The Patently Racial Politics of Bridgerton’s Racial Utopia
(TW: racism, fat-antagonism, sexual assault, colorism, and spoilers)
Like tens of millions of viewers around the world, I treated myself to Season One of Shondaland’s adaptation of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series as a reward for surviving the year 2020. Always somewhat behind the curve when it comes to popular tv and movies, by the time I actually tuned in to the series I was already aware that some viewers’ critical takes on the show. Never a fan of Shonda Rhimes’ penchants for monologue and oversexed (literally) melodrama, I was undeterred; my standards for entertainment were low during my tenth month of confinement. My young neighbor had just died of a sudden, possibly COVID-induced heart attack, and so any distraction would do.
I watched the entire season in two sittings. The writing wasn’t always perfect, Daphne Bridgerton’s bangs were hideous, and Ariana Grande as 19th-century chamber music was weirder than weird, but if, like me, you’ve devoured Downtown Abbey, The Crown, or other British-themed period series, Bridgerton makes for fun, opulent, decadent, fantastical viewing. Whether I will tune in to future seasons is an unsettled question for me, however, and here is why:
The very first week of 2021 provided America with a painfully palpable reminder of the power of media, of platforms and imagery; of just how political — and how consequential — the representation of views and ideas in popular media are for viewers, who may be influenced by those ideas and symbols. The Capitol Hill insurrection of January 6th was the culmination of years of media messaging to Americans deeply invested in white supremacy, patriarchy, and gun culture, communicating to them that they were under attack and needed to fight back by attempting to overthrow the American government.
A couple of weeks earlier, and way across the political and cultural spectrum, Bridgerton’s release would be celebrated precisely because of Shonda Rhimes’ role, as a Black woman, as executive producer of the series, and because Bridgerton was to be a multi-racial Regency romance in which Rhimes takes the liberty of centering Black women as queens and aristocrats so as to render race irrelevant. Bridgerton was to be a celebration of #Blackgirlmagic. After a year of an intense social movement for Black lives, it is not difficult to understand why viewers would be intrigued by, and attracted to, a series offering up the dream of racial utopia. More difficult to understand is why a production house known for multicultural casting and scenarios in which the characters have ninety-nine problems but race ain’t one, used an opportunity for fantasy to reify real, and harmful, anti-Black tropes.
The regressive themes in Bridgerton are myriad, and not limited to race: The (only) plus-sized female supporting character is portrayed as vengeful, undesirable, and miserable; and the viewers are shown that disability has no place within nobility — that it is something that must be vanquished instead of embraced. The series is also wildly heteronormative, with same-sex desire treated as marginal and unacceptable even as extra- and pre-marital heterosexual sex is celebrated. Bridgerton also completely banalizes patriarchy: normalizing unhealthily gendered divisions of domestic labor; and limiting the role of women to wife and mother, spinster, or slut. Disturbingly, the show condones marital rape and forced paternity, and that it does so within an interracial sexual relationship adds additional degrees of cringe-worthiness to a toxic dynamic. It is entirely uncritical of the landlord-serf relationship, or the structurally unjust nature of land-based vulture capitalism. With respect to race, anti-Blackness is not Bridgerton’s only flaw. For example, despite the series’ setting in imperial Britain, and notwithstanding Shondaland’s emphasis on diversity, there is no inclusion of South Asian or other people of color. And yet, Bridgerton’s most fatal race-related flaws are rooted in anti-Blackness, in spite of its inclusion of so many Black characters.
The colorism and featurism on display in Bridgerton are the show’s most noticeable vices. Dark-skinned Black characters with pronounced African features in Bridgerton are not absent; rather, they are present, either as silent maids and servants; or, as a brutishly physical boxer in the form of Will — the sidekick to the Duke of Hastings, who is reminded of his lowly place in society due to his colonized parentage by a White member of nobility seeking to exploit his physical prowess; or, as a villain, as represented by the Duke of Hasting’s deeply wicked, hateful father.
The fairer-skinned and biracial Black actors’ characters actually fare only slightly better, despite the prominent roles given to them in the series. The tragic mulatto trope is more prominent still; the Duke of Hastings’ mother dies in childbirth, unloved by her husband, and only valued her ability to produce a male child. Lady Marina Thompson is resented by the white family with whom she is lodging for her beauty; impregnated by a soldier to whom she is not married and shamed accordingly, and eventually (after a suicide attempt) doomed to a loveless marriage meant to serve as social redemption. The Duke of Hastings, for his part, is tortured by the promise he made to his abusive father; raped by his White wife (with whom the viewer is expected to sympathize); further manipulated into becoming a father against his wishes; and, if all of that were not enough, his (often-naked) body is shamelessly exoticized and sexualized by the series and its viewers. Queen Charlotte, despite her glory and power, is generally bored, grieved by the death of her child, and frustrated by the mentally troubled King George, who subjects her to verbal abuse.
