Class Dismissed? Roseanne and the Changing Face of Working-Class Iconography

Abstract

In a 1989 article on working-class identity, Stanley Aronowitz intends to trace the displacement of representations of the working in massmediated culture, arguing that there are longer direct representations of the interactions among workers on American television. We see workers, he tells us, almost solely in police shows and in beer commercials. He goes on to say that working-class representations disappeared, for the most part, with the unfortunate Archie Bunker stereotype. Forging a identity is now difficult because the media denies working-class existence. Working-class identity is no longer an option, Aronowitz concludes, for class has been removed ideologically and politically from the politics of subalternity . . . and has been replaced by new identities resulting in a kind of cultural homelessness.'