“Miss Sharma, may I have this dance?:” The Role of Historical Dance and Colonial-Washing in Netflix’s Bridgerton
Bhumi B Patel
Abstract: Dance plays an important role in popular culture, even when specific forms of dance transition from the realm of popular dance to historical dance. These dances might return to popular consciousness through popular media, as is the case with the dances of Regency Era England which appear in the 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice and more recently through the Netflix/Shondaland series, Bridgerton. This paper studies how dancing functions within the plot of Bridgerton to build intimacy and suspense between characters. In season 1, the interracial pairing between the Duke of Hastings, Simon and the diamond of the season, Daphne, never addresses their racial difference and dancing becomes imperative to their faux-turned-real love that is untouched by race. Further, in season 2, when we are introduced to two young women from South Asia, the Sharmas, dance is key to the proposed post-racial “utopia” crafted by the show where race couldn’t stand in the way of love. Utilizing two pivotal dance scenes, this paper examines colorblind casting and utilizes movement analysis to propose that dance is a narrative mechanism that shrouds unrealistic intimacy in post-racial utopic love creating a colonial-washing of the history of interracial partnerships.
Keywords: Bridgerton, Dance, Netflix, Postcolonial Popular Media, Fictional Interracial Relationships, Regency Era
Dance plays an important role in popular culture, even when specific forms of dance inevitably move from the realm of popular dance to become historical dances that can be relegated to dance manuals and memories. Fascinatingly, because historical fiction has had a reemergence during tumultuous political climates over the last few decades [1] many historical dances have returned to popular consciousness through books, movies, and television shows, like the reemergence of dances of Regency Era England (commonly noted as 1795 to 1837) through the 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice and more recently through the Netflix/Shondaland hit series Bridgerton (2020-present). Bridgerton is not explicitly about dance, but dancing functions within the plot to build intimacy and suspense between characters, with the first two seasons focusing on interracial couples. In season 1, we witness the courtship between the Duke of Hastings, Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page), and the diamond of the season, Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor), but the show never addresses their racial difference. Dance becomes imperative to their faux-turned-real love that is untouched by race. Further, in season 2, when we are introduced to two young women from South Asia, Kate (Simone Ashley) and Edwina (Charithra Chandran) Sharma, and the love triangle with Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey), dance is key to the proposed post-racial “utopia” crafted by the show where race or racism couldn’t stand in the way of love. Utilizing two pivotal dance scenes, this paper seeks to understand the show’s proposed relationship between colonizer and colonized. Through narrative and movement analysis of moments of dance between Daphne and Simon in season 1 and Kate and Anthony in season 2 and context analysis supported by news articles, blog posts, and interviews related to the first two seasons, I propose that dance is a narrative mechanism that creates unrealistic intimacy and shrouds racial tension by creating a post-racial utopic love and a colonial-washing of the history of intimate interracial partnerships.
Based on Julia Quinn’s novels set in Regency Era London (the ton), Bridgerton, produced by Shonda Rhimes, premiered as an original Netflix series in 2020 and is currently Netflix’s second most popular show ever, with over 1.25 billion hours streamed. The plot follows London’s social season wherein young debutantes are presented to court and society as available for marriage and the eponymous Bridgerton family: widowed mother Violet and eight close-knit siblings—Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory and Hyacinth. Each season takes on the love life of one of the Bridgerton siblings – Daphne and Anthony in seasons one and two respectively. Their love lives are buttressed by experiences of dancing; after all, it is through the waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other country dances that they are implored to fall in love and select their spouses. This was taken with the utmost seriousness. In the early nineteenth century, dance was central to how upper-class men and women found marriage partners. Molly Engelhardt asserts that “dance was the single most popular and important recreation among any group of people” during the time because middle- and upper-class people depended upon social events to not only meet their neighbors and friends, but also, to find a marriage match (2004, 237). As Deidre LeFaye suggests, “modern readers are sometimes puzzled as to why dance scenes have so prominent a place” in Regency Era historical fiction, but balls were “the best, and indeed almost the only place where […] courtship could flourish” (2003, 103). For most young people, it was the only way they were able to find suitable spouses. While participating in social, partner dances of the Regency Era in London, couples enjoyed small moments of privacy and rare physical touch (such as hand holding) otherwise deemed inappropriate.
