"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

May 31, 2011

Roseanne Barr, Badass

"...Call me immodest—moi?—but I honestly think Roseanne is even more ahead of its time today, when Americans are, to use a technical term from classical economics, screwed. We had our fun; it was a sitcom. But it also wasn’t The Brady Bunch; the kids were wiseasses, and so were the parents. I and the mostly great writers in charge of crafting the show ­every week never forgot that we needed to make people laugh, but the struggle to survive, and to break taboos, was equally important. And that was my goal from the beginning...

...Hollywood hates labor, and hates shows about labor worse than any other thing. And that’s why you won’t be seeing another Roseanne anytime soon. Instead, all over the tube, you will find enterprising, overmedicated, painted-up, capitalist whores claiming to be housewives."

Roseanne - And I Should Know


h/t The Activist

4 comments:

Richard said...

No question, "Roseanne" was a great show, broadcast because it made money for the network with its huge ratings, and, probably also because, Barr's ambitions not withstanding, it served as an outlet for the frustrations of people victimized by Reaganomics.

Or, perhaps, more accurately, there was a duality in which it simultaneously served to challenge and reinforce the emerging new neoliberal order.

But Barr is right, we won't see anything like it again anytime soon, and not just because she correctly skewers the hostility towards labor among cultural elites (it goes far beyond Hollywood), but also because there is no longer any residue of class consciousness as displayed by the characters on "Roseanne".

Picador said...

I missed the boat on "Roseanne" -- I always cite "Married... With Children" as the 90s sitcom most ahead of its time, more for its aesthetics than its politics. But yeah, we're not going to see another All In The Family (or Roseanne, or M...WC) any time soon. In fact, I think Ed O'Neil's transformation from put-upon shoe salesman Al Bundy to the rich patriarch in "Modern Family" illustrates your point nicely.

Randal Graves said...

Granted, it's anecdotal, but I work with my fair share of liberal types, and a few aren't exactly friends of those who labor in a physical sense unlike us keyboard jockeys. Because of course your employment spells out every possible facet of your interests, loves, hates, personality.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

I was Teeveeless when "Roseanne" was on (still am), but I remember that both Ralph Kramden and his Paleolithic doppelganger Fred Flintstone were working-class types.

Granted, it's anecdotal, but I work with my fair share of liberal types, and a few aren't exactly friends of those who labor in a physical sense unlike us keyboard jockeys.

That's a shame. It's funny, I always seem to have jobs which involve both brains and brawn. Computer, forklift... they're both machines.