Bridgerton's Dilemma
Netflix Exposes Leftist Failings On Race,
Class, Feminism, Art, and Ethics
Netflix premiered Bridgerton on
Christmas Day, 2020. Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland company produced the series. Bridgerton
is based on bestselling author Julia Quinn's 2015
romance novels of the same name. Like Jane Austen's novels, Bridgerton
takes place during England's Regency
Era. George III, who once reigned over the American colonies, became
mentally ill. His son, who would become George IV, ruled as his regent. The
Regency Era is known as a time of elegance, luxury, and refinement.
Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) debuts
as a marriageable young woman by being presented to Queen
Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel). By the end of the eighth, hour-long episode,
Daphne is happily married to the handsome, passionate Simon Basset, Duke of
Hastings (Regé-Jean Page).
Bridgerton has a 92% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Critics call it "sharp-witted,"
"fizzy and fun," "a hoot," "glossy, glorious escapism,
a jolt of joy and romance," "handsome, lavish, and appealing,"
"sexy," "a Christmas delicacy," "brilliant," and say
it offers "a heady cloud of pleasure and true love set in an idealized,
more inclusive milieu … few fantasies are more inviting." "Bridgerton
Has Been a Top 10 Show in All but 1 of Netflix's 190 Countries," reports
The Wrap.
Viewers will immediately note that Bridgerton
is different from previous Regency romances. A&E's 1995 adaptation of Jane
Austen's Pride and Prejudice has long been considered the
gold standard. I don't remember any nudity in that series and very few
kisses.
The viewer is all of three minutes into Bridgerton
when the first scene of simulated sexual intercourse occurs. Anthony Bridgerton
(Jonathan
Bailey) is Daphne's oldest brother. His bare buttocks flex as he penetrates
his mistress. She, grunting in ecstasy, is pinned against a tree, in broad
daylight, in a pasture. Cows moo behind her. A liveried servant looks on
impatiently.
There are naked chests, breasts, and digital
stimulation – "Do you like this?" the recipient is asked. A man gives
a young woman detailed instructions in masturbation; later, she throws back her
head, opens her mouth, and grasps her silky bedsheets in one fist. He asks for
a full report of her progress in self-pleasure. Characters say the f-word and
the b-word. Simon practices coitus interruptus and mops up spilled bodily
fluids. At an orgy, two men have sex with each other. Later, one of the lovers
gives a speech about how much courage it takes to be gay. A duchess begins a
coy strip tease in front of liveried servants; servants listen in to their
masters' groaning. A man performs cunnilingus on a woman draped over the wooden
steps of a spiral staircase. Blood pools between the spread legs of a mother
who dies in childbirth. Here's something I never expected or needed to see in a
Regency romance: a close-up of a bloodied menstrual cloth.
While watching the sex scenes, I wondered
if Regé-Jean Page eats nothing but skinless chicken breasts and egg white
omelets. He is as toned, defined, and fat-free as a gay porn model. Dynevor, as
Daphne, writhes above Page. Each one of Dynevor's abdominal muscles moves with
the power and sleekness of a snake progressing leglessly across sand. Does she
do Pilates? I didn't feel arousal or involvement. "Muscles, beauty and
gratuitous sex do not chemistry create. Personality is sexy. Originality is
sexy," protests one of the most popular reviews of Bridgerton
at the International Movie Database. Another reviewer
dismissed Bridgerton as "Lightweight lowbrow trash … the sheer
quantity of gratuitous soft porn sex scenes ... maybe works in a certain
segment of the market, but I doubt that it will please a more discerning
audience."
Bridgerton did wring honest tears from me in one,
very brief scene. Queen Charlotte is summoned to dine with her husband, King
George. The pain of having a loved spouse who has gone mad is evident on her
pensive face. At first George converses lucidly, but he asks Charlotte about
their daughter, Amelia. In real life, George was disconsolate after Amelia
died of TB and erysipelas at age 27. In the TV series, Charlotte reminds George
that their beloved daughter is dead. George flies into an incoherent rage. It's
a heartbreaking scene.
