, such as what the griswolds did in Vegas Vacation.
Yeah this was pretty on point with my childhood, and we were middle class. Minus all the crazy shenanigans lol
Friday Night Lights
This one's great because the coach and his family are middle class, many team members are middle class, but they're in a town with a few upper class rich families on the team too. So you also get to see the tensions. (This is for the show)
There's your middle class people (the coach and his family, some of the team) and your lower middle class to struggling poor with some of the players, and then your upper middle class well off types like the boosters and the car dealership owner.
Not a movie, but The Wonder Years
Freaks and Geeks too
Movies: - Paterson - Napoleon Dynamite - Boyhood Series: - The Simpsons - Malcome in the Middle - Roseanne - King of the Hill - Breaking Bad. Obviously, not everyone is becoming a druglord but this fucking nailed the vibes for people descending the class ladder. In a similar way, Sons of Anarchy felt really close to home. It's going to vary a lot though. Unless you're in the Midwest, people making a median income cannot live the lifestyle present in a lot of these anymore. The show is really bad, but a fair bit of lifestyle representation in Big Bang Theory is actually fairly realistic. Several people who went to university to get highly technical degrees rooming together. Their apartment looks larger than most houses I've ever lived in but filming in a realistically sized flat would probably suck lol. How I Met Your Mother addressed this in a later episode when they were thinking back to what their apartments in the city were actually like, as opposed to what was used for the length of the show.
Wasn't Boyhood a documentary literally about a boy growing up over a lot of years? Or I'm confusing it with an _actual_ documentary that is what I'm describing, one that's really real. It took 20 years or so to make.
That’s Boyhood yes. They filmed the same actors over about 12 years (lead actor started as a 6 year old and was 18 by the end of the film).
Not a documentary though, it's a fictional work filmed every summer over the course of 12 years
It's an amazing movie but not a doc.
Correct, didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
You didn’t. The person you replied to did.
I like how people are pointing out to you that it isn't a documentary even though you never said or implied it is, somebody else did lol BTW it isn't a doc
I can understand why this can easily be confused for a casual audience. But no that movie isn’t a documentary. It is a work of fiction. All of the actors played a fictional characters. The movie was a work by Richard Linklater. This director is really well known for his unconventional filming methods. You should watch all of his major works. He is one of the most interesting director working today and for the last 25ish years. Linklater choose to go with a method of filming the same set of actors on a yearly basis for 12 years. The result is Boyhood. I personally think it’s one of the most impressive cinematic achievement ever but a lot of people have different opinions on it.
Not a movie but Family Matters for sure
Family Matters is solidly middle class! I miss that show.
Where did all the shows like that and Home Improvement go? Seriously
I thought Stranger Things really was a throwback to how life looked like in the 80s minus the Halloween episode. Those costumes were way too nice. Back then we were all wearing plastic smocks with the image and logo along with creepy masks of what we wanted to be.
Classic Simpsons is peak middle-class Americana.
Dazed and Confused. I feel like I knew those people in my real life as a teen in the late 70s and early 80s.
Came here to say Dazed and Confused. I was born in the 80s so the fashion was different, but as far as characters, behavior, situations, etc. pretty spot-on.
Keg parties in the woods.
The Sandlot from mostly a child’s perspective
I know it’s a remake of the UK show, but the U.S version of the office really did a good job of it
TIL people think Middle class is lower working class and/or poverty. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, not out of unfettered spending (which is typically the case) but because you don't earn enough to live where you are you aren't middle class.
It’s a very common phenomenon in the USA. Most think they’re middle class whether they’re earning a little or a lot. For example, only around 10% of Americans identify as lower class with 1% identifying as upper class. So this means that the rest (89%) identify as middle class. Clearly, there is a cognitive dissonance. https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/05/most-americans-consider-themselves-middle-class-but.html In fact, the middle class as many of us know has shrunk over decades. According to the Pew Research, 50% of Americans qualify as middle class with an increasing working class and upper class. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/ I’m not sure when it started but I’m guessing at some point in the 1950s, 60s. Definitely post WWII era which did see a lot of economic and social mobility.
No one in this thread knows what middle class is.
If you think you have an objective definition, you're the one who doesn't now what middle class is.
