Quotes / Working-Class Hero

Tony Stark: Let's put it this way. Do you have a mortgage on your house?
Spider-Man: No.
Tony: Good for you.
Spider-Man: No. I'm...ah...I'm renting.
Tony: What?
Spider-Man: With two other guys.
Tony: What?! Aren't you a genius?
Spider-Man: Not when it comes to money.
Tony: Why?
Spider-Man: Because I don't value it.
Tony: You don't value...money?
Spider-Man: No, sorry.

— Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Vol. 2 #10 (2019)

Returning to the question, as to whether it is 'permissible' for people of one kind to depict people or another ... I submit that if this restriction were universally adopted, we would have had no authors from middle-class backgrounds who were able to write about the situation of the lower classes, which would have effectively ruled out almost all authors since William Shakespeare (whose rarity as an example of a writer from an apparently working class background is attested by the number of theoreticians from more elevated social groups who would have it that his work could only possibly have been composed by a member of the aristocracy). While I might have winced on many occasions as a middle-class author such as Martin Amis presents his (at least to my mind) lazy and offensive studies of a vulnerable underclass, I would certainly hesitate before proposing any imposition of an ideology that would also exclude the works of Charles Dickens, Gerald Kersh or any of several hundred other fine writers. I understand that it may not be considered good form to suggest that class issues are as important as issues of race, gender or sexuality, despite the fact that from my own perspective they seem perhaps even more fundamental and crucially relevant. After all, while in the West after many years of arduous struggle we are now allowed to elect women, non-white people and even, surely at least in theory, people of openly alternative sexualities, I am relatively certain that we will never be allowed to elect a man or woman of any race or persuasion who is poor.

— Alan Moore, discussing classes and writers abilities to represent them.

Well, I didn't take up a cause, I didn't become a folk singer for the working class, but I am from a working class background and I wrote about what I knew about. When we did "Sunny Afternoon" I was thinking about how my father told me about The Great Depression — he was old enough to have lived through it, that happened in America as well. So it was stories handed down, almost like folk music. I think working class has disappeared slightly [in Britain], I think they're becoming an underclass. Middle-upper is one class, and rich and poor another. Whereas in America, I think it's big enough and geographically diverse enough to allow working class. And I think the advent of technology and e-commerce made it possible for people in the working class without a job to have an iPhone, which connects them to the World Wide Web, which makes anything possible. People can have different identities. Whether it's a good or bad thing, it gives people connectivity. Which leads people to think, "I can aspire to something more than what my origins are." Whereas in the '60s, I was very rooted in my origins and celebrated it. I'm not saying they're ashamed of it, but I think this is the aspirational generation now — you can be anything you want on the Internet in Britain and America.

— Ray Davies of The Kinks

Oh, I'm working class, but I never worked.

— Martin Scorsese, Scene by Scene

"If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them."

—Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four