As much as anything, Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is about the clash of classes in American society - and what these things mean when the social fabric is challenged by powerful forces outside the existing realm of civilization.

In a social structure where we are defined by those things we own, what are we when we no longer have things?

Part of this story is the stripping away of those things that we count on to provide us with status so that we are forced to confront what is absolutely essential.

In some ways, this conflict is best presented in the characters of Ray and Tim, who represent working class and upper middle class in America.

Ray who works on the docks lives in Newark. While Ray's home city isn't defined, the house is somewhere up the New Jersey Turnpike meaning in the posher Bergen County.

Ray's house is one of those working class places typical of the Iron Bound section of Newark, one in a line of houses in which people still hang their laundry on clothes lines to dry. Their back yards look out onto the giant pylons of a bridge beyond which is a factory.

Tim's home is one of those many of those in New Jersey mockingly call "McMansions" occupied by the new office worker who had struck it rich working on places like Wall Street, with wide lawns, magnificent rooms, carpeted and furnished with the best of tastes.

Ray drives a Mustang and likes to drive fast. Although Ray mocks Tim's tastes in "safe" vehicles such as the SVU Tim arrives in, you get from the film a Ray's jealousy of Tim's success.

Tim after all successfully took Maryann away from Ray, and is rapidly winning over the affections of his children - partly through the purchase of "things."

Ray can afford to give the kids their own rooms, provide T-Vo for their television sets in their room, and pays for their education.

Ray even admires Tim's basement - fully equipped with exercise equipment and other accessories. While Ray has a small room in the back of his house that contains a washer and dry as well, these seem to be relics to a time when Maryann still lived with him, as is most of the other items associated with domestic life.

Ray's kitchen is filled with the pieces of an engine he says will be gone in a week, pizza boxes from ordering out, and a refrigerator filled with condiments instead of food.

"You're out of milk," Maryann tells him. "If fact, you're out of everything."

Ray, of course, tells her to close the door, saying "It's my refrigerator."

In yet in some ways, Ray is more compelling than Tim-even though he is self-centered. While Robbie, Ray's son, hates him, he seems to emulate him, even displaying the same affection for speed and thrills, and thus steals a car.

Robbie seems to be searching for identity through possessions as well.

Then all hell breaks loose, and the alien attack strikes first at the heart of American self-identity by disabling the automobile.

In fact, all those electronic items we have come to rely on, lights, watches, cellular phones cease to work, and humanity takes one giant step backwards.

Suddenly one whole aspect of American identity has been stripped away, and we begin to shape a whole new social order.

It is no longer a society based on artificial precepts of haves and have nots, but those who still have things that function.

Ray and the rest of humanity has not yet come to grips with the change that is over taking them, and still cling to the society that is rapidly vanishing.

The wealthy man is the one who has access to a working vehicle when the rest of the world is condemned to walking.

Ownership degenerates from legal definition to the person who happens to possess it at the time.

Of course, what one man can take another man can take away - so that without the social structure, personal power shifts to those who are toughest.

Ray's minor jealous of Tim gets perverted - although almost from the beginning Ray knew others would want what he has. He simply didn't understand how precarious a hold he had on the van or self identity.

In some ways, Ray's identity becomes mingled with his goal - so that we see a shift of values. By having somewhere to go, they become distinguished from the masses that simply flee.

But by stripping away identity of possessions, Ray and other characters must find new ways of finding self identity. It is a terrible process.

Ray with the gun is powerful until someone with a larger gun comes along (I'll write more about weapons in War of the Worlds later). Then, those who can get on the ferry are the privileged of society until the ferry is overturned. Then, just scrambling to shore is enough, surviving.

Yet the society we see walking as if in a scene from Fiddler on the Roof as refugees has no class distinctions. Except for the military, all are equally miserable, equally afraid, equally despairing.

None can imagine things getting worse. The old social order still struggles to protect them, buying them time while they escape.

But it does get worse.

Stripped of that protection, humans become little more that cattle, a food product for the alien that sees nothing to distinguish one human from another since the color of all our blood is red.

Perhaps in Robbie we begin to see the shaping of a new social order, one that is based on an inner need to help each other, one that Ray has yet to completely learn, although each step through the growing hell around them provides him with an education. He learns that his daughter and son are more important than the van, that the gun is no protection, that in the end, he must first look out for his family

Around him, the worst of humanity shows - panicked people rioting to take possession of the van, authorities that cease to function at the ferry site when people need them most, and even in the farm house, human vice and fear lead man to live like a maggot, imagining some return to the old order, self-deluding aspirations that are cut short when faced with the fact that humanity is merely a food source, nothing more.

Stripped of all of the social distinctions, Ray finds culture - his identity connected to his daughter, and by extension to others.

Ray, in some ways, becomes his son - striking back at the enemy. But it is a collective effort of many dragging him out of the enemy's intestines after Ray had deposited the grenades there.

The parallels to The Holocaust are unmistakable.

In every country where Jews and others were eventually butchered, the pattern was the same: Isolate the victims, strip them of their goods and identity, then slaughter them.

But during the worst of the slaughter, when the Nazi's did their worst, the Jews kept something more valuable - their culture, finding identity in what is truly valuable.

Cruise's sharing of his song becomes the center piece of the film's meaning as he is converted from a materialistic society. He has been enlightened, and has found his soul, even though everything else has been stripped from him - from humanity.

Classes don't matter. Social order as dictated by wealth or where you live doesn't matter, even how tough you are, or how clever, or how sneaky. In the end culture and human connection is the only thing that matters. And sometimes it takes the end of the world for us to realize it.