Labor and Culture: Two Items
New TV Show and Labor Film Database

(1)
Movin' on Down: CMT addresses the Working Class
by Kathy M. Newman
Working-Class Perspectives
January 31, 2011

http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/

Country Music Television (CMT) aired a new sitcom last
Friday, January 28th, to voluminous pre-media coverage-
most of it positive.  It is called, surprisingly,
Working Class, and it stars blonde amazon Melissa
Peterman as Carli Mitchell, a twice-divorced mom with
three children whose slacker (yet metrosexual) brother
lives with her as well.  She works at an upscale
grocery store (a lá Whole Foods) with the incomparable
Ed Asner -  a long-time real-life Socialist and
everyone's favorite crusty boss from The Mary Tyler
Moore Show.

Peterman had her last starring role was the "other
woman" on the Reba McEntire's single-mom sitcom Reba.
She is definitely the best thing about the show. She
has something almost Sarah-Palin-like in her way with
words:  she can deliver withering sarcasm with an
apple-pie smile, and she can be, at once, blustery,
confident, mildly desperate, and disarmingly appealing.

Carli works at the deli counter of a grocery store, so
she probably earns about $10.00 an hour, which cashes
out to about $21,000 year.  Can she really support
three kids and her younger brother in the suburbs of
Chicago on $21,000 a year?  Especially if her ex-
husbands are as deadbeat as she suggests?  $22,050 is
the federal poverty threshold for a family of four.
Perhaps this show should have been called Working Poor?

Of course, we don't look for realism from our sitcoms,
but we do hope for funny.  There is a lot of
economically driven humor in the first three episodes.
In the opening scene, for example, Carli
surreptitiously waters down a gallon of milk while
leading her children in a bowed head "gratefulness
visualization" exercise.  When her son catches her he
complains, "Hey, I'm a growing boy."  She retorts,
"Well, stop, we can't afford it."

The most relevant series of economic jokes take place
in the second episode, when Carli's oldest son has to
make an emergency trip to the dentist.  At first she
tries to talk him out of his pain: "My insurance
doesn't kick in at the store for another month.  Is it
really that bad?"  Her son replies:  "It hurts to
blink."  She then tries to pay for the fillings with a
check that she post dates for 2012.  The deadpan
African American dental assistant/office manager says:
"I can't accept this.  Even though you wrote `please'
in the memo line."  Carli begs:  "Do you have some kind
of payment plan?"  "Yes.  The dentist performs the
service.  You pay.  That's the plan."

The least funny jokes are those about sex and
sexuality, like when Hank Greziak (Asner) leers at
Carli while she towers over him, or  when the dentist
who makes unbearable puns tries to exchange his dental
services for sex with Carli.  These jokes suggest that
Carli's best chances at social mobility will probably
come from how she uses her sexuality.  In the first two
episodes she turns down a marriage proposal from a
financially stable high school chum as well as a less
permanent arrangement offered by the goofy dentist.  In
the third episode her dead-beat ex-husband shows up
loaded with gifts that he was able to buy with the bank
account of his new bride:  an oil magnate played by
Reba McEntire.  They even buy Carli a new bed.  The
suggestion is clear:  in order to move up Carli is
probably going to have to spend some time on her back.

Does the show have any genuine working class roots?
The show's creator, Jill Cargerman, argues that she
created the show from the wellspring of class
resentment that she harbored while growing up in a
Chicago suburb.  "`My mother moved us to [Chicago's]
northern suburbs,' she says.  `Very much as Carli does
in the show, to give us the advantages of the schools
and the community and the community support that we
hadn't - that she hadn't had growing up..It seemed like
everyone else had more than we did, and only now do I
realize that I was probably a little bit of a brat and
that my mom was kind of a hero."

At its worst, Working Class is a Reagan-era "couch and
kitchen" sitcom.  One preview quipped,  "It's kinda
like `Roseanne,' only more Republican." And if that
ragged couch in Carli's living room looks familiar it
may be because the pilot for the show was filmed using
cast-offs of from Hollywood's dumpsters.  As New York
Times reporter Joe Rhoades explains, "In an even more
radical cost-cutting move [CMT Senior Vice President]
Mr. Johnson did not order full pilots for the CMT
sitcom scripts - all domestic comedies - he was
considering, including `Working Class.' After reading
350 scripts and deciding on the 4 he liked best, he
ordered second scripts of each show and then, instead
of pilots, shot what amounted to 15-minute screen tests
with prospective casts, using leftover sets from failed
pilots that other networks were about to throw out -
interchangeable living rooms and kitchens - where
actors from all four shows could shoot their scenes."
The show does feel a bit scrapped together. Only the
quality of the show's stars (especially Peterman and
Asner) allow it to rise above the predictable treacle
of the genre.

While most critics writing before the debut of Working
Class last Friday found the show to be funny and
timely, others, like TV critic Matt Roush, were
decidedly negative:  "Playing off the nostalgic vibe
that worked for TV Land's silly sleeper hit Hot in
Cleveland, but working with a much emptier hand,
Working Class is intended mainly for exhausted working
stiffs willing to kick back on a Friday night with
something that already feels like a rerun. They have my
sympathy."

CMT does have "working stiffs" in its sights.  As CMT
Senior Vice President Ben Johnson explained, CMT's
audience consists of mostly "C and D counties," or, in
advertising speak, rural areas with population
concentrations of 40,000 or less.  Johnson also called
the CMT audience "working class" and "blue collar."

Why is this interesting?  If there is one place where
the myth of a "classless" America is completely busted
it is in the demographic mapping departments of Madison
Avenue.  When it comes to advertising and marketing the
language about class is blunt; class divides are
honestly discussed and minutely tracked.  Of course, no
one ever advertises to a working class demographic with
the hope of making those viewers more class conscious,
but isn't it bizarre that if we want a frank picture of
how much Americans make per year, what they buy, what
kind of mobility they might have and how they see
themselves-that Madison Avenue and Hollywood can
provide us with some of our most reliable data sets?

I close with a plea to Working Class to use more of Ed
Asner.  When he gets to be biting and sarcastic (as
opposed to lecherous and gnome-like) he is a joy to
watch.  He is an interesting choice for the show since
he is certainly not beloved by the Tea Party wing of
the CMT audience.  Numerous right wing websites have
attacked Asner for his outspokenness on Socialism and
other progressive issues.

But if Working Class takes off, it may be because it
can appeal to a broad spectrum of people who work for a
living and who, like me, are stunned by how much food
our kids can plow through in a week, who ask our
dentists for payment plans (like I did last week), and
who struggle to make ends meet on far more than $22,000
a year.  The question of our current era may not be can
we preserve the middle class, but can we prevent the
working class from becoming the working poor?  And, as
we know, there is nothing funny about that.


(2) Labor Film Database

http://www.dclabor.org/ht/d/ProgramDetails/i/23256

The DC Labor FilmFest maintains a searchable database
of over one thousand labor-themed films, and another of
labor film festivals from around the world. See the link 
above.

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