Where are the girls?

Popular representations of gender roles in movies affect the way in which we think and behave. Although we tend to assume that the idea of a patriarchal society doesn’t apply anymore to several countries in the Middle East these days, it could be argued that it still does exist. One simple form of examining gender roles in most Middle Eastern countries is through observing the structure of the restaurants. According to Karla A. Erickson in the book Cinematic Sociology, “The restaurant becomes a site where workers and consumes navigate the boundaries between individuals working and living in a service society.” So, I decided to go to a restaurant in Doha called Afghani Brothers and clearly from the name, it’s not a restaurant you would find women in. I went to the restaurant with my friend who was a girl as well and the welcoming gesture was stares from everyone who was in the restaurant. All the workers in the restaurant were males as well. The waiter immediately told us to sit in the second floor and didn’t explain why or ask if we mind. 

The fact that my friend and I were the only girls in the restaurant made it extremely uncomfortable for us because although there was not indication that women are prohibited from entering, it was just unacceptable for women for eat there. Being in this restaurant made me wonder, why is it unacceptable for women to walk in? Could it be because the restaurant is not a highbrow restaurant? Or could it be because there isn’t any female waitresses or workers there?

On the contrary, restaurants that are more westernised have females either working there or as customers. One example is Jones the Grocer, although there was a number of male workers there, the majority of the workers in the restaurant were females and so were the customers. Although women do work in restaurants, those restaurants often tend to be westernized to some extent.

From the restaurant Mamic in Katara. Although there are females who work in restaurants here in Doha, those restaurants tend to be Westernised to some extent.

Through being in those two restaurants, it could be argued that the idea of the patriarchal society or the breadwinner system is not applied when it comes to a western environment. On the other hand, in restaurants such as Afghani Brothers or Turkey Central, there are no women working there and their main customers are males. Although there is no set rule that forbids women from going into these restaurants, the social norm works as a motivation to stop women from being customers in such restaurants. 

The reproduction of social classes

Abduljaleel, 25 years old

I was sitting at the back of my car and my driver was taking me to college when I told him to go pick up my new spectacles from villagio. And so I gave him the receipt and tried to simplify my language with half Arabic and half English to make him understand what I’m trying to say. But I was surprised when he replied with a fine English with a good accent! I was even more surprised when he told me that he completed two years of his college life and couldn’t afford the rest so he dropped off.

Social classes reproduce itself
Abduljaleel’s Father was a Driver and worked so hard for his son not to be a driver and to educate him. But social classes tend to reproduce itself, and social mobility is almost impossible for working class people. It’s as they call it the American dream that social mobility can be achieved by hard work and personal effort. However, social mobility can’t be easily reached, and the idea of that all men are created equal with equal chances is just a dream! Since his father was a driver his future can be expected the day he was born. We can’t predict that he will be a driver as his dad but sociologist will agree that his social status remains as his dad’s, because social classes reproduce itself.

And so he dropped off his American dream!
After two years of college he wasn’t able to afford the rest so he dropped off and became a driver as his father. Social class is not about how hard someone works but rather it is inherited. And because Abduljaleel was born in a lowbrow culture and almost everyone around him was poor and from the same social class mobilization remained just a dream!



Why Social classes reproduce itself?
It is the way that the bourgeoisies (high-class) have set up the society to benefit themselves is preventing the low class people to mobilize upward. The most obvious example is the low wages of the working class people. With low wages none of the working class people is able to afford education or better life. Because if all proletariat (low-class) were able to educate their children and mobilize upward there will be no one left to do the hard work. So bourgeoisies set up the society in a way that they will remain the high-class people.

Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle, the director of Slumdog Millionaire movie, is captivating his movie as a riddle. The movie is centered on an Indian teen, Jamal Malik, he is uneducated and grows in the slums of Mumbai. Jamal participates in “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” in its Indian version, and he is close to get the 20 Million rupee. He gets the attention from the police on suspicion of cheating. How does the little slum with low education know all the answers? Is he lucky? Genius? Or does he cheat?

In the movie, it shows Jamal flashbacks the events that happened in his life that had all the answers for the program’s questions. The movie focuses on the background scenes of Jamal that help him to be a Millionaire. This movie is so interesting; it has some drama and hilarious scenes and a bit of romance.

Nonetheless, Slumdog Millionaire clearly shows social class and class division. It is not only about the great music it has or the incredible views, but it indicates important sociological concepts about the class system. The American Dream ideology has a different meaning of what happens in the movie, the American dream ideology believes in the personal effort that achieves upward mobility. However, Jamal achieves social mobility but without any effort, he becomes a millionaire and moves up the social system because of the famous show.