There are gowns and cravats, squeaky
boots and lorgnettes, horses and carriages, gooseberry pie, suckling pigs, and
lady fingers – the cookies, I mean. Interiors feature gilded wallpaper, ceiling
frescoes, chaise-lounges, Persian carpets, and marble statues. I paused one
scene just to drink in window treatments and paint colors. Online
discussion records viewers' obsession with sumptuous period detail. One
protested anachronistic "riding boots with zips and snaps!" Another
protested "what is definitely the cheap, plastic, four-hole buttons you
can get on sale at Jo-Ann's Fabric stores!" Another was "bothered by
the white icing on the wedding cake and the white dress. As they should very
well know white dresses were only really brought into fashion by queen
Victoria" – and the cake icing should have been marzipan, not buttercream.
Bridgerton hands the car keys to women and never asks
for them back. Females and their needs drive the plot and dominate screen time.
Queen Charlotte, not King George, is the most important monarch. Lady
Whistledown, a female gossip columnist, is the puppeteer controlling all of
"the ton,"
that is, London high society. Who just got engaged? Married? Pregnant? How can
we meddle and scheme to fix or sabotage our friends or enemies? In endless
balls, Daphne lives out female fantasies to be the envy of every girl, and the desire
of every man. Men drool, duel, and fight over Daphne.
As in many romance novels, Bridgerton
depicts warm, respectful, mutually beneficial relationships between older women
and highly desirable young men. Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury) is 57. She is Simon's
rescuer and mentor. Lady Bridgerton is played by a 54-year-old actress. Her
husband is dead, and she must partner with her handsome eldest son, Anthony,
who is a father / husband surrogate.
Bridgerton endows Daphne with superpowers. Nigel
Berbrooke, a rotter with dirty hair, baggy eyes, and gray teeth, makes
inappropriate advances. Dynevor stands five foot five and weighs 110 pounds. She
is 25 but looks 12. She punches Berbrooke, knocking him flat.
There is a
controversial marital rape scene in Bridgerton. Simon reluctantly
accedes to Daphne's demand that they wed. He stipulates that he will never
father children. She agrees. Daphne climbs on top of him, and, against his
wishes, rapes him. As he realizes what is happening, panic flickers in his
eyes. He struggles to free himself and she is able to pin him down with a touch
of her hand. After it's over, real pain crosses his face. She climbs down,
"Daphne, Daphne, Daphne," he cries out, first in confusion and then
in anger. "What did you do? How could you?" he asks, his face
contorted. Daphne sneers at him and launches into a verbal assault, condemning
Simon for refusing to impregnate her. Simon pleads for her love. She storms
out. And yet all this ends happily. Daphne is Simon's teacher and savior. She
coerces him into both marriage and parenthood, and manipulates him into enjoying
both. Quite the message for young, female viewers, presumably the show's target
audience.
The scene from the book: "Looming
over him … Daphne felt the strangest, most intoxicating surge of power. He was
in her control … He was asleep … drunk, and she could do whatever she wanted … His
eyes pinned upon her with a strange, pleading sort of look, and he made a
feeble attempt to pull away. Daphne bore down on him with all her might."
Reverse the genders and tell me how that scene plays.
Black and Asian actors play major and
minor roles, including Simon, Lady Danbury, and Queen Charlotte. Charlotte's
multiplicity of powdered wings include one with tight, cornrow-style braids,
one with dreadlocks, and an Afro.
Colorblind casting
and cross-gender
acting are not new. Italian-American Espera de Corti and German-American
Heinrich von Kleinbach both famously played Native Americans. Charlie Chaplin
played a woman and Mary Pickford played a man. Bridgerton, though, is
part of an effort to use colorblind casting as an ethical statement and societal
corrective.
Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Queen
Charlotte, played
Othello in 2018. In that staging, Othello was a lesbian. Playing Othello,
Rosheuvel said, was "important to me as a black, gay, female actor. Some
men have a terrible fear of women, particularly powerful women. They would
prefer not to see change, and this Othello is part of change. She is a woman
who has power over all these men, all that testosterone. How does she negotiate
that? Then she goes further and brings her lover – Desdemona – into that arena.
It’s a scary thing to do." Rosheuvel
had previously played Shakespeare's Mercutio, another male part.
Adjoa
Andoh, a woman, has played Shakespeare's Richard II. Andoh is a reader (a
lay preacher) in the Church of England. In a
Facebook video, she says, "As in theaters, so in churches." One
can hear this to mean, "What happens in pop culture finds its way to, or
becomes, religion."
Andoh is the mother of a
"transgender son." When her child looks in the mirror and sees
"a girl's body," "he" knows it is "the wrong
image," Andoh says. "He is, indeed, a boy," and has been a boy
"since earliest childhood." What makes Andoh so sure that her child
is a boy? Her child has always liked football, Spiderman, and constructing
"complex Lego transformers." When she hit puberty, her daughter fell
into a deep depression. After watching a documentary entitled "The Boy Who
Was Born a Girl" she realized that she is really he. Andoh described the
torture her child endured when asked to wear the regulation uniform skirt to a
private school. It would be like asking a man to wear a skirt, she protested. Andoh
cited institutions that helped her, including the Tavistock Clinic, that has
since been mired in controversies and allegations
of harming children by rushing them to transition. Keira Bell, a former
patient who underwent medical procedures to transition from female to male, has since sued Tavistock.
Andoh bemoans "middle-aged,
middle-class, white men's" domination of culture. She wants more women and
POC in the arts. She advocates for this because being a woman is important and
being a woman brings a unique contribution. At the same time, she insists that a
human being with XX chromosomes, breasts, womb, and ovaries, and no penis or
testicles, is not a woman, but a man. Andoh advocates for humanity to become
"colorless, classless, tribeless, genderless." She asks, what if
"markers of belonging were meaningless?" Identity, she insists,
exists only to fuel the "transactions of capital and global power."
"We have been raised to supply the market" Conversely, when Andoh
attended her first meeting of children identified as transgender, she said,
"My son has found his people." And, as mentioned above, she condemns
"middle-aged, middle class, white men" dominating the arts.
Andoh is saying contradictory things. Some
identities matter, and some don't; some identities are elevated, and some
denigrated. It would be an abusive act to refer to her child as
"she." Asking her child, a student at a private school, to wear a
regulation skirt would be as horrific as asking a man to wear a dress. And yet
gender identity is fluid and merely a result of capitalism's brainwashing. We
must defy this by crossing gender barriers and becoming "genderless."
Her playing Richard II – and
wearing men's clothes – helped bring about this future golden age.
Her child's adopted identity as male is
all-important. The identity of the "middle-aged white men" who
purportedly dominate culture is all-important. Those white men cannot represent
women. And yet her daughter can represent men. And yet we are to become so
"colorless, classless, tribeless, genderless," and live in a society
where "markers of belonging were meaningless" that Othello can be a lesbian,
King Richard can be a woman, and Queen Charlotte can be black. But her son is
allowed to have "his people." Identity doesn't matter. Identity is
all important. Which is it?
Some
do claim that the
real Queen Charlotte was black. Given the many portraits
of her, this seems transparently untrue. Charlotte did not meet her husband,
King George, until their wedding day. Even so, their marriage was happy and monogamous,
as well as productive; they had fifteen children. King George opposed
abolition and during his reign 1.6 million enslaved people were taken from
Africa to the English colonies. It's hard to believe that the loving
husband of a black wife would have resisted
England's active and ultimately successful abolitionist movement.
I thought that ahistorical casting might
take me out of the story. It didn't. Regé-Jean Page is handsome and charismatic,
with the body of a fencer, a raspy boudoir voice, and a plummy accent. Page fits,
as hand in glove, his role of an aloof, aristocratic bachelor, sex god, and cad
transformed by Daphne into a Sensitive, New Age Guy. He cast that spell that
actors can conjure that suspends your disbelief and gets you lost in a story. It
was the ideology behind the casting choices that troubled me.
