ABSTRACT
Poverty can be measured both absolutely and relatively. The United States Census measures poverty according to “income levels needed to cover basic needs.” Individuals and families whose income falls below such levels are officially defined as poor. Class structures and social constructions of deviance everywhere in the world share something in common; both are systems of moral stratification. Social class and socioeconomic status are crucial in film, and most of the stories that motion pictures tell task directors with assigning their characters to a particular socioeconomic level, or social class. The exceptions to the rule that mainstream, commercial American film-makers avoid the subject of poverty are few but revealing. According to Roger Ebert, Grapes of Wrath is a “left-wing parable, directed by a right-wing American director,” John Ford, which narrates how a sharecropper’s son, Tom Joad, an ex-convict and, by the conclusion of the film, a two-time killer, becomes transformed into a union organizer.
