Maybe we should just watch Roseanne

In the above scene from Oliver Stone’s Platoon, the protagonist Chris Taylor and his brother-in-arms, King, discuss how Chris – a college-educated white kid – ended up fighting in Vietnam:

Chris: I volunteered. I dropped out of college, told them I wanted the infantry, combat, Vietnam.

Crawford: You volunteered for this shit, man?

Chris: Can you believe that? … Didn’t make much sense. I wasn’t learning anything. I figured why should just the poor kids go to war while the rich kids always get away with it?

King: Oh, I see. What we got here is a crusader…. Shit, you gotta be rich in the first place to think like that.

In this scene King is making a broad point that rich people will always fuck over poor people, no matter what some well-meaning rich kids may do in an attempt at solidarity. But his incredulity at the notion that Chris would throw away college and the opportunity to avoid King’s own shitty fate – and the shitty fates of their other poor and disproportionately black comrades in Vietnam – betrays a finer point. People whose lives are in a constant state of precariousness can little afford to consider giving up whatever advantages they do have for the benefit of strangers in the name of some grand purpose. Chris (with whom King forms a dear friendship throughout the film) is a crusader – trying to save the world while everyone King knows is just trying to fucking stay alive.

So with that in mind, let’s talk about Roseanne for a minute.

A quick note: I haven’t yet seen an episode of the Roseanne reboot. It is not yet available on Japanese TV, and I am a good boy so I don’t pirate TV shows. Anymore. But I have seen every episode of the original series – save for the final season travesty – countless times, and I have read enough about the reboot to feel like I’ve pretty much seen the first two episodes.

There are a million reviews of the Roseanne reboot circulating online. The show seems to be getting generally positive reviews, but there is a lot of chatter surrounding Roseanne’s (both the creator, Roseanne Barr, and that of her eponymous character) vocal support of a certain orange president.

Writing in the New York Times Opinion section (thus, an op-ed, not a review), Roxane Gay discusses her difficulties with watching the show in light of Roseanne’s support of Trump, and the manner in which the show deals with the issue. (Roseanne’s support of Trump is a key storyline in the premiere episode.) She raises an important point about the show perpetuating an idealized portrait of the white working class. She argues that the progressive characters in the show appear to be tokens or window dressing. Ms. Gay concludes that while the show was funny enough, she can’t continue to watch the show due to its lack of accountability for its politics.

As I watched the first two episodes of the “Roseanne” reboot, I thought again about accountability. I laughed, yes, and enjoyed seeing the Conner family back on my screen. My first reaction was that the show was excellent. But I could not set aside what I know of Roseanne Barr and how toxic and dangerous her current public persona is. I could not overlook how the Conner family came together to support Mark as he was bullied at school for his gender presentation, after voting for a president who actively works against the transgender community. They voted for a president who doesn’t think the black life of their granddaughter matters. 

I wouldn’t waste precious hours of my life watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, so I can certainly understand why Ms. Gay would opt not to spend her time watching Roseanne. As an opinion piece however, it seems to suggest that we should reasonably refuse to consume good art (this is television, so we’ll call it good art because in Ms. Gay’s own assessment it succeeds in its mission of being funny) because we disagree with the politics of the artist. Google search “good art by bad people” and you will find that it becomes quite difficult to enjoy art at all if you need your art to be made by agreeable people. But if appreciating art is at least partly about getting into the mind of the artist, perhaps something valuable can be learned from listening to the artist whose politics you have a hard time understanding (or stomaching).

Ms. Gay notes of Roseanne the character’s support of Trump, that “the promise of jobs and the myth of the white working class as the only people struggling in this country, which animates so much of our present political moment are right there, in this sitcom.” While there is undoubtedly a great mythology and lionization of the white working class flooding conservative media (while some standard media uncritically parrot these ideas), I don’t think that “the myth of the white working class as the only people struggling” is particularly widespread. (Some internet comment sections would certainly suggest otherwise, but small groups with loud voices do not mean widespread acceptance.) The fact is that the entire working class has been completely fucked since the 1970s. Good manufacturing jobs have disappeared, replaced by precarious employment. Real wages are down. A huge number of people in the United States live in an utterly precarious state. This includes, but is certainly not exclusive to the white working class.

Within the overall working class, the largest demographic is white people. These white people are statistically less fucked than their black and Latino counterparts, but they are fucked nonetheless. Which brings us back to the clip from Platoon at the top of this post. People with a shitty lot in life don’t generally have a lot of time for worrying about people whose lot is even worse. If there is one theme that has permeated the entire run of Roseanne, it is the main character pushing back against people who judge, castigate, or punish her as she struggles to keep her family afloat. Sounds like someone who would vote for Trump.

One can judge Roseanne (character or creator) for her support of a horrible politician and his horrible policies. But perhaps by watching the show you can gain some understanding of what drives people like her to support people like him. One of the remarkable things about the reboot of the series is the utter stagnation of all of the main characters. Darlene never became a successful writer. Becky and Mark didn’t live happily ever after. DJ went to war, because that’s what poor boys do. Becky is selling her womb to a rich lady. They are all back in Lanford – the next generation Connors following the same hopeless path that their parents trod. These are people struggling to keep their heads above water, and by getting to know them perhaps we can learn to understand why throwing a life boat to others isn’t their first priority.

This is in no way a defense of Trump, his policies, or the cretins with tiki torches. Working class people who support Trump are terribly misguided in doing so. Populist platitudes are nobody’s salvation. However, throughout the Western world, the so-called “left’s” embrace of global capital has left the working class without a beacon, and the void has slowly (and now alarmingly) been filled with xenophobic nationalists promising a return to a greatness that never truly existed.

In the 1990s, when I cut my teeth as a wannabe revolutionary we rallied against free trade and the WTO. In 2018, Trump has the white working class in the palm of his hand as he steals our bit – threatening to kill NAFTA and sounding the protectionist siren all in the name of jobs. All the while, the traditional left has learned to stand on two feet and fit in with the GATT crowd.

With the progressive politics of the left, it could be possible to build a much larger movement than anything that right-wing populists could ever muster. A political movement that includes everyone in a fight for a fairer distribution of society’s ridiculous wealth. Something that speaks to people of all ethnicities, orientations, and identities while addressing the perverse enrichment of the few and impoverishment of the many. But including everyone means getting the people of Lanford, Illinois on board. And (hyperbole fully intended) perhaps Roseanne can help us understand how to talk to them.

So maybe you should watch Roseanne because of its politics, rather than reaching for the remote to find something more comfortable.