You may have come across this which compares representations of  manual v
mental *workers* across class

Richard Butsch,  “Class and gender through seven decades of American
television sitcoms” in June Deery and Andrea Press, eds., *Media and Class:
TV, Film and Digital Culture* Routledge, 2017, 38-52.

On Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 6:50 AM William Kitchen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> *--with apologies for cross posting--*
>
>
> *"Films, novels, TV shows, history books... how do modern forms of
> cultural production negotiate the values which make sense of our labour? -
> values such as wealth, success, activity, efficiency..."*
>
>
> *Modern Media and the Representation of Work*
>
> Dr Will Kitchen (Arts University Bournemouth)
>
>
> *Solent Contemporary Screen Studies Research Group*
>
> 3pm Tuesday January 30th, 2024, Solent University, Southampton, UK
>
> How does modern culture represent work? How has the history of modern
> cultural production negotiated the behaviours and beliefs which give labour
> legitimacy and coherence? This summary lecture, based on Will Kitchen’s
> upcoming third monograph, will examine how modern culture contextualises
> the cultural metaphysics of capital (i.e., wealth, success, activity,
> efficiency, etc.). Beginning with a critique of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of
> the ‘carnivalesque’, *Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the
> Representation of Work* will examine a diverse array of multimedia texts
> from the era of modern capitalism – including George Orwell’s *Keep the
> Aspidistra Flying *(1936), Henry James’ ‘The Lesson of the Master’
> (1888), Robert Darnton’s *The Great Cat Massacre* (1984), as well as
> films and TV shows such as *Boiling Point* (2021) and *The Office: An
> American Workplace* (2005-13) – to understand how culture in the age of
> neoliberal capitalism ‘carnivalizes’ the values of labour even as it
> undermines economic and political freedom.
>
>
> Will Kitchen was Teaching Fellow in Film Studies at the University of
> Southampton and is currently Visiting Tutor at the Bournemouth Film School,
> Arts University Bournemouth. He is the author and editor of several books
> on modern culture and critical theory, including *Film, Negation and
> Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique* (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
> and *ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson* (Edinburgh University Press,
> 2025).
>
>
> For more information about Solent Contemporary Screen Studies events
> contact: Contemporary Screen Studies research group (solent.ac.uk)
> <https://www.solent.ac.uk/research-innovation-enterprise/research-at-solent/research-groups/contemporary-screen-studies-research-group>
>
> *Dr Will Kitchen MA PhD FHEA** (him/his/he)*
> Visiting Tutor
> Bournemouth Film School
> Arts University Bournemouth
>
> *ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson*: Edinburgh University Press
>
> *Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique
> <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/film-negation-and-freedom-9798765105535/>*:
> Bloomsbury Academic
> <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/film-negation-and-freedom-9798765105535/>
>
> R <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/romanticism-and-film-9781501361364/>*omanticism
> and Film: Franz Liszt and Audio-Visual Explanation
> <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/romanticism-and-film-9781501361364/>*:
> Bloomsbury Academic
> <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/romanticism-and-film-9781501361364/>
>
>
> Will Kitchen | LinkedIn
> <https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-kitchen-63997a23a/>
> *Alternative email: [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]>*
>   [image: Arts University Bournemouth] <https://www.aub.ac.uk/>
>
> <https://www.facebook.com/inspiredAUB/> [image: Twitter]
> <https://twitter.com/inspiredaub> <https://www.instagram.com/inspiredaub/>
>
>
> ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the College of Communication and Information
> Sciences, the University of Alabama: https://cis.ua.edu
>


-- 
Richard Butsch

Author:
*Screen Culture: A Global History *(Polity)
https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=screen-culture-a-global-history--9780745653242
;

*The Citizen Audience *(Routledge)
https://www.routledge.com/The-Citizen-Audience-Crowds-Publics-and-Individuals/Butsch/p/book/9780415977906*;
*and

*The Making of American Audiences *(Cambridge)
https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/media-mass-communication/making-american-audiences-stage-television-17501990?format=PB

Professor Emeritus of Sociology, American Studies, Film & Media Studies
Rider University, Lawrenceville NJ 08550, USA

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the College of Communication and Information Sciences,
the University of Alabama: https://cis.ua.edu