Many of you may not be familiar with one of the top rated shows in the late 80’s called “Rosanne.” It featured Rosanne Barr and John Goodman as the Conners, a working class family. The series reached #1 in the Nielsen ratings, becoming the most watched television show in the United States from 1989 to 1990. The show remained in the top four for six of its nine seasons, and in the top 20 for eight seasons. In 1993, the episode “A Stash from the Past” was ranked #21 on TV Guide‘s 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time. The family consisted of outspoken Roseanne, married to husband Dan, and their three children: Becky, Darlene, DJ and later on Rosanne gives birth to a boy named Jerry Garcia Conner. Critics considered the show notable as one of the first sitcoms to realistically portray a blue-collar American family with two parents working outside the home, as well as lead characters who were noticeably overweight without their weight being the target of jokes. Barr’s real-life brother and sister are gay, which inspired her to push for introducing gay characters and issues into the show. “My show seeks to portray various slices of real life, and homosexuals are a reality,” said Barr. Provocative storylines have been an integral part of the series throughout its existence. Barr has stated that they were issues that working-class Americans experience in their everyday lives and that very few scripted programs ever address them. Minorities were not represented in the original Rosanne and in one episode, young DJ struggled with kissing a black classmate. The episode called “White Men Can’t Kiss,” found DJ Conner conflicted over kissing a black girl named Geena Williams in the school play. In the episode, it is revealed that the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois, has a very small black population and DJ admits he doesn’t want to kiss his classmate because “she just looks real different.” While Roseanne Conner told her son he was doing the play anyway, his dad said he didn’t have to do it. One of the most memorable lines from the episode came when Roseanne told DJ, “Black people are just like us. They’re every bit as good as us, and any people who don’t think so is just a bunch of banjo-picking, cousin-dating, barefoot embarrassments, to respectable white-trash like us!”
Fast forward to 2017 and the reboot of Rosanne, with the caveat that the real Rosanne Barr is a dyed in the wool Trump supporter. While Barr’s vocal support of Trump and occasional alt-right Twitter rants have fanned flames, she insists she has “learned to control anger a lot better.” According to some critics, “Roseanne Barr has likened Muslims to Nazis, called supporters of Palestinian human rights, “Nazi helpers,” and called for the killing of all non-Jews among the UC-Davis faculty and student body,” and Let’s not forget that #Roseanne is a Birther, a Trump supporter, and has made racist comments about Latinos and transphobic comments.” Needless to say she is carrying a lot of baggage into this reboot. In her new Rosanne show, Roseanne and Dan still live paycheck to paycheck in their modest home in fictional Lanford, Ill., only now with more family members gathered around the kitchen table. but with a slight difference. Remember DJ, the son who did not want to kiss a black classmate in a school play? He has a child by a black woman and that child is her grandaughter. According to Rosanne, “That was something that I always wanted to do because of DJ not kissing a black girl [in season seven]. So that’s important to me.” Now I’m not questioning her sincerity, but the bigger your audience, the better your ratings. After all the majority of bigots and racist are not making enough money to buy that $40,000 Dodge Ram the advertisers are hawking on her show. Will black people flock to her show and re-live the corny but funny antics of some respectable white trash? I don’t know. But I think BuzzFeed hits it right on the mark. “Black audiences are accustomed to finding ways to relate to television characters that do not look like us. This is mostly out of necessity due to the fluctuation of black characters and/or shows on TV, but also because universal themes transcend race when written well.” That being said, it also points out, “Prior political elections, prominent legal battles, and the internet have made it clear just how much Roseanne (and the demographic she represents) is willing to put race before the ties that made the show relatable to black audiences in the first place — ties such as class and gender. This makes it potentially more difficult for black audiences to be on board.”
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