While the existence of dance in the time period is important, in the show, the dancing is often positioned as a space of utopic connection between characters as though physical touch was available for all people. Regé-Jean Page, the actor who plays Duke Simon Hastings, shared in an Esquire interview that:
the dancing was a gift. Once you start dancing, you get to be honest. I think that’s why dances are so central to these stories. They’re not frivolous; they’re the real heart and soul of the story, because everything else is a two-level dialogue where you say one thing and mean another. Then suddenly, there’s this place where you can’t hide. I think we learn the most about the characters on the dance floor (Westenfeld 2020).
Here, Page reinforces this utopic ideal about dance utilizing language like “honesty,” “heart and soul,” “real,” and “you can’t hide” leaving out any traces of intersections of race and dance in the show or how realistic this could be in the historical time-period. While it is not necessarily imperative to be true to history, so to speak, this sort of utopia, reinforced by the magic of falling in love alluded to through the dancing, allows for contemporary white audiences to point to these historical fictions of examples of post-racial societies existing in the past where they did not.
Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings, brushes his fingers against Daphne Bridgerton’s back during an intimate moment on the dance floor in the final dance scene from season one, episode two: “Shock and Delight.”
The imagination of a raceless society is something that is popular in current popular media, and in Bridgerton, the choice to use instrumental, popular, contemporary music in a period drama is a deliberate choice to appeal to contemporary audiences. The music adds to the appeal of the show, complementing the dance sequences in the show. In Bridgerton, period-specific dancing is brought into contemporary consciousness both through the television show’s popularity but also with the choice to set the choreography to present-day, US-American popular music reimagined as instrumental tracks. Instrumental versions of Ariana Grande's “thank u, next,” Maroon 5's “Girls Like You,” Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” and Billie Eilish's “Bad Guy” performed by Vitamin String Quartet bring together dramatic moments with nuance, texture, and depth.
Moreover, despite the fact that the dancing takes place in popular Regency ballroom floor patterns, the bodies in motion speak to 21st century audiences and their concerns: love, loss, and sex. This sets up an appeal to audiences that fails to recognize the lack of historical accuracy. At first glance, Bridgerton seems like a raceless society, but as Gary Younge points out in “Black Like Me: Bridgerton and the fantasy of a non-racist past” for The Nation, “the fact that slavery has only just been abolished and colonialism is in full throttle—meaning race was very much an issue—is a point for pedants and killjoys” (2022, 18). For the purposes of this paper, I analyze the dance scene between Daphne and Simon in season 1, episode 8, “After the Rain” and the dance scene between Anthony and Kate in season 2, episode 4, “Victory” to demonstrate that dance in the universe of the show is used to shroud racial tensions and engage with a colonial-washed nostalgia for a fantasy of a Regency Era London where race didn’t impact intimate partnerships.
Colorblind casting is a perpetuation of colonial-washed nostalgia that generates a false utopia in fictional historical settings. Kristen Warner takes head on this false utopia, where race doesn’t exist as a systemic barrier, with her text The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting where she asks how a show that neutralizes the existence of race can still be considered by critics to be a show about race. I ask, how can a show that neutralizes the existence of race, still be about race when the audience doesn’t see it? For Warner, “racial colorblindness is the ideological politically correct default lens we use to make everyone the same, media pundits have to abide by the hegemonic rules of universality and equity until an outside force ruptures the stasis” (Warner 2015, 2) and that this colorblindness is “inherently seductive” when considering the audiences who are part of “a well-intentioned society full of liberal guilt” (Warner 2015, 4). She does go on to assert that “colorblind casting is a myth perpetuated to uphold and maintain white supremacy” reinforcing that drawing attention to race is imperative to dismantle white supremacy in television (Warner 2015, 25). Finally, Warner makes a deeply important point about performance studies as a way in to deal with issues of race in the ideology of colorblindness. She suggests that “performance studies is well-situated to deal with identity issues relating to character roles because from a performance perspective, the actor and her presentation abide in the text, and, with her, a plethora of social and political meanings” (Warner 2015, 13).
