Dearest gentle reader, as Lady Whistledown, Bridgerton’s mean gossip writer who brought down the ton down a peg in a way that no one else could, would have penned, I must confess that not only did the three seasons of the show enthrall me, but they also started a series of debates in my head that is presently dying to wear one of those humongous wigs that Queen Charlotte sported in the show. This predilection is similar to what I experienced after watching Bhansali’s Heeramandi, when I wanted to wear glittery nose-rings and jhoomars 24/7 as part of my daily attire. Now I’m also desirous of gallivanting in larger-than-life, floor-sweeping satin and tulle gowns everywhere.
“The Bridgerton universe occupies a special space in culture,” said Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer of this Netflix drama not long ago at the opening of the London Stock Exchange to celebrate the economic impact of Bridgerton in the UK. “Resonating with young and old alike, creating conversation, starting trends and influencing everything from baby names to weddings. It is clear that the business of art and culture can make a huge economic contribution to local communities.” Damn right she is.
One of Netflix’s biggest hits of all time, it’s almost impossible to be unaware of Bridgerton. Either you have watched it or it sits on your list or there is a bit of curiosity in your head about it because of the intense debates it has led to about its historical correctness, colour-conscious casting, fashion, music and lots more.
Diamonds up for grabs
But before we discuss what led to the fervent debates, let me make another confession. As I sat devouring episode after episode, feasting on the opulent sets, the elaborate costumes, loving the etiquette and the curtsies, I came to the scene in which Queen Charlotte calls debutante Daphne Bridgerton, the diamond of the season.
It unleashed the powers of my wildest imagination that I will hereby share at the risk of being called ludicrous. I like to believe that perhaps one balmy night in Mumbai, Sanjay Leela Bhansali sat watching Bridgerton when he conceived the idea of Heeramandi. The Diamond Bazaar offered the latest jewel in town ever so often, even going so far as to use the term ‘debutants’, which was also used in Bridgerton, and of course the colour themes, art direction, costumes, jewelry, synchronised dances, the chariots and chauffeuring, the promenades, parasols, powerful women, Brimsley, the queen’s gay right-hand man and intimacy between gay characters were quite similar in both shows.
Rhimes and Bhansali both chose to portray many different emotions through their characters, but desperation was a common denominator. Initially, it may have been about love and lust, but beneath the frill, flounce and flourish, the women in the ton and the ‘mandi’ desperately needed someone to look after them and offer them a secure future. Were the similarities intentional or pure coincidence after all, I continue to wonder.
Colour-conscious casting
When Bridgerton received widespread publicity for so-called 'colour-blind casting' in a genre traditionally populated by white actors, Shondaland defended it as colour-conscious casting.
The diverse cast has been key to the show’s popularity and Shondaland Media, the show’s production company believes that it’s important for people to see themselves reflected on screen, offering them a way to connect to the characters and their stories.
Despite a discussion in the show between Lady Danbury and the Duke of Hastings [both played by coloured actors] where they touch upon being coloured people, certainly there were coloured/black people around in the Regency era, but they weren’t twirling in ballrooms as shown in Bridgerton, they were probably cleaning them.
Shonda Rhimes casted the ridiculously hot Black actor Rege-Jean Page as the Duke Simone Basset, the love interest of Daphne Bridgeton, played by talented actress Phoebe Dynevor, who happens to be White. But as soon as the Netflix trailer dropped, Bridgerton’s comments section was sullied by what was called the “anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi venom,” and the OTT was accused of incorporating colour-blind casting to falsify history and further modern society’s multicultural agenda resulting in the penultimate goal of white genocide.
Dear gentle reader, it was grossly overlooked that Netflix is a multimedia company that pumps out show after show that are not always realistic but engineered to pull larger audiences and generate huge revenues. It is business after all and a number game, for Bridgerton inspired fashion trends, partnerships with brands like Bath and Body Works, and even a spin-off series Queen Charlotte, about King George III and his wife.
The original Bridgerton books published by Julia Quinn comprised of all white characters. Maybe Rhimes, an African-American, probably thought that this was her chance to create a black queen, repaint the Regency era however she pleased by introducing a coloured cast, and to create jobs and diversity, attract larger audiences and spark endless discussions on airtime, cyber and print space.
In portraying a rosy diverse picture of the past, Rhimes has whitewashed history by glossing and glamming over the historical struggles of coloured people? From Bollywood’s Junoon (1979) to Lagaan (2001) to the more recent The Rani of Jhansi and RRR, we have seen British brutality against the locals, and more broadly speaking Django, 12 Years a Slave, Roots and many more have showed us enough of the ugly side of the British Empire.
