It's time to overthink Bridgerton. Bridgerton is one of those cultural anomalies
where despite its many flaws, critics love it, audiences love it, and everyone including
people who didn't love it, wants it to succeed. And succeed it did. At
least, in the monetary sense. Since its release in December, Netflix announced
that the show was watched by 82 million households in its first 28 days - making it the
most-watched series on the platform to this date. Well when the show was announced in
November, people were pretty excited. It was serving us fantastical diversity
ala Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, offering an anachronistic twist on the
period piece in the vein of Hamilton, while delivering that escapist, Austenian smut
fantasy we’ve all been craving. Bridgerton is based on Julia Quinn’s early 2000s romance
novels of the same name, produced by American screenwriting legend Shonda Rhimes, and directed
by former Grey’s Anatomy writer, Chris Van Dusen. Now at first glance, the show has a very Rhimesian
touch with its supposed colourblind casting - a practice that Rhimes popularized in the early
2000s where race is not a consideration in either the writing or casting process, which results in
the kind of neutralized post-race universe that you see in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal.
Her colourblind casting has been largely praised for liberating racialized characters from their
socio-political constraints and allowing them to be whoever they want to be in a narrative. But
it’s also been met with a bit of criticism.In a 2015 essay, scholar Kristen J. Warner argued
that Rhimes’ process, intentionally or not, causes the least amount of discomfort to white
people while “providing an illusion that under liberal individualism, the marketplace will do
right by historically marginalized individuals.” Nonetheless, the colourblindness of Bridgerton
was a major appealing factor for audiences. It promised to be a show where BIPOC and POC
could see themselves represented on screen, running around ornate corridors in pretty
costumes, and simply sit back for some airy fun. This was poised to be an overall escapist
experience. Then this happened. "We were two separate societies, divided by color, until a king
fell in love with one of us. Love, your grace, conquers all. The king may have chosen his queen.
It may have elevated us from novelties in their eyes to now dukes and royalties, and at that
same whim he may just as easily change his mind." Hold up. Then I did some research. Turns out,
Chris van Dusen, the showrunner, was shocked that people thought his regency-era show where people
of all races live harmoniously amongst each other, could possibly be set in a post-race universe!e
harmoniously amongst each other, could possibly be set in a post-race universe! When asked about
whether Bridgerton was created with colourblind casting in mind, he said, “I feel like the word
colorblind implies that color and race was never considered.” No, in fact Van Dusen wants us to
know that his show is ripe with social commentary, going on to state in an interview for Shondaland:
"With Bridgerton I wanted to escape to this lush, beautiful, cinematic world, but I also wanted
to explore real topics like gender and class and race and sexuality — topics that are relevant and
important. And I think we’ve been able to do that with this show, and it’s something I want to be
able to do with all of my work. I wouldn’t be able to really be proud of something if I wasn’t saying
something meaningful about the world that we all live in." So van Dusen punked us - and in doing
so, unwittingly opened his show up … to criticism. The kind of political criticism that Shonda
Rhimes’ apolitical shows mostly evaded. Since the race of the actors was, in fact, integral
to the casting process, then these seemingly innocent casting decisions are now wrought with
serious implications, which are starting to come to the fore. And what makes this all the more
interesting is that the show is still marred by the issue that Rhimes’ colourblind shows were
criticized for - “undermining the diversity of [racialized] bodies through a laundering, or white
washing, of social and cultural specificity.” These black actors are filling the roles of
characters that were written to move about their surroundings as if they were
white - and the only attempt of the writers to invoke any sort of nuance into these
previously white characters is in this scene. Which leads to a lot of complications regarding
representation that are extraneous to the universe of the show. The only dark skinned actor occupies
a villainous role. There are no people of other races occupying roles in the main cast. This
alleged social commentary was never apparent in the promotional material for Bridgerton, is
never discussed by any of the white characters, and appears in the fourth episode only to never
come up again. And perhaps most egregious, the showrunners cast a Black man in a role where
he would be maritally raped by a white woman, and then they would later reward her for it.