And then there is Lady Danbury. Cast as the show’s heroine and played by the venerable Adjoa Andoh, her role is complex, but all too familiar to many Black women. On the one hand, she is wealthy, free, and fabulous. On the other, she is written outside of desirability, completely de-sexualized, and particularly so where she is both mammified (despite being de-feminized by having no children of her own) and cast as the Magical Negro/Black Sage whose sole purpose is to lend her gifts in service of the Duke’s preparation for an assumption of capitalist, patriarchal power. Her magic, then, is not transformational at all, but bound to traditional and problematic anti-Black tropes. Despite her wealth and independence, Lady Danbury’s worth is still, at times, reduced to her labor. One sees in Lady Danbury the troubles projected onto American political superstar Stacey Abrams, who must combat both dehumanization and super-humanization by a society that will not celebrate her as she is, but only for the capital that it can extract from her. Shondaland effectively turns Lady Danbury into a rendition of Jiminy Cricket, down to the cane, the top hat, and her limp.
More transformative would have been the casting of a Black Bridgerton family, including a Black Daphne Bridgerton who boasted cocoa-colored skin, a 4-C curl pattern, and a physical configuration that was thicker than a Snicker’s. On-screen love between a Black couple, especially where, in a heterosexual pairing, the woman is darker-skinned than her partner, would have been a revolutionary breakthrough. Given that Shondaland took liberties elsewhere throughout the season, there is no reason why making it clear that All Black Lives (and All Black Love) Matter was not possible. As much of the viewing audience counted down the days to the end of a Trump Presidency, seeing a couple that reminded us of the Obamas would have likely been well-received.
Other commentators have already noted the oddness of the framing of Bridgerton as post-racial when race is centered, both visually, and then again in the writing, when Lady Danbury explains to the Duke of Hastings how the ton’s racial equality came to pass. Lady Danbury described a society in which Black people still had to thank white power for being willing to share, in which Black people’s power was premised on romantic love once shared between the now deranged white King George and the Black Queen Charlotte. Because the British monarchy depends upon, and revolves around, patriarchy, Queen Charlotte’s power depends entirely upon the King’s goodwill (or in this case, his incapacitated state), and with hers, that of all of the ton’s other Black residents.
The sight of Black royalty and aristocracy can be more than just enchanting to Black audiences accustomed to only being relegated to roles of obvious servitude — it can be comforting, and even validating. There are many Black people in the Western world who strive only for equality, and not for liberation — seeking proximity to Whiteness and access to its comforts and privileges. This is understandable; liberation is hard work, and Black people are exhausted. But what does racial equality mean in a society that is fundamentally and structurally unjust? What is the benefit of a Queen Charlotte, a Lady Danbury, and a Duke of Hastings in a feudal and colonial society, premised upon the economic exploitation and extraction from which Will’s father fled in the colonies, and which relegates Will, his wife, the modiste, and even the Duke’s white tenants, to underclass status?
I first offered my critiques of Bridgerton via social media, focusing primarily on the question of colorism. While some commentators agreed with my perspective, others were confused and even offended thereby. Some took umbrage with the fact that I laid responsibility for Bridgerton’s casting and writing at Shonda Rhimes’ feet, pointing out that her showrunner is white and that she could not be held responsible for every decision. I find this argument difficult to accept: Rhimes, after all, is the show’s executive producer and its successes are largely attributed to her and to Shondaland. Should her glory be responsibility-free?
Those who undertake to identify and denounce racism are often met by racism-deniers who will: claim that racism does not exist, and that argument failing, will seek to minimize its impact or import before jumping to the familiar gaslighting technique of claiming that “reverse racism” is the real problem that the anti-racist person should be addressing. Likewise, critics of colorism and featurism will be met by those — most often members of Black communities — willing to weaponize similar tactics against them. While featurism is still poorly understood and little-featured in the mainstream anti-racist discourse, there are some who completely deny the existence of colorism in the Black community, both as a general matter, and then regularly on every case-by-case incident presented to them for consideration.