Romancing with history
The historical romance genre has never been historically accurate. Bridgerton portrays dukes and duchesses, feminist heroines and heroes falling over themselves to form equal partnership with their spouses, when in reality life for women in Regency England no matter their status was a far cry from being a pixie-dusted fairy tale. In fact, it was a lot like our society because it was so easy to relate to women lacking power, girls being geared to find husbands, the husband or the eldest son giving approval for marriages and taking decisions for the family, just the way Viscount Anthony Bridgerton played by Jonathan Bailey did as head of the household in wake of his father’s early death. While men gave the final nod for proposals, the women worked behind the scenes to make these matches possible. Social status was important and women’s reputation always at stake as they were confined to strict rules of propriety especially in regard to being alone with men so as not to hurt their prospects on the marriage market.
In the second season, the colour-conscious casting went a giant leap further as it focused on the second novel (The Viscount Who Loved Me) in the eight-book series, when Anthony searches for a perfect wife in the toasty brown Edwina (Charithra Chandran), and her dusky older half-sister Kate, played by Netflix’s Sex Education star Simone Ashley. The Sharmas have moved to London from India for Edwina’s societal debut adding more colour to the lily-white world of the Bridgerton novels. The Sharmas dressed in yellow for a mayoon scene prior to Edwina’s wedding day with a string cover of the title track of the popular Bollywood movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham in the background as the bride prepped for her wedding in S2E6, creating a Bollywood vibe with the intense ultra-South-Indian look of the actors.
If Rhimes was really chasing inclusivity, which she wasn’t, the Bridgertons should have been a Black family of affluence in the Regency era. A brown Violet Bridgerton’s plight of marrying her “gorgeous” children to suitable matches would have been far more perilous than the one that confronted the white Violet B!
Historical correctness
Interestingly, the Regency-era Britain actually had a courting season that began when the parliamentary season ended around early summer. The families involved with parliament were also involved in the marriage market, meaning this way of courtship was limited to a few hundred nobles of the society. As shown in Bridgerton, the real Queen Charlotte was a proponent of matchmaking and kicked the season off with a ball, evaluated debutantes, and proclaimed one as “the diamond of the season.” Queen Elizabeth II discontinued this tradition in 1958.
There is no issue in creating a world similar to Regency England, but Britain it is definitely not! Rhimes candy coats history and creates the world that she wishes to see, but when she is taken to task for it, Rhimes chooses to hide behind the excuse that Bridgerton is not a history lesson.
The reality
“Between 1836 and the Civil War, over 220 men, women and children were enslaved at Oak Alley,” reads a plaque inside a slave house that I visited near New Orleans, a few years ago. Oak Alley, a sugar plantation was built by and relied on enslaved men, women and children who lived in squalid conditions until the 20th century. Forgotten by history, these people are quantified like any commodity, and appear in sales records and inventories.
I haven’t forgotten how surreal and emotionally unsettling it was to walk the grounds of the slave plantation, and how the now tranquil environment still evokes sad thoughts about the horrors, atrocities and dehumanising conditions that the plantation has seen.
White supremacy is not just a thing of the past. In the more recent times, Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle led to speculation about whether or not Queen Charlotte had an African ancestor or not. The jury is still out. She did not, in any case, choose to identify with people of African descent or with the plight of those enslaved in Britain’s colonies.
According to Library of Congress documents:
“In 1788, as Britain’s abolitionist movement gained steam, Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who had been stolen as a child in Africa, pleaded with the Queen: “I supplicate your Majesty’s compassion for millions of my African countrymen, who groan under the lash of tyranny in the West Indies.” The Queen’s silent response is not surprising.
A recently discovered document from 1869 shows that King William III received £1000 of shares in the slave-trading Royal African Company.
“Across almost three centuries, 12 British monarchs sponsored, supported or profited from Britain’s involvement in slavery,” the Guardian reports.
The slave trade was abolished in 1807 during King George’s reign but by then the blood money had already been amassed into fortunes and palatial estates, and many of Britain’s wealthiest still maintained plantations in the Caribbean that profited from enslaved labour.
Shows like Bridgerton are fabulous euphoric fantasies, but they could influence mindsets. Post-Bridgerton if a minority group is able to break through certain ceilings, get into certain doors and access certain platforms, the purpose of the show would be achieved.