How <i>Roseanne</i> Handled the Culture Wars of Its Time
This week, Roseanne returns to television, 30 years after its October 18, 1988, debut on ABC. Controversy has already surrounded the new season following the announcement that the title character will be, like the outspoken star Roseanne Barr herself, a Donald Trump supporter. Fans of the original questioned the reboot’s decision to get so overtly political, but Barr defended her decision to create “a realistic portrait of the American people.” Likewise, the show’s executive producer, Bruce Helford, has promised that the series will depict “something that doesn’t really exist on TV anymore, which is an honest family.”
Such comments could be seen as a swipe at ABC’s current line-up of sitcoms celebrated for their diversity, like , , , and . Combined with TV promising the return of the family that “lives like us” and “looks like us”—with all of thein 2018 ends up feeling more reactionary than it does revolutionary, it’d be largely because the original series inspired these same concerns about the politics of the sitcom.