There are those who made the claim that while there may have been some colorism in Bridgerton, that it wasn’t a matter worth discussing; after all, aren’t folks just happy that the queen is Black? Shouldn’t folks be grateful that there are dark-skinned characters present at all? What more do people want? Why doesn’t the wokerati let us enjoy nice things (almost always a question posed by someone with a #sayhername or #blacklivesmatter hashtag in their social media bio)? Finally, there are those who, forced to accept that colorism is a reality, will gaslight dark-skinned people by making the straight-faced claim that colorism against fair-skinned Black people is as harmful to fair-skinned people as discrimination against dark skin is to dark-skinned people, despite overwhelming evidence of the privileging of fair skin within Black communities and in society more broadly — the very phenomenon of colorism itself.
Denying the existence and impact of colorism and featurism is violence, and it is traumatizing salt in the wound to those impacted thereby. It is tempting to give in to emotion when addressing someone who refuses to acknowledge your existence and experience, and who, in doing so, erases you or people you love. But as a scholar of human rights and atrocity, I have adopted an approach that allows me to offer persuasive arguments about incredibly sensitive topics in a way that allows the willfully blind to see hard truths. As a human rights advocate, I have been trained, and therefore accustomed, to appealing to morality and neo-liberal senses of justice as a means of dismantling oppression. But these days, I often prefer to appeal to something everyone can understand — money.
Colorism and featurism cost their victims money. It is well-documented that colorism and featurism lead to discrimination in recruitment and hiring. In Bridgerton, as in Hollywood more generally, leading roles pay more than minor roles, and certainly much more than extras. Further, those actors and actresses with the most speaking time or time in front of the camera will obtain greater exposure, which leads to greater potential celebrity, fame, and the opportunities for money-making that come therewith. Not so much for the very dark-skinned actresses who played Queen Charlotte’s silent, barely-visible ladies-in-waiting.
Elsewhere, of course, it means pressure to bleach one’s skin because the social capital that comes with fair skin actually translates — and particularly in very patriarchal societies — into liquid capital via better marriage prospects for women, or into better employment prospects in societies with a legacy of chattel enslavement of people of African descent and European colonization.
I have personally experienced the effects of colorism while working on Wall Street, and before then as a child whose younger sister is fairer-skinned, and thus, was deemed more physically attractive, kinder, and more delightful by certain of my relatives. Today, I watch my children, who possess a range of hues, as they are sorted by extended family members as attractive, less attractive, and ugly, according to their skin tone and grade of hair. I do my best to protect them at home, but I will not be able to protect them from such discrimination when they apply for admission to schools, or to jobs, when they are granted or denied promotion, access, and capital because of how their hair curls and how their skin absorbs melanin. The financial impact of anti-Blackness at work, then, is compounded for Black people who may also face the social and psychological costs of anti-Blackness that is played out on their bodies when they walk through the doors of more intimate spaces.
Colorism and featurism are vicious, insidious problems, and seemingly inescapable for those they impact, precisely because they actually are all about to whom resources, power, and the opportunity for both should be delegated. Take, for example, the recent uproar over colorism and featurism related to the marketing of Black British rapper Enny’s “Peng Black Girls.” Originally featuring singer Amia Brave, the track was accompanied by a video affirmatively centering dark-skinned, Afro-featured Black women in a wide range of body types and sizes. Her message was overtly anti-colorist, anti-racist, anti-featurist, and even feminist, bemoaning in the track that the media “never wanna put us in the media, bro.” Her feature of Amia Brave, a very dark-skinned, full-figured Black woman with decidedly African features drove Enny’s message home. However, Enny removed Brave for the remix of the track, replacing her with biracial singer Jorja Smith. Moreover, though Jorja was only the featured artist, some complained that the remix was marketed as if the track was Jorja’s, featuring Enny. The decision to recast was savvy and painfully ironic: the song, which had previously flown under the radar, gained a great deal of attention because of Jorja’s inclusion.
If I choose to continue to celebrate Shondaland’s liberal racial fantasy, I, as a Black woman with irrefutably African features and hue, must do so at the expense of myself. The utopia of the ton is no fantasy for me, unless I occupy a place of subordination within it. Bridgerton reifies my place in society as an essential worker — mandatory, as labor, unnecessary otherwise, wholly unwelcome as a proprietor. Inclusion and acceptance, yes, but at what cost, if Shonda Rhimes’ dream is still a nightmare for me?
Bridgerton proves that diversity and inclusion are not the answer to anti-Blackness; they never were, and never could be. They are white supremacist solutions to white supremacist problems, and they fail accordingly. Bridgerton can only be transformative if, like liberal Western society, it is radically transformed in future iterations.
So, why can’t we just enjoy nice things? Well, that is an excellent question indeed. I look forward to doing so one day, whenever my enjoyment — and more fundamentally, my humanity — are finally written into the script.
