“Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell,” concludes Holden after not giving a sufficient donation (in his own view) to a pair of poor nuns (Salinger 61). Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and the film Billy Elliot show that differences in socioeconomic status make both the privileged and the poor “blue as hell”: the lower class feels bitterness towards the elites and their expensive leisure activities, while the wealthy experience guilt for these activities that separate them from the working poor. The stories of Billy and Holden illustrate this double-sided alienation and show the pervasive role of class in all modern life, even for adolescents. Holden, as a member of the upper-class leisure society, feels guilty and alienated in interactions with people who “don’t have too much dough,” and Billy Elliot’s impoverished family show their resentment of the leisure society through their animosity towards ballet.
Throughout the Catcher in the Rye, Holden pays immaculate attention to informing us how much money he has or is spending, telling us minor details like how much he sold his typewriter for (29) and the exact amount of change he skipped across the pond (84). These details show how Holden tends to “size up his surroundings, his friends, his family and his situation in general in monetary terms,” as money is mentioned in every chapter and often plays a significant role in the plot (Pearlman 3). Furthermore, he recognizes that he is “pretty loaded” (29) and that his father is a “quite wealthy” corporate lawyer, who “really hauls it in” (38). Clearly, Holden is ‘class conscious,’ almost to an extreme degree. This constant awareness of his monetary status tinges his relationships with other characters.
Whenever Holden encounters someone noticeably less wealthy than himself, his awareness of their difference in status makes him feel guilt and sadness. When he sees two Catholic nuns eating a simple breakfast, Holden recognizes his socioeconomic status and reflexively feels guilty, saying “that depressed me. I hate it if I’m eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee” (59). He could tell the same nuns could not afford the classy restaurants that Holden’s family routinely attended, and the fact that the nuns “never went anywhere swanky for lunch” made him sad as well: “I knew it wasn’t important, but it made me sad anyway” (63). Like many wealthy individuals, Holden tried to alleviate his guilt through philanthropy, giving ten dollars to the nuns for their charity collection. This proves to be a pointless attempt, as Holden still feels guilty for not giving enough: “After they left, I started getting sorry that I’d only given them ten bucks for their collection” (61). His interaction with the nuns exemplifies the way class influences social relations: a signifier of class (simple breakfast of toast and coffee) makes the wealthy aware of their status, causing guilt, which the wealthy attempt to assuage by giving.
Sometimes, Holden finds these differences in wealth, and the emotions they generate, almost intolerable. He even says that “I can even get to hate somebody, just looking at them, if they have cheap suitcases with them” (59). Due to a past experience, Holden associates cheap luggage with guilt. His roommate at Elkton Hills, Slagle, had very inexpensive suitcases. Holden says this “depressed the holy hell out of me, and I kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him” so that Slagle would not have a “goddam inferiority complex” (59). Slagle hid his suitcases under the bed, and called Holden “bourgeois” for having expensive Mark Cross suitcases and a nice fountain pen. Even though Holden liked Slagle’s for his “helluva good sense of humor,” their difference in class separated the roommates, as “it’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs” (60). Even though Holden can recognize abstractly that superficial things like suitcases are unimportant, in his concrete relations with lower-class people, he cannot ignore these signifiers of wealth.
Despite being a member of the wealthy American elite, Holden shows revulsion and indignation at the greed and ostentatious privilege of the society he was born into. For example, he associates wealth with deceit: “the more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has–I’m not kidding” (2). When the wealthy alumnus Ossenburger gives a speech, Holden is cynical about the entire affair: “he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing after him… he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive–that’s a cheer” (28). His language implies that Holden finds the alumnus’ speech and display of wealth pathetic, recognizing that Ossenberger is only celebrated for monetary success and not for excellence. Holden is also disgusted at the way his wealthy aunt refuses to help the poor without displaying her superior status, as he “couldn’t picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and no lipstick” (63).
Finally, even though his father is a lawyer, Holden says that lawyers seem phony and do not appeal to him, as they just “make a lot of dough and play golf and…buy cars and drink Martinis and look like hot-shots” (92). He intuitively recognizes those who have gained position through phoniness and hypocrisy, seeing that for the wealthy, “charity work becomes a social event for wealthy ladies, philanthropy becomes a means of self-glorification for successful businessmen” (Bungert). One of the many ironies of the novel is that despite being a member of the privileged class and a “spendthrift” who can burn through a “king’s ransom” in two weeks (58), Holden disdains the pretentious exhibitions of wealth that surround him.
