one of the things i've considered is that the myth of the american dream has involved two stories. one is about working hard to make it. the other is about making it by virtue of luck, being in right place a right time but not by accident but rather because of street smarts. it's a kind of counter-hegemonic narrative, that one. iow, the second dream says: 'i reject this working hard bizzo, coz look at those rich snots who inherited the money. and look at all the people who work hard and are talented and don't make it. clearly, there's got to be another way and that other way is street smarts. so i'm smart and i work hard at trying to make it by winning, by cheating the system however that is conceived, by hustling, etc" these folks say, I'm taking my fate in my hands so it's not really a matter of chance or fate or luck really, but about playing lady luck in the right way. it's a purposeful activity that they pursue by way of resisting the dominant ideology, in their minds.
a good example in film: working girl. melanie griffith does the conventional american dream: goes to night school, changes her attire, gets rid of the accent and the big hair, the flashy make up and the bubblegum. but she is also unconventional insofar as she makes connections between business news and entertainment news in order to hit upon "the deal" that will reveal her talent, get her noticed and propel her to the top. in the movie, she stumbles over the info because she likes reading the entertainment page--such a woefully silly working class thing to do right. bubblegum for the brain. but it's also portrayed as streetsmarts because only a streetsmart gal would put these things together. the wall st. types are too enamored of their own set in stone ways of doing things. this makes wall st. types chumps and we can laugh at their incompetence while championing the working class hero who stands out from the rest of her working class friends who still have the hair, the make up, the bubblegum and the k mart clothes. it also helps that harrison fords character is screwed over by the 'bad' wall st types, even tho he's fundamentally 'good'. so, we can see that there are good wall st types and bad wall st types. in this way, wall st is preserved. the basic system isn't bad, it's the people who are bad. [ditto charlie sheen v. michael douglas in Wall St.]
i'll send along an analysis of titanic too, coz similar themes and more are in that flick. especially some stuff about how the entertainment bizz--service work--is our savior.
this is a hodge podge of insights from research and life experience. my dad was a hustler. he worked hard at a regular job where he got nowhere. and he was pissed b/c he thought that leaving manual labor for the ranks of lower mgmt would be the entry level job that he was led to believe it would be. but he was blocked by lack of education and, of course, his working class background. he supplemented the meager income by hustling the pool and card tables. thank god the car dealers in town were huge suckers coz we had a cool late model car every six months. learned to drive a stick in a datsun 280zx. my dad almost had a heart attack though. we also were the beneficiaries of a litter of puppies, an old sewing machine, and countless other crap coz my dad was also a sucker in his own way and if the person who lost couldn't pay up then he took pity. really, honest, he's joe avg six pack. not a bad guy at all.
some of this 'other american dream' stuff is revealed in qualitative research on why people become amway dealers and vacuum cleaner sales reps. those kinds of jobs generally get people to work for them by presenting the job as one in which they can get rich quick. so they play on this second american dream. it's by virtue of street smarts and a different approach to business that they think they will 'make it'
kelley