This notion of the sentimental vs. the gothic is spot fucking on. I’ve trying for months to write an eviseration of Bridgerton and Hollywood, but especially the former, because I am tired of the American romanticism of Regency England, which really reflects an American romanticism of the class system without having to actually look at class in America, how violence it is. There is so much racial and colonial hand-waving in that show, which entirely erases the actual Black and Asian people who were in England during the Regency era, and the incredible violence and oppression of the Empire and the class system, which is where the ton gets most of its money. I think you explain perfectly the motivation behind the constant production/consumption of these a historical Austen-lite stories.
I love your Morgan Spector speculation a lot; I wish the show were smart enough to have taken the path you recommend. He looks Arab to me, but lots of people do, I’m always looking for my people. (I remember watching True Blood a decade ago and mishearing the name “Alcide” as “Al-Saeed” — there's some real magical thinking at work over here.) Anyway, your version of the show sounds so much better that what’s actually onscreen. I wish I could watch that instead.
A number of historians including Martha Jones in "All Bound Up Together" have observed that the 1880s-1890s from the POV of Black women and Black women writers were sufficiently hopeful that the discourse in the Black press was of the "Women's Era". So Peggy's arc could be historically defensible. I do acknowledge the difference between "Look, these are middle-class people" and "How did Black middle-class people think about becoming first-class citizens in this era" which is the subject of the aforementioned books. Elizabeth McHenry's "Forgotten Readers" is really, really groundbreaking.
Re: Peggy, I also want to add that Peggy is young! The young are idealistic! She's got the optimism of wanting to be her own person on her own terms. She's hard-headed and stubborn and determined, and it's amazing to see. I think for me, though, it's that the storytelling on the show just seems to...elide a lot of that nuance in favor of wanting to paint this fantasy of an effortlessly bourgeois blackness.
I feel like the unstated point of the show is that while Peggy and her family and the black journalists she works with are middle class, a significant portion of the black population were not. And their middle-class life implies a black underclass that the show did not want to deal with because to deal with it, really deal with it, would be to acknowledge or confront slavery. And that show simply couldn't integrate that.
Excited to check out these books! Thanks so much for this context.
Would prefer a Wuthering Heights/House of Mirth/avec black bourgeois protagonists extravaganza! As a San Franciscan I've always longed for a meaningful Chinatown gold rush gothic story, granted "Warrior" on HBO came close to that sorta.
“ Old fortunes were dying and new fortunes were being born like fresh galaxies suddenly flaring to life in the night sky.” THE WAY I STOPPED BREATHING WHEN I READ THAT LINE. So glad you wrote this.
I wonder if the problem is that Julian Fellowes is essentially applying what worked so well in Downton - class-based conflict at the height of major historical change - to American history, when really race-based conflict drove most of the conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries, as you point out. I haven't seen the show yet, but it does seem like Fellowes fundamentally misunderstands the point of both the Gilded Age as a distinct historical period and how it's situated within the broader context of 19th century American history.
"the bourgeois as a class tend to have an ahistorical view." is the line that is going to keep me awake at night. We're screwed. But thank you for this perspective.
I just finished reading Edward P Jones The Known World, and it would defy dramatization. Everyone would howl that there are no sympathetic characters. I wonder; is it southern gothic?
I was also struck by the absence of the Civil War. It’s not even the elephant in the room, since that would imply the existence of something unusual in the room but choosing not to acknowledge it. In fact, almost without thinking about it, I invented a backstory for Bannister, the butler, deciding he was an abolitionist who fought on the Union side during the war, probably as an officer. There were a couple of scenes with soldiers, so you got the idea something may have happened a few years back, but hardly a trace otherwise. A production which handled this better, oddly, is the recent remake of the veterinary drama All Creatures Great and Small. There were subtle hints at backstories in the First World War, but an even more effective use of dramatic irony to suggest the horrors to come, when the characters are shown reacting happily to Chamberlain’s announcement of peace in our time. This gave a real feel of the hopes and fears people of the time were living by, as the trauma suffered by British society during WW1 and the reluctance to embark on another war is one of the salient features of that period. Surely something of this sort could have been done with Peggy and her family to bring the drama closer to lived reality. One could go on, but the Raikes storyline was also curious in the way it seemed to lose faith in even the sentimental possibilities, yanking the wheel like it was trying to dodge a possum in the road. I don’t even like psychological drama, but it was noticeable by its absence. Thanks for the very interesting and informative post.
