Sad to say... money can buy happiness!!

Sometimes or better said most of the time it seems to be that money is the main cause of our problems, but at the same time many people think that is the only solution to them. We have been raised in a society where most people believe that money is the main thing you need to be a successful person in life. In other words, you have money, then you can have anything you want. As we read in the article “Class in America” I can’t believe how these myths like believing that America is a classless society can exist when we clearly can see the differences of social classes all over the country. We can see people in each of the different classes (poor/working/middle/wealthy) even though most of the people will identity themselves as being in the middle class.

Focusing a little bit on the upper class, there are some people that probably have worked hard enough to get where they are now and all the money they have is because they have earned it, but what doesn’t seem fair is that there are many people out there that are suffering, and trying hard to survive while there are wealthy people that all the money they have hasn’t cost them nothing at all. As we mentioned in class, they are born in wealthy families. They went to the best schools and they had everything they wanted. They gained so much without having to give anything in return. Many times is hard to see how a lot of these people will not even appreciate what they have. Mostly for the people who are not in the wealthy class points of life come when they think that we live in an unfair world where life seems to play more harsh for people that don’t deserve it.

But how strong is the power of money? Well, as I mentioned before for most people money seems to be the answer to everything, money can buy happiness, and its power it’s so strong that it can even make you blind until the point where you will refuse to the love of your loved ones, you will ignore the sacrifice that they have made for you, you could even come to the point of being embarrassed of having to hang out with someone from a lower class than yours.

The movie that I want to use for this example is "Spanglish".Even though this movie focuses more on the idea that two people from two different cultures, with two different languages can fall in love, there are so many other different concepts brought up in this movie. Deborah who was laid off from his managerial position is force to manage her house now. She is married to John who owns an upscale bistro in LA. They might not be that wealthy, but for sure they gave a lot of money. Bernice is Deborah’s daughter. Deborah hires Flor, a Mexican immigrant to be the housekeeper. Here we have this stereotype of Mexicans being represented as a lower socio economic class from whites. Christina is Flor’s daughter, and she is about the same age as Deborah’s daughter. Deborah has been always telling her daughter that she’s is over weighted and that she doesn’t have a nice body, so when she sees Christina, a “beautiful” girl, she sees her as the daughter she always wanted to have, and here is when it comes the main point I want to make. Deborah starts buying Christina a whole bunch of stuff, new fancy clothes, jewelry; she takes her to the beauty salon, and wants to put her in one of the best schools. Christina starts to find happiness in money; she starts to get this idea that money can give her anything she wants that she forgets all the sacrifice that her mom Flor has made for her. She forgets that the main thing that overpasses everything is her mom’s love. Money has made her so happy that she even wants to stay to live with Deborah for the rest of her life even if her mom has to leave. Here we can see that for money many people will do anything they can, even if that involves refusing to their loved ones.

As our book America on Film says: “Occasionally a Hollywood movie will sound the idea that wealth corrupts, or “that money cannot buy happiness”” and this movie is not an exception. Sad to say; Yes, for many people money can buy happiness and even worst there’s nothing much we can do for those who are in the poor/underclass. Thanks God for those who are not materialistic and are content with what they have. Thanks God for those who are able to find happiness with or without any money.