NPR's
Ailsa Chang interviewed Page. He made clear that Bridgerton
wasn't just about entertainment, but about improving society. Part of that
improvement was the introduction of black actors as aristocratic Englishmen;
another part was advancing women and lowering men. Page said that Simon is like
Clint Eastwood, Mr. Darcy, and Heathcliff. "All these men are hugely
emotionally stunted. That is their redemption arc." That is, they are
macho, and a woman comes along and fixes them.
As Page put it, "Where are we at
with discussing masculinity? How can I contribute to something of a feminist
lens to this? Part of that is bringing in this conversation that we have
contemporarily of masculine vulnerability and where the strength in that lies
and where the redemption in that lies and where what's appealing about that in
a romantic hero and what we're looking for in our lovers in the 21st century. I
think we're at a point in history where, generally, people consider themselves
to be feminists … I kind of tried to find my lane and do my part."
Of Bridgerton's colorblind casting,
Page says, "It's incredibly important that when we are indulging ourselves
in these kind of great, big Cinderella fantasies, that everyone gets to see
themselves as worthy of status and glamour and love and redemption … where you
can see yourself as rich, attractive and admirable is important for absolutely
everyone." Bridgerton, Page said, is "bringing in 21st century
perspectives to whatever it is they're doing and try and kind of, you know, put
some vitamins into pop culture."
So, Bridgerton doesn't want just
to entertain. It wants to improve us as people. It will do so through
colorblind casting. All that sex and wealth is not there just to boost
Netflix's ratings. It's there to preach us a sermon.
My mother was born in a river as her
mother took a break from working in the fields. Mom grew up in a rough-hewn house
her shepherd father built by hand. After arrival in this country, my mother,
one of the smartest human beings I have ever known, like
so many of her impoverished Bohunk fellow immigrants, cleaned houses. When
I got sick and could not go to school, she took me with her. I saw the
difference between the house we lived in and the houses of the rich, the foods,
the educations, the available respect. One hundred fifty-five years ago, after
the American Emancipation Proclamation, peasants like my family were finally
"liberated" from serfdom in czarist Russia.
A
quarter of a century ago, a boom in Jane Austen film adaptations began.
Back then, I was part of an online film discussion group. My forte were Golden
Age Hollywood flicks that featured tough working class girls who clawed their
way up through wit and grit. I'd watch anything starring Jean Arthur, Barbara
Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, or Irene Dunne. My fellow discussants urged me to
watch A&E's 1995 miniseries Pride and Prejudice. I griped that I had
zero interest in watching a bunch of rich, privileged Brits whine about trivialities.
My friends told me that the problem wasn't with Pride and Prejudice; the
problem was with me. Art might do what I had not allowed my religion to do: it
would expand me, so that I could appreciate a story about persons unlike myself.
My friends cited big, literary names like Sir Walter Scott, George Henry Lewes,
and Henry James. These authors rejected the idea that Austen was writing about
"trivialities," but, rather, insisted that her artistry was in penetrating
the subtleties and consequences of real life as lived by women like herself.
Chastised and competitive, I forced
myself to watch Pride and Prejudice, all five and a half hours of it,
three times. On the third viewing, I got it. Yes, rich Brits, just like poor Bohunks,
also have feelings. Yes, rich people's heartaches matter. Yes, rich people,
just like poor people, can feel trapped in their lives. Watching Pride and
Prejudice expanded my ability to feel compassion for persons unlike myself.
A&E's P&P also expanded my
aesthetic ability to appreciate quiet artistry that captures moments of life
that I had dismissed as "trivial." The first time I watched it, I
kept waiting for something to happen. I saw no action, no sex, no plot. The
Regency England of P&P is one of suppressed emotions and rigid social strictures.
