Author: bessore

This blog post was inspired by a conversation my mom Carrie initiated during our weekly family Facetime. It went something like this:

Carrie: What do you think about all this Bridgerton stuff?

Esmé: What do you mean? I haven’t seen it but know a lot of people like it.

C: I mean, with all the Black characters. Don’t you think that would confuse little kids?

E: ??

C: There isn’t slavery in the show, right? I mean, what do you think of all this representation stuff? Isn’t that confusing for a kid to watch a story that takes place back then but without the racism and slavery?

E: Well, I don’t think it’s confusing, and I think more people of color were in aristocratic positions back in the day than film/TV up until this would’ve led us to believe… The sense that I get is that there is still racism within the show but it’s not as explicit as slavery, it’s more nuanced and implicit like today.

C: But what about people who don’t believe slavery happened? Doesn’t that further their argument?

E: I mean, it’s a fictional show…

Hindsight is, famously, 20/20, and there are many things I wish I’d pointed out to my mother in the course of this conversation: that Bridgerton is a bodice-ripping soap opera that even the most oblivious parent probably wouldn’t let their child watch, and that historical fiction is so whitewashed it’s become difficult for us to imagine people of color even existing in the distant past, much less succeeding or holding any position of power.

Again, let me preface this by saying I haven’t seen any Bridgerton at all. All my knowledge of it has been filtered through newspaper op-eds, TikToks, and word of mouth. The especially salacious parts naturally get the most press: Sex! Sex in regency England! Naked sex in regency England! I remember comparisons to horny Jane Austen being made about it at the time and thinking, But Jane Austen’s already horny…

After recently seeing Challengers, the baffling new Luca Guadagnino film, I hunted high and low for different readings of the film, explanations for what I experienced as a nearly incoherent, anti-erotic story that had the entire movie theater laughing when it definitely did not intend to.

I promise this has something to do with TV studies!!!

Questions of authorial intent and formal filmmaking decisions aside, this recent convergence of watching Challengers and having this odd conversation with my mom made me think about Mimi White’s essay “Ideological Analysis and Television”. Buckle up for the words you’re about to ingest, dear reader: White’s essay, which I read within the past month, is possibly the singular encounter I’ve had with (and understandable explanation of) Marxist ideologies.

At an American liberal arts college.

Wow. Just let that concept sink in. I’m as shocked as you, don’t worry. My point in mentioning this is that it’s inhabited a place at the front of my mind through which I’ve filtered a lot of media and conversations, especially television. A classical Marxist take on Bridgerton and other shows in the Shonda Rhimes cannon would shovel it in the same pile as Fox news and Say Yes To The Dress, arguing that television as a medium is not harmless entertainment, but a bourgeoisie brainwashing tool to convince the masses to participate in the (economic, social) systems that oppress and blind them. As White fleshes out, though, classical Marxist thought is flawed in more ways than one. A more complicated take holds that individuals find pleasure in mass media like television despite its propagandistic elements, and thus it has positive value to the individual viewer. It’s over-simplistic and snooty to categorize all media made for profit as valueless when shows like Bridgerton and Grey’s Anatomy imagine worlds in which marginalized viewers see themselves in characters who have agency and are more than a hollow racial or gendered stereotype.

In her essay “Challenging Stereotypes,” Evelyn Alsultany problematizes the idea of “positive” minority representation on TV. In the wake of 9/11, hate crimes against Arabic- and Muslim-Americans increased exponentially. In response, shows like Fox’s long-running crime thriller 24 made an effort to increase Arabic and Muslim representation outside of “negative,” antagonistic contexts. But, as Alsultany argues, resisting writing characters into cultural stereotypes does nothing to dismantle these insidious forms of oppression if these characters still operate within a show that regularly equates Islam with terrorism.

Alsultany’s essay got me thinking about shows that, unlike 24, work to create worlds where sympathetic, nuanced Muslim characters are not the exception to the rule, worlds that focus on these characters wrestling and/or making peace with their upbringings and identities. I thought of Sort Of, a funny and sweet Canadian dramedy following Sabi, a nonbinary 20-something of Pakistani descent navigating life and love in modern-day Canada. The show employs a variety of the techniques Alsultany unpacks, including humanizing these underrepresented characters in familial contexts and showing them as victims of racism and homophobia. Whereas 24’s “positive” (patriotic and/or victimized) Muslim characters “perform the ideological work of producing the illusion of a post-race moment that obscured the severity and injustice of institutionalized racism,” Sort Of’s Muslim protagonist and multicultural supporting cast, the vast majority of whom are people of color, queer, trans, etc., occupy different realities very much informed by race. Sabi experiences microaggressions and other, less overt forms of racism and transphobia left and right, from comments on their skin color by white characters to complicated relationships with family, culture, and gender identity.

