Last week, I woke one morning and typed some of my personal thoughts about a joke from the new reboot of “Roseanne” into nine tweets and pressed send.
In the episode, which aired April 3, Roseanne and Dan awaken after passing out on their couch to discover they’ve missed all the TV shows “about Black and Asian families” (a thinly veiled reference to their fellow ABC sitcoms “black-ish” and “Fresh Off the Boat”), to which Roseanne quips: “They’re just like us. There, now you’re all caught up.”
Up until that point, Twitter had been a junk folder for my b-side thoughts and a place I might go to research who bit Beyoncé's face. That morning, though, I decided to use it differently. I guess I was looking for a place to unpack my tangled discomfort with the subtle yet loaded implications of the joke I had heard the night before.
“It’s an endorsement of dismissiveness and disregard,” I wrote. “It’s a familiarity and comfort with the culture of objectifying and demeaning people of color.”
Within minutes of tweeting, I began to receive an unholy influx of feedback. A few hours later the thread was picked up by established news outlets, and once that happened ... well, it was off to the races.
Many of the comments I received were supportive — retweets, likes and the always flattering fist emoji. However, I have to admit that the loudest voices to me were the ones that were vitriolic and shockingly mean. Among the hundreds of replies I got, some included words like “crybaby” and “bitch.” One comment was simply three short words: “Slant eye ____.” For some reason, when that one appeared, I stared at it for a good 60 seconds (probably because my eyes are so slanted) trying to wrap my head around what had just happened.
In putting my thoughts to tweet, I was attempting to do a few things: question the creative motivation behind the joke, point out glaring industry double standards and shed some light on the systemic complacency that allows these things to happen.
What I was definitely not attempting to do was presume knowledge of any sinister intentions of anyone at the show or at ABC. But the truth remains: They wrote a bad joke. It wasn’t funny, it used broad racial generalizations for no ostensible reason, and it never should have made it to air.
A show that shares its title with the name of its lead actress is already testing the “fourth wall” by design. By airing a joke by which that fictional character suddenly references other fictional characters from different TV shows on the same real network, the writers were basically begging the audience to blur this line even further. There’s a reason you don’t often see this happen — it takes the viewer out of the story. When was the last time you heard someone on “NCIS: New Orleans” go: “Quick! The killer’s getting away with the serum! Maybe ‘Kevin Can Wait’ ... but we sure can’t!” In the case of “Roseanne,” this was especially jarring in light of Roseanne Barr’s extensive right-wing political advocacy and the showrunner Bruce Helford’s explicit request that viewers somehow separate that advocacy from the fictional world of the show.
That said, as a television writer myself, I can sympathize with the pressures and deadlines of network comedy. Not everything is going to be a winner. Not everything is vetted and picked apart. At the end of the day, it was a couple lines on a TV show. Let’s all just move on. I kind of agree.
Kind of.
Because, to me, this isn’t just about a couple lines on a TV show. This isn’t just about Twitter or outrage or political correctness or even race, per se. To me, this is about attention. This is about the basic human need to have someone say: “I see you. You matter.”
I am watching “Roseanne.” I have it on my DVR and will probably finish the season. Like so many of us, I was a huge fan of the show’s original iteration in the ‘90s and the opening harmonica alone sends endorphins cascading down my spinal cord. The set, the tone, the music and the actors (including the national treasures Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman) all conspire to instantly bring me back to a simpler, more comforting time.
Moreover, I sincerely believe the show is attempting to tell stories in an awkward, nuanced middle ground that makes it laudable. It is with this high standard that I am watching “Roseanne,” so when I sit down to take in an episode — I am paying attention. And what my attention reveals to me is a show about people who feel left behind.
After a 19-year hiatus, “Roseanne” has suddenly returned in glorious HD for a reason. Its astronomical ratings — more than 18 million viewers watched the series the night it had its premiere — proclaims not only the show’s enduring resonance, but also a restitution of something lost (or at least something passed). In this era of capital-D Diversity, numbers like that indicate an unequivocal hunger (dare I say nostalgia) for stories about families like the Conners, who live blue-collar, paycheck-to-paycheck lives; fighting, laughing, and loving in the earnest heartland (read: white working class) of America. Not unlike the results of the 2016 presidential election, the #MakeAmericaWatchRoseanneAgain movement is a beacon in the night, illuminating a once-abandoned subsection of the country with a spotlight of validation. As if it were saying: “I see you. You matter.”
Which is why it’s so galling that a show celebrating ostensibly marginalized Americans would consider shows about even more marginalized Americans a punchline, tossed off between two yawns and a meh, followed by a roomful of people laughing.
And although, admittedly, I have no idea what it means to be white or working class, there are at least a half-dozen shows out there through which I can experience it vicariously. Meanwhile, white working-class people have one — and only one — current network show to help them understand the lives of Asian-Americans (hint: it rhymes with Shmesh Off the Shmoat).
Because here’s where I agree that we are all the same: It’s the invisibility that hurts. It’s the passing over, the looking away, the casual flick of the hand. It’s the denial of basic recognition. It’s the reluctance to concede that your story deserves to be told. In some profound or perverse way, I see a subtle kinship between the watershed premiere of “Fresh Off the Boat” in February 2015 and the recent revival of “Roseanne” in March 2018. In both instances, the shows were received with the same profound subtext: “I see you. You matter.”
I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. I refuse to believe that just because one group gets attention, another group gets dismissed. I don’t understand how telling one kind of story requires a blasé disregard for another. In fact, I think different stories can serve different purposes. I can watch one TV show as an uplifting reflection of my own experience, while watching another as a deep dive into “Othersville.”
But that requires effort and patience and curiosity and attention. As comfy and cozy as it might be, we can’t fall asleep in front of our television sets like Roseanne and Dan. We have to somehow resist the safety of our heavy eyelids and the security of our warm couches. If we want others to respect our stories, we have to respect theirs.
At the very least, we have to stay awake and continually challenge ourselves to say: “Maybe we’re not all caught up.”
