It’s not ground-breaking at all. It’s brownface.
Hit period drama Bridgerton returns for a second series on Friday – with two of its lead characters portrayed by actresses of South Asian heritage. Young actors from the same background tell BBC News why on-screen representation is so important to them.
Right. Now reverse this and see how it works. That’s right, it would be deemed racist. Either it is racist or it isn’t, you can’t have it both ways. Also, as Simon Webb regularly reminds us on his YouTube channel, England was a white nation and there were very few ethnic minorities prior to the sixties. Certainly the higher echelons of society weren’t brown or black – with one or two exceptions and they were vanishingly rare.
This is a deliberate and cynical attempt to brainwash people into believing that we were a multicultural society all along when this is patently false – as false as the notion that there were black legionnaires on Hadrian’s wall or that modern inventions were created by black people. It’s rampant bollocks and needs calling out.
The racists here are the wokerati and those who enable this nonsense.
Bridgerton has adopted a variation of colour-blind casting, where a person’s skin colour plays no part in the decision to give them a role.
I do sympathise.
I’m waiting for the Nelson Mandela biopic with ‘Lauren’ (né James) Harries, the poundshop Little Lord Fauntleroy of the late 80s, in the title role.
The jarring dissonance here is the very concept of “multiculturalism”. Culture, in its fundamental sense, has nothing to do with surface fripperies like clothes or food. It is how people relate to and treat each other. British – western – culture has a strong core of civic responsibility. That culture, despite all appearances, is still very much predominant.
The “cultures” being brought in generally do not. It’s that simple. Any sense of duty or responsibility is totally different: You, your immediate family, maybe co-religionists (who can be demonized on the basis of primitive texts if convenient) and fuck everybody else. To people who behave this way, they are decent and moral by their own lights. Always remember this.
The end result of this can only be balkanisation. A country (well a geographical area at least) that will look like Lebanon with the ghettos resembling the most depraved shiteholes – pakistan, south africa – imaginable.
I can imagine how jarring the dissonance must be on the actual set. “Action” pretend to be a genteel, courtly white lady. “Cut” back to the whiny entitled brat seething at the manifestly superior culture all around you.
No, I won’t be watching it either.
“A country (well a geographical area at least) that will look like Lebanon with the ghettos resembling the most depraved shiteholes – pakistan, south africa – imaginable.”
Sounds like you’ve not been to Bradford. . . . .
I have always managed to avoid it!
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) with a new major character Azeem (Morgan Freeman). So old the home release was on VHS, but perhaps an early foretaste of things to come?
It’s older than that. The 1980s TV series had a Muslim character called Nazir.
The march through the institutions starts with a single step…
And that one had a much better theme tune!
“or that modern inventions were created by black people. It’s rampant bollocks and needs calling out.” Black people have created nothing modern? Such a generic statement cannot be held up as fact. It is too ridiculous, stupid and wantonly ignorant to merit comment but I could not resist. You obviously know nothing of “Modern” American industrialisation or indeed science/biology or mathematics. Several modern inventions, including traffic lights and the tv (famously stolen by logie baird) were developed by blacks and literally patented/stolen by white competitors. I could go on but the premise itself is so stupid and dumb to warrant scrutiny. Everything good = white, everything bad = black. Lesser than kindergarden logic.
Nice little strawman you’ve built there. Ever thought of applying for a CAP subsidy? The only kindergarten logic here comes from you, frankly.
I see you are using precisely the devious method outlined by Simon Webb here to justify your claptrap. For example the first traffic light was invented in the UK by J P Knight in 1868. The idea predated that, having been used on the railway infrastructure. Not a US invention at all, let alone one devised by a black person. It is indeed possible that patents exist for subsequent developments in the name of black people as Webb points out. Your argument is disingenuous in the extreme. And, no, Logie Baird did not steal the television invention. At this point any credibility you might have had (and it was weak to start with given that you commenced with logical fallacy), evaporated.
Your words, not mine. Fuck off.
Neither were invented by black people and you are a crank.
Quite so.
@Mr D
“traffic lights by blacks”
Bollocks. John Peake Knight invented the traffic light in 1868, first used in London. I’ve known this since childhood
I call Bollocks on TV by blacks too. Provide proof
What’s your next claim? Jet engines? Computers? Steam engines? Blacks defined cholera?
Name one invention pre Western empire from Africa, I can’t think of one and genuinely want to know. Maybe slave trading?
When I first saw Mr D’s ridiculous comment, my first instinct was delete such obvious trolling. However I let it slide as I figured my regulars would appreciate this example of stupidity.
If they were invented by blacks, why don’t they ever seem to pay attention to them?
Ouch.
Racism, what else.
There was a picture of a black girl who, apart from being black obviously, looked really like climate obsessive Greta Thunberg. The was a caption saying that she was going to play Greta in the Disney biopic.
So they can start showing “it ain’t half hot mum!” on tv again????
I think that timbuktu was the centre of learning when we up north were meer savages. The library of findings have recently been saved from Islamic fundamentalists and can be accessed on line. So there were great mathematicians etc back in the day but their empire vanished. That is the way of empires.
Why can’t tv people look at that past and make dramas which not only enlighten people of history that we don’t really know about and also gives work to ethnic minorities.
Many intellectual advances indeed originated in areas which we now see as backward. The difference is about culture.
Over the last three centuries, the culture in the now-developed ‘Western’ world encouraged the exploitation of innovations, developing each concept into practical applications from which all the population eventually benefited. Call it capitalism if you want, but the drive to create wanted products or services, unconstrained by oppressive theology, allowed those to advance whilst the others stagnated. It’s nothing to do with colour, it’s all about culture.
No, because reasons…
You can see where this idiocy is going to end up. We’ll have dramatisations of the lives of, say, Churchill or Einstein, and Churchill or Einstein will be played by a black actor. We’ve already had Anne Boleyn played by a black actress, because, as everyone knows, Anne Boleyn was black.
By the way, has anyone noticed that lefty media outlets such as the Independent and Garudian now routinely capitalise the word ‘black’ in any article or story about black people, while the word ‘white’ always remains in lower case? Are they saying that Black people are superior to us honkies, and therefore the word ‘black’ needs to be capitalised?
I’ll go ahead in supporting multiculturalism when the story of Martin Luther King is made with Alan Carr in the title role.
Don’t watch TV, but saw an article with a picture of the two, apparently from the sets. They were dressed in period costume. Isn’t it a bit colonial to have South Asian ladies dressed in a manner alien to their own cultures?
It’s only cultural appropriation when whites do it; like racism. In an honest world, Obama would have sat in the Oval Office resplendent in Masai Warrior get-up; complete with goatskin shield and assagais.