That said, Sort Of offers a glimpse into an alternative, optimistic Canada: one populated by queer people free to present themselves how they want to, who have access to safe, queer spaces, and support each other through thick and thin. The relationships between marginalized characters are made deeper and more complex by their experiences in a world hyper-focused on race. The characters’ status as ‘other’ to their white, heteronormative, cisgender surroundings only serves to bring them closer together.Reading this essay and watching Sort Of in recent memory have made me think about how neglected a topic representation behind the camera tends to be in conversations about diversity in pop culture. Bilal Baig, who stars as Sabi, is also billed as executive producer and co-creator. Would Sabi and their surroundings be as nuanced and thoughtful were a nonbinary Pakistani-Canadian not at the helm of their stories? I’m not sure. What I do know, though, is that giving people with marginalized identities the chance to tell their own stories, on their own terms, is the most straightforward route to dismantling oppressive systems upheld by racial stereotypes in pop culture.

Paramount Plus’s series Evil follows a trio of truth-seekers—a priest-in-training, a working-class tech wizz, and a Scully-coded psychologist—hired by the Catholic church to work through their backlog of investigation requests into various supernatural phenomena, from demonic possession to medical miracles. I started watching it for a few reasons. First, the first three episodes were available to watch on the plane home for spring break. Second, reading the series description faintly reminded me of an article my mom had sent me about it (she thought it seemed up my alley and she was correct). Third, and perhaps most importantly, I liked the poster advertising the show on the tiny TV screen implanted into the headrest of the seat in front of me. It was hyper-stylized, showing a closeup of a woman’s face turned toward the heavens, impossible things reflected in her tears.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying I’ve watched a whopping four episodes of the entire show, whose last season airs in May. I’m reading this text based on the arcs I’ve seen develop over the first quarter of the first season. That said, with only four episodes under my belt, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this show and the way it problematizes questions concerning science and faith.

Startlingly different readings of the series arise through the use of television studies theorist Stuart Hall’s definitions of three broad categories of interpretation, as outlined in his 1980 essay “Encoding/Decoding”: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. A dominant decoding involves the television viewer ‘correctly’ interpreting the text; that is, deriving the meaning from it that the creators, producers, distributors, etc. encoded into it, whether intentionally or not. An oppositional reading actively resists a ‘clear’ or dominant understanding of the text, instead opting to “retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference” (173). Finally, the negotiated reading exists between the realms of the dominant and the oppositional, flirting with both lenses and ultimately drawing a more dynamic, ‘complete’ conclusion than either of the other two can on their own.

A few different readings of Evil thus far, per Hall:

Dominant- Many superstitions and “miracles”/religion-based beliefs are rooted in ignorance and stigma around mental illness, as well as structures of power created and sustained to upkeep and emphasize the institution of Catholicism. Many “miraculous”/“unexplainable” things in the world can be explained through close observation and scientific reasoning. Earthly explanations. Science does not, however, explain everything—some things truly cannot be explained through empirical means, or at the very least humankind hasn’t caught up enough to effectively explore these phenomena.

Negotiated- This program is capitalistic in nature but still contains artistic merit and relevant/thoughtful discourse on the human experience and the various ways we make sense of the world around us—through empirical or subjective lenses, or, ideally, both.

Oppositional- Though Evil appears well-intentioned, it, like all television, is simply another cog in the capitalist machine disguised as a legitimate artistic/philosophical effort. It is a part of the same intricate systems of oppression it fictionalizes and seeks to explore. The fact that the three main characters in the series are all employed by the Catholic church exposes their corrupt intentions and morals in this seemingly charitable pursuit of truth and rightness, as well as their creators’ inability to truly challenge this system. Did the individuals involved truly care about debunking harmful religion-based societal assumptions designed to disempower those most affected by systems of oppression, they would refuse to work with the Church and instead strike out on their own as a nonsecular effort to right centuries of lies perpetrated by religions like Catholicism. This program, by having its protagonists employed by the Church, reestablishes the very systems of power it markets itself as challenging. It is nothing more than yet another money-grabbing, formulaic attempt by a dying streaming platform to stay relevant in a world increasingly populated by sensationalist media. True art is not for profit.

In my opinion, this show is an ambitious and complicated effort by makers legitimately interested in problematizing the world around them through the lenses of science and religion, exploring what happens when the two intersect. It is neither patronizing toward religion nor blindly trusting of science. It grapples with modernity through three strikingly different characters of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, asking more questions that providing definitive answers.