From The Marquee Blog: Twenty years ago this week, “Roseanne,” a TV series about a working-class family facing daily challenges with a blue-collar brand of humor, premiered on ABC. Today, with the state of the economy so bleak, more and more families — like “Roseanne’s” Conner clan — are clipping coupons and forgoing luxuries, making the message of the show perhaps more relevant today than ever.
And yet today it seems as if every character on television is upscale. While wealth is not synonymous with love and security, television has all but abandoned blue-collar characters. Modern-day shows tend to mock the working class and lack the soul that “Roseanne” once expressed so exuberantly.
What happened to shows about people who don’t have Birkin bags or slick luxury cars? The character of Naomi on “90210” seems to have a Chanel bag for every day of the school week. Members of the “Gossip Girl” cast can often be heard click-clacking along Manhattan sidewalks in Christian Louboutin heels.
3 comments:
Roseanne is probably the best sitcom ever created and, I think, outperforms All in the Family in terms of social satire. I'd call Roseanne Barr a 20th Century Charles Dickens if Charles Dickens was funny.
I just finished reading a great article in the new Entertainment Weekly on the 20th Anniversary of Roseanne, the CNN article you linked to links to it as well.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20235368,00.html
Some thoughts that occurred to me:
1) There are still lower/middle class characters on television, but the shows' themes aren't as universal as they were on Roseanne. This makes the characters unrelatable. (My Name is Earl is about karma, The Office is about a borderline-retarded buffoon, Prisonbreak is about, I guess, breaking out of prison, Chuck is about a Best Buy employee/spy).
2) Reality television has created a new, less romantic idea of the types of people Roseanne focused on. Today we see people like Nancy, Roseanne's lesbian friend played by Sandra Bernhard, competing on Tila Tequila. We see families like the Conners but with more personal tragedy rewarded on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
3) Roseanne's premise grew out of Roseanne Barr's stand up comedy persona of the "domestic goddess". Larry the Cable Guy or Bill Engvall may be a modern equivalent, but they are alone in a sea of snarky ironic comedians. The Blue Collar guys are more of a throwback to Hee-Haw days, they don't give a unique voice to an under-represented demographic like Roseanne's stand up did.
Great insight there RDubs. I loved Roseanne too, and I remember many lazy days and nights at someone's shit box apartment watching Roseanne. I watched it quite a bit when I was younger and I actually had a babysitter who was cut from same cloth as Roseanne. At the time, I never really understood or got her humor, but it was a great way to grow up and offers such a humble way of life as you get older.
Ryan, I'm just proud that I blogged about The Connors before you. Other people of the blog, Ryan and I LITERALLY watched every fucking episode of Roseanne in college. It would be played in succession on Nick @ Nite, and we were there; sotaly tober.
There never was, never will be another sitcom like Roseanne. They were every family. I remember my mother claiming to be Roseanne as child.
Ryan, you make a great point about reality tv destroying the romanticism of the demographic Rosey stood for... At least we knew Rosey would vote for Obama.
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