A cousin of queerbaiting, colorbaiting draws in viewers and courts media attention with the promise of subversion, only to squander viewers’ goodwill by failing to deliver. The deployment of Black and Brown bodies to lay a melanated veneer over the continuing public obsession with oppressive, imperialist stories is nothing short of colorbaiting.
Though the show has been hailed as a “ sparkly period piece with a difference” (the New York Times) whose “ colorblind casting com as a welcome surprise,” (ABC News), those same distinguishing features can come across as dissonance and erasure. Bridgerton’s seemingly bold creative choices, however, often seem like less an example of bravery than they are symptoms of caution, coddling, and-most strikingly-a lack of creativity. The cast’s diversity is business as usual for Van Dusen and producer Shonda Rhimes, given their history with shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. This is most visible in the way that Black and other people of color are part of the story in anachronistic roles for nonwhite actors. (Each book in the series focuses on one Bridgerton child.) But as period pieces go, Bridgerton is a new take on the genre for a new era. Entertaining and sumptuous save for the occasional shoddy set, Bridgerton quickly became one of Netflix’s most popular shows-so popular, in fact (it reached 63 million households since its Christmas release), that series creator Chris Van Dusen may see his dream of seven more seasons come to pass. Based on the eight novels by Julia Quinn that are collectively known as the Bridgerton Series and released by Netflix in December, the series is set in Regency-era London its main characters are all gentry in the “ton,” and each one’s character arc is marked by anxiety about virtue, status, and marriage. Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset, left, and Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne Bridgerton in Bridgerton (Photo credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix)īridgerton, in many ways, is just another period piece.
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