"The P.M.C. are people whose economic and social status is based largely on education rather than capital ownership: teachers, managers, lawyers, doctors, and culture workers of various kinds. These professionals make up about twenty per cent of the country’s population."
You'll notice that this quick list doesn't include legislators. I don't know what class they are in. They ought to be educated managers and not just lawyers, but they are mainly money-raisers. Some of them are ignorant, dependent on their staffs, leashed by big corporations and media. In the beginning they were land-owners. Everything is about assets, territory, ownership, and what the rules say. The "rules" are more like parliamentary procedure than moral principles. In short, legislators are a kind of capitalist owners who overlap with the people who are so wealthy that they have become self-perpetuating institutions.
In the evenings I've been marathoning "The West Wing" which is about the ivy-league educated managers just below the President. One of the interesting dynamics is the "assistants" who are female and assist the men who assist the president. The scripts move the wisdom and strength back and forth between the two. In addition there are two very strong men, presidential advisors, who are almost co-presidents. The president himself is very much idealized, NOTHING like Trump.
It is said that this show tries to be at least believable if not realistic, that it is an echo of the Clinton Administration, at least the face of it. NOT Bush, NOT Obama. The question of bringing back a show that is like the Clinton Administration is ridiculous. Sheen's version of the president is not a hound. We would not tolerate that now. Not even if the hound were JFK.
The characters, as written, are self-conscious about their status but never quite believe that there are people who are very different: they never think of themselves as privileged financially or socially. "Different drummer" doesn't cover it. Some characters are a bit problematic. Virtue signalling gets a little bent when dealing with "Charlie," the president's young Black "body man." They're all so young, so looking for love, so bleached and shaven. No one is funky. Even if they sleep in the office, all they need for renewal is a clean shirt.
This essay is particularly thought provoking because it takes on the impact of casting, esp. in the case of the president. To cast a minority or a negative character will totally change the show. (The deaths of the actual actors also changed the plot line. Few episodes were as grand as the cathedral memorial for the President's secretary. (The real actress died of cancer rather than a car crash.) And yet it challenges religion in an upper middle class way.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-real-reason-the-west-_b_14286
Even this far out of the actual time of the show, the episodes addressed classic enough situations for them to be almost eerie in terms of what's happening with Trump right now. They never thought of a pandemic on our scale -- it was inconceivable at that time, in particular for the Professional Managerial classes who thought up this series pre-globalization. All the characters, even Charlie, are members or aspirants to this class. However, the "middle class" is actually a very broad "continent" and people work hard to move up in it. The highest class seem to be mostly born into money, inheriting from resource exploitation, faking college through "heritage".
Another level of watching drama rests on the technique of the actors and the shaping of their material, though they must share with directors. This paragraph is from Wikipedia's Aaron Sorkin entry.
"Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's characteristic directing technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts."
It would be interesting to know who wrote this whole entry since it has a distinct point of view. The characters have few flaws except for drugs and smoking, which are also Sorkin's problems. John Spencer, "Leo", was also alcoholic but came from down lower in terms of class. His parents were blue collar which gave Spencer a ring of authenticity and practicality when he so convincingly portrayed Sheen's advisor. He died of a heart attack before 59 so left some episodes unfinished, to be rewritten. This sort of "class-assigning" discussion of characters and actors hasn't been done because both are assigned stereotypical characteristics and I'm doing that here. It is "America."
Most of the thought about "class" in regards to Hollywood refers to Jewish culture and connections, which are very powerful. Outsiders don't think much about the difference between Hollywood and Broadway, and don't think of the "Method" school of acting being Russian in origin, part of that country's acute interest in the science of minds. On film the director and editor can make actors of a dog because of the power of cuts and points of view. I once had a student who could create a dialogue between some scissors and a stapler on a tabletop, with pauses, slow turns, super closeups.
To some people the point is sinking into the world of the story to the point of feeling it is real and they hate this kind of observation. This is more true of movie theatre watching than of television watched at home with bathroom breaks and kids demanding attention. Sorkin's long thoughtful speeches don't do as well in that medium, so another influence is the actual medium of a story. He doesn't draw back in terms of using an easier vocabulary or more action to accommodate the people who are watching. This is rarely true of money-based television.
But "our class" is avid to watch Rachel Maddow in her long professorial speeches about history and complex forces. More so as the seriousness of the subjects increase daily. This doesn't mean she's dry and not impassioned. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I see similarities with "West Wing."
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