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Since Cummings tasked the act of reviving a beloved sitcom with the responsibility of "help us all make sense of the election," consuming “Roseanne” became an act fraught with meaning. Working on 'Roseanne' meant I could write for characters who had different beliefs and experiences than me and who may even have voted differently than me.”
And in fact it was working-class people who elected Trump.” In fact it wasn’t, but Barr - who is in many ways Exhibit A, as a Trump supporter who paid $1.78 million for a macadamia farm in Hawaii - is hardly alone in believing in this wildly persistent myth.īack in January, executive producer and co-showrunner Whitney Cummings explained in an essay for Vulture that one reason she wanted to work on the new “Roseanne” - aside from the fact that the original had been a touchstone of her childhood, like so many of us who grew up loving the snarky, loud, loving Connor clan - was that “giving my brain to a show that touched the hearts and got the eyeballs of so many working-class people is how I could finally do my part to help us all make sense of the election.
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The premiere delivered on that promise, painting Roseanne Connor's "it's about jobs!" support for Trump against her sister Jackie's "nasty woman"-style preaching in an intrafamily war of archetypes: It's snowflakes vs. deplorables, round 37!īarr herself told a room full of TV critics back in January, "I've always attempted to portray a realistic portrait of the American people and of working-class people.
There was no way America could watch “Roseanne” in 2018, knowing what we had been told about the show ahead of its premiere, without wondering what it could tell us about “Trump voters” as they have been reductively painted by reporters and think-pieces galore. It’s going to be the blue-collar story we talk about, no matter how many other shows today, as my colleague Melanie McFarland points out, also depict the struggles of a struggling America. Now “Roseanne” can’t possibly be just a TV show. When Trump made a point to call Roseanne Barr and congratulate her on the premiere’s high ratings, and then praised the show’s success in a speech, saying “it was about us,” he cemented the show’s place in the current culture war.
Critics and viewers alike are watching for the intersection points between the politics of its outspoken eponymous star, a Donald Trump supporter, and the politics of the show itself. Because of the scrutiny the national media has placed on voters like those at the center of the show - a working-class household headed by white Baby Boomers with high school educations in post-industrial middle America - “Roseanne” is under the microscope not only for whether its humor holds up, but for what the show and its reception might tell us about the state of American politics. ABC’s “Roseanne” revival is officially a hit, and not only because it’s reaping the fruits of network TV nostalgia like “ Will & Grace” and “ Fuller House” before it.