Roseanne…Feminist Icon.
Roseanne
Twice in the last month I have run across references to the sitcom “Roseanne” praising its groundbreaking content and even describing Roseanne as a feminist icon. Feminist icon aren’t my first thoughts when I think of that show or Roseanne Barr, the comedienne. I think more about the interpersonal mayhem over the show that is the stuff of Hollywood legend and the tabloid craziness that surrounded Roseanne herself. But when you peel that away, the content of the sitcom was pretty remarkable and real.
It has been 20 years since “Roseanne” first came to America’s airwaves. Entertainment Weeklyfeatured a very transparent article bringing together the various voices behind the show in its October 31, 2008 issue. The article is full of the drama behind the scenes but it also highlights that everyone knew they were presenting to America an alternative view of the American family. “Before [Roseanne], it was just people walking around in expensive sweaters. I don’t remember people ever looking as realistic as our cast did.” said Laurie Metcalf, who played Roseanne’s sister Jackie. It was this real life depiction that made the show different: money worries, kids acting up, too busy to make the house look perfect. Sara Gilbert who played Darlene said, “Roseanne and the writers were committed to taking stories from their lives- whether they were controversial or taboo or not- and just putting them on the screen.”
In Campbell and Kean’s book, American Cultural Studies, they identify the character, Roseanne Connor, as an archetypical “unruly woman.” She does not fit the “script” of the housewife written in 1950’s in post war America. She is loud, heavy, bossy, and an equal foil to her husband. In other shows, this type of woman was seen as disruptive and dangerous, someone to be controlled. But with Roseanne, “the family is not destroyed by her, but it is questioned and decentred while she remains ‘unambiguously non-assimilable’ and so is challenging and subversive.” (p. 226) Roseanne remains who she is unapologetically (ironically, despite a real-life facelift for the actress midway through the series).
“Roseanne” blew the doors off the typical housewife role and women responded. My mother really enjoyed it. I remember talking to her on the phone while I was away at college about the show. I never imagined that my mom would be a Roseanne fan, but in retrospect it really makes sense. My mom wasn’t the typical homemaker, not because she had to work but Donna Reed just wasn’t who she was personality wise. She had 4 or 5 recipes she cooked well and the house work got done when it got done. My mom saw a different type of woman in Roseanne and probably recognized some of herself in her. She saw an alternative presentation of womanhood and a bit of herself that had not been affirmed.
“Roseanne” ended over a decade ago, but what can this show say to the church today? To us as evangelicals? We need to accept alternative presentations of women and affirm them. Personally, if I hear one more sermon on the woman in Proverbs 31 and how I’m supposed to be like her, I think I will explode. I feel the Proverbs 31 woman is just as unattainable as the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model- and the model gets airbrushing. Sure there are a good principles to aim for in the Proverbs 31 woman but I think that vision along with the “script” of the 50’s housewife laid over it, chain Christian women to “what we are supposed to be” often leaving us feeling defeated and like failures. There are a lot of different types of women out there that don’t fit that model. No matter how liberated a woman is, if she is a Christian I think deep down she struggles with what the church has told her and how God has truly created her. I know I feel it.
Tags: Americal Cultural Studies, Entertainment Weekly, Feminist Icon, Proverbs 31 Woman, Roseanne
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