Slowly but surely, I came to realize that something as simple as two people's
eyes meeting can have shattering consequences. There's a scene in P&P
that every fan adores. A girl plays piano, a woman mentions the name of a
man who hurt the girl's feelings years before, and Elizabeth Bennet, the
heroine, goes to the girl and turns the page of her music book. That doesn't
sound like much, but, to those sensitive to all the implications, it's a
heart-melting scene. It took concentration for me to appreciate the strength,
courage, and kindness exhibited by that heroine.
The ability to appreciate quiet art is
key to real feminism. Most women do live lives that are more domestic, more
internal, and more about feelings. Jane Austen's focus on the small, the quiet,
the quotidian, is truly feminist. Daphne punching and raping men is not.
I still have a chip on my shoulder, and
when I watch Regency-Era films, I don't focus on the buttons or the zippers or
the cake icing. I focus on the legions of poor people on whose heads the
wealthy characters of these films walk. In scene after scene, the rich inhabit
rooms where silent servants stand at attention, staring into space, waiting to
fulfill their master's every whim. Less visible, but no less present, are the
farmers working land from which the aristocrats profit. In most films, the
African slaves whose bodies provided Regency England with much of its wealth
are unmentioned.
Now Bridgerton comes along and
fixes all that. The male lead and the queen are both black. This "solution"
reminds me of the phrase "Black Lives Matter." We have learned the
hard way that those words do not mean what they say. In fact only some black
lives matter, that is, the black lives that can be exploited to serve a
Marxist, anti-Western narrative. BLM shed zero tears for David Dorn, a veteran black
police officer killed by a black looter while Dorn was attempting to shield his
friend's business. BLM demonizes anyone who tries to talk about the
astronomical number of blacks shot by young black men.
White supremacy elevates skin color to a
virtue. Affirmative Action does the same, thus damaging
poor white and Asian college applicants. Any real solution to college
accessibility would address all disadvantaged college applicants, not just
those with the preferred skin color. Ironically, wealthy and foreign-born
blacks are often the ones who benefit from a focus on skin color alone.
Just so, there is no real liberation in Bridgerton's
colorblind casting. Rich English aristocrats in Bridgerton still live
their lives surrounded by poor people who must treat them as godlings.
"Her happiness will be your greatest concern," Daphne is assured
about one of her servants. A bored Queen Charlotte watches a contortionist
attempting to entertain her by assuming a painful-looking balance on her
twisted neck. Another servant mentions something about a scullery maid.
Charlotte protests, "I don't care about a dish wench. I want to be
entertained."
Years ago, my friend Francesca and I
were leaving the Paramount
theater in Oakland, California after seeing the 1954 Bing Crosby musical White
Christmas. Seeing a classic on a big screen in a refurbished art deco
theater was heavenly. Francesca was subdued. I asked her what she thought.
"There was no one like me onscreen," she said. She's black.
I wanted to say, but didn't, "Francesca,
identity politics renders all white people the same. You assume that I look at
a goddess like Vera Ellen and see myself. I'm taller than many men and I have
the shoulders of a football player. Big, strong girls have never been the
heroines, and we never will be. We are the villains, the laughingstocks, the
object lessons in how not to be female. There is a tall, big-nosed woman in
White Christmas. She's a meddling housekeeper who sabotages the lead
couple's romance. Has any respectable female lead in a big-budget movie before The
Apartment's Fran
Kubelik had a Slavic last name? So, no, Francesca, there's nobody like me
in this movie or many others. But I can still enjoy it. That's how art works."
Regé-Jean Page says, "It's
incredibly important that in these Cinderella fantasies, that everyone gets to
see themselves as worthy of status and glamour and love and redemption."
That's hogwash. Bridgerton's servants are always older or plumper or
taller or have larger noses or smaller breasts than Phoebe Dynevor. Dynevor weighs
sixty pounds less than the average American woman. The bad guys in Bridgerton
are who the bad guys always are in popular entertainment: the ugly people.