Since the colourism and race baiting of the show have already been widely discussed and
articulated much better than I ever could... "so this type of discrimination shows up in all
aspects of life. But in film and television, I feel like colorism is kind of getting
out of control." I’m going to focus on two different issues I see with Bridgerton:
liberal escapism, and historical revisionism. This scene offers a very neoliberal take on race
relations. Now you might be wondering what I mean by neoliberal. Well if you haven’t heard me drone
on about it in my Parasite video, neoliberalism is an ideology that upholds economic growth as the
most necessary ingredient for human progress. It’s a modern extension of classical liberalism,
developed by theorists like Adam Smith, who believed that the state should have a minimal
hand in the economy. “Neo” liberalism, as we know it today, emerged after a period of economic
downturn and high public debt in the 1970s, and it was championed by conservative leaders
like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who promised that opening up the British and American
economies to the free market would accelerate economic growth. It’s like liberalism on speed.
And this process of deregulation and privatization fundamentally separated the individual from
the state. No longer did the government have a social responsibility to its people - it was
now up to us to grapple with the failings of society. it was now up to us to grapple with the
failings of society. This is famously the reason we say things like, “an idea, hard work, and
determination will get you anywhere” or when we look at homeless people and say “why don’t they
just get a job?.” Flouting that sort of rugged individualism that your boomer uncle tells you as
he sips on a lukewarm glass of milk with dinner. But what often isn’t talked about is how the logic
of neoliberalism uses this hyper-individualism to distract from social issues. In The Threat
of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism, David Theo Goldberg states: "It was but
a short step from privatizing property to privatizing race… It does not follow that
the state purges racism from its domain. Rather, the state is restructured to support the
privatizing of race and the protection of racially driven exclusions in the private sphere where
they are set off-limits to state intervention." If you’re confused, he means that since
neoliberalism has been the dominant ideology, discussions of race have slipped from the
public vernacular from being a product of our social systems, to a concern between
private individuals. In her own response to Goldberg’s argument, Susan Searls Giroux says:
"… greater freedom begets greater responsibility, deregulated markets and deregulated racisms were
by definition reflexively managed and accountable to no one. Responsibility was divested of
its social character; indeed, according to predominant neoliberal wisdom, there was ‘no
such thing as society’."We’ve seen it time and time again in movies like Crash, Greenbook, The
Blind Side, Driving Ms. Daisy, and so on - where race is relegated to this sort of interpersonal
phenomenon. One where some meanies are racist, but at the end of the day - love conquers all. "I
never had one before. What, a room to yourself? A bed." And it's in this one line that Bridgerton
becomes the sort of liberal fantasy that only Hollywood could produce. The show seems pretty
harmless compared to some of the other examples in this territory, since this clumsy moment
can probably be chalked up to bad writing. But since Bridgerton is so popular, we
need to consider its potential impacts. In trying to dance around a social commentary,
the showrunners suggest that the big heart of one white man has the capacity to end racism
as we know it in this universe. Now in my own research, I study voluntourism. You know, when
well-intentioned people travel to poor countries in the Global South, pose with orphans, and then
clog up your Instagram feed with pictures of it. A major concern with the voluntourism industry is
that it places too much emphasis on the emotional connection between the host community and the
volunteer. The idea that you can go to Tanzania and you can make a difference in that child’s
life! But this emphasis on individual emotions and impact completely glosses over the fact that
the child will continue to be poor after the volunteer leaves. Voluntourism makes us think that
by hugging an orphan we’re making a difference- never asking us to question why these countries
are poor in the first place - the reason being that the system allowing these organizations to
flourish is the very same one that continues to underdevelop the Global South. Now that’s enough
material for a whole other video - but this is the important takeaway: the voluntourism industry
distracts from the complex systems underlying global poverty by highlighting development
as an individual, emotional experience. And this is precisely the problem with how
Bridgerton approaches race. But hey, maybe we should give the writers the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe they tapped into that innate, but flawed, human instinct to individualize our problems.
