Vareen Ismail
Welcome to the culture wars of Bridgerton.
It might seem like a fun romance show where you can let go and escape the stresses of modern life with a warm hot chocolate close at hand, but your eyes have deceived you. Bridgerton heralds the end of western civilisation due to colour-blind casting. You only had yourself to blame Shonda Rimes when you casted a ridiculously hot Black man, Rege-Jean Page, as the Duke Simone Basset. He is the love interest of Daphne Bridgeton, played by talented actress Phoebe Dynevor, who happens to be White. A Black man staring alongside a White woman in a romance! Someone call the KKK!
Unfortunately, as soon as the Netflix trailer dropped Bridgerton’s comments section was far from prim and proper. It was besmirched by anti Semitic Neo-Nazi venom. They accuse Netflix of incorporating colour blind casting to falsifying history and further modern society’s multicultural agenda resulting in the penultimate goal of white genocide.
You see dear reader, Netflix isn’t a multimedia company that pumps out a constant stream of interesting shows that blink out of existence after one season and really crappy, nostalgic teen romcoms. Netflix is actually social engineering us to hate White people.
However, some of these people, who have nothing to do with the alt right or Neo-Nazis, just really care about historical accuracy. They think it’s wrong to portray a rosy diverse picture of the past and Blackwash history glossing over the historical struggles of non-White people. There were no Black people in the aristocracy of Regency England, and even today it’s hard to tell apart the British aristocracy from each other. One thing that’s for certain: they’re all related.
The original Bridgerton books published by Julia Quinn were comprised of an all-White cast of characters. The first book, The Duke and I, which forms the basis for season one of the show, was published in 2000. Race was never a question in the books and at first I thought it wouldn’t be a question in the show as well.
I was content to lay back and be sucked into this alternative Regency race blind world like the 1997 Cinderella. See, unlike some people’s insistence that seeing Black people in a Netflix romance serious breaks their immersion, I was very willing to be serenaded by orchestral Taylor Swift anthems that were defiantly not present during Jane Austen’s time.
The Historical Romance genre has never been historically accurate. It is filled with dukes and duchesses on every street corner, feminist heroines and heroes who are willing to form equal partnership with their wives, when in reality life for women in Regency England no matter her status was far from a fairy tale.
An upper-class man would never lower himself by marrying a servant which takes place within the Bridgerton books. Unlike Romance land, ‘Happily Ever After’ was not guaranteed and women were legally seen as their husband’s property. Netflix was just following the grand old tradition of completely ignoring the harsh realities of Regency England and just added people of colour. And that would have worked just fine, until Bridgerton started talking about race.
As soon as Bridgerton brought race into play the world looked less like a regency fantasy and more reminiscent of Get Out. This is when Bridgerton‘s colour blind casting becomes problematic and reeks of Pastel Progressivism.
The actions of Simon’s abusive father are made understandable if Black people have only recently been given power and equal footing to their white counterparts. The actions of Daphne’s older brother Anthony can be seen in a less favourable light.
Instead of being the protective older brother Anthony could be seen as racist. Simone may be good enough to be his friend but not good enough to be the husband of his white sister. Bridgerton opens a can of worms in an effort to be woke, but puts in no work to tackle the issue of race head on, instead preferring to leave it as window dressing to entice a younger, progressive, and more racially diverse audience to watch the show.
Bridgerton is also compromised by the scandal of colourism. Colourism is when people of lighter skin tones in non-White ethnic groups are given more privilege and preferential treatment than people of the same ethnic group with darker skin tones.
In Hollywood and Netflix shows we see this negatively affect Black women with darker skin tones such as not being given lead roles in film and television.
In Bridgerton the prominent Black female characters are played by lighter skinned biracial women. Lady Danbury is the only prominent dark skinned female character however she is relegated into a ‘magic negro’ role and does not have a compelling storyline of her own. Maria Thomson’s storyline descends into tragic mulatto trope.
This is a problem that arises when you try to cast people of colour into White storylines that were never designed to explore the experiences of people of colour. This can be seen in A Streetcar Named Desire that was held in Manchester Royal Exchange in 2016. Sharon Duncan Brewster a Black woman played Stella and Maxine Peak – a White woman – played Blanche, Stella’s sister. This prohibits the audience from fully engaging with the play extracting its complex layered themes due to colour blind casting. One of the major themes of A Streetcar Named Desire is the decaying Old South which is lost on the audience if they can clearly see a Black woman playing Stella, the sister of Blanch and one of the heirs to a former plantation house.
There are no easy answers to this predicament, since BAME actors have as much right and talent to play these complex roles. In Britain many famous actors have gotten their start in period dramas set in the Victorian or Regency eras such as Colin Firth, Helen Bonham Carter, and Tom Hiddleston.
It is foolish to believe that the Alt-right care about these complex discussions surrounding the issues of colour-blind casting. The Alt-Right aim is to infiltrate these online fandom spaces to proliferate their toxic Nazi ideology to younger audiences disguised as critiques of media.
As an aspiring culture critic and journalist this makes my job harder since I have to sift through bullcrap from good faith criticism. We have seen it with Star Wars, She-Ra and the Princess of Power, and the new Doctor Who. There are grown men on the internet complaining how the new She-Ra Adora who is 16 is not drawn feminine enough – which translates to not catering to the sexual viewing pleasure of adult men.
And why should she? She-Ra and The Princess of Power is aimed at young girls who are 11-14 not adult men! Apparently female characters drawn age appropriately is part of conspiracy to destroy womanhood, thereby destroying civilisation as we know it.
It starts off by watching a harmless video on why the new Star Wars bad, which is a reasonable opinion to have. You watch another Star Wars video, but this time it contains the word SJW just a little too much. The YouTube algorithm keeps bombarding you with content.
Then the algorithm recommends you Alt-Right content sucking you deeper into the pipeline until you lose all empathy for your fellow human being. Tech companies don’t care as long as you keep watching and they keep racking in the ad money. Hopefully Bridgerton’s second season, coming out on January 21 2022, will be a much more enjoyable viewing experience.
Feature image courtesy of Radio Times. Image licence found here.