The bad family in Bridgeton is made up of overweight, big-nosed,
tackily-dressed, relatively lower class gingers, that is, redheads. Yes, ginger abuse is a thing, and
there are mountains of research that testifies to the price women pay,
socially, economically, and emotionally, for being fat. The villain of the
series (Nicola Coughlan) is a fat, redheaded girl who destroys her entire
family out of a fit of selfish pique. Lord Rutledge (Michael Culkin) is
referred to as a "walking spittle factory with very large teeth."
Rutledge is the fattest, oldest, ugliest character in the series. His hair is
conspicuously dirty. He's balding and has wattles. He's bad. Why is he bad?
Because he's old, fat, and ugly. Really. There is no other character
development. His physical unattractiveness is enough to render him a monster.
The desperation of poor whites is every
bit as okay to the Woke as it is to those who praise Bridgerton as a
liberatory breakthrough. Just so, "Black Lives Matter," but when
black leftist Van Jones said that leftists should act as if poor whites' lives
matter as well, leftists pilloried him for it. There is a scene in Bridgerton
that made me wish I could throw a copy of Das Kapital at Shonda Rhimes.
Mrs. Featherington takes Marina, played by a black actress, to a slum. Marina
is pregnant without a husband and is resisting those husbands that Featherington
has chosen for her. The slum visit is a warning. You could end up here. Poor
whites slog through a filthy puddle. Rats crawl across the street. Children
starve. Ramshackle dwellings sag. That was the reality of life in Regency
England: nasty, brutish, and short. Life expectancy was 35 years. Poor people
exist in Bridgerton to serve the rich, as servants, and as object
lessons of how bad life can be.
What, then is the solution? How can Shonda
Rhimes create high-quality Marxist art that will kick the revolution into gear
and liberate the masses?
Just as human nature gets in the way of
Marxism per se, human nature gets in the way of Marxist art. I don't want to
see a face and body like mine dance with Danny Kaye over a
pretend oceanside dock. I want to look at Vera Ellen, a woman so thin it's falsely rumored
that she killed herself with anorexia. I don't want to see a movie that
realistically depicts the life of a cleaning woman. I've lived that life. I
want to watch pretty people in fabulous clothes acting out my fantasies of
romance, wit, and success. I don't watch narrative films to be lectured by my
betters. When peasants gathered in huts across pre-modern Europe, they didn't
tell fairy tales that reflected their limited lives. They told tales of Jack, a
poor boy who, through pluck, won a giant's fortune. Cinderella began in ashes
and ended a queen.
Human nature dictates that we crave narrative
entertainment through which we vicariously live lives of power, privilege, and
superiority. We don't want to watch Soviet films about collective farmers. We
don't want to watch movies based on Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel, The
Jungle, depicting Polish immigrants being turned into sausage meat in
Chicago's meat-packing plants. Put three strangers in a room and they will
determine who is the best looking, the smartest, the fittest, and the richest.
Marxism will never rescue us from hierarchies. We want art that allows us to
imagine ourselves at the top of the inevitable hierarchy. Bridgerton does
nothing to challenge the hierarchy. It just changes the tint of one man at the
top. That's not revolution; that's not ethics. That's window-dressing.
Golda
Rosheuvel said that casting her as Queen Charlotte was "clever"
because "Putting a person of color at the top of the triangle allows you
to expand the boundaries." Not at all, Golda. There have always been
powerful people of color. Mobutu Sese Seko, the Duvalier family, the Aztecs,
the Incas, Chinese emperors, Indian Brahmins, are just a few. It was African
royalty who facilitated the sale of the African poor into slavery – and indeed
it was Polish aristocrats who profited from the enserfment of my ancestors.
The "triangle" Rosheuvel
refers to is a pyramid structure. Such structures are an unavoidable part of
the human condition. Lucinda Elliot
claims that 1.5 percent of the British population was gentry; only 300 men, out
of a population of nine million, had titles. Bridgerton wants us to care
about and identify with its aristocratic leads, and to regard the surrounding
servants frozen in obedience as mere wish-fulfillment fantasy. "Wouldn't
it be cool if I had maids to cater to my every whim?"
