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viscountessevie · 2 years

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The ‘Whites’ Who Loved Me: Interracial Romance, Hollywood, and Bridgerton’s “Post-Racial” Fantasies

Written By Tré Ventour-Griffiths

Public Historian-Essayist | Poet | Speaker: race, whiteness, Black History, dyspraxia/autism and more

[Took me a couple days to write this up but we finally did it so enjoy reading yall!]

This article was sent to me and our group by Lav @sweetestviscount and it pretty much hits the nail on why POC fans - especially Black and Brown fans - of the show who came for the diversity and the respective seasons that repped their communities are so disappointed with the way these characters have been treated. I urge everyone to go read the whole article in full! It’s well-structured, very comprehensive with his sources cited and linked, drops a lot of great truth bombs in the most subtle yet blunt manner that had me gasping so many times because HE IS RIGHT!

Anyways click under the cut only once you’ve read the whole essay and enjoy these highlights and my fave parts of the article with me!

[Note: This became longer than I expected so you all may want to sit down and read this when you have the time!]

Right out of the gate, he explains the use of ‘whites’ in the title which I thought was employed perfectly but glad he gave an explanation still before anyone could get in a huff (and oh boy did people get huffy but more on that later)

To reiterate the last line: the article is purely opinion as is my commentary of the article, that being said doesn’t it say something that this article resonated so deeply with my WoC fandom friends?

I also had a little giggle when he said it’s not research (though he probably clarified this for legal/academic reasons) when he really did put a lot of thought and research into this like I said above, there’s a lot of related links that I will definitely be going through when I have the time!

The Main Thesis of the Essay which is found at the top/sub-header once you click the article is essentially this:

There is a wider dominant media culture and narrative that situates Black and Brown people in interracial relationships only as worthy of love when in proximity to a white person and white families.

And in this article, the author essentially unpacks how and why Bridgerton feeds into this culture and narrative. To me personally, it feels more insidious coming from Bridgerton’s production because their very first and main selling point from Day & Season 1 was that it’s a very diverse show especially with casting actors of different races! This will be explained more in depth by the author and I’ll share screenshots. However now as the seasons go by, and the show featuring more white people thus making it like every other Regency show/movie from the 2000s which,,, what’s new?

I have also spoken about this topic before especially in regards to Mindy Kaling and Shondaland’s works. However, it’s important for me to share this point of view as well. This article to me was also the embodiment of “Ohmygod he put it into words!” So it’s definitely more thorough and in-depth compared to what I’ve said before. Especially since I come from an Indian POV while Tré, the author, provides the POV of a Black person.

Now to my favourite bits and lines!!

That being said, Bridgerton is not an anomaly, but part of an American film and television complex in Hollywood where whiteness dictates who is worthy of love on screen. Such programmes include Master of None, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Girlfriends, Dear White People and Modern Family — which ‘legitimise’ the desire of Black and Brown people as only possible in proximity to a white person — accredited their ‘human status’ via affiliations with ‘white others’.

I AM LOVING THIS SONG! Honestly, if you boil this essay down to these sentences and it relates back to the main thesis statement above: “whiteness dictates who is worthy of love on screen. [Whiteness] ‘legitimise’ the desire of Black and Brown people as only possible in proximity to a white person — accredited their ‘human status’ via affiliations with ‘white others’.”

[God I could write a whole other essay on Aziz Ansari & Master of None. I would do anything to put him and Mindy in a room and write something completely insane chock full of internalised racism against our Indian community kjhdkjas.]

Okay but THIS WHOLE SECTION:

It speaks for itself and I have nothing to add, nor is it my place to do so!

[Also again yall please go give the actual article all the love because everything linked deserves a read too especially to give us a wider context and information of everything!]

THIS BIT HOWEVER:

Kate ends up married to Anthony, with Bridgerton reinforcing the Great White Hope of interracial relationships on mainstream television.

Mr. Tré I AM CACKLING!! ‘Great White Hope’ took me the fuck out because, he’s so so right. I love Anthony as much as the next person - yall know this. I am actually Show Anthony (with his book mortality issue and reckless with his life tendencies) but he is a whole clown and like Tré said, him and the rest of the other Bridgertons being white just fortifies the ‘Great White Hope’ narrative Hollywood has going on.

