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Spiderman: Homecoming - Adrian Toomes (The Vulture) isn't working class

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I mean I have definitely actually seen people unironically saying that Toomes was spouting good leftist rhetoric against the capitalists (with the only concession to hypocrisy being that he "had a nice house")
 

Fliesen

Member
That job was a last ditch effort to save his company and keep his employees eating. Not to mention the owner of the company worked right beside his people.

He also lives in new York city.

aye, didn't he mention that he pretty much remortgage his house to be able to afford the equipment and manpower for the manhattan job? So maybe he was (employed) working class, and this job was his attempt of having his big break into being a business owner.
 
He didn't have savings, did he?

Wasn't the implication that he had taken out a huge loan to finance the operation?

Not to say that he's working class, just that he didn't seem well off.

I don't know if I remember thinking he took out a loan but it definitely did seem like the movie was telling you it was coming out of his pocket, and he was sacrificing something so that his guys could keep their jobs and support their own families.

I would consider a small business owner who does that to be working class
 

Alienous

Member
That doesn't make him working class.

Working class ends when you own a business of that size. It can be failing but that doesn't make you working class. That's what the article wants you to understand. It skews the reality of what working class is. It's easier to relate to the working man rather than a boss.

A business of what size? Did he have more than four employees?
 

TwoDurans

"Never said I wasn't a hypocrite."
I took it as he was the guy holding a shovel in the beginning. He was working class, but had to adapt to survive. Tony Stark hadn't "worked" a day in his life as far as Toomes was concerned.

Sure he had a lot of nice stuff by the end of the movie, but that was from selling illegal arms,.
 
I thought it was less that he was part of the working class, and more that he was a business owner who had been screwed over by The Avengers / Stark. I certainly found him enough of a decent character because they gave him reasons for being evil.
 

theWB27

Member
That doesn't make him working class.

Working class ends when you own a business of that size. It can be failing but that doesn't make you working class. That's what the article wants you to understand. It skews the reality of what working class is. It's easier to relate to the working man rather than a boss.

That size? He had like 7 people working for him. Did i miss the other 100 workers?
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Snarky❤;244577044 said:
I don't know if I remember thinking he took out a loan but it definitely did seem like the movie was telling you it was coming out of his pocket, and he was sacrificing something so that his guys could keep their jobs and support their own families.

I would consider a small business owner who does that to be working class

He had taken out big loans in order to do the Manhattan job, it's why he freaked out when the rug got pulled out from under him. He had literally lost everything in that exact moment.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
That size? He had like 7 people working for him. Did i the other 100 workers?

I run a 10 person company, it would be weird to call myself "working class" and I don't identify that way even though I draw a salary and you know, work long hours. The fact that the business he owned was in construction doesn't make a difference
 
That doesn't make him working class.

Working class ends when you own a business of that size. It can be failing but that doesn't make you working class. That's what the article wants you to understand. It skews the reality of what working class is. It's easier to relate to the working man rather than a boss.



You don't get a loan for that much (equipment and men) if you have nothing of value.

I don't know if I understand, are you saying that a boss of a small business can't be "working class" and that to be working class you have to have "nothing of value"?
 

theWB27

Member
I run a 10 person company, it would be weird to call myself "working class" and I don't identify that way even though I draw a salary and you know, work long hours. The fact that the business he owned was in construction doesn't make a difference

I imagine someone wouldn't have to put their homes up to buy equipment if they were above working class.
 
Vulture's early characterization is *heavily* steeped in American capitalist mythos. He's a small business owner who seems to actively put in work alongside his employees, seems to at least generally give a fuck about them and their financial well-being, and is screwed over by a union of government and big business. All those are things that typically resonate with the sort of American working class ideal even though it doesn't really fit a more marxist interpretation of working class.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I imagine someone wouldn't have to put their homes up to buy equipment if they were above working class.

I took out tens of thousands of dollars in personal debt to get my company through a rough spot. I'm still not working class

(also no, I'm not rich, by any conceivable metric)
 

Fliesen

Member
Snarky❤;244577260 said:
I don't know if I understand, are you saying that a boss of a small business can't be "working class" and that to be working class you have to have "nothing of value"?