The movie implies the moral consequences of poverty, as shown the police takes Jamal and is surrounded by questioners to admit his cheating. Jamal faces hard times due to the social and economic exclusion because he is born in the Lowbrow culture that associated with lower and working class. The movie shows a dialogue between the police inspectors who discuss the impossibility of what Jamal knows, they are certain that he cheats and can’t know the answers. The title of the movie itself  ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ contains a contrast within it, which provides a symbolic meaning of the content of the movie. Although he becomes a millionaire, he is still seen as on of the Mumbai’s slums, and one of the scenes in the movie shows how the upper class rejects the idea of a slum to be one of the Highbrow culture and to move up the class system, for example the broadcaster is in the wash room with Jamal, writes in the mirror the wrong answer for the 20 Million rupee question, he wants Jamal to lose the contest and go back from where he is, but Jamal chooses the other answer and he becomes a millionaire.

The film’s message is clear that everyone has a chance to be a ‘millionaire’ or to be in the elite class, even Indian slum can do it. But there is always social inequality in real life, as people don’t start from the same starting point to achieve social mobility.

Everyone wants to be The Joneses

In this blog post I will be talking about conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure in the movie, “The Joneses”. In this movie a self-marketing unit working on increasing the revenue of other companies hires a fake family to promote for their products. The Joneses, who are living the American Dream, come to this neighborhood with the company’s products, fancy cars, clothe. They have to live in a fancy house and get the job of making others want the products they have done. Throughout the movie, we see conspicuous consumption appear when The Joneses wear and use purchases such as phones, jewelry, food, ect, making people around them impressed.



From the readings and especially the movie we watched previously, “Six Degrees Of Separation”, we always see how highbrow culture consumers tend to sell their life style to people of lowbrow culture. Yet, in this movie, we see fake, high social class family trying to sell their lifestyle to their upper class neighbors. “If people want you, they want what you’ve got”, and according to that The Joneses manage to be the most popular and wanted people in the town by making connections with store owners, throwing parties and making friends, impressing them with the things they own and make them want to own those things as well.



The increases in revenues of these companies are measured by numbers, calculations and graphs. Each member of the fake family is asked to get the highest numbers possible. The fake family did not display class and status through the things they have, yet, they also practiced high-culture pastimes as we see the man of the fake family playing golf, and play classical music.



In short, the movie, “The Joneses” shows us how people of highbrow cultures live, and the effect they can have on each others’ decisions. As known such movies are pointed to people of lowbrow culture, but in real life such life style affect people of highbrow culture too.

The Glamor of the lowbrow culture.

Fight Club blew my mind. It felt like a 136-minute rollercoaster ride. And if anyone ever said that Inception was intense, it wasn’t. Inception is an animated movie meant for children in comparison to Fight Club. I spent an hour later going over scenes, reading the script online and trying to figure out whom Jack is.

If the concept of social mobility has ever been appealing in a movie, this movie isn’t it. Social mobility is the movement of an individual up or down the social class system- either by marriage (like in The Lady and the Tramp, when the tramp moves up in social class) or by becoming the rocket scientist that you always admired (October Sky). Either way, movies have always been about upward social mobility or finding the American dream.

The American dream ideology: a set belief that through personal effort, a person can achieve upward social mobility. Disney is the perfect advocate for this idea. Walt Disney’s riches to rags story has 100,000 people in front of its Cinderella Castle every New Year screaming, “Dreams come true.”

Fight Club is NOT a Disney movie.

David Fincher, director of some of our generation’s most brilliant movies: Seven, Panic Room, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network has also directed Fight Club.

Based on the book that Chuck Palahniuk, American author, wrote, the movie reflects Palahniuk’s life. Having grown up in a broken home and been the member of a rebel group called the Cacophony Society, his experiences and ideas seep through the movie with so much pain, cynicism and honesty.

The problem with the American Dream ideology (among many others) is that a lot of people who do work hard never see their dreams come true. This movie is the contraflow of every inspiring American Dream movie that you have ever seen- The Pursuit of Happyness, It Could Happen to You and Rocky.

Fight Club is the product of the rage of every person that never got what they dreamt of.
“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

It is the story of an unnamed man- an insomniac, an over-stressed employee of “a major car company,” a man who is alone in the world. He talks about life, about how he wishes it would end – in a mid air collision when he’s on a business-related flight, having his coffee with a single serving cream, a single serving pat of butter, next to his “single serving friend.”