when we think of gentrification, we think of those annoying yuppies who walk around sipping
overpriced bone broth. When we think of climate change, we think of that big family at the beach
who leaves all their trash behind in the sand. Volunteers hug orphans, thinking
this will make all the difference. We don’t want to have to think about the big
businesses that are buying out properties in low income neighbourhoods, or the unconscionable
waste it takes for Zara to keep us trendy, or the structural adjustment loan programs
that keep countries in the Global South impoverished. We don’t want to have to think
about these things, because it means confronting the dominant logic that our media has sold us
all these years. After all, The Beatles tell us All You Need is Love? Sanitized, liberal takes on
race relations are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. But when you realize that this one man with a big
heart in Bridgerton is actually King George III, a real historical figure, the waters get even
muddier. Bridgerton takes place in 1813 and presents a sort of metatextual account of
history - where our fictional characters co-exist with the very real historical
figures of Queen Charlotte and King George. Now the characterization of Queen Charlotte offers
an anachronistic version of the real figure, whose ancestry has been widely speculated to have
originated from a Black branch in the Portugese monarchy. Although this theory has yet to be
substantiated. And the issue isn’t at all how she’s portrayed, since Golda Rosheuvel delivers
one of the strongest performances on the show and has some of the best costuming. The issue is
that the real Queen Charlotte wasn’t married to a man who was willing to collapse the system of
racial oppression in the name of love. Actually, King George III and his son, the Duke of Clarence,
were major proponents of slavery, and staunchly opposed the abolitionist sentiments growing in
parliament and British society more broadly. In fact six of his sons stood in opposition to
the foreign slave trade abolition bill in 1806. During his reign, over 1.6 million people were
taken from Africa in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. And although the bill received royal assent
in 1807, this shouldn’t be attributed so much to George, who had ostensibly lost his mind by that
point, as it should to prominent abolitionists like William Wilberforce, as well as the success
of the Haitian revolution. Of course, many have argued that to say Bridgerton is historically
inaccurate is missing the point. But I think the point we’re actually missing is that the show,
in its clumsy writing, is historical revisionism. I made a similar argument in my Sofia Coppola
video, when I said that Coppola’s removal of an enslaved character from The Beguiled frames
the Confederacy as less egregious than it was. This was met with a large response in the comment
section, where people argued the very good point that we don’t need another depiction of
black women as downtrodden and enslaved, and that Coppola would be ill-equipped to handle
that topic. I definitely should’ve included that perspective in the video. Black women have
been overrepresented in downtrodden and either de-sexed or fetishized roles, as well as
hollow stereotypes like the “Strong Black Woman”. Black audiences have frequently voiced their
frustration with how frequently these depictions are produced - and even acclaimed. But I want to
ask this: if the goal is to stop over representing the uglier, more traumatic parts of the past
to make room for positive representation, why does Hollywood keep revisiting these
painful, politically fraught periods in history? Why did Coppola choose a text that’s set during
the confederate era, in a confederate state, which depicts confederate soldiers if she was
uncomfortable depicting the negative aspects of that history or bringing BIPOC writers in to
help her give more nuance to the Black characters? Why did van Dusen choose to shoehorn Black actors
into a problematic Harlequin, white romance novel, set in a metropole during the height of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, and keep the real figures of King George and Queen Charlotte,
if he wanted his show to include Black actors? AND WHY are we getting a FEEL-GOOD MUSICAL where
Hugh Jackman stars as P.T Barnum - feel-good philanthropist? Many of these implications
could be avoided if we set these stories in different universes with fictional characters. But
instead, Hollywood keeps churning out historical pieces and then actively erasing negative
histories in the name of so-called “progress”. Sidebar. Most of the time, when we do get
completely fictional universes, the oppression narrative is often displaced onto white male
protagonists who are oppressed due to fictional social hierarchies, and characters of colour are
relegated to being symptoms of societal decline. Now back to the video. In an article for The
Ringer, Alison Herman traces the multiple instances in which Disney and HBO have simply
taken racist films, like Song of the South and Gone With the Wind out of their catalogues
entirely. With respect to Disney she says, “This kind of self-absolution is typical
