Class on TV: Getting More Ham-fisted?

Even during the darkest, upward-redistributing days of the Reagan and first Bush eras, television could still deliver a firm slap in the face of class prerogative, be it the lurid inhumanity depicted in owning-class soap operas such as Dynasty and Dallas, or the quasi-heroic sitcom misadventures of Roseanne Barr and the Bundy clan. Yes, that cohort of working-class protagonists was still condemned to economic doom and cultural irrelevance, but the rich were tobogganing headlong into the void at a much faster and more stylish clip themselves. If they accomplished nothing else, the TV offerings of the eighties and nineties made viewers from any social class feel equally bad about themselves. In the cloistered and punitive Old World of Downton Abbey, though, underlings who display any fire in their bellies are treated as petulant and uncomprehending children.

For the Baffler, Heather Havrilevsky looks at how class is handled, or mishandled, on TV today. She covers GIRLS, Downton Abbey, Revenge, and Gossip Girl, to name a few, and the verdict isn’t great.

Exposing the presumptions of the prosperous while never giving in to the notion that wealth bestows any kind of ethical advantage (or disadvantage, for that matter): this is what both Gossip Girl and Girls do so well. But instead of showering the rich and less rich with equal-opportunity angst and scorn, how about making television shows about regular people, struggling to survive without appearing either hapless or insane, working hard to make ends meet without shooting themselves in the foot? If network execs and TV writers need a little help imagining stories about regular people with regular concerns, they need to stop and look around for minute. Because, well, we’re everywhere — everywhere but on TV.

Miss you, Roseanne.

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