Of Hollywood, and “the Other”
The failures of historical revisionism in television.
I’ve always been a sucker for a period piece.
From the use of costuming to how the color grading is manipulated to communicate that period or call back to our own, the period piece was one of the first ways I fell in love with television and cinema.
With the period piece becoming more and more prevalent specifically within the current age of television, it surprised me to see this insistence on producing work that is so steeped in nostalgia. Just as the television industry has rapidly evolved in its construction, the kinds of series that are being churned out in a “Fordist” fashion have been evolving with it. Considering the unassailable success of “Peak TV”, which was characterized by the seeming non-existence of the average BIPOC, POC, and queer person (unless reduced to disingenuous characters that were essentially caricatures), I assumed that even the age of streaming would adhere to what was indicative of formulaic success.
This made me consider why the period piece has managed to maintain itself, especially in our lightning-paced tech-centric world. Perhaps it is precisely this type of world that yearns for “the good old days'' and seeks escapism in - strangely enough - real-time periods. However, the new era of the period piece has not taken the form and shape of its predecessors. With Hollywood, and Bridgerton as some of the most impactful and widely spread period pieces, their primary draw is something that even “Peak TV'' managed to miss: diversity. But the conversation around diversity has long progressed past a simple “add [insert systematically erased identity here] and stir” if you will. And while the listed period pieces have done their fair share of subversion, their attempts at diversity have done a larger deal of damage than they anticipated because of one overly arrogant exploit: they are trying to rewrite our deeply damaged histories.
Hollywood is a Netflix series that aired in May of 2020. The slice of escapism we were all seeking in the early stages of COVID-19, Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood observes a star-studded ensemble cast portraying filmmakers and actors who are vying for their big break in Hollywood. We are transported to post-World War II Los Angeles which is driven by sex, deceit, and dreams. The ensemble cast was initially praised for its inclusion of upcoming Black actors such as Jeremy Pope (who plays a queer struggling screenwriter that works at the Golden Tip Gas Station as a sex worker, Archie Coleman) and Laurie Harrier (as Camille Washington, a talented actress on the rise). And not foreign to Murphy’s narratives, numerous queer plotlines explore romance, exploitation, and the precariousness of queerness in the late 1940s. What makes this mini-series particularly interesting is how it combines the fictitious and non-fictitious. Several characters are real figures of the Classical Hollywood era; Hattie McDaniel (Queen Latifah), Rock Hudson (Jake Picking), and even Dylan McDermott’s Ernie and his “gas station” is based on the life and career of Scotty Bowers.
Courtesy of Netflix - Still from show, Hollywood
Hollywood is a very ambitious project, but the story suffers because of this. The narrative could have easily depicted the perils of creatives of color and queer people in an era teeming with content that would produce poignant storylines of an industry built on prejudice and exploitation. Instead, you are given what James Poniewozik so aptly termed, “a Sudsy rewrite” of history. It is so pristine and full of hope that Hollywood becomes more exhausting than entertaining and borders on offensive. The very real obstacles that prevented marginalized people from succeeding in the industry are erased with the notion that appealing to the pathos of one person can change everything. In the end, you can almost hear Murphy’s panting after he has tirelessly forced inclusion and diversity in a world that simply doesn’t want it.
Then we have a regency era period piece that is enveloped in revisionism. Bridgerton. This series was practically inescapable since its Netflix premiere on Christmas day last year, and people couldn’t get enough of it. Chris Van Dusen’s show could not have anticipated Bridgerton’s cultural impact and the attention that it received was not purely because, as Van Dusen said, “it’s really sexy”. Regé-Jean Page occupied a lead role as the primary love interest, while other supporting roles featured black people, such as Ajoda Andoh playing the formidable Lady Danbury, Golda Rosheuvel portraying the biracial Queen Charlotte, and Ruby Barker in the role of Marina Thorpe. With the show’s primary focus being the goings-on of London High Society, the inclusion of people of color in primary roles could have been taken as a feat in modern television.
That could have been the case had the cast consisted of fewer actors who pass the brown paper bag test and if the only other darker-skinned black person (other than Ajoda Andoh and Martins Imhangbe) was not the almost cartoonishly vile Lord Hastings played - quite phenomenally - by Richard Pepple. The show also managed to regurgitate comp-het ideologies without seeming to consider the possibilities of the romance genre outside of these conventions While the show’s blatant colorism, unexplorative queer plotlines, and sidelining of Asian characters from any leading (or even speaking) roles could have been excused as the habitual sins of television and the streaming era succumbing to “Peak TV’s” failures, the show advertised and presented itself as the complete antithesis of this period. “We knew we wanted the show to reflect the world we live in today, and even though it's set in the 19th century, we still wanted modern audiences to relate to it and to see themselves on screen,” stated Van Dusen in an interview with Town and Country Mag when addressed regarding the casting choices and even the score. And unfortunately, the show does the opposite and manages to further the erasure of dark-skinned and Asian people from television and essentially proposes that darker skin and queerness equals less meaningful characters, while completely disregarding Asian narratives and voices.
Courtesy of Netflix - Still from show, Bridgerton
Murphy and Van Dusen failed to ask themselves throughout casting their series, creating characters, and even detailing lighting fixtures: is this my story to re-write? While the exploration of narratives is not limited to the bounds of personal identities, (race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc.) there is always the possibility that a creator could misconstrue an experience or leave a blind spot unaddressed. Some tropes and stereotypes passed down through television and film could go unopposed, and marginalized identities may not get to write their own experiences without being engulfed by the shadow of their (slightly) mediocre predecessor - who gets shrouded in praise for achieving almost nothing.
This calls into question if we should create period pieces at all. If attempts at diverse casting and storytelling land up turning into benign faux-revolutionary “moments”, then what is the point? But most importantly, is there any good we can derive from sanitizing our pasts? What makes these periods what they are is the prejudices and violence imposed on marginalized people. Without the trans-Atlantic slave trade and imperialism, the regency era’s opulence and irresistible beauty would not exist. Without the black and immigrant bodies used as cheap labor and the fearful assimilation of queer bodies, there wouldn’t be the machine that was the Golden Age of Hollywood. While our support for period pieces remains unchallenged, it is becoming more difficult to see what we truly gain from telling stories set in periods where white, cisgender, able-bodied, and heterosexual narratives are laden with nuance and humanity because marginalization has rendered “the Other” inapplicable. This allows narratives we know best to develop, or we actively engage with “the Other” only to fall into the trap of exploiting the traumas and horrors of these experiences for monetary gain and critical acclaim.
Image of James Baldwin
In the “Autobiographical Notes” in his prolific book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin writes, “[I] think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” And Baldwin’s emphasis on exploring the past is something that the film and television industry has taken into account. From Roots to Little Women, period pieces have been instrumental in shaping our understanding of the world and aiding us in conceptualizing new ways forward, but perhaps it is time to shift our narrative focus. Maybe production giants could look to other periods in different parts of the world, and loosen their unjustifiable grip on “the Other’s” narratives, or perhaps we do away with the period piece as it stands today altogether. Whatever the solution is, it surely is not what we have witnessed.