Art, no less than political movements,
that attempts to defeat human nature will always feel didactic and alienating.
Rhimes knows this truth and lives this truth. If she really wanted to make
Revolutionary art, she could have adapted Longbourn.
Jo Baker's 2014 novel tells P&P from the point of view of the servants. But
Rhimes didn't give her viewers a realistic view of the life of a black person
in Regency England. Rhimes gave her viewers a long, hot bath in lust, gluttony,
narcissism, greed, and materialism, with no redeeming virtue whatsoever. Watching
Bridgerton is the aesthetic equivalent of swallowing a pillowcase full
of Halloween sugar. I do not begrudge her or her viewers their wallow. What
bugs me is her team's insistence that sticking Regé-Jean Page, a gorgeous black
man, into the lead somehow makes Bridgerton high-minded art. Rhimes,
like a calculating Regency debutante, flaunts virtue as just another showpiece
for sale.
This version of ethics reminds me of a
sorry theater that took place on Facebook after George Floyd's killing sparked
national outrage. A few of my rich, white, liberal Facebook friends suddenly
stopped posting about their extensive gardens, their vacation cruises, their
award-winning endeavors. "I am so sad for black people! I am so angry at
bad, bad, bad white people!" They were lauded for humanitarianism. None of
them, as far as I know, posted about actually doing anything to advance any
black person. These Facebook posts, and Bridgerton's colorblind casting,
are a way to use a black skin as a badge of virtue, without any personal
sacrifice to earn that badge.
Leftists like to bash Gone with the
Wind as a Confederate Lost Cause relic. They are partially correct, but Gone
with the Wind is also a masterpiece. I couldn't care less about the
Confederacy, and I skim through those passages quickly. My Gone with the
Wind tells the gripping tale of a spoiled coquette who, through war, siege,
death, and her own clueless self-sabotage, loses everything she loves, and yet
learns how to take care of others and bounce back from catastrophe. The only
lesson Daphne learns is how to masturbate. The same folks uncomfortable with
the affectionate relationship between Scarlett and Mammy are not protesting Bridgerton's
poor white servants who announce that pleasing Daphne is their life's goal.
Regé-Jean Page says that Bridgerton is
feminist. "You are a man therefore you have everything. A woman has
nothing!" Eloise whines to her brother. Eloise is meant to be an
adolescent girl, but she's played by a thirty-one-year-old actress with a
husky, Tallulah Bankhead voice.
Daphne's domination of Simon isn't
feminism. It's merely the photographic negative of features feminists protest
in men. Men rape – so Daphne can rape. Men tell women what to do – so Daphne
can force a man to be a husband and father, though both are the last thing he
wants.
Simon says to Daphne, "I do not
want to be alone. I know that now. And what I do not know is how to be the man
you need me to be, the man you truly deserve." Daphne generously instructs
Simon in how to be the man she truly deserves. Now put those words into the
mouth of a female character who allows herself to be manipulated by a man. The
lines would become notorious; some would boycott the program.
1995 saw five
major Jane Austen adaptations. This began a stampede, including Pride
and Prejudice and Zombies. P&P depicts a world where, to have access to
sexual contact that produces legitimate heirs, men must pay attention to women,
look at and listen to women, and even dance with women. That women flocked to
Austen products in the nineties was a slap in the face to the Sexual
Revolution. Women were tired of Erica Jong's "zipless
f---s." They wanted art that conjured a world geared to women's
intimacy needs. The fantasy world of A&E's P&P, the silent, chaste
courtship of Elizabeth and Darcy, met that need.
Bridgerton is less revolutionary than A&E's
P&P. Daphne, the upper class, pretty heroine, is indeed courted chastely.