of Disney’s response to controversy. When the company stopped circulating Song of the
South after its final theatrical release in 1986, there was no announcement or explanation, let
alone an admission of fault.” She quotes Alfred Martin, a professor of Communications studies, who
says “Part of the particularly American issue with race and racism is that we never really deal with
the problem. What we want to do is map it over and make it go away… We never necessarily learn from
history. We only try to bury it. When we try to bury it, these corpses of our racist history just
keep coming back and coming back and coming back.” Even Hamilton, which is a renowned musical,
has come under scrutiny for simply taking out the uglier aspects from the lives of Alexander
Hamilton and his peers. In her review of Hamilton, historian Lyra Monteiro found that the musical
seemed to be praised for the fact that it reflected (quote) “Obama’s America” - with one
critic saying ‘this is the story of America then, told by America now’. Monteiro takes issue with
this language because critics seem to ignore the fact that America has never been a solely white
nation. BIPOC and POC, however subordinated, were there and played major roles in the lives of the
founding fathers and in the revolution.Instead, Lin Manuel Miranda seems to place a
greater emphasis on Hamilton’s supposed anti-slavery sentiments. Monteiro thinks
that this is a product of the fact that Miranda used Ron Chernow’s particularly
flattering biography as his only source. She says: "One wonders whether, had he employed
a person of color as his historian, Miranda would have been able to write a play that downplays
race and slavery to the extent that this one does. But there are few historians of color who work
on the founding fathers, let alone on Alexander Hamilton specifically—most are driven instead
by projects that chip away at the exclusive past typified by the cult of the founders."
Monteiro’s critique of the show was met with a lot of criticism - saying she missed the point, as
Hamilton isn’t meant to be historically accurate, it’s a metatextual fanfic. Interesting, this
is the same defense we get with Bridgerton. So I think a big question is: does the
historical revisionism in Bridgerton, or the historical erasure in The Beguiled and
Hamilton allow us to ever learn from history? How can we approach historical periods through the
contemporary lens of positive representation?I’m not sure I know the answer. And we can’t discount
the fact that these shows provide BIPOC and people of colour with the holistic depiction of
themselves that they’ve been deprived of for decades. The importance and effect of which is not
my place, as a white-passing person, to speak to. But why should holistic depictions only be found
in the shoes of white characters or figures? When asked about the omission of slavery in
Hamilton, Christopher Jackson answered: ‘‘The Broadway audience doesn’t like to be preached to.
... By having a multicultural cast, it gives us, as actors of color, the chance to provide an
additional context just by our presence onstage, filling these characters up." And herein lies the
crux of our problem. As Kristen Warner argues in an article she wrote for Film Quarterly, we as
an audience have fallen into the binary trap of negative and positive representation. For example,
an enslaved character is now coded as negative, whereas an independent business woman character
is coded positive. Warner explains: "The result [of the positive/negative binary] is the
production of thinly written characters of color with a mirage of depth added by audience
members and pop-culture critics who labor to thicken the characterizations in public
discourse. Discourse, for example, surrounding their importance to film and television history
gives these wavering characterizations a steady platform to lean against and be perceived as
solid and weighty." It’s true - Bridgerton, despite its myriad flaws and hollow
representations, has received critical acclaim. In “The Spectacle of the Other”, Stuart Hall,
also known as the father of cultural studies, examines the idea of representation. He explains
that no image can have a single meaning, but representational practice is an attempt to
intervene in the many potential meanings of an image and privilege one over the other.He finds
that when minorities are represented, they often fall into sharply opposed, binary extremes:
“good/bad, “ugly/excessively attractive”, “civilized/primitive,” and that often, attempts
to reverse negative representation just results in another extreme. A similar thing can be
said for Bridgerton and the other examples I’ve mentioned - where, in their attempts to sanitize
history for the sake of providing audiences with escapist, positive representation, they have
simply either erased real historical people of colour from the narrative, or taken out any of
the nuances that come along with those identities. What Hall wants is multiplicity
and complexity in representation. What these “wavering characterizations” may boil
down to is the fact that many of the writers rooms for these films and shows are majority white.
Shonda Rhimes may have produced Bridgerton - but Chris van Dusen is the true operator.And when
you look at the writers credits, you realize that there was only one Black person on the writing
team, Joy C. Mitchell - who wrote for 3 of the 8 episodes. Janet Lin, the only other person of
colour, wrote just one. And neither of them wrote episode 4. But this critique I’m offering here
falls into the very kind of individualized trap I mentioned earlier. It’s not as simple as
counting PoC on a board, since this can often lead to tokenization. When we defend white
writers for writing flimsy accounts of race, writing hollow PoC characters, or erasing those
characters altogether, we let them off the hook. The process of fighting systemic inequality
in the film industry shouldn’t only be about hiring more BIPOC and POC writers, leaving
it up to them to solve all of the problems. It should also be about pushing white writers
to do the work of unlearning their privilege. Writing what you know can only take you so far.
Rather than speaking for, we can learn to speak with. It could be that we’re getting this
positive/negative binary because well-rounded depictions of black people haven’t often seen
the light of day in a deeply unequal industry. It’s the reason intricately rendered, contemporary
shows like I May Destroy You are snubbed at award ceremonies. The establishment will give
awards to sad stories about black trauma, and profit exponentially for including
surface-level diversity in lazily written shows - and there’s no
room for anything in between. So Bridgerton gives us a liberal, cookie-cutter
discussion of race relations and actively re-writes the very dark history behind its
subjects. And I’m concerned that this insistence on purely visual progress, cherry picking
historical narratives, shoehorning Black actors and actors of colour into previously white
roles without making changes or adding nuance, deleting any existence of past problematic
material, and re-writing historical figures to appear less villainous, has the potential
to induce a sort of collective amnesia. As Hall states, “The problem with the
positive/negative strategy is that adding positive images to the largely negative repertoire
of the dominant regime of representation increases the diversity of the ways in which 'being black'
is represented, but does not necessarily displace the negative. Since the binaries remain in place,
meaning continues to be framed by them.” (275) Representation doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. By diversifying the writing rooms, asking
more from white writers, and acknowledging painful histories when necessary, Hollywood could
provide more well balanced and thoughtful media. At the end of the day, Bridgerton has a lot
of squandered potential. With a defter hand, they could’ve taken two clear directions
that would make this an incredible show. They could either commit to the Harlequin fantasy
and set the story in a completely fictional universe like Whitney Housten’s Cinderella, or
commit to the social commentary and dive into a more sociological story which asks “what would
the regency era look like if the trans-Atlantic slave trade had never happened and people of
all races co-existed peacefully in England?” Both of these options, along with
more careful casting decisions, might have given us more complex representation
while still offering a truly escapist experience. Bridgerton is a piece of liberal escapism. It’s
the sort of media made to please the masses by offering the most marginal, purely visual kind
of progress. It makes Hollywood execs feel comfortable by placing the responsibility for
social progress onto the individual, making us believe that we alone can solve racism by placing
one black woman at the top of the regime. In doing so, it paints a lovely, glossy veneer on history
and wraps it in a big, neat bow. Like many have said, not all media has to be serious or deep,
but that doesn’t mean it can’t be thoughtful. If they keep giving us these half-baked attempts
at progress and selling us the idea that “love conquers all”, and if we keep buying it, then
we’ll continue to need a reason to escape. This video is sponsored by Blinkist. Blinkist
is an audiobook app with over 3000 titles, which condenses key insights from the best
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