(no subject)
so it turns out I am doing pretty good in grad school.
here is my final paper film/tv theory
“It’s hard being a lady”:
Balancing the classes on Gilmore Girls
The Story of the Gilmore Girls starts 16 years before the events of the pilot episode, in the Connecticut home of Richard and Emily Gilmore. Members of the wealthy New England upper class they have high hopes for their only daughter Lorelai. Their world is everything one would expect of a rich east coast family. Richard is a prominent figure in Hartford's insurance business, and Emily is involved with many charitable committees and functions. Their life is as upper-class as one can get in America. This life suddenly changed when Lorelai becomes pregnant with a child by the son of another wealthy family. The grown Lorelai and her now sixteen year old daughter Rory are the main characters of the story. “ Lorelai never felt like her parents understood her. So she wanted to really make sure that this kid felt understood, respected, nurtured and free to be whoever it was she was going to be.” said Amy Sherman Palladino the shows creator of the characters genesis. The Gilmore Girls exist into two worlds, the one that Lorelai ran-away from, and the world she made her home. From the very beginning the plot had a basis in the struggle between the two classes. The Gilmore Girls deal with the problems of being a part of both the upper and middle class.
The pilot opens sixteen years after Lorelai ran-away from her parent’s home. She now resides in the small-town of Stars Hollow. Lorelai has built a life in the small-town for daughter Rory(short for Lorelai) and herself. Exceptionally bright, Rory has been accepted into exclusive prep school Chilton Academy. However the expensive tuition of the school leaves one option for Lorelai. Ask her parents to pay for the education. It is not entirely clear how much contact she has had with her parents since she left in the years since she left. However when asked to help with their granddaughter's education Richard and Emily happily agree. There is one string attached both girls must attend dinner every friday night at the Gilmore house. This arrangement establishes a tension between the upper class and middle classes in the premise of the series. It also forces an interaction between the middle class world of Stars Hollow, and the upper class world of Hartford.
Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni wrote about the ways cinema incorporates ideological themes. They list several distinct methods that describe how films address these issues. Gilmore Girls fits best in type A. The structure of the story itself present these themes as it presents reality. This seems to be the case with this series. The writers have picked the setting of New England and progressively from there the story grew. The series is not a forum for the creators views on the differences between the wealthy and poor, but rather arises because of the nature of the story. Amy Sherman Pallidino describes how she picked the show’s setting, “And we went away and we stayed in this beautiful inn in Connecticut, the Mayflower, and it was like, `Oh, she should work at an inn and she should live in Connecticut.' It just all sort of happened on the trip.” In most interviews she credits the setting of the series on this trip. There does not seem to be some Marxist agenda in making the series. Just a desire to tell a story that is different then what has been previously told.
The classical Marxist theory does exists in the world of the Gilmore Girls. There is a upper class who own and control the means of production, or base. This is the society that the Gilmores are apart of. Richard often mentions his friends who own or run powerful companies. The Gilmore house itself is a symbol of the upper class. The home is a mansion in the traditional sense. It is an outward symbol of of the hegemony that the Gilmores are at the top of. Mimi White describes the term as, “the general predominance of particular class,political, and ideological interests within a society”(White 167). Emily and Richard see the rules of their class as civilized and the rest of the world as less then them. Both of them grew up in the upper class. Attended Ivy League schools, got married and joined society. Their home is run by Emily who has a maid(who is usually of foreign origin) to do all of the labor. An ongoing joke in the series revolves around her inability to keep a maid. Emily has her function. She keeps the household running, while Richard works. Often he is called upon to travel for his job. Interestingly, the rich are for the most part portrayed as people who work hard at their jobs. It is obviously not the same as blue collar work. But often Richard is effected by the stress of his job. It is not portrayed as the rich do nothing. They worked work hard for there fortune and want the best for their children.
