The American Ruling Class is a 2005 dramatic documentary film written by Lewis H. Lapham and directed by John Kirby that "explores our country’s most taboo topic: class, power and privilege in our nominally democratic republic." It seeks to answer the question, "Does America have a ruling class?" Its producers consider it the first "dramatic-documentary-musical."
A rough-cut of the film was shown at the 2005 TriBeCa Film Festival, the final version of the film was shown on the Sundance Channel in July 2007, and it had its theatrical premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April 2008. Currently the film is available for sale by The Alive Mind, veteran film distributor Richard Lorber's new label, and schools colleges, universities and institutions can purchase the film from Bullfrog Films.
Read more about The American Ruling Class: Plot, Interviews, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words ruling class, american, ruling and/or class:
“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)