Social Class In A Streetcar Named Desire

Elia Kazan’s view on social class, the difference between poor and rich, is revealed in his 1951 greatest American film: A Streetcar Named Desire analyzes characteristics of lower and upper classes and how it affects the relationship between wealthy and underprivileged people. The use of the rich language in the play indicates the upper class versus the use of the street language that demonstrates uneducated people who work at the factories. While the rich people dress nicely and wear expensive accessories, the lower-class people wear dirty, ripped clothes that are made from cheap fabrics. Kazan uses repetitions, strands, and binaries to point out class and status issues in the film and to show “fame/shame” culture (Gandal 6). From the very first scene, where Blancher DuBois, a woman representing the upper class, appears, until the very last fragment of the movie, lower and upper classes are separated and unequaled.

Kazan uses repetition of the word “never” to show how uninformed and surprised is Blancher when she found out that her sister Stella Kowalski lives in a poor section of New Orleans and splits a flat with another family. Blanche shows her disappointment when she says, “Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture….” (A Streetсar Named Desire). Another separation of the working class from the upper class can be seeing when Stella’s neighbor meets Blanche and tells her that Stella got the downstairs of the house and the neighbor got the up (A Streetcar Named Desire). The filmmaker, therefore, uses imagery to demonstrate living conditions of both classes. Blanche was shocked once she saw how her sister moved from a big house with white columns to this grey and horrible place (A Streetсar Named