When Rory enters Chilton it becomes apparent her peers are affected by there parents wealth. The best example of this is Paris Gellar, who transforms from a rival to one of Rory’s best friends over the course of the series. Her goal is to get into an Ivy League school, like many previous members of her family. To reach this goal she devotes her time obsessively to her school work. Often makes referencing the fact that her parents are absent from her life. In the sixteenth episode of the second season she begs Rory to help her study for a test that she feels under prepared for. She blames it on the stress of her parents divorce, “My dad figured out how much it would cost to divorce my mom, and now he’s moving back in.” She is not alone among her peers, most of the other Chilton students come from broken homes. Which is the opposite of the world that Rory was raised. Her best friend Lane comes from a strict but loving home where both parents are present. Her first boyfriend Dean also comes from a nuclear family. And Rory is raised by Lorelai in stable environment. At graduation all the families gather at Chilton to watch their offspring go off into the ivy leagues. We meet who Paris considers her family. It’s her families nanny and her children, who have become her support system. When invited to stay and eat at Rory’s for dinner, she calls the maid for permission in Portuguese. Which stands in stark contrast to Emily’s refusal to treat her maids like a fellow human being. Ironically Paris’ own mother showed no interest in her, is replaced by the nanny she hired to raise her daughter. The effects of the wealthy are seen as having negative impact on their children.
This is especially true of Lorelai Gilmore and Christopher Hayden. Both were born into wealthy families in Hartford. Seemingly Lorelai has been fiercely independent since she was born. A trait which she has inherited from her grandmother (whom she is named for) and her own mother. Not much is mentioned of the her pre-teenager life. Richard describes her in one episode as “the brightest girl in her class.” But apparently she made a habit of embarrassing her parents, and getting into trouble. Christopher grew up in a similar fashion. Born into privilege great things were also expected of him. Both families lived close together. The two children bonded as the grew up together. When they became teenagers the friendship changed as their hormones increased. Both families had big dreams for their children that change when they discovered that Lorelai was pregnant. The immediate reaction from both families is that the two should get married. The sixteen year old Lorelia refuses. She gave birth to healthy baby girl. But after only a few weeks at home she takes her baby, and left her parent’s house.
Richard and Emily’s view on this event seem to have some dissonance with Lorelai’s. In her mind she escaped the controlling grip of her parents to freedom. Her parents however view the event as the moment when they lost their daughter, and the future they wanted her to have. Teen pregnancy is often seen as a problem for the lower class, this subverts the social issue and places in new setting. Richard tells an adult Lorelai that he wanted to kill Christopher for getting her pregnant, but that there was an order and procedure for dealing with “these kind of things”. The proper way was for Lorelai and Chris to get married. During the first season all this brought up when both families meet for first time since it happened. The Gilmores though hurt, have realized that past can not be changed and are happy that their granddaughter and daughter are apart of their lives once again. The Haydens still hold a grudge. Chrisopher’s father Strob lashes out, blaming Lorelai’s pregnancy for stopping his son from attending Princeton. The Haydens still see it as an embarrassment, something that dishonored their family name. Which is seemingly more important to them then what Christopher actually wanted. The Gilmores though deeply hurt by Lorelai’s actions, want to be a part of Rory’s life. What this back-story illustrates is that the marxist model is not strict in this series. There are defiantly two classes, and two ways to look at the world. None is portrayed as any worse then the other. Lorelai’s escape is her rejection of her parents world. Not a rejection of the whole upper-class. She decided that was not the life she wanted for her and her daughter.
Lorelai left the wealthy world of her parents and stopped at the first place she felt safe, the Independence Inn. She asked for a job and began working as a maid, while she lived with her two month old daughter in a pool house out behind the inn. The whole act is a rejection of her parents world. The daughter of Richard and Emily Gilmore working as a maid. She goes from being served, to serving. She works her way up over the years to a position where she runs the inn. Her best friend is the inn’s chef Sookie and because of that many of the scenes at the inn take place in the kitchen. Or behind the front desk where she interacts with the day manager, Michel. While at work she is established as one of the working class. Lorelai is surrounds herself with people who work in what are considered blur collar jobs because that is what she has become.
The name of the inn is representative of the independence that she now has. The Inn is situated the picturesque small town of Stars Hollow. It is strikingly different from the world that Lorelai ran-away from. The small town is the opposite of the rich world of Emily and Richard. It repersents the american way of life. Amy Sherman-Palladino describes the town in the Washington Post,
Here there's no need for a car: Everybody walks from Luke's to the grocery store to the confectioner's to the bookshop, inevitably passing by the town square, where there always seems to be a parade or concert or historical re-enactment taking place." The town is another character," says Sherman-Palladino. "The whole point of Lorelai leaving her parents' house in Hartford and moving there was that she wanted to find a place where everything felt free and open --where people were supporting each other -- all the stuff she felt she didn't have growing up. The town automatically had to play the part of surrogate parents."