Okay so these two parts of the same para:

Every time people praise Bridgerton for its ‘diversity’, I am reminded how the ‘the diversity’ ended up being married into white families and thus ‘embodied property’ — as Aileen Moreton Robinson discusses in her 2015 book The White Possessive.

It’s the way THREE of the ‘prominent’ families of the Ton and show are all white - the titular Bridgertons, their foils Featheringtons and the villains, Cowpers. We couldn’t even get some adopted kiddos?? Complete blind casting like the Prince from Brandy’s Cinderella and his parents?

If Bridgerton aimed to do anything provocative, it would have been more useful to have been a Wakanda-esque regency fantasy world with a token white character (heck, Black Panther even has a token white man in Everett K. Ross played by Martin Freeman).

THIS would have been fun to see in Bridgerton. An example - other than Everett - that comes to mind is Nick in Wedding Season who was the token white character who was the butt of the jokes in the best way. He was also very endearing and respectful of his fiancee and their family but didn’t take focus away from the main characters! All of whom were mostly Indian and Damian Thompson who played James, the main girl’s British boss which was brilliant! So refreshing to watch a story that was about my culture and it wasn’t centred on a white person and both of the leads were Indian!

Tré also calls out the show for never resolving Simon’s SA. Now there’s no reason to do so since Regé left and we saw how it was erased in S2 😭😭.

He then breaks down the roles each of the main Black characters played on the show in S1:

He goes on to compare the other media that’s been doing better especially in terms of showing Black love, namely Sandition with Georgiana Lamb and Otis Molyneux and showcasing the Black Tudors in love in The Spanish Princess. He also cites more sources and academic articles to back up his previous points.

I really want to play THIS song for everyone though:

if the Bridgerton showrunners wanted to depict Desi women, where are the Desi men? Bridgerton is a show that has used the popularity of D&I to garner record viewing numbers and it has worked par excellence, while at the same it is a white show pretending to be a diverse.

WHERE ARE THE DESI MEN??

Papa Sharma my beloved!! Lord Sheffield could have easily been an Indian man with a different last time, we could have just left the name Sheffields unmarred and in the old books.

So not only did Mary’s classist parents and her marriage become a class issue, but it has an extra touch of xenophobia all because Papa Sharma was from India! The man was literally a ROYAL PERSONAL secretary to the King and was closer in proximity to a royal than Lord Sheffield himself ever will be AND THEY STILL had a problem with him?

We could have also given Mary a hot brother or something, give the Sharmas girls a cool fun uncle to help them navigate the London season or something!

And of course this is what we’ve all been saying for a while now:

[Bridgerton] used the popularity of D&I [Diversity & Inclusion] to garner record viewing numbers and it has worked par excellence, while at the same it is a white show pretending to be a diverse.

That’s it. That’s the sentence, it speaks for itself.

However, in a 2015 article, Kavita Bhanot writes that “The concept of diversity only exists if there is an assumed neutral point from which ‘others’ are ‘diverse’.” That default point is white.

Ms Kavita Bhanot is R i g h t! Unfortunately, the default IS white that's why that demographic always needs to centre themselves in conversations like these (more on that later - maybe a separate post on how this article was received on Tré's Twitter) and the majority always yell online about how "everything is woke nowadays" when talking about racial (and queer) diversity in media.

Why is the default white though? It's not as if people of colour just randomly materialised out of thin air in the 70s. If we put all of us together we certainly outnumber white people, so why is that not represented in mainstream media?

For the first paragraph, let me be very clear, it’s not that we didn’t know or want Polin AT ALL. We knew from the start - especially those who had read the books before and after S1 - that Polin will be endgame and canon in S4.

What we didn’t expect was for them to be the leads a season earlier than expected and to be heavily promoted across every season, take up space in Kathony’s season and already being centred in their own love story. It’s the unfair favouritism and treatment they are getting over Jimone and Kathony. Them being S3′s leads also completely sidelines a show fan favourite Benedict and the chance for us to see another WOC lead in Sophie being loved up by this incredibly charming Bridgerton that GA has fallen in love with! Because after Sophie, there wouldn’t be a WoC romantic lead til Lucy if we ever get to S8.