The unnamed man defines himself as a pathetic, mindless consumer who is sold out by clever pieces of furniture from IKEA. Desperately in search for a cure to his insomnia, he attends mutual aid movements for dying people so he has someone that he can talk to, someone he can cry with. Hitting rock bottom was the key. “Losing all hope is freedom.”

On a business trip, in a plane, he meets Tyler Durden- a man who is the opposite of everything that our Ikea man is. They talk about Durden’s work: making soap. Durden talks about how explosives can be made from “simple household items.”
Our protagonist is fascinated. Entertained.

Back in his city, he heads to his condo only to see it blown apart into pieces, nothing left of anything that he ever had. He calls Tyler Durden, and 3 pitchers of beer later; Fight Club was born- all because none of them had ever been in a fight before.

Tyler Durden and the unnamed man begin to live together in an old, abandoned house that is about ready to fall apart. “By the end of the month, I dint miss TV. I dint even mind the warm, stale refrigerator.” Durden begins to teach the narrator how money doesn’t matter and that we were never meant to be special. His philosophy was that fear is futile and that if you fear anything, you must master it.

“You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying matter as everything else.”

Our Ikea man finds that he no longer cares about anything any longer- threatening his boss into giving him a check every week of the year and getting into a fight every week was all that mattered anymore. That was his freedom.

“You are not your job. You are not what’s in your bank account. You are not what you own.”
In the end, we find out a lot more about our unnamed-Ikea-protagonist-guy and everything we have ever known is all a confusing zero. Chuck Palahniuk has taken The Iron Cage of Rationality to a new level where “white collar slaves” are everything but attractive.

Karl Marx was disproved in this movie when he said that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.

You need to watch it- going to college is not going to make sense anymore.

Conspicuous Consumption in Sociology

I agree with Karl Marx that class conflict is the engine of social change and historical development. You can find many examples that serve as a proof of Karl Marx’s theory, whether it was here in Qatar, or any other part of the world. In a democratic society where social mobility is possible, people in lower classes work hard to earn the best education to later get a great job and be part of the highbrow culture.

Particularly in Qatar, people are in a constant struggle to improve their social class. They would do all it takes to “up-grade” their status. Some families would go as far as taking massive loans to purchase expensive cars that they obviously can’t afford. Here in Qatar, people indulge in conspicuous consumption, a sociology term that means that they purchase something in an attempt to display high status or class through the consumption of highbrow culture, luxury goods and services.

One cannot believe the lengths some people will go to just to show off their new house, car or even something as simple as their cell phone. How often do you see a person walking while holding his/her blackberry instead of keeping it in the bag or the purse? I’m guessing that you witnessed that a lot. Although the reasonable thing for a person is to keep his/her cell phone in the bag, these people will never quit showcasing their blackberry mobiles whenever they get the chance to!

I have to mention that this sort of action does not show that you belong to the upper class or you’re filthy rich. No, this just screams to me that you’re a poor or a middle class person who probably used up most of your savings just to purchase this blackberry of yours, which clearly indicates that you’re not used to buying luxurious things because people who can afford luxurious do so with ease. People who belong in the upper class probably won’t struggle financially this month just because they purchased a simple phone that only costs something around or even less than 2400 QR. People who are filthy rich have more money than they could count. My advice to such people is as follows, people if you want to brag or showoff then at least do brag about something that says ”I’m rich” not something that screams “I’m dying to look rich”. Of course ideally, people shouldn’t brag, but at least it would be more understandable if a guy bragged about his new Bugatti or new villa that is located in Palm Jumeirah or something.

Another example that shows the effects of conspicuous consumption is the sudden huge demand on the Mercedes-Benz G55 in the Gulf region, after the ruler of Dubai Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid appeared in a national event driving a G55. Many Emiratis and citizens of neighboring countries wanted to own a G55 to demonstrate to others that they don’t belong in the lowbrow culture because they can afford to buy a Sheik’s car.

Cultural Omnivores and Class: A New World of Universal Consumers

We are all consumers of culture. However our interpretation, reception and experience of various types of culture vary according to several factors, mainly differences that are socially constructed. These “socially constructed” differences create social classes, and reinforce the boundaries among them. No cultural object or practice is inherently sophisticated or “high brow” and similarly neither is essentially “low brow” or common. Instead, cultural tastes, standards, practices and experiences of those in the “upper class” become the society’s highbrow culture. For example, the fine arts consumed by the affluent classes, becomes the elite, sophisticated “highbrow” cultural practices that are distinguished from or “higher” than those practices of the lower and working class such as a variety of music genres like rap and hip hop, sports and recreational events like camping, boating etc.



source

Opera, fine arts, classical music, fine dining, symphonies, playing golf, collecting priceless antiques and abstract art and reading books for pleasure, are all linked to the upper class, highbrow culture.

