“Bridgerton” (2020- ) is a US television show on Netflix based on the romance novels of Julia Quinn. Like Jane Austen’s love stories, it is set in Regency England of the 1810s, but one with a handsome Black duke! It is brought to us by Shonda Rhimes, she who gave us “Grey’s Anatomy” (2005- ) and “Scandal” (2012-18). It has just been renewed for a second season.
Regency England, the one in our universe, did not have a Black duke, handsome or otherwise. But it did have actual Black people (Sarah Baartman among them), got rich off of Black slavery, and had a queen, Queen Charlotte, who was part African by blood.
Queen Charlotte, circa 1784.
Cast: The Duke is played by Regé-Jean Page, who played Chicken George in the remake of “Roots” (2016). Lady Danbury, the mother figure in his life, is played by Adjoa Andoh. She was Martha Jones’s mother in “Doctor Who” in the late 2000s. Both are British actors. The rest of the cast is unfamiliar to me.
Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) and the Duke (Regé-Jean Page).
Lady Danbury:
“We were two separate societies, divided by colour, until a king fell in love with one of us.”
That is how “one of us” became queen, leading to the racial integration of England. Compare that to the actual England of the 2010s wherein a very light-skinned Black duchess (Meghan Markle) was a bridge too far (Megxit), where Britain has torn itself from the European Union to stop the immigration of fellow White people from Eastern Europe (Brexit), where period dramas like this are beloved, one suspects, because they present a mythical all-White-everything past – a trope “Bridgerton” upends.
Race: But what could have been sharp and profound commentary on race is mostly just turned into a sugarplum fantasy. It is colour blind in the worst sense – of mostly just ignoring the whole issue of race. One character does talk about how Blacks have to be exceptional to navigate the new Kumbaya England (pretty much the “twice-as-good” parental talk that also appeared in “Scandal”), but that is pretty much it. Little if nothing is said of slavery. The sugar of those sugarplums came from somewhere.
Asian characters: There were a few, here and there, but only one, South Asian, spoke. Briefly.
Symbolism without substance: Race was a twist added to Quinn’s lily-White novels, which is a wonderful idea, but it was largely wasted. But, maybe as with Black presidents and Black duchesses, even that little bit was going to be too much for many White people.
Colourism: As colour-blind as the casting seems to be, colourism still abounds. Good characters are generally lighter-skinned, evil or unimportant ones, darker-skinned.
Fashion: Anachronisms also abound. Just as Regency England did not have Black dukes, neither did it have zippers, polyester, corsets, magenta dyes, nor did it lack for bonnets. And the queen in 1813 did not wear her hair or dress like it was still 1761. It is not a profound mystery how she looked: we have paintings of her from that time.
Overall, though, it was fun to watch.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- The Roots remake
- colourism
- “I don’t see colour, I just see a human being”
- Black Britain
- The British through time: the last 10,000 years – not as lily-White as many suppose
- Dido Elizabeth Belle
- Sarah Baartman – same time and place as “Bridgerton”
- Meghan Markle
- Afua Hirsch: Brit(ish)
- black men, white women
572
Meghan wasn’t chased out because of her colour. It’s a lazy and ignorant narrative. Meghan was LOVED when we first heard about her. Feelings changed when she moaned about ‘living’ while on tour in the poorest continent in the world and when it became clear she wanted to leave Blighty for Hollywood. And I’m not sure what’s racist about leaving a white union lmao. If anything it’s xenophobic but, again, if you don’t live here then you’ll most likely fail to understand any reason deeper than ‘they don’t like others’.
And as for Bridgterton, it’s meant to be light entertainment with an inclusive cast. Not sure how much of an escape it can be if race is brought up. This reminds me of how POC actors are always asked questions about their race in interviews. Aren’t we tired? There’s a time and place.
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Rege’-Jean Page is a handsome devil.
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it saddens me that a black person chose to adapt this. the novel series makes light of the reality and now this will further skew the historical perspective
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“the novel series makes light of the reality and now this will further skew the historical perspective”
You are overthinking this. Look at it for what it is, female oriented porn. What I want to know is when will Shonda Rhimes make the black billionaire list?
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I am not overthinking this one. this is whitewashed history under the guise of representation.
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@ DurtVanDutch
…this is whitewashed history under the guise of representation.
Agreed.
Many people are ignorant of history and some take anything on tv or in the movies at face value. In a effort to integrate a cast, Black folk are shown doing and saying the most unlkely things at the most unlikely times in history.
There were Africans and people of African descent in England from Roman times. Some were free soldiers, diplomats, muscians, poets, dancers, servants and slaves. However, to tell their stories, Africa’s contributions to the world and the role of race, ethnicity and color would have to be discussed.
One that comes to mind is the very real story of Adolf Badin (1747-1822). Badin was a member of the Swedish court, avid book collector, diplomat and palace manager among other things.
https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/badin-adolf-1747-1822/
There were also a fair number of Africans, known as “Blackmoores” in Elizabethan England (1500s to early 1600s). Elizabeth I used the Africans as scapegoats during times of crisis. She issued proclamations against Africans in England in attempts to shift blame from the suffering caused by poor harvests, etc. onto the Africans. [Nothing new there.]
In 1596, Elizabeth I, wrote to the lord mayors of England’s major cities:
[In modern English: “…recently there have been various African brought into this country. There are too many of them here.”]
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/early_times/elizabeth.htm
Like Abagond wrote in this post, if this “history under the guise of representation” were honest, answers to the question of where “the sugar [for] those sugarplums” came from would be included. Honesty would further include scenes of Africans laboring in sugar cane fields under the sweltering sun on an island in the Caribbean.
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People, Rhimes is an entertainer, not a historian, color neutral casting, jarring initially, keeps black actors employed. It can be defended as a form of Brechtian distancing. “Brecht first used the term in an essay on “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting” published in 1936, in which he described it as “playing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience’s subconscious”.[1]”
Strangely, in Rhimes’s hand, it has the opposite effect, especially on Blacks.
“Like Abagond wrote in this post, if this “history under the guise of representation” were honest, answers to the question of where “the sugar [for] those sugarplums” came from would be included. Honesty would further include scenes of Africans laboring in sugar cane fields under the sweltering sun on an island in the Caribbean”
If Abagond really cared about history he’d write about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam , the Indian farmers’ struggle against their government and corporations working hand in hand, or the 1794 abolition of slavery by the French National Convention instead of this fluff.
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perhaps this “fluff” might be useful? The idea that “power” (Queen, Duke…etc) can be shared by non-whites and it won’t be the end of the world might be much needed imagery in an inward-looking xenophobic “West”?
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“perhaps this “fluff” might be useful?” Anything under the sun can be useful, but how likely is it? We have had a number of non-whites wielding power in the ‘real’ world. The result? more xenophobia a/k/a backlash.
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Upthread I wrote: “There were Africans and people of African descent in England from Roman times.”
Then I read Abagond’s fascinating article about The British through time: the last 10,000 years.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/the-british-through-time-the-last-10000-years/
Cheddar Man and Whitehawk Woman may not have been African per se, but they still had some recognizable African features and coloring. They were in the process of mutating, migrating and mingling.
Abagond, thanks for that link.
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well my english studies (major in college) gravitated towards romantic period, ie pre-victorian england, still this makes me cringe, and i watch british tv
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I watched part of the first episode. Once I saw where the plot was heading, I knew this wasn’t the show for me for many reasons.
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