Working Class Hero: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Quint:''' You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been countin' money all your life.<br />

 

When a character or group of characters is shown to be highly intelligent and capable precisely because he didn't do fancy things like go to school or study or stuff, that makes him cool. They did everything on the job. As a result, he has all this great timeless common folk wisdom that solves every problem.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** Arguably subverted, at least in the movie. {{spoiler|Quint lets his pride cause him to ignore important advice from Hooper, and ultimately gets killed for it. Hooper, although not exactly effective in his own right, at least survives at the end.}}

*** Arguably ''double''-subverted. {{spoiler|Hooper was originally supposed to die earlier in the shark cage scene, but the scene was ruined because the 14ft shark tore the miniature cage apart before the miniature stunt-double could get in. The footage ended up being so incredible that they actually rewrote the movie to accommodate the shark's ad-lib. The way the original script went, ''both'' supposed experts ended up as fish food!}}

** This one is debatable because it was a matter of how much time they had available for training. Offshore oil drilling is an extremely specialized technical field, and the only real "astronaut-y" task the drillers have to learn is how to operate in a space-suit, something that wouldn't take too long, since they're supervised the whole time anyway. It's not that the astronauts are incapable of learning, it's that there isn't time to teach them.

* A deconstructed take on this appears in ''[[Gran Torino]]'' with Clint Eastwood: He's implied as not being a terribly intelligent or academic fellow, but he has lots of common sense wisdom and is totally effective at dealing with young gangsters. The drawback being, of course, that he comes off as incredibly racist.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* Étienne Lantier, Maheu and Souvarine in [[Emile Zola]]'s [[Germinal]].

* Sam Vimes from the [[Discworld]] books is just a beat cop in the town watch who moves up through the ranks to become Captain and has a Duke-ship thrust upon him against his will. The ruler sends him as a diplomat/ambassador where he uses street smarts to beat the bad guys.

** ''Unseen Academicals'' could also be regarded as a [[Deconstruction]], exploring how an actual [[Working Class Hero]] may end up being [[Tall Poppy Syndrome|criticised for their achievements]].

* [[X Wing Series|Wedge Antilles]] never went to an Imperial academy, and New Republic military academies didn't form until well after he became a serious [[Ace Pilot]]. Just in general his education isn't detailed, but it can be inferred that he got a lot of it on the job. He doesn't look down on people who were trained by the Empire, though, since so many of his friends and comrades are ex-Imperial.

* [[Sharpe|Richard Sharpe]] is a great officer because he fought his way up from the ranks, defeating prejudice from the aristocrat-dominated officer corps who know far less about what warfare is like for the common soldier. Because of this Sharpe focuses on what he knows is important from his battlefield experience instead of getting hung up on theory like the book-taught officers. However, this trope is subverted in one way--Sharpe has a great respect for the upper-class William Lawford, who taught him how to read while they were imprisoned together in India.

 

{{quote| And you think you're so clever and classless and free<br />

But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see }}

{{quote| My generation is zero<br />

I never made it as a working class hero }}

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== Theater ==

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** More of a double subversion actually. {{spoiler|Atlas beguiles the masses and subverts the trope, but also subverts the Self Made Man trope.}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==