Following Warner’s critique, this paper challenges colorblindness in popular media. Colorblind casting is a central tenant in the work of Shonda Rhimes, who in addition to Bridgerton, has produced shows like Grey’s Anatomy (2005-Present), Scandal (2012-2018), Inventing Anna (2022), and How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020). While moments of racial tension exist in the show, when it comes to love and partnership, these tensions are erased in favor of an idyllic belief in love overcoming all. In 2006, Durba Ghosh published “Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire,” and in 2022 when the second season of Bridgerton was released, her book came back into popularity, prompting a post for Cambridge University Press’ blog, named “Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire,” after her book. In this post, she states that when Bridgerton season 2 came out, she was inundated with questions about race. She notes that these questions “are likely provoked by a particular set of assumptions about histories of colonialisms” (Ghosh 2022). These assumptions are centered around family construction and interracial intimate partnerships where if, in Bridgerton, two interracial couples can fall in love, then certainly there were other people of different ethnic groups that could sleep together and make loving families before “British colonialism turned violent and racist” (Ghosh 2022). The reception of the show where audiences believe in the fantasy of loving families created between the colonizer and the colonized is a colonial-washing of the documented history of colonial violence that occurred, even in intimate partnerships. It is a promotion of a fantasy to interrupt the realities of intimate relationships between the colonizer and the colonized. This is evidenced by two major pairings in Bridgerton that I study in the next two sections of this paper.
Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings, and Daphne Bridgerton dance, gazing into each other’s eyes during a pivotal dance scene in season one episode eight: “After the Rain.”
Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma dance, hands touching while they look into one another’s eyes, realizing that their feelings run deeper than dislike during a pivotal dance scene in season two episode four: “Victory.”
Kate and Anthony
The romance of season two builds upon the racial dynamics and nostalgia in season one. In season two of Bridgerton, released in 2022, the audience is introduced to The Sharmas—sisters Kate and Edwina—who become the central heroines of the season. This season focuses on the fact that it is time for Anthony, the eldest of the Bridgerton children, to marry, and he is ready to find a wife. This season brings into question the position of South Asian women in British society during the Regency era, their relationships to European men, and whether or not changing the characters of the Sheffields (as they are in the original Julia Quinn book) to the Sharmas really mattered at all. After the release of the second season, historian Durba Ghosh, who focuses her historical work on the intimate relationships between South Asian women and European men, responded to viewer queries to understand whether South Asian women were present in Britain at all during the time. She was inundated with such questions as: “was it true that a South Asian woman might have been circulating in the social circle of Regency-era London?How many women of Asian descent would have there been?” Ghosh responded by unpacking some of the assumptions made about the time period. She writes,
Most of the reporters I spoke to were focused on confirming whether Bridgerton with its casting of South Asian actors to play two characters of Indian descent was a positive development for race relations in Britain. These questions are likely provoked by a particular set of assumptions about histories of colonialisms: as I understand it, surely if people of different ethnic groups slept together we can imagine that people of different cultures and background got along fine before British colonialism turned violent and racist. But as anyone who has read my book knows, the point of my book was to argue that relationships between Europeans and women who lived on the Indian subcontinent did not generate happy families (Ghosh 2022).
However,Bridgertoninvites us into a budding romance thatsurelymust generate a happy family for Anthony and Kate, even if they start out disliking one another. Headstrong and protective, Kate arrives in London with her widowed mother and her younger sister Edwina to secure a wealthy husband (and by extension her family’s future) for Edwina. At her first ball, she overhears Anthony making misogynistic comments about finding a wife and then vehemently objects to his courtship of Edwina, despite his wealth and good looks. Anthony doubles down on his courtship of Edwina, all the while antagonizing Kate. The first time that they dance together, at the request of Edwina, who desired that her older sister and future husband get along, their relationship changes and the tension that had been building in previous episodes comes to head and through the non-verbal narrative of the dance scene, the audience realizes the truth. They are in love. In this scene hostility turns to budding romance, a trope often called “enemies to lovers,” but Anthony is already in pursuit of Edwina. So then, the love story becomes the major complication of the season rather than Kate’s (and Edwina’s) immigrant status and racial identity, the erasure of South Asian women in British colonialism, or their (Kate and Anthony) vastly different cultural upbringings.