Excellent, as ever, Brandon. I disliked the show, but lethargically, from the start. I laid it to not really wanting to see the ruling class of that Gilded Age celebrated while we are living through Gilded Age Redux. You've provided a keener analysis of my paralysis--ugh. The sentimentality.
I just heard you on the radio. Your perspective is very helpful as I've also been trying to navigate the "tonal mindfuck" of the show--with the added layer of my being a direct descendant of not only the Vanderbilts and Huntingtons and others but also of the man who helped coin the term "separate but equal" in Plessy v Ferguson (my great-great grandfather who served on the Louisiana Supreme Court at that time). I recently visited Plessy's grave in New Orleans and just had a moment there sitting with the enormity of it all. Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful commentary.
I just got this in an email from the Schomburg Center. I should have remembered "Aristocrats of Color" from some footnotes but have not actually read it.
Excellent piece; I learned a lot from this. I appreciate your suggestion that Peggy's husband is white - that would be a fascinating avenue. But this show has a fetish for avoiding interesting plot avenues. Two easy examples: The suicide's widow spends one episode mumbling darkly and threateningly against the Russells, then disappears for the rest of the season. And fans/commenters had some interesting and juicy theories about why Mr Raikes was pursuing poor Marian - maybe he knew her railroad shares would eventually be worth a fortune! Maybe that's why he wanted to quickly elope with her while still flirting with other rich women! But no, absolutely nothing interesting happened in that plot. It's weird how averse Fellowes was to interesting plots!
Finally, agree with your Morgan Spector thirst 1000%.
This notion of the sentimental vs. the gothic is spot fucking on. I’ve trying for months to write an eviseration of Bridgerton and Hollywood, but especially the former, because I am tired of the American romanticism of Regency England, which really reflects an American romanticism of the class system without having to actually look at class in America, how violence it is. There is so much racial and colonial hand-waving in that show, which entirely erases the actual Black and Asian people who were in England during the Regency era, and the incredible violence and oppression of the Empire and the class system, which is where the ton gets most of its money. I think you explain perfectly the motivation behind the constant production/consumption of these a historical Austen-lite stories.
I love your Morgan Spector speculation a lot; I wish the show were smart enough to have taken the path you recommend. He looks Arab to me, but lots of people do, I’m always looking for my people. (I remember watching True Blood a decade ago and mishearing the name “Alcide” as “Al-Saeed” — there's some real magical thinking at work over here.) Anyway, your version of the show sounds so much better that what’s actually onscreen. I wish I could watch that instead.
A number of historians including Martha Jones in "All Bound Up Together" have observed that the 1880s-1890s from the POV of Black women and Black women writers were sufficiently hopeful that the discourse in the Black press was of the "Women's Era". So Peggy's arc could be historically defensible. I do acknowledge the difference between "Look, these are middle-class people" and "How did Black middle-class people think about becoming first-class citizens in this era" which is the subject of the aforementioned books. Elizabeth McHenry's "Forgotten Readers" is really, really groundbreaking.
Re: Peggy, I also want to add that Peggy is young! The young are idealistic! She's got the optimism of wanting to be her own person on her own terms. She's hard-headed and stubborn and determined, and it's amazing to see. I think for me, though, it's that the storytelling on the show just seems to...elide a lot of that nuance in favor of wanting to paint this fantasy of an effortlessly bourgeois blackness.
I feel like the unstated point of the show is that while Peggy and her family and the black journalists she works with are middle class, a significant portion of the black population were not. And their middle-class life implies a black underclass that the show did not want to deal with because to deal with it, really deal with it, would be to acknowledge or confront slavery. And that show simply couldn't integrate that.
Excited to check out these books! Thanks so much for this context.
Please write a gothic period piece for premium cable!
