On Tuesday, May 29th, ABC Entertainment canceled the reboot of Roseanne after Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, comparing the former Obama advisor to an ape. ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey stated, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” The show debuted in March to huge ratings and a second […]
Class Themes in Film and Fiction
Roseanne and the Changing Working-Class
When ABC’s Roseanne premiered in 1988, it arrived in the era of Reaganomics with policies that stripped power from unions, sent blue collar jobs overseas and flattened wages throughout the Rust Belt.[1] Roseanne Barr, creator and star, argued the show intended to “speak directly to working-class viewers in an active feminist voice over the people’s airwaves […]
Roseanne: A Working-Class (S)hero Returns
The Roseanne reboot promises to tackle love and politics. Pack your bags and hit the road, folks. On March 27th we’re going back to Lanford. The return of the hit 80s/90s sitcom Roseanne is the latest in a wave of nostalgic revivals hoping to recapture our hearts. And while other reboots have stirred up controversy, […]
Phony rags to riches stories
I just finished watching the movie Julie and Julia, and it irritated me in the same way that many books and movies have irritated me lately: they purport to be the story of extremely humble origins turned into ravishing success through pluck and persistence. But they aren’t. I didn’t mind, in fact I preferred the […]
“Sixteen Tons” brings mine wars of ’20s and ’30s alive
“Are the mules okay?” Not to diminish hard-working mules, but the mine boss’s urgent question after an accident captures the cruel reality thrust upon generations of underground coal miners, whose toil fueled America. That authentic quote valuing mules over expendable common laborers jumps off the pages of “Sixteen Tons,” (Hard Ball Press, 2014), described as […]
Beasts of the Southern Wild: Class themes in Oscar nominees #1
A darling of the film award season this year, the American fantasy drama film Beasts of the Southern Wild (BOTSW) has been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including a Best Actress nomination in the 85th Academy Awards for the youngest ever nominee, Quvenzhané Wallis, at nine years old. BOTSW did not only capture its viewers’ […]
Les Miz: Class themes in Oscar nominees #2
The poverty in the Les Miserables movie seems more realistic than most poverty portrayed in fiction in one crucial aspect: the way desperately poor people in Les Miz are preyed upon. Fantine is deceived and ripped off by the Thénardiers, who try to extort as much money as possible from fostering her daughter. Then as […]
Silver Linings Playbook: Class themes in Oscar nominees #3
Movies about mental illness are a favorite of the Oscars. The nominees are often serious affairs with sad endings and a key point: it sucks to have a mental illness. Underlying that key point is the idea that having a mental illness creates an outsider status of not being normal where one lacks access to […]