Like Ghosh points out, the narrative that a South Asian woman in Britian could end up in a happy, loving relationship with a titled member of British society at this time is “a fantasy” (Ghosh 2022). At the start of the dance, they glare at one another, hands barely coming into contact, turning sharply and bouncing on the balls of their feet to maintain space between their bodies. As they go into a slow-motion moment of the dance, they look into each other’s eyes while rotating around one another. It’s almost as though the world slows down for them to realize their feelings. As the playback speed increases again, their bodies are closer, their hands linger in touch longer, and their faces draw near. Whether desire or choreography, Anthony’s hand rests on the front of Kate’s shoulder, near her heart. The spell breaks when Kate declares that once her sister is married, she will return to India alone. Though Anthony and Kate eventually end up married, if this story played out as historical accounts suggest it would have, we would have seen a family with a mother as a ghostly figure. Afterall, Ghosh reminds us that “for the families that emerged from the intimate encounters between British or European men and local women on the subcontinent, there is almost always a mother who cannot be named” (2022). Kate’s strong-willed and fierce nature makes it seem unlikely that she would accept a subjugated role. So then, this idea that Kate can both be the wife of a titled member of society and remain as strong-willed as she is contributes to a colonial-washed version of nostalgia that convinces modern audiences that love can erase racial tension. This dance scene veils the racial dynamic and creates an unrealistic intimacy in post-racial utopic love.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Bridgerton, created on the premise of colorblind casting, continues to be popular with contemporary audiences. The dancing, as Page emphasizes, impacts viewers and draws them into this fantasy of a post-racial world. But the show is primarily viewed by US-American audiences and Warner reminds us “the price of a post-race America is always paid by Black and Brown bodies” (Warner 2015, 64). The show has been renewed for at least two more seasons. Whether the dancing will continue to erase racial difference and cover it with a sense of nostalgia remains to be seen, but what is true is that nostalgia erases the past. More than that, as Jenner argues, nostalgia has a tendency to “depoliticize the past” and is often an “individualistic and narcissistic project” that allows those in power to believe that there was racial peace during the British Empire (Jenner 2021, 301-2). Like most Shonda Rhimes’ television shows, even Bridgerton, which is set 200 years ago, promotes a post-racial, multi-racial version of the world that we live in. It is a fantasy to believe that by dancing all the complications of life, but particularly the complications of race, can be erased and overlooked. Indeed, while the fantasy of a raceless society may appeal to audiences who want a nostalgia for a time that never was, this perspective on the Regency Era in Britain is false, and dancing shrouds this reality as a non-verbal narrative mechanism, colonial-washing the series.
Works Cited
Bridgerton. 2020. “After the Rain.” Netflix. 1:12:52, December 25, 2020. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81044689.
Bridgerton. 2020. “An Affair of Honour” Netflix. 1:01:25, December 25, 2020. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81044684.
Bridgerton. 2020. “Shock and Delight.” Netflix. 1:01:51, December 25, 2020. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81044586.
Bridgerton. 2022. “Victory.” Netflix. 58:13, March 25, 2022. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81306375.
Eng David L. and Shinhee Han. 2019. Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans. Durham: Duke University Press.
Engelhardt, Molly. 2004. “The Manner of Reading: Jane Austen and the Semiotics of Dance.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 26 (January): 237.
Ghosh, Durba. 2022. “Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire.” Fifteen Eighty Four: Academic Perspectives from Cambridge University Press. Published on May 11, 2022. https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2022/05/sex-and-the-family-in-colonial-india-the-making-of-empire/.
Jenner, Mareike. 2021. “Netflix, nostalgia and transnational television.” Journal of Popular Television 9 no. 3 (June): 301-305.
LeFaye, Deirdre. 2003. Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. London: Frances Lincoln Limited.
Westenfeld, Adrienne. 2020. “Regé-Jean Page Is the Leading Man For the Next Decade.” Esquire. Published on Dec 9, 2020. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34882440/rege-jean-page-simon-basset-bridgerton-netflix-interview/.
Younge, Gary. 2022. “Black Like Me: Bridgerton and the fantasy of a non-racist past.” The Nation (April): 14-19.
Warner, Kristen J. 2015. The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting. New York: Routledge.
Notes:
[1] In 2023, three out of five works of fiction nominated for 2023’s National Book Award were works of historical fiction. (https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a45859903/national-book-awards-recap-2023/)