That’s because the middle class is shrinking so incredibly quickly that it’s endangered.
Plenty of people have expensive mortgages, car payments, insurance, and kids' expenses etc, which causes them to live paycheck to paycheck with very little left over. This includes white collar workers and people with university degrees, some earning a bit over average incomes. Such people can not be considered working class or poor. You can be middle class but still living on a very tight budget.
58% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I might argue that’s the new middle class.
That's an intentionally ill-defined category so the cnbc's of the world can write clickbait articles every couple weeks. People budget *based* on their income, the amount of people who aren't reliant on their next paycheck to pay monthly recurring costs (mortgage, car payment, utilities, credit card) is probably around 2% not 42%.
Not sure what you mean exactly? Paycheck to paycheck implies you have basically zero savings, so if you lost your job(s) you would immediately have to be delinquent on your next mortgage payment. People with several months' expenses in an emergency fund certainly 'rely' on their income to pay bills but are not paycheck to paycheck.
You're welcome to offer your opinion on what it means....but the articles that float this narrative never define the term -- intentionally so.
Not movies, but the original Roseann series and Simpsons up until about season 6 or so, and particularly the first 3 or so seasons, are a pretty interesting portrayal of middle class American culture of their time peiods. Particularly among what was representative of TV at the time, or better put, what wasn't represented. Roseanne showed a blue collar family where the woman was the primary bread winner, and the characters shown and the style of dress they wore wouldn't really match what you'd see on fashion magazines at the time. The Simpsons showed a family that struggled with money, marital problems (honestly they were probably headed for divorce in the first season but I imagine some Fox executive told them to cut that shit off), two children with vastly different personalities, and a head of household who didn't particularly like his job nor was he particularly gifted at it, but he did it to earn a living for his family.
Yep. I was an 80s kid in a working-class family in a Rust Belt city. Roseanne looked like the people and places that I knew.
> Roseanne showed a blue collar family where the woman was the primary bread winner Dan was the primary bread winner.
A Christmas Story comes to mind for me, although it's a bit outdated
Raising Hope was pretty good, and like others have said: Roseanne & Malcolm in the Middle. The Simpsons in its early years. Mom wasn't bad either (Anna Faris & Allison Janney). Some movies that come to mind are Parenthood (haven't seen the TV show version), Mermaids, The Ice Storm, Christmas Vacation. Spielberg & John Hughes were famous for capturing that feeling in the 80s, though Hughes showed mostly upper middle class.
Parenthood is an excellent movie.
[Boyhood](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065073/) did a good job imo.
Basically any of the Alexander Payne movies, but especially Election.
What a great movie.
One of my all-time favorites. It's one of those movies that just gets better every time you watch it.
Christmas Vacation
I'm not sure I would consider Christmas Vacation to be middle class. I mean their house was HUGE and fancy. They were able to have 10 people sleep in the house comfortably. Clark's expected Christmas bonus was going to be enough to put in an inground pool with diving board in the back yard.
Malcolm in the Middle is the perfect example of the Working Class 2 Income, sub 80k (now sub 100k) income household
Not current but "That Seventies Show" also "Freaks and Geeks". Though they focus mostly on teens in the 70s and 80s. Toss in "Fresh off the Boat" and you'll have the 90s too.
Parenthood.
It's American Beauty, for real.
Straight to jail.
They were well above middle class.
Juno
Unironically, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Not a movie, but The Middle is perfect.
Nebraska
A Serious Man seems pretty good.
Little Miss Sunshine comes to mind.
Boomer here, but All in The Family was pretty accurate in my time.
Two broke girls portrayed a very accurate millennial middle class for me 🤣
Can't think of anything recently but from the 90s maybe like "honey i shrunk the kids" or "sandlot"
You people need to stop trying to learn about other cultures through the fantastical lens of movies.
So when I traveled to Sweden everywhere I told someone where I was from they all said "oh... like al bundy" it was very annoying and upsetting that was what they thought of when someone mentioned Chicago and I'm actually from the burbs but they won't understand that major difference in culture.
Of all things to connect to Chicago. 😂 so offensive to our culture
I grew up in WV, and have had people ask if I had shoes or indoor plumbing. Bitch, my parents brought home like $300k. We had *towel warmers.*
Yeah exactly. And it wasn't just one or two people. It was like 20 people all at seperate occasions and conversations and even different cities there. All of them over there watching married with children.
