#ActorsWithDayJobs: Geoffrey Owens, Job Shaming, and the Ideology of Work

William DeGenaro

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Chapter 15 #ActorsWithDayJobs

Geoffrey Owens, Job Shaming, and the Ideology of Work

In: Working-Class Rhetorics

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William DeGenaro

William DeGenaro
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 195–207

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004501508_016

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Abstract

Cultural myths around social class and work are persistent and durable. Myths like the the nobility of hard labor, the benenvolent elite, and the meritocracy continue to circulate in popular culture in particular. For example, all three of these myths inform the ways that social media users reacted to the job shaming of Geoffrey Owens in 2018. The general public knows Owens best for his supporting role on the 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, but thirty years later Owens appeared in a viral photograph working at a grocery store, an image that prompted waves of jeers and admiration (and a job offer) on Twitter. This social media happening illustrates not only the persistence of familiar myths, but also the ways that those myths preclude more critical discussions about work and the working class.

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Working-Class Rhetorics

Contemporary Memoirs and Analyses

Series: Critical Media Literacies Series, Volume: 9

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004501508

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 30 Aug 2021

Subjects
- Education
  - General
  - Culture & Education
- Social Sciences
  - General

Front Matter

Figures

Introduction Defining and Defying Common (Mis)Understandings of the Working Class

Chapter 1 Social Class and Sociolects

Chapter 2 Becoming “Gente Educada”

Chapter 3 Rhetoric

Chapter 4 Five Miles and a World Away

Chapter 5 Feeling Like an Imposter at College

Chapter 6 (Un)Belonging in Liminality

Chapter 7 Book Smart AND Street Smart

Chapter 8 “Remember the Spartans”

Chapter 9 Honest Work

Chapter 10 Bodies in the World of Labor

Chapter 11 Mind on Heaven

Chapter 12 White Bread as a Working-Class Symbol

Chapter 13 “Put Some Flowers in the Graveyard”

Chapter 14 Working Class on the Small Screen

Chapter 15 #ActorsWithDayJobs

Chapter 16 (Literal) Self-Exposure

Chapter 17 Returning to Van Buren Street

Back Matter

Index

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Chapter 15 #ActorsWithDayJobs

Geoffrey Owens, Job Shaming, and the Ideology of Work

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Working-Class Rhetorics

Contemporary Memoirs and Analyses

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