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With Flashdance, Hollywood made a complete break with the realities of the working class. The film was released in 1983. Ronald Reagan was president. Unions were under fierce attack. A new kind of American subject was emerging. Nothing like Flashdance had existed. You only have to watch Saturday Night Fever to see how dramatic the change in depiction of working-class people was. In that film, which was made six years before Flashdance, and which starred John Travolta (as Tony Manero), the working class was still grounded and had no illusions about its social position. Work sucked. Work was alienating. Work was all about exploitation. Disco dancing at the nightclub was about something completely different than earning your daily bread; it was the time the worker had for him/herself and, as such, was distinct from employment-time, in which the hours are owned by the master.

You're not you at your job; you are you when you're having sex at home, or having dinner with your family, or walking your dog, or dancing at a nightclub. The job pays the bills; the recreation sustains the soul. And what is always clear is that serving the market is not your whole life. You are indeed in a struggle with its priorities. What you want is more time to yourself, and what the market demands is more and more of your time devoted to its one concern—the extraction of surplus value.

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