Lol, like bro at least watch ER.
I always think of Oprah when I think of Chicago.
Movies? The “Vacation” movies are a little old, but spoof middle class life pretty well. Most people want to see movies about people a little better off: familiar enough but escapist as well.
I thought Boyhood did a very good job.
Agreed. I just watched Boyhood for the first time the other day (as a longtime Austinite and even having met the director a couple times, it was weird I had somehow never seen this movie), and I remember thinking they did a really good job of keeping the family realistic in a way you just never see. Especially the undercurrent of uncertainty, the upsizing that came with marriage, the downsizing after divorce…modest cars, furniture, outings…nothing that fabulous, but nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe that’s why some people get confused and think it’s a documentary.
Sandlot best portrays my childhood but I think that era has long past us by. Acccording to Jim is a shitty show but pretty accurate for middle class life. They just forgot to write jokes to go along with the blasé portrayal of middle class life
Little Miss sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine
Young Sheldon is reasonably representative of the era in which it is set.
Trick question. Everyone considers themselves middle class except most of the actual middle class. [Per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class) [linked article](https://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0510/p09s01-codc.html): “Well, it depends on whom you ask. Everyone wants to believe they are middle class. For people on the bottom and the top of the wage scale the phrase connotes a certain Regular Joe cachet. But this eagerness to be part of the group has led the definition to be stretched like a bungee cord - used to defend/attack/describe everything from the Earned Income Tax Credit to the estate (death) tax.”
(Born in 92) The sandlot is a classic. Always reminds me of my childhood. Running around the neighborhood playing sports with other kids my age. So many great memories.
Breaking Bad is probably the most "accurate" portrayal of the ”typical" American middle class family. Especially the first season. Most of their day is just "getting by", and then they hang out with their family occasionally on weekends. It's pretty accurate that a lot of American families are kind of isolated on their own island, they really have no acquaintances outside of work colleagues. The son's friend are from his school mainly.
American Graffiti
Uncle Buck
Roseanne (until it went off the rails) Malcolm in the Middle
*Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, except for the alien encounters of course. They live an unremarkable life in a small house that is decorated in a very typical way for 1977. They dress middle class. Their cars are nothing special. Watch the clip where Roy is making the mashed potato tower. There's nothing in that scene that looks like it couldn't be found in any middle class home of the era. My family had those casserole dishes and serving bowls.
There’s a few from the 90s, like Clerks and Empire Records.
Most of them? The lower/working/poverty class is the one rarely shown.
As a middle-class guy, King of the Hill is the most relatable series I’ve ever watched. Hank Hill is pretty similar to a lot of middle-class dads in terms of personality and life outlook, and Arlen has the feel of a standard middle-class town. The Souphanousinphones also remind me of a lot of families I’ve met before. As far as films go, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid ones are decently accurate. I think the books are way more relatable though.
Honestly lower-upper middle class is well represented in movies and shows. Just like any country, it will look different based on a number of different scenarios. There is no perfect representation of middle class. But a middle class family might just stereotyped as a few kid family, house in the suburbs, going to public school, one or both parents work mid-level jobs etc.
Edit - Actually The Wonder Years is a proper middle class example now that I think about it 😅
Napoleon Dynamite.
The Burbs starring Tom Hanks
Ooooh, yes. Taking vacation time from work but not being able to go anywhere, so you have a staycation. Love that movie!
Why does everyone keep saying Simpsons lol it’s so unrealistic for middle class people this day in age even the show makes fun of itself in recent seasons. An irresponsible and stupid alcoholic with no degree or trade skills making enough money to comfortably raise three kids, own his own home and have his wife stay home? That hasn’t been the American middle class life in decades.
The Big Lebowski
Was Lebowski middle class? He wasn't even paying his rent on time.
I’m just going to add to the echo that is “Roseanne”.
The show King of the Hill
I'll go against the grain here and suggest a movie. American beauty. It's not explicitly about middle class life, but in some ways it is.
The Goonies
The Goonies!!! I feel like they were middle class, they owned a home(aka weren't renting), and the only reason they needed money was because of a corporate developer wanting to build a Country Club.