THINK WHAT YOU WANT, YOU WILL ANYWAY | SARAH JAFFE
Roseanne Barr, in a recent piece in New York Magazine, pointed out that there’s next to no television these days about working-class people, much less working-class women. It’s certainly true now and was true then, in the 80s, when she got started. And in the 90s, when teen television took off, the flagship show was Beverly Hills, 90210—not exactly a blue-collar zip code.
Yet there was one show that did deal with class and teenage life, the struggles not just of economic pain but of the difficulty for working-class and middle-class kids to understand each others’ problems. A show that knew that the struggles of surviving high school were sometimes just that—literally a struggle to survive.
Oh hey look, I wrote something for the Rayanne Project!
this piece is so great you guys. it’s about class but also about a lot of other things and it is sad and beautiful aaaaand on a slightly less important note IT IS THE BEST EXPLANATION EVER OF WHY TEAM CATALANO IS THE ONLY TRUE WAY. seriously i have always been team catalano and for a long time felt extremely conflicted about this, because i felt like i was supposed to like brian better and in some ways i kind of did and i worried i was just being too susceptible to The Pretty, slash over-romanticizing him because i wanted so badly for angela to get what she wanted, but i am cured of doubts. team catalano now, team catalano forever, i want to give jordan a hug and maybe be his case worker or something because now i am old enough that it would be creepy to make out with him. oh who am i kidding i still want to make out with him oops.
