Netflix’s hit series Bridgerton has faced allegations of colourism and featurism. Not only this but it was also accused of being falsely marketed towards BAME audiences in order to increase its viewership; the series was advertised as a Period Drama set in a utopian, racially integrated society where people of all ethnicities could live in harmony. The creator, executive producer and showrunner of the series, Chris Van Dusen even stated that ‘with Bridgerton (he) wanted to (…) explore real topics like gender and class and race’. This led the BAME community to believe that they could feel either represented in a genre where they rarely are or have racial issues effectively addressed. However, they were sadly mistaken in both respects.
While the actual cast is fairly ethnically diverse, this does not apply to the principal characters as almost all were played by either white or light-skinned black actors with features that conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. This leaves non-black ethnic minorities and dark-skinned members of the black community still underrepresented as they were generally only cast as background characters almost as if they were there for decorative purposes.
Bridgerton is by no means an anomaly in its failure to properly represent ethnic minorities and merely falls into the overarching trends of the film industry. For example, the severe lack of Asian representation within TV and film is exposed by the statistic that as of 2019 Asian actors only played just over 1% of Hollywood’s leading roles despite making up around 6% of the US population. Additionally, from the top-grossing films of 2007-2018, only around 4.5% of speaking characters were Latinx, despite them making up 19% of the US population in 2019.
Written by Madeline Harding
Artwork by Zara Masood