We just thought we’d get one more season of ‘the most diverse’ Regency show before they turned it 70% white. [Also Bridgerton has officially lost that title when Mr. Malcolm’s List is right there but I digress, that’s a review post for another day!]

It does not help that a big part of the extreme side of that sub fandom gloats every time something goes in their favour and are completely oblivious as to how awful they sound. You are literally gleefully celebrating in the fact that the cast of colour is being ignored and overlooked for your white faves. As if that doesn’t happen every fucking day of our real lives.

Also let’s talk about this bit:

[Black-ish] still feels like a series tailored to the delicate sensibilities of the white people who do not have any Black friends!

I can’t comment directly on Black-ish (I just couldn’t get into the show’s humour - Mix-ish was more my speed!) as I didn’t watch past the pilot and Tré knows best so I’m taking his word for it!

I brought up this part because that’s exactly how I have been feeling about this show lately. Yes, I’m sure many fans of colour like myself signed up for the show to see ourselves represented in a world where we could be the leads when we couldn’t be before. But now the racial diversity rep feels so incredibly superficial and there just to fill a quota. I LOVE the Mondrichs, don’t get me wrong but why are they still there? They were very heavily tied to Simon. However what I was hoping for in S2, is that they could have made them friends with Kathony with the Simon-Anthony connection. Maybe Anthony visiting the boxing ring again to let off some steam but nope Will is gonna start a bar! Where Colin can commit a microaggression against him YAY /s.

Because of this superficiality and most fans of colour leaving the fandom and no longer tuning in for S3, it feels like the majority of people left behind (note; I don’t mean ALL just a big portion) feel like those kind of people who only appreciate the racial diversity so that they can pat themselves on the back for watching something that has a diverse cast in it. It’s very much giving “I can’t be racist because I have POC friends!” While they turn around and either ignore microaggressions/racially charged attacks other people in the fandom commit. Or worse: commit microaggressions themselves, don’t see ANYTHING wrong with what they did, get defensive and never learn when called out for it. It’s just exhausting to see these type of people on my dash and tags across social media.

The next few sections of the article goes back to the thesis statement of the article and then Tre makes really great comparisons to If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight (both by Barry Jenkins) and how they are “so important — when leading white characters are absent from the story.” It’s really great how he breaks it all down!

I want to bring light to this part since this has been a point of heated discussion in our fandom. Especially before they announced who S3 was actually going to be about and everyone was speculating once again who Sophie could be:

Simon didn’t come back cos of Regé’s departure (no one’s fault really) and they didn’t recast him (which as much as I wouldn’t have minded and I even have some fan casts in mind, it wouldn’t have flown with the GA) and now we know the Sharmas aren’t coming back with Chari doing her romcom and Shelley doing The Boys spin off - though they severely under-utilised Shelley as Mary anyways so I’m glad she just took the check and bounced.

So NaniCoolJ is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. It IS a rotation of people of colour as if we are just interchangeable.

With the Sophie casting speculation and fan cast, it felt like everyone was fighting for their lives to be represented in Sophie and as someone on here pointed out, it was starting to feel like the show and fans were trying do a racial Pokemon Catch It All with all the Bridgerton spouses (except Pen and Philip who have already been cast) and trying to fit as many different ethnicities as we can with the limited spots we have. Honestly it’s only 4 of them left - Sophie, John and Michael (though I imagine they won’t be adopted cousins) and Lucy.

[SPOILER FOR SHOW FANS]

If we ever get to see them, Gareth and his family are Black since Lady Danbury is.

Do you see how incredibly fucked up it is, that out of ALL the three main families, we fans of colour are only represented as MAIN leads/characters by 7/9 of the spouses (including John)? That’s only 7 (potential) POC leads vs the current 18 white leads. As it stands, it’s only 2 against 18 are currently in the show - Regé as Simon and Simone as Kate. If we count Lady Danbury and Queen Charlotte, that’s 4 but still a HUGE disparity in numbers. I focused on Simon and Kate since they are the romance leads as this is a romance show even if production forgets that most times.

