chris, your comments about locality and neighborhood in boston made me think about the film, Good Will Hunting, which depicts the white working class in Southie. obviously the film is a representation of young manual laborers, written by young men who grew up in boston, though not in Southie, and influenced by Howard Zinn, _A people's History_.
the movie opens in a Harvard bar when the upper middle class is symbolically separated into deserving and undeserving. the object of desire [deserving, of course!] is the hardworking upper middle class med student who must be won [saved?] from the clumsy, sexist [kennedyesque?] advances of the Harvard poseur. despite his unearned opportunities he's no match for the naturally talented, self-motivated will who proves his caliber in an impromptu intellectual battle with his sexual competitor: nothing less than a radical history lesson for the audience.
gee, i wonder why? [i don't mean to knock howard zinn, prob. not his fault...]
there's also the opposition between the math prof who discovers will and the therapist. the math prof openly seeks to use will for his own ends whereas, in will's view, people like the good therapist disguise their careerism donning the mantle of do-good professions w/ their empty credentials. makes little difference to him, they're both using him.
what i find interesting is the mobilization of "natural ability" both to distinguish will from the undeserving middle class and his working class buds, the avg, the ordinary. will is only different and, thus, better because he is 'naturaly' talented. there's little discussion of what kind of work he must have done reading freud, shakespeare, and becoming a math whiz. indeed, will's best bud tells him that he's holding a 'winning lottery ticket and too chicken to cash it in." so this notion of natural ability and the good fortune of luck propelling one to fame and "a calling" is still with us, at least in this film. and it is altogether too easily reconciled with the racist beliefs in IQ and genetics.
this reinforces the popular notion of natural ability that s&c write about, yet also suggests that there's an element of choice here, that someone can choose to cash it in or not. if they don't, then it's their fault.
kelley