Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air


Recently I've started watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. For those who don't know, it's a popular show from the 90's about an African American teenager who lived in a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia, and his move to Bel-Air. Along the way, because of clashes between culture of a lower class and upper class, many funny situations occur.

In a particular episode, Will's mom visits the family in Bel Air for Thanksgiving from that the audience can see that her views from a lower class status are pretty different than that of her sister's upper class status ones. Whereas Will's mom believed that Will should be doing chores in the house instead of relying on the servants, Will's aunt believes that education is more important and that instead of doing house work, she believes that the kids should be spending that time on homework. There is an obvious class divide between the two women's perspectives regarding the importance of education, simply because they live in different class settings.

As mentioned in the lecture regarding Crossing Class Boundaries, lower income individual appreciate hard work and self reliance more, this explains why Will's mother wanted him to do chores by himself. She believed that it built character. Whereas Will's aunt believed that homework was more important because it will help Will with his future which will bring him to better opportunities in the future. These different ideas of what is important and should be prioritized is different according to class.

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