Some reviewers argue that Salinger’s depiction of a profoundly class-conscious Holden is unrealistic and inaccurate. In reality, these readers of the novel might argue, only poor students recognize their class and the disadvantages it entails, while rich students are unaware of their privilege; the awareness of socioeconomic status does not extend to both sides. In John Fowles’ novel The Collector, a character reads the Catcher in the Rye and remarks “It’s not realistic. Going to a posh school and his parents having money. He wouldn’t behave like that” (Whitfield 6). The observations that Holden makes throughout the novel are uncharacteristic of a privileged and wealthy private school student. For instance, when Mr. Spencer insists that “life is game that one plays according to the rules,” Holden recognizes that it’s only a game if one is on the winning side – “if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing” (6). But as a rich, white, intelligent, able-bodied, and well-educated male child in a stable, nuclear family in 1950s America, isn’t Holden on the winning side? Critics of Salinger’s portrayal might ask: what possible experiences of oppression would prompt Holden to point out that life is only a game for the privileged?
While it may be true that Holden is exceptionally perceptive or socially informed, and that Salinger exaggerates the class awareness of wealthy students, research shows that awareness of socioeconomic status is the rule and not the exception among American students. According to a study of socioeconomic status (SES) in education, SES accounted for the highest percentage of variance in student self-esteem, verifying that low-SES students like Slagle can experience what Holden calls an ‘inferiority complex’ (Pearlman 5). This study also found that like Holden, adolescents “gather information about variations in speech, dress, and residence” to determine social class, and often avoid the discomfort of interacting with people of different backgrounds, preferring “class homogenous” relationships. By the time American children leave secondary school, they (like Holden) have already learned to distinguish between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ – noticing the quality of other’s suitcases, what they eat for lunch, whether they say “he don’t” instead of “he doesn’t” (Salinger 73), and how they are dressed (87). Salinger’s portrayal is a realistic account of the way adolescents learn how to navigate our stratified society.
On the other hand, the story of Billy Elliot illustrates the plight of working-class students who attempt to engage with traditionally upper-class leisure activities. When Billy attempts to pursue his dream to be a ballet dancer, his father and brother spurn his aspirations and ballet itself. They label Billy as a “poof” (effeminate or homosexual man), and assert that “frigging ballet” is for “lasses” (Billy Elliot). Based on this language, most assume that Billy’s family despise ballet because it subverts traditional masculinity. While this explains part of their antagonism, many forget that another key component of their hostility is ballet’s role as a symbol of elitist, upper-class ‘high art.’ As Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot, said in an interview:
I grew up in an industrial working-class community. Art, theatre, poetry – and certainly ballet dancing – were seen as ridiculous and for posh people. [But] working-class people have always been creative. For centuries they have had their own art forms. It has been crucial to those communities, but they have been told that “high art isn’t for you,” and that has been absorbed by them.
(Smith)
This concept of ‘high art’ exemplifies the way the wealthy use culture to elevate themselves and exclude others. In his Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen argues that the elites use ‘cultural capital’ to signal their privilege and their “conspicuous abstention from labor,” engaging in leisure activities like “learning dead languages,” ballet, literature, art, and practicing “what is known as polite usage, decorum, and ceremonial observances” (Veblen 15). The liberty to engage in non-productive leisure is one of many signals of wealth, used to separate the rich from those who have to work for a living.
Especially in the context of the strike and the poverty that came with it, Billy’s family and community despised these unproductive leisure activities of the extravagantly rich. Ballet, historically an activity for wealthy female courtiers, was a symbolic embodiment of the elite. High arts originated with the aristocracy, and participation in them is mostly still limited to the rich. The largest existing study of class-based consumption of high art found that the college-educated wealthy are 58% more likely to go to a museum, 55% more likely to attend a play, 34% more likely to read literature, and 47% more likely to listen to classical music than members of the working class (DiMaggio 12). Therefore, ballet symbolizes the exclusive elitism of the policymakers and capitalists who Billy’s family perceived as oppressive enemies of the working class. The miners “want to live, and have to sell themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity and purchases the workman” (Nietzsche). This necessity to work excludes the workman from unpaid artistic expression, causing resentment towards those who use leisure activities like ballet to conspicuously display their freedom from labor.