On the other hand, fast food, gossip magazines, pop music, hip hop, sports such as baseball and basketball and other cultural products that have “mass appeal” are usually considered lowbrow.

These change over time. The boundaries between them blur, and the variation in consumption of culture from these two categories becomes more prevalent. Many families and homes today exude a wide variety of cultural consumption ranging from the elite highbrow symphonies to the rap tunes on their ipods. From decorating with abstract art and antiques in their homes, to ordering fast food take out and eating in front of the TV as opposed to eating at a fine dining restaurant or a neat dining table setting at home.



We are exposed to a wide variety of culture, and nowadays, belonging to a certain “class” does not necessarily dictate exactly what kind of music you listen to or what other cultural products you may consume. Although belonging to the upper social class may result in an inherent cultural capital, it does not limit your knowledge of other lowbrow popular culture or even the practice of it. You can listen to a wide variety of music, watch a variety of films, go to a variety of events, participate in different sports, and collect various kinds of art. The tolerance for a wider variety of cultural products is increasing and hence the number of cultural omnivores that experience and practice wider forms of culture, is rising. It is seldom that I come across someone who has just classical music on their mp3 players, or one genre of films in their DVD collection, or who just likes football, or only plays chess, or only goes to symphonies and watches classical Shakespeare plays in elaborate theatres. People belonging to the upper class are likely to engage in activities affiliated with the lower class and vice-versa.


I can see my own "cultural omnivoreness" in my consumption and practice of culture at home and outside. My sister and I play classical Tchaikovsky and Beethoven tunes on the piano, and also play popular music like soundtracks of movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter. My home is decorated with antiques and classical paintings and collections of historic pieces, “fine” china, and crystal.









Last summer, I attended a music concert for one of the most popular Lebanese singers in Lebanon, in my hometown in the mountains, Ehden. The artist's name is Najwa Karam, winner of over thirty music awards.
Today her music not only appeals to Lebanese people but Arab listeners worldwide listeners. Although Najwa Karam’s first album started with just Lebanese traditional/folkloric songs, her artistic identity and music albums then developed to include more romantic and contemporary themes and beats, appealing to a broader “modern” audience. Her latest albums fused Lebanese tradition with Arab pop. Although most of her albums to date are classic in style, Najwa’s music appeals to a wide range of Arab listeners and classes. This was evident in the concert I attended. People from all parts of Lebanon, and across the world especially diasporas travelled all the way to Ehden in the mountains to attend this concert.



There were people from all social classes, and backgrounds, elite to working lower class, different seating for different classes, and people from all parts of Lebanon travelled all the way to Ehden in the mountains to attend this concert. But still as soon as Najwa started singing there wasn’t a sense of segregation of the classes but a huge mix of cheering fans, who ultimately all like the same music. I am not a great fan of traditional Lebanese music, but a fan of Najwa Karam’s music, I don’t listen to all traditional Lebanese mucis, but only to hers, and her music is just another color in the rainbow of genres and styles of music in my song library. Her fusion of classic with contemporary Arab pop, can be a reason for its popularity among a wide range of listeners high and lowbrow consumers, which makes the artist herself, first a cultural omnivore, a consumer, interpreter and receiver of high (classic music) and lowbrow (pop music) culture.



Furthermore, I also take part in cultural events like the Palestinian Night in Education City, dressed in the traditional Palestinian abaya, and attend “highbrow” plays like the Sound of Music and symphonies in Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto where I would be dressed differently, as the setting suggests. Lowbrow Palestinian night filled with cultural folk dances, traditional food, informal atmosphere, and charity sales is a big contrast to the “Queen Elizabeth” theatre’s theme, ambience and “class”. My far-ranging tastes and consumption of art and music, suggests I am indeed a cultural omnivore like many I know and interact with.



So what is the effect of cultural omnivores? How does this manifest in the hierarchy of cultural consumption? If all music and all art forms become digestible by almost everyone, what’s the point of classifying them? If the boundaries are to be obscured, and classes blurred, does this mean it will become more challenging to identify and sustain class boundaries if everyone’s cultural consumption no longer reflects certain standards, tastes or practices?