Stars Hollow is full of interesting middle class people who work for a living. There is Miss Patty the former Broadway actress who runs a dance studio, the girls hippie neighbors Babette and Maury, Sookie’s produce supplier husband Jackson, and Mrs. Kim the korean immigrant that runs an antique shop. Literally this town is home to the american every-man, who is embodied by Kirk. Who over the course of the series has done every job in the town. Visually the town is the opposite of her parents mansion. Everything is close together, and the inside spaces are visually small. Luke’s diner for instance is little more then a store front. In comparison the dining room at the Gilmore mansion is more then double the size. The rooms in the mansion are large and sparsely decorated compared to the the homes of Stars Hollow which are cluttered with knickknacks of all kinds. Even the large town square becomes a crowded space during the many festivals that take place during the year.
The culture of the Gilmore Girls differs entirely from that of Richard and Emily. The dialogue of the series is a torrent of pop culture references. Rory and having amazing ability to reference almost any cultural event. What stands out about these comments is that they seem hard wired into them and their world. Douglas Kellner described Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead as:
This generation was possibly conceived on in the sights and sounds of media cul ture, weaned on it, and socialized by the glass teat of television used as a paci fier, baby sitter, and educator by a generation of parents for whom media culture, especially television, was a natural background and constitutive part of everyday life(Kellner 319).
Those words also describes the girls relationship with the media and popular culture. Both have grown up with the media, although they are different ages see it much the same way. Richard and Emily consider the media a few steps below the traditional arts. Many of the charities that they are involved with are often museums, theatre or ballet. They as the upper class have their main interests in what is considered high culture. The girls revel in what is low culture. Often they watch a bad film for sole reason that is bad. Constant on they show is references to popular music, often through the charecter of Rory’s best friend, Lane. The impression is that in the world of Stars Hollow, low culture is the norm. While in the world of Hartford much of Lorelai’s reference go either unnoticed or ignored. They are just not interested in discussing television or rock music in a social setting, unlike in Stars Hollow.
One of the main people that Lorelai interacts with is the owner of the local diner, Luke. He is essentially the opposite of her. He grew up in the small town, inherited his father’s hardware store and turned it into a diner. As blue collar as they come in most episodes he is seen in a flannel shirt and backwards baseball hat. In the most recent seasons he is dating Lorelai. But throughout the series Lorelai is involved with several men. They all came from the world she escaped. Christopher is ever present as her first love. In the second season she almost marries a teacher from Rory’s prep school. And in the fourth season she dates her father’s business partner and childhood friend Jason Styles. Through out all these relationships Luke is ever present. When ever something is broken at her house she calls him. By the end of the fourth season she and Luke start dating. The relationships with men from similar backgrounds do not work while she and the man from a blue collar background seems to be the right match. Emily does not think that Luke is the right person for Lorelai. She believes that Rory’s father is who Lorelai is who she is destined to be with. This belief cause problems when he shows up with his girlfriend who is eager to get to know Rory. So when he trades places with her so she can spend with his girlfriend and shows up to friday night dinner instead of Rory, Emily is immediately curious where her Granddaughter is. When she finds where Rory is, she takes it as a threat against her family. When Lorelai ask her what is wrong she tells her that it should have been her helping Christopher get his life together. Later in the series she tries to break up Lorelai and Luke, feeling that her daughter deserves better. It interesting to see that even though Lorelai has left her parents world that Emily feels that she still belongs in it. Though Lorelai feels that she is in a different class her mother continues to see her as one of the elite.
The Glimores also see Rory as a member of their world. Not that this viewpoint is not understandable. It is that at the same time Rory does not see herself as a member of the upper-class. The fact that she comes from the slice of small-town life that is Stars Hollow seems to ground her among the rich kids at Chilton. Like Luke, her first boyfriend is the all american boy. Dean moves to town with his nuclear family (complete with little sister) and is quickly helped by the friendly town-folks to an after school job at the local market. During the first season as he and Rory begin to date, she is also pursed by her Chilton classmate, Tristan. Comparing the two names, one sounds rich and one sounds middle class. These two characters repersent the two worlds that Rory must balance. Tension seems to mount when these two worlds meet. In the second season Richard and Emily are so excited that she is in the top three percent of her class that that offer to have a special dinner next week with her favorite foods, and tell her that she can bring a friend if she wants. Rory chooses to bring Dean to dinner, telling that him that she wants her Grandfather to meet him. When the girls show up to dinner with Dean in tow, Emily is surprised. But welcomes Him into their home. The meal proceeds normally until, Richard begins interrogating the boy. Asking him questions about what his plans for college, what grades he gets, and what kind of career he wants. He proceeds to tell Dean that Rory is special, and insinuates that her goals are bigger then him. When Rory comes to her boyfriends defense he yells back, “This family has standards!” and “Certain people can hold you back” After he has left the room Lorelai leans toward her mother, and says “Is it just me or was that supposed to be us?” The wounds that Lorelai inflicted on her family still run deep and effect they way they view Rory. The Gilmores want her to date someone with connections to their world. Rory is seen by her grandparents almost as making up for the disappointment of Lorelai’s decision. Lorelai tells her in one episode that she it “the great white hope of the Gilmore clan.”