This enmity towards ballet as an elitist activity is revealed, for example, when Billy’s brother Tony yells a class-based insult at Sandra Wilkinson, the dance teacher: “If you go near him again, I’ll smack you, you middle-class cow.” While middle-class is typically a non-pejorative term in the modern world, Tony saw the middle-class as an ally of the elite, as they had the privilege to abstain from the strike and thus were passive bystanders in the oppression of the lower class. Sandra shows her unawareness of the miner’s working-class struggle, for example, by saying “it was just fifty pence a session, you know. I can do without it. I don’t do it for the money.” First, she assumes that fifty pence is very little, when this is a substantial amount to a family who has to destroy a piano for firewood. Second, she has the luxury of ‘not doing it for the money,’ and thus is a member of the leisure class who can afford to participate in unpaid diversions. In part, Billy’s family is opposed to ballet because it is a symbol of the leisurely elite and signifies a betrayal of the working class and the labor unions.
Billy’s father and brother would rather have him participate in boxing, not just because it is more masculine, but because it is a useful and productive skill in the confrontational, physically demanding world of coal mining: boxing is “man-to-man combat, not a bloody tea dance” (Billy Elliot). Ballet is a symbol of the leisure class as boxing is of the working class. It is impractical and useless in the context of a mining community. This is shown when Tony declares that “[Billy] won’t grow up to race whippets, grow leeks or piss his wages up the wall.” Tony compares ballet to racing dogs (whippets), gardening, or wasting money on trivial pursuits – all non-productive activities associated with the wealthy English leisure class. The miners have absorbed the idea that workers cannot engage in non-productive art or creativity, but instead have to constantly be seeking useful and/or paid occupations.
In this way, Billy’s community typifies Freire’s model of how “the oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines,” take an active role in their own oppression (Freire 45). The vast talent pool of the working class is excluded from high art not just by the elites, but also through the repression of talented artists by the working class itself. is Working-class communities like the mining town of Billy Elliot are excluded from artistic expression and creativity, the “power to make and remake, to create and recreate…which is a privilege of the elite, but the birthright of all” (Freire 88). Ultimately, Billy manages to overcome this exclusion, but only in a neoliberal fashion that does not dismantle the system of exclusion:
Billy…leaves for London’s Royal Ballet School as he walks through the audience, signifying his entrance into the middle-class. We see that individual talent and leaving behind one’s working-class community, not the promise of equality promoted by an evaporating welfare state, is the only opportunity for success in neoliberal Britain. Billy may have been able to use his dancing talent to succeed, but we are left to wonder what happens to the children of the other 300,000 British miners.
(Young)
Thus, Billy exemplifies how “the oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders” (Freire 41). His story ends on a positive note of liberation, until one realizes that the strike has failed and his community is left in the coal dust, remaining impoverished and subjugated.
Through the eyes of Billy Elliot, the dancing son of impoverished coal miners, and Holden Caulfield, a wealthy and rebellious private school student, we see how adolescents become class conscious and how this affects their ‘coming of age’ stories and their interactions with others. Classism as a system of oppression that harms both the wealthy and the poor is an often-overlooked undercurrent in both Billy Elliot and The Catcher in the Rye, and is also frequently ignored in our modern education system. But the evidence from these works shows that for at least these two adolescents, socioeconomic status plays a vital role in the social and personal development of youth. It alienates and separates the leisure class from the working class, causing guilt in the wealthy as shown by Holden and resentment in the poor as shown by Billy Elliot and his family.
Works Cited
Bungert, Hans. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: The Isolated Youth and His Struggle to Communicate. Berlin: Die Neueren Sprachen (208-17), 1960. Print.
Billy Elliot. Dir. Stephen Daldry and Lee Hall. Prod. Greg Brenmann and Jon Finn. Universal Pictures and Focus Features: 2000. Film.
Campos, Paul. “How a Louis Vuitton bag can explain the higher education bubble.” The Week. 26 Feb 2014. Web. 13 Mar 2018.
Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Print.
Geismar, Maxwell. J. D. Salinger: The Wise Child and the New Yorker School of Fiction. Boston: Hill & Wang, 1958. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. New York, NY: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2017. Print.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Brown and Company, 1951. Print.
Smith, Domonic. “Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall talks class and culture as The Pitmen Painters returns to Brighton.” The Argus. 21 Jun 2013. Web. 14 Mar 2018.
Pearlman, Michael. The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Adolescent Literature. Adolescence, Vol. 30, No 117. San Diego: Libra Publishers, 1995. Print.
Whitfield, Stephen. Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: The New England Quarterly Vol. 70 No. 4, 1997. Print.
Young, Jay. “Performing History, Class and Gender in Billy Elliot: The Musical.” ActiveHistory.ca. 9 Mar 2011. Web. 14 Mar 2018.
Veblen, Thorstein. Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Courier, 1889. Print.