As I watched the first episodes of the Roseanne reboot, I kept imagining how the Roseanne Conner I remember would have reacted to the real Roseanne Barr's twisted interpretation of her legacy. In the 1980s and ’90s, the character of Roseanne Conner was a quasi-socialist, pro-union feminist who mistrusted rich people and barked back at gestures of toxic masculinity with her own brand of ferocious confidence. Watching her depicted today as a Trump supporter, I imagined Roseanne Conner sitting next to me screaming, "What an idiot!"



The common explanation is that Roseanne’s evolution makes sense demographically. With so many poor whites clinging to Trump’s nostalgic and racist populism, maybe this character, so heavily associated with that demographic, should do the same. But characters aren’t just built demographically—they’re built psychologically. And the Roseanne whose inner life we witnessed for nearly a decade never betrayed any characterological traits of someone who would support the fascist hate-mongering of Donald Trump.

Roseanne never identified with her oppressors the way working class white Trump voters identify with Donald Trump and his cabinet of billionaires. Whether it was her abusive father, her exploitative foreman, her condescending boss, or any of the wealthy people she encountered, Roseanne Conner neither trusted them, nor did she make excuses for them.

ABC

If anyone in Roseanne’s world demonstrated the psychology of a Trump voter, it would be her sister Jackie. Though rendered in the reboot as a hysterical Hillary supporter, it was Jackie who was vulnerable to the charisma of demagogues and the false protection of violent male authority. She idolized her abusive father and made excuses for the boyfriend who beat her. When she wanted to seize ownership of her life, she joined the police department, taking solace in being an instrument of state violence. Jackie demonstrated the emotional patterns of someone who could look at Donald Trump and say, “Well, maybe he could help me!”

The Roseanne whose inner life we witnessed for nearly a decade never betrayed any traits of someone who would support the fascist hate-mongering of Donald Trump.

One of the most compelling dynamics on the original Roseanne was how the two sisters dealt with issues of domination. While Jackie was constantly negating herself through bad relationships and subservient positions, Roseanne would “rescue” her from these situations by further negating her, berating her and shaming her. Roseanne would attempt to save Jackie from someone’s domination… by dominating her. The toxic cycle repeated over and over, and Jackie’s accumulation of resentment—especially as contained within the genius face of Laurie Metcalf—was some of the most complex television storytelling I’ve ever seen.

If I revisited their family today, I can imagine leftist Roseanne bullying Jackie so hard into opposing Trump that Jackie finally rebels and goes full MAGA rather than actually deal with their unhealthy relationship. In Jackie’s fashion, she would replace the emotional tyranny of her sister with the deceptive embrace of fascism.

But that doesn’t happen.

ABC

In the Roseanne reboot, Barr decides to play a calm, reasonable Trump voter, relegating the role of Hillary supporter to Metcalf, who, true to her character’s emotional precedent, portrays Jackie as weak and incapable of making strong decisions on her own.

Ultimately, these choices were not tailored to the decision-making rhythms of the characters we know so well. They were tailored around the nearly inconceivable reality that Barr herself has become a racist, transphobic, alt-right figurehead.

Barr’s support for Trumpian fascism caps off several years spent insulting transgender women on Twitter, hawking conspiracy theories about lizard people, and publicly fantasizing about the deaths of Palestine solidarity activists. Fans watched in horror as this icon, who once helped so many women and queer people speak up for ourselves, turned against us. It was sad and confusing. We didn’t understand why this happened, and she didn’t give us any hints.

It seemed to come out of nowhere. Only a few years beforehand, Barr was still solidly on the left in most respects. She regularly expressed solidarity with Palestine, and talked about going on a flotilla to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. She boldly said, “The Jewish soul is being tortured in Israel” in response to Israeli violence against Palestinians. Then, seemingly overnight, she was sharing tweets likening Islam to Nazism and tweeting that the BDS-supporting student government of UC Davis should be “nuked.” She turned on a dime from one position to another. We all watched this happening and asked, “Why? Why? Why?”

If Roseanne Barr was a fictional character on a TV show, the writing staff would be fired. While the basis of most narrative drama is that people do things for specific reasons, she has evolved seemingly without any. Her evolution has been erratic, confusing, and difficult to understand or justify. Her actual pattern of thought couldn’t be further from the essence of Roseanne Conner, who was always written as having consistent values, and whose association with Barr seems more and more like a bizarre technicality.

ABC

But when Roseanne Conner reappears on screen, supporting a real estate tycoon who has admitted to committing sexual assault, we are not given any real reasons for this profound shift in thinking. She says, “He was talking about jobs,” but the Roseanne Conner we all watched for so many years couldn’t conceivably be swindled so easily.

We’re supposed to accept this shift because Barr lived it. But her shift doesn’t make sense in the first place. By imposing her erratic alt-right turn onto a character who was always much smarter and more grounded than that, we let Barr hide behind the rationality of Conner. We falsely collapse the inexcusable opinions of Barr into Conner’s trustworthy iconography.

In other words, because the character arc of the real Roseanne Barr defies any reason whatsoever, to fuse that shift onto the life of the character Roseanne Conner falsely normalizes the embrace of Trumpian fascism.



When confronted with the reality of this political moment, we can’t move forward unless we understand why we’re here. Storytelling helps us do this. But when 18 million people tune in for the return of Roseanne Conner, and she’s a fascist for no reason other than the fact that Roseanne Barr is too, then support for fascism gets reduced to an odd, inexplicable detail—not particularly worth unpacking beyond a few superficial family arguments.

We can watch Roseanne and Jackie argue about Trump, but we never get to ask why Roseanne changed into this person.

We can watch Roseanne and Jackie argue about Trump, but we never get to ask why Roseanne changed into this person—and we don’t encounter the people who have already begun suffering from the violence of the Trumpian state and its thuggish emissaries. Without asking why this happened, or seeing why it’s important, the fact of Trump’s existence loses any meaning at all.

That’s useful for Roseanne Barr, because if this moment isn’t actually worth exploring in a meaningful way, then she doesn’t have to answer for it.

But she must, just as anyone who voted for Trump should. “I’m working class” is not a good enough answer for supporting fascism. “I didn’t like Hillary” is not a good enough answer for supporting fascism. “He talked about jobs” is not a good enough answer for supporting fascism.

Roseanne Conner would hate who Roseanne Barr has become. My hope is that Barr, who has already made so many perplexing 180-degree turns in her life, will do so again. After all of the good she’s created for the world in her groundbreaking career, her fans would welcome her back to the good fight with relief and love.

Dan Fishback is a playwright, musician, and director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. Follow him on Twitter: @dangerfishback

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