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 […]
Pop Culture Classism
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, […]
Classism In Spanish Society
I moved from Boston to Madrid 10 months ago. Among the barrage of cultural differences and neoliberal similarities between my home country and my adopted one, I’ve noted several instances of classism in Spanish society. Bearing in mind that I have a severely limited understanding of class structures in this vast and complex nation, I […]
Is Elvis-Hating Classist?
So much depends on whether you are looking up at Elvis from the working poor or working-class or down at him from the middle- and upper-class. When you look at photos of Elvis fans at his funeral or Graceland, they don’t usually look well-off. Their haircuts, clothes, whole demeanor suggest they came from the same […]
Spring Break?
When I think of spring break, I think of MTV and early 20-somethings soaking up the sun. I believe that this ideal spring break is becoming more and more mythical with the rising costs of education. Classism enables wealthy students to obtain degrees debt free while low-income and working-class students are faced with more and more debt. I […]
Debbie Downer’s Spring Break
Spring break is coming up. That means hearing about Cancun and Barcelona while walking by students, seeing Airbnb and hotel tabs on 101 laptops, and seeing Snapchat countdowns every day. Spring break is a college student’s dream – one that comes with a hefty price to make it a reality. As a student coming from […]
Social Class and a Writing Conference
Though not all writing conferences are expensive, many are. A number try, essentially, to take money from those who can afford it to subsidize those who can’t – a worthy policy. But one still tends to meet more wealthy people than poor at a writing conference. Last summer, I attended one on the East Coast that […]
Class Inequality in Children’s Movies
A new study, Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies, from Duke University sociologist Jesse Streib reveals that almost universally G-rated movies legitimate poverty and social class inequality in a new way – by presenting them as benign. Limited Learning about Other Classes What are some of the first ideas about social […]
“Undercover Boss”: More TV Class Unrealities
Undercover Boss is a prime time reality show on CBS. The concept is that the CEO of a company is disguised and then goes “undercover” for a week in his/her company doing the low wage work on the front lines to see how things really are. Typically, bosses are white men, although there have been […]
Denial of class in Downton Abbey’s dream world
Ah, Downton Abbey. Who wouldn’t want to live there? Crises arise, but they are almost always resolved with human kindness. It’s a comforting world; maybe that’s why, despite its blithe ignorance or studied denial of most facts about working-class life, I still watch it. We all need some wish fulfillment, and the wish fulfilled by […]
Modern Family: A Poor Perspective
Each year, popular television appears to break new cultural barriers. Perhaps its most vital engine is the critically acclaimed, Modern Family, celebrated for its sophisticated portrayal of non-traditional households. But what if I told you Modern Family is no different from most shows in that it fails to address the poor and working class? In […]
“Revenge” and the Failures of Social Climbing
The hit ABC melodrama “Revenge” features a slinky, mysterious blonde seeking delicious, sweet, sweet revenge. Emily Thorne, who isn’t really Emily, changed her name from Amanda Clarke, the juvenile delinquent and mentally lost daughter of a convicted 9/11 terrorist. The classist stereotypes portrayed in “Revenge” are viciously ripe. Each class has social limitations keeping them […]
Orange is the Newest Redneck Bashing
I’m eager to talk with someone who has both read Piper Kerman’s memoir “Orange is the New Black” and seen the Netflix series based on it. I want to discuss the class and race implications of how the story was fictionalized – and in particular, one poor white character who is turned into the most […]
Money is No Object: Over-representing the Upper Middle Class on TV?
As a child, I recall watching The Brady Bunch. Wow, they were rich. Although they had a large family, it never seemed to impact their finances. They had money for bikes, vacations, really nice clothes, nice cars, a gleaming kitchen commanded by a servant, a huge house in an obviously nice neighborhood. Didn’t they also […]
Arrested Development & the pitfalls of the wealthy
Why do so many TV watchers love Arrested Development (whose latest season was released on Netflix last night)? Is it just another sit-com in the cringe-inducing comedy genre, like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm? I think there’s another factor: the show accurately illustrates some common maladaptive life paths of people who grow up in […]
Thinking Positive Thoughts as the Ship Sinks: Oprah, Tolle & New Age Classism
I’m concerned about classism in the new age, self help and spiritual movements. Oprah Winfrey’s show and “lifeclass,” which many people study religiously, promote individualistic “create your own reality” ideas, including the philosophy of guru Eckhart Tolle. “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it,” Tolle writes. These ideas can be […]
“Wishing for Heaven”: Cross-Class Relationships and Contemporary Culture
Class representations are present in many aspects of contemporary culture. Think about the latest TV sitcoms, five star movies, and literary novels. Sure, the word “class” may not be used always, but hints of class or class indicators, such as income, education, occupation, and power, certainly appear in one form or another. Cross-class relationships in […]
“Jumping the Broom”: African American class divide
When you were a young child, did you think about getting married? We may plan our wedding and visualize the person of our dreams, but we never stop to think that our class backgrounds and family values could possibly clash with theirs. In the movie Jumping the Broom, Sabrina Watson and Jason Taylor come from […]
Gisele Bundchen’s clueless classist comments
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen was quoted in the September Harper’s Bazaar UK as saying, “There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.” Bundchen got lots of outraged reactions to her statement, but mostly from women with positive opinions about bottle-feeding, or general dismay at woman-to-woman lifestyle […]
