Diversity and History

What harm is there, you might ask, in masses of women coming home from work, getting the kids to bed and then sitting down with a plate of biscuits to enjoy a bit of fluffy, fanciful, ahistorical bodice-ripping pseudo-Austen drivel that comes across like Pride and Prejudice if it were directed by Wes Anderson, from a script cobbled together by a bunch of Kindle Direct indie authors and second year feminism and gender studies students? And what further harm, you might ask, might be incurred from such hard working and decent ladies indulging in perving for a bit at the fit and hunky lead, then slipping into the bathroom afterward to bring themselves to a state of quaking bliss with the showerhead whilst envisaging themselves clutching the lead’s firm buttocks in their tight-fitting breeches?

In the context of braindead lowest-common denominator slush for the mass streaming market, it probably doesn’t matter too much.

What might matter a little is that, these days, we’ve pretty much passed a tipping point, where the presence of coloured actors and actresses in glaringly incoherent historical contexts has transitioned from being a kind of audacious in-your-face progressivism, to a normalized hardly noteworthy phenomenon, where it would be considered uncool and even dubious or reactionary to even comment on it. We’re not all the way there yet, but the momentum is clearly in that direction. Given how rapidly this has all unfolded, its extraordinary that there hasn’t been much sophisticated pushback, or even dialogue, about such a monumental shift with such huge implications for the future of entertainment – and by the future, I mean the past. The imagined past of Bridgerton, and David Copperfield, to the very real past of Anne Boleyn.

The question is – how are we supposed to digest this contextually? In some of these shows, we’re being asked not only to suspend our historical understanding of coloured people centuries ago in England, which is already something of a stretch, given we all know the relative rarity of such people through vast swathes of Anglo-Saxon history, and the lowly positions they would have held socially, as well as the outright dismissive contempt in which most would have been held, especially in the context of intensely prescribed conventions of hierarchy, marriage and status. Once we’ve put in this effort, we then have to believe that the white characters from two hundred years ago are comporting themselves in an even remotely authentic way, as if black people at courtly dances were a common feature of the social circuit, and that black women, in particular, were part of the aristocratic establishment. Or is it that, we’re supposed to accept that it is sensible to crashland an aspirationally post-racial contemporary society into the middle of Georgian life, so that the white characters are so bizarrely enlightened that they don’t figuratively see colour? But just as we’ve signed up to this surreally indulgent reimagining, the new series of Bridgerton hits us with a pair of eligible sisters who are openly exotic, coming from the subcontinent, at a time when India was being taken over and sucked dry by an English mercantile class, with the blessing of English society who considered the natives of that far off land a somewhat lesser and certainly irrelevant people. And yet, taking a deep breath, subduing every last vestige of common sense, historical accuracy, context and narrative judgement, we are now supposed to reimagine, for the sake of lazily-constructed, mass-market bland entertainment, that this is a sensible premise, with all of this undertaken in a candy-coloured Georgian England that is a bastardized fever dream of Jane Austen, but is in fact so shamelessly a vehicle for identity politics and empowerment, that Jane Austen herself, were she to watch five minutes of it, wouldn’t know what the fuck was going on.

Also, it could be noted that many of the same folks who have adopted a disparaging view of the British past, and the British empire, seem to have no issue with sitting in front of their telly and reveling in the heritage, the trappings, the culture and the social climbing to wealth and position of a bygone age that was largely underwritten and financed by the very imperial antics they claim to want to deconstruct.

Why is this racial-historical fantasy reimagining stuff such an English thing? I suspect much of it is to do with the fact the Americans can’t really do it - all things synonymous with gallantry, old-world charm and genteelism are also synonymous with the old south, or the wild inequality of New England during the gilded age. Also, America never had hereditary titles, the dukes and duchesses and earls and ladyships which is more properly the stuff of escapist fantasy historical fiction.

Is the suggestion that English people of West Indian, Indian or Pakistani descent are more culturally integrated into the idea of Englishness and England identity than say African American or Latino American’s? Is it that, since much of American history and its key historical episodes, and therefore much of its literature is derived from subjugation and prejudice of black people, so therefore the black adoption of white characters is less permissible and too full of jarring ironies? Too explicitly out of synch?

The suggestion here would be that English people of West Indian, Indian or Pakistani descent migrated much later in the piece – more of a post-war wave, which certainly met its counter waves of bigotry and open racism, but which, after a generation or two, has assimilated to the point where their own sense of identity is significantly or overwhelmingly English, and having gone through the English education system and experienced Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen the only particular differentiation for actors is skin hue, which therefore is a superficial distinction, and it shouldn’t really matter on screen?

If that’s the basic gist then I sympathize with that a lot – it makes sense to me. If such actors and actresses have been through college acting courses, and RADA or other theatrical companies and don’t see the point of being hemmed in to certain roles simply on account of the levels of melanin in their skin, then that is a totally fair perspective.

But there are counter-perspectives. Period or historical dramas are hugely popular right now, so there are significant profile building and credit-gaining opportunities and paychecks available in that sphere. But its only one sphere – there are plenty of roles available for someone of such a background in series and films in contemporary settings; and such roles would do at least as much for dramatizing and exploring the complexities of lives of people of colour as the gaudy period trash clogging up everyone’s screens.