That feeling is ever present in the second season episode entitled, Presenting Lorelai Gilmore. It is a prime example of the class conflict that happens in the series. The episode opens with Rory stopping my her grandparents house after school to borrow a book. When she wanders onto the patio where Emily and her DAR friends are discussing who is being presented to society at the annual debutante ball. Rory returns home and tells her mother that she is coming out to society. The idea of girls being presented to society is an upper class idea, and has special significance to the Gilmores. Lorelai was unable to attend her debut due to her pregnancy. Lorelai is shocked at Rory’s willingness to participate in the event. She tells her, “This is the stuff I ran away from, I just thought that you would be running with me.” The ball repersents very clearly the world that she left, and to see her daughter step further into it brings up old feelings for her. When they read that the girls are to be presented to society by their fathers, Lorelai quickly calls Christopher. Like Lorelai he left the world of his parents to make his own way in the world. He tells Lorelai that, “I like that I have done something, earned something”, and that he does not want his parent’s life. Later in the episode it becomes apparent that as much as Christopher and Lorelai have tried to leave the world they came from, it will always be apart of them. They stop by Miss Patty’s dance studio to check on Rory and Dean who are learning the waltz. The teens are having trouble learning the steps, so they show them how its done. They do the steps to the dance with no problem, and comment on their inability to forget this now useless information. This is evidence that their upbringing will always be apart of who they are, and growing up rich has shaped who they have become.
When Dean finds out that he not only has to wear a tie for the event, but also tails and gloves he makes it clear that Rory owes him. Dean who grew up in middle class America finds the idea of dressing up so foreign to him that it makes him uncomfortable. While he is learning how an upper-class gentleman dresses, Rory is learning what is expected of a Lady. Those things are mocked by Lorelai. Who tells her that, “That ladies are completely helpless.” It becomes very apparent that Rory was raised to be the opposite of what proper society thinks a girl should be. This is shown when she arrives at the event, and begins getting ready next to a girl named Libby. One of the first things heard from her mouth is a complaint about the color of lipstick she has been given, “Wrong color and I’ll look like a hooker, or a teacher.” She has born and bread into wealth. When Rory jokes about tripping while walking down the large staircase Libby tells her, “Don’t joke about joke about that, those two minutes on the stairs will determine your social standing for the rest of your life.” For the rest of the girls this even is there introduction the world of their parents as adults. It is important for them to make a good impression so that the girls will have good marriage prospects. So important Libby tells Rory that this is her fifth coming out.
This episode tells in a stand alone story how different world is. Lorelai raised her daughter to be independent. Rory has lofty goals that are talked about before she gets into Chilton. When comparing her goal of being a journalist with Libby’s goal of marrying well. The effects of being raised outside the rules of the upper-class become apparent. Rory sums it up at the end of the episode as she still in her gown bites into a huge burger at Luke's, “Being a lady is hard.” The tradition of the ball is viewed as some what antiquated. But as Lorelai and Rory see it’s humor, they also seem to know that the ceremony is important to Emily. Who still regrets that her daughter never got to be presented to society. She tells Lorelai at the end of the episode, “That should have been you up there.”
The Gilmore Girls exist in both the upper and middle classes simultaneously. Both worlds are seen through the perspectives of Lorelai and Rory. The stand out when they interact with the upper-class. Their appreciation for both low and high culture, and their fervent independence stands in contrast to the stuffy and rigid world that Lorelai ran-away from. Her wealthy parents, who had the means to give her anything she wanted, did not give her the freedom she desired. The town of Stars Hollow is the opposite of her parents world. Everybody is unique, and respects each others right to exist. Through out the the series the family structure remains intact. Both in the Gilmore family who try to put the past behind them, and the people in Stars Hollow that became Lorelai’s family. It is the bonds of family and friendship that transcend the complications of class.
here is my final paper film/tv theory
“It’s hard being a lady”:
Balancing the classes on Gilmore Girls
The Story of the Gilmore Girls starts 16 years before the events of the pilot episode, in the Connecticut home of Richard and Emily Gilmore. Members of the wealthy New England upper class they have high hopes for their only daughter Lorelai. Their world is everything one would expect of a rich east coast family. Richard is a prominent figure in Hartford's insurance business, and Emily is involved with many charitable committees and functions. Their life is as upper-class as one can get in America. This life suddenly changed when Lorelai becomes pregnant with a child by the son of another wealthy family. The grown Lorelai and her now sixteen year old daughter Rory are the main characters of the story. “ Lorelai never felt like her parents understood her. So she wanted to really make sure that this kid felt understood, respected, nurtured and free to be whoever it was she was going to be.” said Amy Sherman Palladino the shows creator of the characters genesis. The Gilmore Girls exist into two worlds, the one that Lorelai ran-away from, and the world she made her home. From the very beginning the plot had a basis in the struggle between the two classes. The Gilmore Girls deal with the problems of being a part of both the upper and middle class.
The pilot opens sixteen years after Lorelai ran-away from her parent’s home. She now resides in the small-town of Stars Hollow. Lorelai has built a life in the small-town for daughter Rory(short for Lorelai) and herself. Exceptionally bright, Rory has been accepted into exclusive prep school Chilton Academy. However the expensive tuition of the school leaves one option for Lorelai. Ask her parents to pay for the education. It is not entirely clear how much contact she has had with her parents since she left in the years since she left. However when asked to help with their granddaughter's education Richard and Emily happily agree. There is one string attached both girls must attend dinner every friday night at the Gilmore house. This arrangement establishes a tension between the upper class and middle classes in the premise of the series. It also forces an interaction between the middle class world of Stars Hollow, and the upper class world of Hartford.
Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni wrote about the ways cinema incorporates ideological themes. They list several distinct methods that describe how films address these issues. Gilmore Girls fits best in type A. The structure of the story itself present these themes as it presents reality. This seems to be the case with this series. The writers have picked the setting of New England and progressively from there the story grew. The series is not a forum for the creators views on the differences between the wealthy and poor, but rather arises because of the nature of the story. Amy Sherman Pallidino describes how she picked the show’s setting, “And we went away and we stayed in this beautiful inn in Connecticut, the Mayflower, and it was like, `Oh, she should work at an inn and she should live in Connecticut.' It just all sort of happened on the trip.” In most interviews she credits the setting of the series on this trip. There does not seem to be some Marxist agenda in making the series. Just a desire to tell a story that is different then what has been previously told.
The classical Marxist theory does exists in the world of the Gilmore Girls. There is a upper class who own and control the means of production, or base. This is the society that the Gilmores are apart of. Richard often mentions his friends who own or run powerful companies. The Gilmore house itself is a symbol of the upper class. The home is a mansion in the traditional sense. It is an outward symbol of of the hegemony that the Gilmores are at the top of. Mimi White describes the term as, “the general predominance of particular class,political, and ideological interests within a society”(White 167). Emily and Richard see the rules of their class as civilized and the rest of the world as less then them. Both of them grew up in the upper class. Attended Ivy League schools, got married and joined society. Their home is run by Emily who has a maid(who is usually of foreign origin) to do all of the labor. An ongoing joke in the series revolves around her inability to keep a maid. Emily has her function. She keeps the household running, while Richard works. Often he is called upon to travel for his job. Interestingly, the rich are for the most part portrayed as people who work hard at their jobs. It is obviously not the same as blue collar work. But often Richard is effected by the stress of his job. It is not portrayed as the rich do nothing. They worked work hard for there fortune and want the best for their children.
When Rory enters Chilton it becomes apparent her peers are affected by there parents wealth. The best example of this is Paris Gellar, who transforms from a rival to one of Rory’s best friends over the course of the series. Her goal is to get into an Ivy League school, like many previous members of her family. To reach this goal she devotes her time obsessively to her school work. Often makes referencing the fact that her parents are absent from her life. In the sixteenth episode of the second season she begs Rory to help her study for a test that she feels under prepared for. She blames it on the stress of her parents divorce, “My dad figured out how much it would cost to divorce my mom, and now he’s moving back in.” She is not alone among her peers, most of the other Chilton students come from broken homes. Which is the opposite of the world that Rory was raised. Her best friend Lane comes from a strict but loving home where both parents are present. Her first boyfriend Dean also comes from a nuclear family. And Rory is raised by Lorelai in stable environment. At graduation all the families gather at Chilton to watch their offspring go off into the ivy leagues. We meet who Paris considers her family. It’s her families nanny and her children, who have become her support system. When invited to stay and eat at Rory’s for dinner, she calls the maid for permission in Portuguese. Which stands in stark contrast to Emily’s refusal to treat her maids like a fellow human being. Ironically Paris’ own mother showed no interest in her, is replaced by the nanny she hired to raise her daughter. The effects of the wealthy are seen as having negative impact on their children.
This is especially true of Lorelai Gilmore and Christopher Hayden. Both were born into wealthy families in Hartford. Seemingly Lorelai has been fiercely independent since she was born. A trait which she has inherited from her grandmother (whom she is named for) and her own mother. Not much is mentioned of the her pre-teenager life. Richard describes her in one episode as “the brightest girl in her class.” But apparently she made a habit of embarrassing her parents, and getting into trouble. Christopher grew up in a similar fashion. Born into privilege great things were also expected of him. Both families lived close together. The two children bonded as the grew up together. When they became teenagers the friendship changed as their hormones increased. Both families had big dreams for their children that change when they discovered that Lorelai was pregnant. The immediate reaction from both families is that the two should get married. The sixteen year old Lorelia refuses. She gave birth to healthy baby girl. But after only a few weeks at home she takes her baby, and left her parent’s house.
Richard and Emily’s view on this event seem to have some dissonance with Lorelai’s. In her mind she escaped the controlling grip of her parents to freedom. Her parents however view the event as the moment when they lost their daughter, and the future they wanted her to have. Teen pregnancy is often seen as a problem for the lower class, this subverts the social issue and places in new setting. Richard tells an adult Lorelai that he wanted to kill Christopher for getting her pregnant, but that there was an order and procedure for dealing with “these kind of things”. The proper way was for Lorelai and Chris to get married. During the first season all this brought up when both families meet for first time since it happened. The Gilmores though hurt, have realized that past can not be changed and are happy that their granddaughter and daughter are apart of their lives once again. The Haydens still hold a grudge. Chrisopher’s father Strob lashes out, blaming Lorelai’s pregnancy for stopping his son from attending Princeton. The Haydens still see it as an embarrassment, something that dishonored their family name. Which is seemingly more important to them then what Christopher actually wanted. The Gilmores though deeply hurt by Lorelai’s actions, want to be a part of Rory’s life. What this back-story illustrates is that the marxist model is not strict in this series. There are defiantly two classes, and two ways to look at the world. None is portrayed as any worse then the other. Lorelai’s escape is her rejection of her parents world. Not a rejection of the whole upper-class. She decided that was not the life she wanted for her and her daughter.
Lorelai left the wealthy world of her parents and stopped at the first place she felt safe, the Independence Inn. She asked for a job and began working as a maid, while she lived with her two month old daughter in a pool house out behind the inn. The whole act is a rejection of her parents world. The daughter of Richard and Emily Gilmore working as a maid. She goes from being served, to serving. She works her way up over the years to a position where she runs the inn. Her best friend is the inn’s chef Sookie and because of that many of the scenes at the inn take place in the kitchen. Or behind the front desk where she interacts with the day manager, Michel. While at work she is established as one of the working class. Lorelai is surrounds herself with people who work in what are considered blur collar jobs because that is what she has become.
The name of the inn is representative of the independence that she now has. The Inn is situated the picturesque small town of Stars Hollow. It is strikingly different from the world that Lorelai ran-away from. The small town is the opposite of the rich world of Emily and Richard. It repersents the american way of life. Amy Sherman-Palladino describes the town in the Washington Post,
Here there's no need for a car: Everybody walks from Luke's to the grocery store to the confectioner's to the bookshop, inevitably passing by the town square, where there always seems to be a parade or concert or historical re-enactment taking place." The town is another character," says Sherman-Palladino. "The whole point of Lorelai leaving her parents' house in Hartford and moving there was that she wanted to find a place where everything felt free and open --where people were supporting each other -- all the stuff she felt she didn't have growing up. The town automatically had to play the part of surrogate parents."
Stars Hollow is full of interesting middle class people who work for a living. There is Miss Patty the former Broadway actress who runs a dance studio, the girls hippie neighbors Babette and Maury, Sookie’s produce supplier husband Jackson, and Mrs. Kim the korean immigrant that runs an antique shop. Literally this town is home to the american every-man, who is embodied by Kirk. Who over the course of the series has done every job in the town. Visually the town is the opposite of her parents mansion. Everything is close together, and the inside spaces are visually small. Luke’s diner for instance is little more then a store front. In comparison the dining room at the Gilmore mansion is more then double the size. The rooms in the mansion are large and sparsely decorated compared to the the homes of Stars Hollow which are cluttered with knickknacks of all kinds. Even the large town square becomes a crowded space during the many festivals that take place during the year.
The culture of the Gilmore Girls differs entirely from that of Richard and Emily. The dialogue of the series is a torrent of pop culture references. Rory and having amazing ability to reference almost any cultural event. What stands out about these comments is that they seem hard wired into them and their world. Douglas Kellner described Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead as:
This generation was possibly conceived on in the sights and sounds of media cul ture, weaned on it, and socialized by the glass teat of television used as a paci fier, baby sitter, and educator by a generation of parents for whom media culture, especially television, was a natural background and constitutive part of everyday life(Kellner 319).
Those words also describes the girls relationship with the media and popular culture. Both have grown up with the media, although they are different ages see it much the same way. Richard and Emily consider the media a few steps below the traditional arts. Many of the charities that they are involved with are often museums, theatre or ballet. They as the upper class have their main interests in what is considered high culture. The girls revel in what is low culture. Often they watch a bad film for sole reason that is bad. Constant on they show is references to popular music, often through the charecter of Rory’s best friend, Lane. The impression is that in the world of Stars Hollow, low culture is the norm. While in the world of Hartford much of Lorelai’s reference go either unnoticed or ignored. They are just not interested in discussing television or rock music in a social setting, unlike in Stars Hollow.
One of the main people that Lorelai interacts with is the owner of the local diner, Luke. He is essentially the opposite of her. He grew up in the small town, inherited his father’s hardware store and turned it into a diner. As blue collar as they come in most episodes he is seen in a flannel shirt and backwards baseball hat. In the most recent seasons he is dating Lorelai. But throughout the series Lorelai is involved with several men. They all came from the world she escaped. Christopher is ever present as her first love. In the second season she almost marries a teacher from Rory’s prep school. And in the fourth season she dates her father’s business partner and childhood friend Jason Styles. Through out all these relationships Luke is ever present. When ever something is broken at her house she calls him. By the end of the fourth season she and Luke start dating. The relationships with men from similar backgrounds do not work while she and the man from a blue collar background seems to be the right match. Emily does not think that Luke is the right person for Lorelai. She believes that Rory’s father is who Lorelai is who she is destined to be with. This belief cause problems when he shows up with his girlfriend who is eager to get to know Rory. So when he trades places with her so she can spend with his girlfriend and shows up to friday night dinner instead of Rory, Emily is immediately curious where her Granddaughter is. When she finds where Rory is, she takes it as a threat against her family. When Lorelai ask her what is wrong she tells her that it should have been her helping Christopher get his life together. Later in the series she tries to break up Lorelai and Luke, feeling that her daughter deserves better. It interesting to see that even though Lorelai has left her parents world that Emily feels that she still belongs in it. Though Lorelai feels that she is in a different class her mother continues to see her as one of the elite.
The Glimores also see Rory as a member of their world. Not that this viewpoint is not understandable. It is that at the same time Rory does not see herself as a member of the upper-class. The fact that she comes from the slice of small-town life that is Stars Hollow seems to ground her among the rich kids at Chilton. Like Luke, her first boyfriend is the all american boy. Dean moves to town with his nuclear family (complete with little sister) and is quickly helped by the friendly town-folks to an after school job at the local market. During the first season as he and Rory begin to date, she is also pursed by her Chilton classmate, Tristan. Comparing the two names, one sounds rich and one sounds middle class. These two characters repersent the two worlds that Rory must balance. Tension seems to mount when these two worlds meet. In the second season Richard and Emily are so excited that she is in the top three percent of her class that that offer to have a special dinner next week with her favorite foods, and tell her that she can bring a friend if she wants. Rory chooses to bring Dean to dinner, telling that him that she wants her Grandfather to meet him. When the girls show up to dinner with Dean in tow, Emily is surprised. But welcomes Him into their home. The meal proceeds normally until, Richard begins interrogating the boy. Asking him questions about what his plans for college, what grades he gets, and what kind of career he wants. He proceeds to tell Dean that Rory is special, and insinuates that her goals are bigger then him. When Rory comes to her boyfriends defense he yells back, “This family has standards!” and “Certain people can hold you back” After he has left the room Lorelai leans toward her mother, and says “Is it just me or was that supposed to be us?” The wounds that Lorelai inflicted on her family still run deep and effect they way they view Rory. The Gilmores want her to date someone with connections to their world. Rory is seen by her grandparents almost as making up for the disappointment of Lorelai’s decision. Lorelai tells her in one episode that she it “the great white hope of the Gilmore clan.”
That feeling is ever present in the second season episode entitled, Presenting Lorelai Gilmore. It is a prime example of the class conflict that happens in the series. The episode opens with Rory stopping my her grandparents house after school to borrow a book. When she wanders onto the patio where Emily and her DAR friends are discussing who is being presented to society at the annual debutante ball. Rory returns home and tells her mother that she is coming out to society. The idea of girls being presented to society is an upper class idea, and has special significance to the Gilmores. Lorelai was unable to attend her debut due to her pregnancy. Lorelai is shocked at Rory’s willingness to participate in the event. She tells her, “This is the stuff I ran away from, I just thought that you would be running with me.” The ball repersents very clearly the world that she left, and to see her daughter step further into it brings up old feelings for her. When they read that the girls are to be presented to society by their fathers, Lorelai quickly calls Christopher. Like Lorelai he left the world of his parents to make his own way in the world. He tells Lorelai that, “I like that I have done something, earned something”, and that he does not want his parent’s life. Later in the episode it becomes apparent that as much as Christopher and Lorelai have tried to leave the world they came from, it will always be apart of them. They stop by Miss Patty’s dance studio to check on Rory and Dean who are learning the waltz. The teens are having trouble learning the steps, so they show them how its done. They do the steps to the dance with no problem, and comment on their inability to forget this now useless information. This is evidence that their upbringing will always be apart of who they are, and growing up rich has shaped who they have become.
When Dean finds out that he not only has to wear a tie for the event, but also tails and gloves he makes it clear that Rory owes him. Dean who grew up in middle class America finds the idea of dressing up so foreign to him that it makes him uncomfortable. While he is learning how an upper-class gentleman dresses, Rory is learning what is expected of a Lady. Those things are mocked by Lorelai. Who tells her that, “That ladies are completely helpless.” It becomes very apparent that Rory was raised to be the opposite of what proper society thinks a girl should be. This is shown when she arrives at the event, and begins getting ready next to a girl named Libby. One of the first things heard from her mouth is a complaint about the color of lipstick she has been given, “Wrong color and I’ll look like a hooker, or a teacher.” She has born and bread into wealth. When Rory jokes about tripping while walking down the large staircase Libby tells her, “Don’t joke about joke about that, those two minutes on the stairs will determine your social standing for the rest of your life.” For the rest of the girls this even is there introduction the world of their parents as adults. It is important for them to make a good impression so that the girls will have good marriage prospects. So important Libby tells Rory that this is her fifth coming out.
This episode tells in a stand alone story how different world is. Lorelai raised her daughter to be independent. Rory has lofty goals that are talked about before she gets into Chilton. When comparing her goal of being a journalist with Libby’s goal of marrying well. The effects of being raised outside the rules of the upper-class become apparent. Rory sums it up at the end of the episode as she still in her gown bites into a huge burger at Luke's, “Being a lady is hard.” The tradition of the ball is viewed as some what antiquated. But as Lorelai and Rory see it’s humor, they also seem to know that the ceremony is important to Emily. Who still regrets that her daughter never got to be presented to society. She tells Lorelai at the end of the episode, “That should have been you up there.”
The Gilmore Girls exist in both the upper and middle classes simultaneously. Both worlds are seen through the perspectives of Lorelai and Rory. The stand out when they interact with the upper-class. Their appreciation for both low and high culture, and their fervent independence stands in contrast to the stuffy and rigid world that Lorelai ran-away from. Her wealthy parents, who had the means to give her anything she wanted, did not give her the freedom she desired. The town of Stars Hollow is the opposite of her parents world. Everybody is unique, and respects each others right to exist. Through out the the series the family structure remains intact. Both in the Gilmore family who try to put the past behind them, and the people in Stars Hollow that became Lorelai’s family. It is the bonds of family and friendship that transcend the complications of class.