Would prefer a Wuthering Heights/House of Mirth/avec black bourgeois protagonists extravaganza! As a San Franciscan I've always longed for a meaningful Chinatown gold rush gothic story, granted "Warrior" on HBO came close to that sorta.
Jordan Peele should direct!
“ Old fortunes were dying and new fortunes were being born like fresh galaxies suddenly flaring to life in the night sky.” THE WAY I STOPPED BREATHING WHEN I READ THAT LINE. So glad you wrote this.
I wonder if the problem is that Julian Fellowes is essentially applying what worked so well in Downton - class-based conflict at the height of major historical change - to American history, when really race-based conflict drove most of the conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries, as you point out. I haven't seen the show yet, but it does seem like Fellowes fundamentally misunderstands the point of both the Gilded Age as a distinct historical period and how it's situated within the broader context of 19th century American history.
"the bourgeois as a class tend to have an ahistorical view." is the line that is going to keep me awake at night. We're screwed. But thank you for this perspective.
I just finished reading Edward P Jones The Known World, and it would defy dramatization. Everyone would howl that there are no sympathetic characters. I wonder; is it southern gothic?
Came for the thirst, along the way learned some things and cackled! Brava!
I was also struck by the absence of the Civil War. It’s not even the elephant in the room, since that would imply the existence of something unusual in the room but choosing not to acknowledge it. In fact, almost without thinking about it, I invented a backstory for Bannister, the butler, deciding he was an abolitionist who fought on the Union side during the war, probably as an officer. There were a couple of scenes with soldiers, so you got the idea something may have happened a few years back, but hardly a trace otherwise. A production which handled this better, oddly, is the recent remake of the veterinary drama All Creatures Great and Small. There were subtle hints at backstories in the First World War, but an even more effective use of dramatic irony to suggest the horrors to come, when the characters are shown reacting happily to Chamberlain’s announcement of peace in our time. This gave a real feel of the hopes and fears people of the time were living by, as the trauma suffered by British society during WW1 and the reluctance to embark on another war is one of the salient features of that period. Surely something of this sort could have been done with Peggy and her family to bring the drama closer to lived reality. One could go on, but the Raikes storyline was also curious in the way it seemed to lose faith in even the sentimental possibilities, yanking the wheel like it was trying to dodge a possum in the road. I don’t even like psychological drama, but it was noticeable by its absence. Thanks for the very interesting and informative post.
Hitting the nail on the head and driving it deep into the board of American history.
Nice!--great to see Fiedler in there. . .and helped me understand what bothered me so, so much watching the show.
Excellent, as ever, Brandon. I disliked the show, but lethargically, from the start. I laid it to not really wanting to see the ruling class of that Gilded Age celebrated while we are living through Gilded Age Redux. You've provided a keener analysis of my paralysis--ugh. The sentimentality.
I just heard you on the radio. Your perspective is very helpful as I've also been trying to navigate the "tonal mindfuck" of the show--with the added layer of my being a direct descendant of not only the Vanderbilts and Huntingtons and others but also of the man who helped coin the term "separate but equal" in Plessy v Ferguson (my great-great grandfather who served on the Louisiana Supreme Court at that time). I recently visited Plessy's grave in New Orleans and just had a moment there sitting with the enormity of it all. Anyway, thank you for your thoughtful commentary.
I just got this in an email from the Schomburg Center. I should have remembered "Aristocrats of Color" from some footnotes but have not actually read it.
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2022/03/30/short-bibliography-black-elite-books-about-black-high-society-gilded-age
Excellent piece; I learned a lot from this. I appreciate your suggestion that Peggy's husband is white - that would be a fascinating avenue. But this show has a fetish for avoiding interesting plot avenues. Two easy examples: The suicide's widow spends one episode mumbling darkly and threateningly against the Russells, then disappears for the rest of the season. And fans/commenters had some interesting and juicy theories about why Mr Raikes was pursuing poor Marian - maybe he knew her railroad shares would eventually be worth a fortune! Maybe that's why he wanted to quickly elope with her while still flirting with other rich women! But no, absolutely nothing interesting happened in that plot. It's weird how averse Fellowes was to interesting plots!
Finally, agree with your Morgan Spector thirst 1000%.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