Confederate Nonsense Ruined My Love for Blanche from Golden Girls

When it comes to picking my favorite of the four main characters on The Golden Girls, I can be wildly indecisive and inconsistent. During the show’s seven-season run on NBC (1985–1992) and for the first decade of reruns on Lifetime, she was always Dorothy, hands-down.

Lately, though, I tend to vacillate wildly. I rarely have Dorothy days anymore. Most of the time, Sophia is my spirit animal (it must be my encroaching cranky old age), with Rose and especially Blanche occasionally grabbing my fanboy love.

The Blanche Devereaux days have made me take a closer look at a wonderfully vivid and occasionally problematic character. She once said her perfect man would have to have “the body of Mr. Mel Gibson, the personality of Mr. Johnny Carson, and the financial resources of Mr. Donald Trump." Her exuberant embracing of the Confederate tradition and inconsistent views on gays now seem surprisingly un-progressive for a character who remains beloved by many.

When her brother, Clayton, came out in the 1988 fourth-season episode "Scared Straight," she initially reacted poorly, echoing the experience of many gay men who come out to their families. At first, she thought her brother must have been punishing her for something she’d done. Later, she gleefully bragged, "Sweet Jesus, I’ve done the impossible. I converted one." She said it as if converting gay men were a worthy or even a possible goal.

Blanche’s reaction didn’t make her a bad person, just a realistic one. That was how many people reacted to gay people in the late ’80s and still do today. It wasn’t a joke made at the expense of the dignity of gay people as much as comedy reflecting reality.

Some of the Southern qualities that made Blanche so funny on TV in the ’80s and ’90s, I’d find deplorable in a real person today.

It took two separate episodes more than two years apart for Blanche to accept having a gay brother, but a girl can evolve—or be incredibly inconsistent. By the time the 1990 season-six episode “Ebbtide’s Revenge” came around, she was the one pointing out to Sophia that you don’t call gay people “queer” anymore. Curiously, that was two episodes before “Sister of the Bride,” the one where Blanche struggled to come to terms with Clayton’s engagement to a man.

Eventually, she accepted Clayton’s fiancé into the family—somewhat begrudging, as relatives often do. Still, she’d come a long way from her season-four showdown with an uber-camp wedding planner in “Sophia’s Wedding: Part 2.” “You’re ready to fly right out of here, aren’t you?” Blanche said, shooting him a side-eye. His response: “Well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant.” Cue laugh track.

As a gay man, I can chuckle over it, but as a Black man, I’m not quite as forgiving when it comes to some of Blanche’s expressions of Southern pride. Her Southern heritage made her the butt of gentle ribbing throughout the show and like any big The Golden Girls fan, I laughed. It was the character’s defining characteristic, great comic fodder that was usually harmless fun but occasionally became cringeworthy.

In the 1987 second-season episode “Dorothy’s Prized Pupil,” Rose agreed to be Blanche’s wiedenfrugen (translation: personal slave) for one week to make up for supposedly losing a pair of earrings she’d borrowed. Blanche was so delighted to be waited on 24/7 that she said, “Wiedenfrugen, a lovely idea. If we’d had them in the old days, we wouldn’t have had to fight that disruptive Civil War.” Really, Blanche? “That disruptive Civil War” that cost more American lives than any other US military conflict and led to the emancipation of an entire race of people.

Some of the Southern qualities that made Blanche so funny on TV in the ’80s and ’90s, I’d find deplorable in a real person today. In the 1990 season-six episode “Wham Bam, Thank You, Mammy,” after finding out that her late father had a decades-long affair with her Black nanny, Blanche was incredulous and condescending. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Big Daddy was a Republican.”

Judging from her obsession with the Daughters of the Confederacy, she must have held some of those Republican values herself. In the May 5, 1990 season-five finale, the ladies are preparing for a visit to their home by President George Bush (the first one). When a national official charged with screening them asked which organizations they were members of, Dorothy mentioned that Blanche belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy. Blanche reacted as if Dorothy had just announced she was American royalty.

In the sixth-season episode, “Witness,” which first aired March 9, 1991, she was trying to become a member of “Daughters of the Old South” but in the process of examining her family history, she discovered she had a Jewish ancestor who was from, of all places, Buffalo, NY. The scene is roll-on-the-floor funny, less for Blanche’s shame over her Jewish ancestry than for how Dorothy slyly skewered the stupidity of anti-Semitism by needling Blanche over it.

Blanche tried to hide her Jewish heritage from the Daughters at first, but she eventually confessed. After she begged them to “let my people in,” they refused, prompting Blanche to exit, saying, “Oh, you lost the war. Get over it,” on her way out.

Take a note, Southerners who worship the Confederate flag as a symbol of strength and rebelliousness. The Confederacy lost the war, which makes them losers.

Interestingly, three seasons earlier, Dorothy dropped a new friend after finding out she belonged to a social club with restricted membership: No Jews. Didn’t Blanche learn a thing from that? The writers tried to make a point about Southern pride but it made Blanche look bigot-adjacent.

She ended up having a somewhat redemptive moment that aired December 4, 1992 on The Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace. In the reboot, which lasted only one season on CBS, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia moved out of the Miami home they’d shared with Dorothy and bought a hotel on the beach. In the episode titled “Camp Town Races Aren’t Nearly As Much Fun As They Used to Be,” Blanche agreed to host a group called Daughters of the South at The Golden Palace.

At least they were wise enough to drop “Confederacy”—but as it turned out, not wise enough.

In preparation, Blanche dressed up in her best Scarlett O’Hara regalia and hung a huge Confederate flag across the front desk. When Roland, the Black hotel manager played by a young Don Cheadle objected, Blanche explained it was just a representation of Southern pride that had nothing to do with racism, slavery, or White supremacy.

After facing off for most of the episode’s 22 minutes, Roland finally schooled Blanche on just why that common justification of an emblem of Black bondage was bull then and is bull now.

At last, she got it, proving you can teach an old character new awareness, even if, in Blanche’s case, it came nearly eight seasons late.

Source: particle news