Best Class

The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 American screwball comedy directed by George Cukor for MGM. Starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, it’s notable for its sharp dialogue, romantic tension, and critical acclaim including an Academy Award win. The film explores themes of marriage and social expectat...

The Class Sketch is a famous British comedy routine broadcast on the satirical television show "The Frost Report" in 1966. Written by Marty Feldman and Barry Took, the sketch features three actors of distinctly different heights—John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett—physically looking up or...

Annette Lareau is an American sociologist whose research examines social class, family life, education, and inequality. In Unequal Childhoods, first published in 2003, she contrasted middle-class "concerted cultivation" with the "accomplishment of natural growth" more common in working-class and poo...

John Goldthorpe is a British sociologist known for research on social class, occupational structure, and intergenerational mobility. He helped develop the class classification commonly called the Goldthorpe or Nuffield schema, which groups occupations according to employment relations and market sit...

Erik Olin Wright was an American sociologist known for analytical Marxist research on class structure and alternatives to capitalism. In Classes, published in 1985, he developed a framework that included contradictory class locations rather than treating class as a simple division between owners and...

Gosford Park depicts a group of British aristocrats and an American producer spending a weekend at a country estate. Following a murder during a dinner party, the narrative explores the ensuing investigation through multiple viewpoints. The story involves both the staff and guests of Gosford Park as...

"Avocado Bathroom" is a comedic sketch from the British television series That Mitchell and Webb Look. The sketch features David Mitchell as an estate agent showing a house to Robert Webb's character, attempting to present an outdated, avocado-green bathroom suite as a highly desirable luxury featur...

Chewing gum is a British television series created for Channel 4. The show focuses on the darkly comedic experiences of a group of affluent individuals navigating relationships and social situations in London. It’s notable for its cynical portrayal of wealth and privilege and explores themes of diss...

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is a comedy-ballet by Molière, first performed in 1670 with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. It follows Monsieur Jourdain, a wealthy merchant whose efforts to imitate aristocratic manners expose him to manipulation and ridicule. Combining spoken comedy, music, and dance, the wo...

Ralf Dahrendorf (1929–2009) was a German-British sociologist and liberal politician who challenged functionalism with a conflict theory of class based on authority relations in Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (1959).

Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist whose work addresses social class, gender, culture, value, and respectability. Formations of Class and Gender, published in 1997, grew from an ethnographic study of working-class women undertaking care courses in northwestern England and examined how class an...

The Maids is a 1947 play by French writer Jean Genet centered on two sisters, Claire and Solange, who work as domestic servants for a woman they call Madame. In private, they conduct elaborate role-playing rituals in which they imitate their employer and rehearse her humiliation and murder. The play...

Albert Szirmai’s *Mágnás Miska* premiered in 1916 and remains a significant piece of Hungarian operetta. This comedic work, set in the 1910s, explores themes of class and mistaken identity through lively music and engaging characters. It is frequently performed by light opera companies and appreciat...

The Working-Class Voice is an A Bit of Fry & Laurie sketch satirising class performance through the deliberate adoption of a supposedly authentic accent.

Holiday is a 1938 Columbia Pictures screwball comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The film’s sharp wit and playful romantic tension established many conventions of the genre. It's notable for its sophisticated dialogue and performances, showcasing a classic p...

God of Carnage is a play by French playwright Yasmina Reza, first performed in 2006 under the title Le Dieu du carnage. It follows two couples who meet to discuss a playground fight between their young sons, only for their controlled conversation to collapse into insults, accusations, and shifting a...

David B. Grusky is an American sociologist at Stanford University whose research focuses on social stratification, inequality, poverty, and economic mobility. He has directed the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and has contributed to debates about how occupations, social classes, instituti...

Blue Jasmine is a 2013 psychological comedy-drama directed by Woody Allen, centering on a wealthy Manhattan socialite who suffers a tragic mental breakdown.

2017 Swedish satirical film directed by Ruben Östlund that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, skewering hypocrisy and performative virtue in the contemporary art world.

Göran Therborn is a Swedish sociologist whose work applies Marxist analysis to class, ideology, state power, and global inequality. In The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (1980), he examines how ideology shapes people as social subjects and helps sustain political orders. His comparative...

David Lockwood was a British sociologist whose research influenced modern studies of class, work, and social stratification. The Blackcoated Worker (1958) analyzed clerical employees and challenged the assumption that their status could be understood from occupation alone. He also distinguished soci...

August Strindberg's 1888 naturalistic play Miss Julie concludes with this monologue, delivered by the aristocratic protagonist after her transgressive sexual liaison with her father's servant, Jean. Having lost her social standing and autonomy, Julie is placed into a hypnotic trance by Jean, who com...

Mike Savage is a British sociologist known for research on social class, inequality, culture, and social stratification. He helped lead the Great British Class Survey, a large public study developed with the BBC, and co-authored Social Class in the 21st Century, published in 2015. His work draws on...

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's 2019 black comedy horror starring Samara Weaving as a bride who must survive the night after her aristocratic in-laws hunt her per family tradition.

"National Lampoon's Animal House" is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi. Set at a fictional college in 1962, the plot revolves around the chaotic members of a rowdy fraternity and their ongoing conflict with the strict college dean. Produced on a modest bud...

"I'm All Right Jack" is a 1959 British satirical comedy film directed by John Boulting. The narrative centers on a young man who unwittingly becomes a pawn in a labor dispute at a local missile factory, drawing attention from both corrupt management and militant union officials. Peter Sellers delive...

W. Lloyd Warner was an American anthropologist and sociologist known for applying ethnographic methods to the study of social class and community life in the United States. He directed the research published as the multi-volume Yankee City series, which examined institutions, status hierarchies, occ...

American sociologist and psychotherapist (1924–2014) known for "Worlds of Pain" (1976), a qualitative study of working-class family life and marriage in America.

American sociologist August Hollingshead studied social class in 'Elmtown's Youth' (1949) and co-researched class and mental illness with Frederick Redlich.