Just some numbers to think about, next time yall wanna yell that the show is super diverse. Don’t even get me started on how some Polins use Nic/Pen’s weight as a ‘body diversity’ bargaining chip to completely invalidate what fans of colour are saying and using it to be against racially diverse casting. It just makes their body positivity activist come across as performative when you have to put down one form of diversity to uplift the other. This is more uncomfortable when you realise that Nicola herself has said multiple times that she doesn’t want people commenting on her body - positively or negatively and she DOES NOT want to be a body diversity activist. But more on that in another post since this is getting long enough!

And now the racists are back, louder than ever, sigh. It was bad enough they were slut shaming and throwing racial slurs at Marina and whoever defended her post-S1 and I was even privy to some of it still happening during pre and post-S2. Not to mention how Simone and Charithra were treated in different ways after their castings were announced. Now with their favourites being front and centre, they have become more insufferable and horrible to the rest of the fandom thinking they are above consequences. It’s really vile the things people will say behind the shield of anonymity.

Tré then goes on to reference the The Blindian Project which sounds super cool and established to build solitary with Black and Brown communities which is such a vibe.

Honestly I feel like most of us on here do get along well and band together against the racists so that’s been a great support system for all of us. Just to say once again, I am always here for you guys. I know all of this is so frustrating to experience and now we have this author outside of the fandom validating our experience. It kinda takes the load off, for me at least. And any time yall need to vent about how its all going in the fandom, my asks and DMs are always open.

Tré goes on to say this, which becomes even more relevant with all the white ladies arguing with him that “fAt ReP iS juSt aS iMpoRtAnT.” Which to be clear I’m not discounting that having fat rep is important. It IS important. However, this is not the conversation happening in the article. As I said above, it feels EXTREMELY performative of them to centre the conversation on a fat white woman when the conversation is about race and how Black and Brown characters are being sidelined and we don’t even have other ethnicities represented at all (not in a leading role at least).

whiteness must be discussed always, even in the politics of love on and off screen. With the breadth of romance on screen still necessitating white people, there is a problem that in a dominant culture of white supremacy it says: ‘Black and Brown people are incapable of love, unless when a white person is present, or if this text is a ‘race show’ or ‘race film’.

These ladies in his replies really read that paragraph (or maybe they didn’t wouldn’t put it past them to just read the title and argue with him for the sake of it.) and specifically the line “whiteness must be discussed always, even in the politics of love on and off screen“ and decided to go “Ah yes, I’m going to discuss my whiteness now.”

Also to Elora, Julia and Tanya (idc I’m naming names): to hijack a necessary conversation on race in Bridgerton by discussing fat representation denies the very real history of racism in the television/film industry and is quite frankly a disgusting case of whataboutism. This isn’t about you and as my friend Triv said (who also helped me phrase this paragraph), “Remember, it wasn't the fat woman who got sat at a segregated table at the Oscars even as she won the award; it was the Black woman.”

It’s so incredibly insensitive of them to diminish what Tré and the fandom is saying by throwing weight in our faces. I bet you, these women wouldn’t blink an eye if a fat WoC was cast on the show, they would probably still overlook her for their favourite girlboss.

And for the finale:

Took us a while but we made it! Much like most of his article, this conclusion speaks for itself and so I shall leave it be.

I have mostly said what I had to say in this commentary. Honestly, it got so long because it’s multiple conversations we’ve had all over the last few months all contained and condensed into one post. These concerns have also been a long time coming, it’s so good to let it out and try to move on now. Thank you once again to Tré for writing piece and vocalising a lot of the POC fans and our friends have been thinking for a while now.

Thank you to everyone who read the article and this post all the way through, hope you enjoyed reading it and feel validated in other people sharing the same sentiments as you. Please know none of you who feel this way are alone and we’re all here for you and as I said earlier, asks and DMs are always open!

#Bridgerton #Bridgerton Fandom #Bridgerton Production #Anti Bridgerton #Anti-Bridgerton S3 #I'm not tagging the other anti tags because EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS

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