Well, by strict definition, if you're not employed for a wage, you're not working class - that's true.

but i'm not sure there's a point to arguing about semantics.
Regardless of whether or not he was "working class", Vulture was still someone that got shafted by the 1%, that obviously felt strong "economic anxiety" (eek!). I think it's fine to use 'working class' as shorthand for "part of the bottom of the economic food chain" regardless of whether or not he's on someone's payroll or owns a struggling small business :/
 

kswiston

Member
I run a 10 person company, it would be weird to call myself "working class" and I don't identify that way even though I draw a salary and you know, work long hours. The fact that the business he owned was in construction doesn't make a difference

Don't you have a doctorate though?

In common American usage, "working class" has come to mean the manual skilled and unskilled trades, along with waged jobs. Basically anything that doesn't require a 3/4-year degree or postgraduate work.

Obviously the academic definition is more strict.
 
Snarky❤;244577260 said:
I don't know if I understand, are you saying that a boss of a small business can't be "working class" and that to be working class you have to have "nothing of value"?

Why would they be working class? They hire the working class. His workers? They're not on the same level as him.
 

LosDaddie

Banned
I run a 10 person company, it would be weird to call myself "working class" and I don't identify that way even though I draw a salary and you know, work long hours. The fact that the business he owned was in construction doesn't make a difference

This doesn't necessarily mean someone else in your position would be wrong in identifying as Working Class.
 

DeathoftheEndless

Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
He gave Peter one pass for saving Liz. But at the end he was giving him a pass for saving his life. At least that is how I read him not selling Peter out to the other guys.

Technically he gave Peter two passes, but yeah, saving his life was definitely a factor in not selling him out to Scorpion.
 
Exactly my thoughts, perfectly phrased. Like so many wealthy small business owners, Vulture plays off working class sympathies while actually being a bourgeois leech himself.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
The same way Rolling Stone was wrong about identifying Toomes as working-class, the Verge is wrong about identifying him as part of the burgeoisie. Time for repeat viewings
so Homecoming can make it to $800m.
 

JCHandsom

Member
I could've sworn that Toomes said he needed to mortgage his house to rent out the equipment and workers for the Avengers cleanup. The implication was that he risked everything he had in search of a large payout. The government guy saying he "stretched himself too thin" wasn't wrong, he was just being a dick about it.

Working class? Probably not? A guy in economically dire straights whose life was on the brink of ruin? Yeah.
 

Kin5290

Member
The way I saw it, Toomes wasn't working class at the beginning. Owners of construction companies, which he is coded as, make tons of cash, and his motive for turning to crime is to keep taking care of his family, not to get rich.
 
Snarky❤;244579198 said:
Honestly this feels just like the people saying Spider-Man in Homecoming "isn't an underdog".

And there's legit arguments for that. You either join in the discussion or step back cause there's no point in venting your frustration that people are critical of something you like.
 

linkboy

Member
I think it was pretty obvious he was rich when you saw his house. It was to me. His speech is about the bigger guy taking from him and the government intervening in his private business. His illegal arms dealing is the ultimate private business.

By the time Homecoming starts, he'd been the Vulture for 8 years. That's why he was rich.

At the start of the movie, he wasn't. He poured everything he had into the NYC salvage job and the government just came in and took it all away.

That's why he started doing what he did, as a way to get back at the government and Stark.
 
I could've sworn that Toomes said he needed to mortgage his house to rent out the equipment and workers for the Avengers cleanup. The implication was that he risked everything he had in the search of a large payout. The government guy saying he "stretched himself too thin" wasn't wrong, he was just being a dick about it.

Working class? Probably not? A guy in economically dire straights whose life was on the brink of ruin? Yeah.

Think about it- to make payroll for enough employees to clean up that huge mess plus rent the needed equipment (a small forklift rental costs my company $2,000 a month, I can only imagine the rental costs on heavy equipment to clean up that level of damage), Toomes would already have be in a multi-million dollar mansion or he owned a company with a sizeable workforce but needed the extra bit from the mortgage to expand enough to meet whatever timelines the city required.

Either way he isn't working class.
 
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