She loses her virginity only on her wedding night, in the sixth episode. Not so
for lower class women. There are prostitutes, mistresses, and nude models. They
smile while servicing their upper class clients. One could conclude that they
chose that life. Marina, the girl who gets pregnant out of wedlock, is treated
horribly by Bridgerton. She is miserable, alone, and humiliated again
and again. After multiple frustrations, she is forced to marry a man she does
not love. She might as well be wearing a scarlet letter. Siena, Anthony's
mistress, is a conniving, heartless nymphomaniac. Bridgerton has as much
contempt for loose girls and poor "working girls" as any religious
fanatic.
Jane Austen was a Christian. See here,
here,
and here.
Her books are not overtly religious, but Christianity is the ethical
background. In A&E's P&P, Elizabeth Bennet constantly wears a ruby
cross pendant. You
can purchase a replica. Christianity is absent from Bridgerton, except
for Daphne's brief church wedding. Bridgerton's virtue is found in its
identity politics.
The left focuses on identity politics so
intently that any choice a filmmaker makes re: race is open to attack. In Bridgerton,
an abusive, absentee father is black, a girl pregnant out of wedlock is
black, and a man who grew up without a father is black. A normal person will
understand that there is no message in those casting choices, but those
obsessed with identity politics are not normal, and they will see a malicious
pattern at work. So, no, colorblind casting has not spared Bridgerton from
criticism. Three of the main "black" stars are actually mixed race,
and relatively light-skinned. The identity police have noted this, and they are
angry.
Simon's abusive father is dark-skinned
and the "worst
person in the show," protests Carolyn Hinds, a black film critic.
Will, played by a black actor, drops out of the plot. He should have had more
screentime, even though he's only a secondary character. White people purposely
selected light-skinned blacks because white people, including the people who
made Bridgerton, are all racist and can accept only light-skinned
blacks.
The black actors have "Eurocentric
features." Daphne is nothing but a "white savior," rants
another
critic. And
more: "The only Black leads allowed are light-skinned. Their colorism
problem is exhausting." "Sprinkling in light-skinned blackness isn't
enough."
What would be enough? Nothing. Cultural
critics Douglas Murray and Tom Holland, both atheists, have observed that with
Christianity as cultural background, we had two tools to deal with human
failing. Original sin said that everyone was a sinner. No one could pretend to
be superior to another in this regard. Confession and divine forgiveness
offered a route back into society after one had done wrong. Woke does not allow
these features. Whites are always guilty. We must all be aggrieved all the
time; we must all shame and browbeat each other; we must all hang our heads.
Bridgerton has been lambasted
for having only a quick scene with gay sex, without offering a more developed
gay subplot. Bridgerton "lacks meaningful
representation" of gay characters. Such representation, of course,
would also not be enough. As an IMDB reviewer
put it, Bridgerton "is not that bad after a few glasses of
wine. I enjoyed watching a period piece with a racially diverse cast. However,
if you're going to get rid of racism why not also get rid of misogyny, bigotry,
and classism?" A Woke-ster's work is never done.
I extend this invitation to those who
insist that casting black actors in Bridgerton "injected
vitamins" into pop culture. Make a series as costly, lavish, and heavily
promoted as Bridgerton. In this new series, cast a white actor as an
enslaved person in the antebellum South. If identity really is suddenly
infinitely malleable, as Andoh and John Lennon's "Imagine" propose,
then let's prove our commitment to the cause. The antebellum enslavement of a
person with majority European, Caucasian ancestry would not be ahistorical. See
these photos.
Millions of Europeans were enslaved by African and Eurasian Muslims; see here,
here,
and here.
If the real message of colorblind casting is that skin color is meaningless and
viewers should accustom themselves to getting past it – a message I wholeheartedly
endorse – then let's apply it when telling the story of slavery. If it is
important to have a woman Othello, then let's demand a high budget feature film
that depicts rape and its aftermath. The lead can be played by a man playing a
woman.
Again, I'm not protesting colorblind or
gender-crossing casting. I'm protesting hypocrisy. Identity doesn't matter,
till it does. Playing with Legos doesn't make a girl not a girl, until it does.
We should respect all genders and races equally, except, of course, straight
white men.
Danusha Goska is the author of God
through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery