Here are some vaguely modern English-language movies with working-class heroes or heroines:
Norma Rae
The Florida Project
Logan Lucky
American Honey
Patti Cake$
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
North Country
Repo Man
Rocky
Silkwood
Good Will Hunting
Made in Dagenham
The Full Monty
The Terminator
The Deer Hunter
Educating Rita
Matewan
Blue Collar
Swing Shift
Not really, and certainly not if you are talking about the 1930s. If you had a job you might not be well off, but you weren’t really poor, or at least you wouldn’t consider yourself as such. Poor people were those who were unemployed and weren’t working at all.
Apart from the great depression US unemployment has been pretty low for over a century. If, unlike most other countries, the concept of “poverty” was restricted only to those without a job, then remarkably few households could consider themselves poor.
I am dubious that this is or was the case.
The characters in The Fast and the Furious franchise generally seem to be working-class.
Dwayne Johnson also played working class characters in Central Intelligence, Rampage, San Andreas, and Skyscraper.
The characters in Ready Player One were working class. Other YA series like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Mortal Engines are based around working class protagonists.
I speak from experience. I grew up in a working class neighborhood in the Bronx in the 1950s-1960s. Nobody there thought of themselves as poor. The poor people lived in the South Bronx.
I think historically remarkably few households did consider themselves poor, even if others might have.
And yet, most of the Defenders are supposed to be sort’a working class; even the lawyer is, yes, a lawyer, but one who’s always five minutes away from eviction.
I think that one of the differences between older films (say, up to 1965) and more recent films (in the U.S., at least) is the disappearance of heroes and heroines who were from rich families and didn’t seem to be working at anything themselves. It’s not the people in modern films can’t be just as easily split up into various economic classes, but you don’t see people who are rich and just live on their family fortunes. I doubt that this means that there aren’t still idle rich people, just that they don’t appear in movies as much anymore.
Seems to me that any war movie with an NCO protagonist would qualify.
I dunno, someone’s got to be paying for all of those fancy cars, and all the other characters at least have access to them. I think “my rich friend lets me drive his Ferrari whenever I want” is enough to put you out of “working class” territory, even if your own personal wealth is low.
I disagree. There’s a big difference between being rich and having a friend who’s rich.
Knowing somebody who’ll let you drive his Ferrari is nice. But you still need to go to work to pay for things like your food and rent. And the work you do is in a garage (or as a police officer).
That’s working class. Even stealing cars is working class albeit on the criminal side.
Remember that John MacLane’s wife was a senior executive at a multi-national corporation, so he was, at best (in the first 2 filmes) a working-class member of an upper-middle-class household.
Even more extreme was Bogart’s character in Sabrina, who was supposed to be one of the richest men in the country.
Class isn’t just about what you have. It’s more about who you associate with. And Fast/Furious is about people who associate so closely as to consider themselves family, with someone who can afford vast collections of top-line vehicles.
There’s a lot of confusion about “working class”, “rich” and “middle class” here. Generally, the classic differentiator is that working class people work for wages, while middle class people work for salaries. It’s kind of morphed into some kind of recognition of education, financial security and work autonomy, with working class having little to none of any, despite having jobs, and having that education, security and autonomy is what defines the middle class. Living paycheck-to-paycheck is a working class defining characteristic, for example.
There is a lot of overlap here; my grandfather, for example was working class by one definition- he worked as an operator at a chemical plant. But he did so from 1950-1980, and was paid very well, so my grandparents lived a very decidedly middle-class lifestyle, even if they had very working-class views and attitudes on things.
“Rich” or “Wealthy” is usually reserved for people who basically could make a good living owning things- stock, bonds, companies, etc… and who aren’t actually paid by someone else for doing work. There’s a lot of ambiguity here too- there are lots of people who could very easily just live off the proceeds of their companies, but who work because they choose to.
I can’t think of a movie in a long time that has a “rich” character who’s portrayed positively- usually they’re portrayed fairly negatively. The vast majority of movies and tv shows portray middle class people, but a few, such as Logan Lucky and Roseanne/The Connors portray working class people.
Do Iron Man and Batman count?
I wasn’t convinced with that performance, and many other people thought it didn’t suit him.
Some good points made, especially about all the superhero stuff.
The only Avengers I can think of who are clearly working-class in origin are Spider Man, Ant-Man, and Captain America. Nick Fury in the comics started out as a Sergeant but I don’t know the backstory of the current character, which is different. Some of the others may also be from a working or poor background but I don’t know their backstories. The others are a collection of gods, demigods, princes, scientists, billionaires, androids, and aliens.
Drax and Rocket Raccoon certainly act like they are working class, but I would hesitate to identify them as such.
Well, as far as super heros, Superman, came from parents I assume were upper or ruling class on Krypton, adopted by farmers on Earth which is about as solidly working class as I can imagine, and then went on to become a big city reporter. Working class or no? Aquaman? Mom was a queen, dad was a lighthouse keeper.
A few more leading actors that come to mind who have periodically played working class types include Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlburg, and Woody Harrelson. I’m sure there are lots more. In fact, I think most current major actors have played that type of role at some point.
If you can’t think of working-class leads you haven’t been thinking very hard.
“Crazy Rich Asians” from last year.