Thursday, March 1, 2007

The Upper Middle Class American Dream

Every Christmas, there's at least one commercial that opens with the following question "What do you get for someone who has everything?"

What indeed. There are millions of employees working forty hours a week to figure out the answer to just that question - what to get for the person that has everything - so Christmas gifts don't represent much of a problem anymore. Just ask an advertising agency, they'll think of something.

Less clear, however, is the problem of what the American dream means to someone who has already achieved it by rights of birth. For most middle class Americans, a college education, a home, and a sustainable income is not as out of reach as it once was - in fact, most grow up with these things as a given of American existence. So what is left to dream about?

Fame and Fortune. The two most dangerous words in the English language, and the two most desired. Most people want one or the other, but a rising amount of them will not be satisfied without both in equal measure.

At the Sundance Film Festival of 2003, an old professor of mine was standing in line waiting to get into yet another in a string of networking parties. As he waited, his breath coming out in hazy puffs, a thin whisp of a girl in a skimpy dress covered by a trendy animal print fur coat swept by him, and was admitted immediately.

Who was that? He thought to himself. A couple years and a few unauthorized sex videos later, he had his answer and more. It was Paris Hilton, hotel heiress. He watched her rise to fame with the bemusement of an industry veteran. "That girl's publicist," he said, as did so many others, "should get a Pulitzer Prize." Paris Hilton was started the wave of celebutantes, celebrities whose fame we can never quite trace back to its source. Talent be damnded, fame is now an example of circular reasoning - Paris Hilton achieved fame by being famous, and she's famous because she achieved fame.

According to her father's estate, Paris Hilton is set to inherit a little over $20 million. However, fortune was not enough for her. She wanted fame, and at the tender age of 26 she has more than achieved it, as well as roughly $15 million dollars of her own income.

When faced with the problem of having it all, one can really go either way. They can go the way of Bono, and trade up on their fame for influence, using their status to accomplish what humanitarian goals they have racked up in their lifetime of world travel, or they can go the way of LiLo, trading down for endless and cliche cycles of drugs, rehab, and ever-increasing (if bad) publicity. It should come as no surprise that the gap between the two is usually filled by age.

These are extreme examples, but they mark an important point on the scale of the American Middle Class. Where once to be a member of the middle class was the dream, it is now simply a a standard of mediocrity that one is born into and views as a starting point to something better. Presumably, this is because most people don't ever have to work all that hard to get there, and they cannot be satisfied with what is essentially a given for most. Survival is no longer the goal, nor is moderate success. In a constant quest of dissatisfaction, the sights have been set on immortality, and the closest anyone can get to that in this day and age is fame. Therefore, they will accept nothing less.

But even fame is getting easy. These days, all you need is an exuberant personality to get your fifteen minutes on whatever reality show is currently en vogue. You don't have to be smart to earn money, nor do you have to work particularly hard. You just have to get yourself a spot on Deal or No Deal. Supermodels are no longer ethereal and untouchable, they are that annoying and not all that attractive girl whining at you from your television screen because she got yelled at by Tyra Banks on America's Next Top Model.

So what is left to dream about? Got me, but don't worry - I'm sure the advertisers will come up with something.

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