I don't know if blue-collaredness is looked down upon, but it feels like writers go out of their way to let it be known that the characters we are supposed to like, are extraordinary.
In literature its quite a bit different. "Class" by Paul Fussell goes over the cultural differences while glossing over mere employment. I enjoyed that book, it was fun reading it and seeing how accurately he called out various class behavior I observed growing up, he's pretty accurate top to bottom, from what I've observed. The book is about 25 years old and it would be interesting to see a more modern book. Seen in a Fussell point of view from 25 years ago, the whole social media fad sounds extremely middle class by his definitions of pathological desire for signalling and likes, for example, and has no appeal to what Fussell would describe as the extremes, although where I live twitter users seem exclusively the absolute lowest classes, which is strange. From a Fussell point of view TV has gone from mostly middle class culturally in terms of interests and attitudes in the 70s to exclusively prole feed. Its very unusual now to see anything on TV that isn't prole in attitudes and desires and outlook and values as defined by Fussell.
Indeed, the "Daddy's bad because he works too hard" trope is just about everywhere. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhenYouComingHome...
I think that's more "needs of drama" than anything else, though. It's basically impossible to show somebody doing a job on TV. You can show the social interactions, you can show very carefully selected highlights, you can show quick dramatized representations in the language of drama (e.g., a man holding a shovel in front of a ditch that wasn't there in the last scene, dirty from head to toe, taking a deep breath and blowing it out loudly, and wiping sweat from his brow; this is a man who just spent hours digging, but we don't have time to show that), but there's no way to truly show them doing the job, because who would watch that?
And I'd also suggest that what it is is the extreme positions of their jobs; either they are very good or they are very bad. Again, standard-issue dramatic heightening. Though "average" comes up, but the way it is represented is simply to ignore the job. I can recall several instances where we are informed some character has a job, and maybe one episode will center around their job, but for the most part it's just completely unimportant.
Even in shows where the career is not a big part of the plot it's still pervasive. On Modern Family everyone has upper middle class white collared jobs; small business owners, real estate agent, lawyers. On How I Met Your Mother; architect, news anchor, etc.
Interestingly I don't think upward mobility is a big part of it. It's career achievement for the sake of career achievement. You hardly every see characters' lifestyle changing when they get big promotions.
An interesting counter-example would be Friends, where one of the characters worked a blue-collar job, and none were explicitly "excellent".
Perhaps what pbh101 means is whether you're good at your job or not is unrelated to whether you're blue-collared or not. With that interpretation, you and he are in agreement.
Yep :)
Not sure how this relates to my original comment. For clarity, do see my clarification under sibling comment at [1].
My (now unnecessary) point was that whilst tool-and-die makers are blue collar, I consider that profession to be full of practitioners of excellence (at least the ones I have encountered).
By what they do and the motivation to do it (teachers, nurses, doctors that see it as a calling, versus those that see it as a job). By constraining their lives (same examples, nurses with 12 hour shifts 3 days a week, severely constrained and stressed, but then 4 days to decompress gives them some greater freedom to pursue other interests than a typical 9-to-5 employee, but the stress may be too much anyways). By defining who they're in contact with (constant contact with coworkers, do they become friends, enemies, merely people you work with). By defining how much time you can spend on holidays (1 week, 2 weeks, a month?), which determines what you can do with leisure time. Income levels, again defining what you can do with leisure time, or at least constraining it if income is too low.
Unless someone's going to the bathroom frequently or painfully due to a medical condition (IBS, kidney stones, bladder infection, etc.), they likely aren't finding their lives terribly constrained or defined by that element of their existence. So in a drama it has little value, perhaps more in a comedy depending on the sort of humor they're going for (see Family Guy).