Shameless

Class and status is devised of two separate words meaning different things. Your class is defined by the amount of income you have, people with lower income will be a lower class than someone with a higher income. Status is more to do with the levels of respect you have and your power in society. It is represented in the Shameless clip through the use of camera shots, editing, sound and mis-en-scène.

My initial thoughts on this clip is that the father isn't a very good father. It seems to me that he is a drunk and a drug taker and doesn't really look after his children that well. They don't seem to have a lot of money and are not a very close family as you see that they have an argument in this clip. However at the end, you see that they are all laughing together.

Firstly, the camera shots and mis-en-scène work well together to portray class in this clip. As the man comes down the stairs at around 0:10 there is a medium shot showing the top half of his body. This allows the audience to see the state of his clothes, his face and his hair. From this shot we see that his clothes are reasonably dirty, His hair is greasy and he has short stubble on his face. After this, at 0:12, there is a long shot of the table where you see 4 people and a baby which, in my opinion, may show that they could be of a lower class because having more people in the family means you need to spend more money on food and other resources so you would generally have less money for other things, like a bigger house. Also, stereotypically, people with larger families tend to have lower class than say, someone with only one child in their family. There is then a close up of the mans face to see more detail and features. As the clip progresses, at 0:37 you see a confrontation between the man and a teenager. Just from the shot types you can see the expressions of the rest of the family through use of close ups. This helps us see how the rest of the family are feeling and how they will react to this situation. You can also see the the state of the house in the background, it doesn't look very clean and there house is quite bare. There aren't many decorations and the table is very small so just from these few shot types and the mis-en-scène, we can see that the class is represented through the state of the house and the people living in it.

After this encounter between the two of them, at 1:04 to 1:10 there is a series of close ups on the man. It switches to slightly different angles each time as he does different actions and they are very quick and happen one after the other. To me, this shows that it is very hectic and stressful in the house because of the speed the different shots were happening. We can then link this to the class of the family and say because of this stress and the household, we can put it down to maybe a lack of money. In the shots we see the what looks like the man screaming in anger as his facial expressions are that of an angry person.

The next few shots are pretty much the same shots over and over as they continue to engage in conversation. They are just close ups of the man, to long shots of the family or close ups of an individual member of the family and back to a close up of the man. We can see from the mis-en-scène that the clothes the family wear suggests a lower class family because a family with a higher class would usually wear things like jeans and polo tops, not joggers, tracksuits and jackets.

The next interesting shot is at 2:05 when it cuts to an establishing shot where it shows the state and a caravan outside the house that is being delivered with them all standing outside waiting for it. We can be stereotypical and say that it's just gypsies that have caravans and maybe relate this family to gypsies. In my opinion, most people see gypsies as lower class as they don't tend to have any high paying jobs or a big house but instead, they do cash in hand jobs and live in caravans. However, gypsies do not pay taxes so they will have that extra money and are a lot richer than most people think. You also see in the background the back of another caravan which could belong to the family or could belong to someone else, either way it shows that people on this estate own caravans and we could argue that this is because they haven't got a lot of money, therefor being lower class.

There is then a close up of a turtle crawling down the street at 2:24 while the family just watches and we can say that this could be their pet and maybe they can't afford a dog or a cat so instead bought a turtle and link this back to them being lower class. At 2:49, the turtle in run over by the caravan that is being delivered and the girls of the family walk over to it and the rest of the family start to gather round to look at it, none of them looking that sad.

A man in a suit then approaches them from behind and immediately, just from the look of him we can assume he is an upper class citizen. He is cleanly shaven and has a well kept suit that is ironed and well fitted. He holds a document in his hand which shows that he is an important man and can link class to status as because it looks like he has a lot of money, it also looks like he has a lot of power and respect. There is a medium shot that shows the upper class man handing the lower class man a slip of paper (3:07) while the lower class man looks outraged and the upper class man acts as it's completely fine (3:10). The rest of the family being to laugh and then the lower class man joins in too. The last shot in this clip is at 3:18 where there is a high angle shot that is looking down at the family and the upper class man walking away.

At the start of this clip there is some non-diegetic sound which means it is sound that is not actually in the story, it is just being added for effect. To me, this is just a piece of mood music to set the scene as when he first stumbles downstairs the music adds to the effect that he may still be drunk from the night before and he is confused and can't remember some things.

From the speech in this clip we learn that this man is indeed their father and is a drug taker and a drunk. We also know that they do not have a lot of money and are selling their house to live in a caravan as they can not afford it anymore. From speech it is represented by literally telling us that they are a lower class family.

There is a piece of synchronous, diegetic sound in this clip, it is when the baby makes a sound while drinking milk. The sound is diegetic because it is actually happening in the story and we know it's synchronous because we can see the baby make the sound.

The last piece of sound is when you hear a dog barking. This is what we would call an asynchronous piece of sound because even though it is diegetic and it's actually happening in the story, we can't actually see the source of the sound. This shows that they would probably live in a lower class estate because in films and TV programs the lower class people will have the dogs that bark and the upper class people have well trained dogs that don't bark.

The editing in this clip is mainly only profoundly present at the point where the close up shots were coming really fast over and over to add the effect of stress in lower class families but other than that, I can't really see where the editing in this clip helps represent class.