Simulated diversity and racial couvade: re-casting the past in historically based television dramas

I introduce the term “Simulated Diversity” to describe a problematic trend of superficially diversifying fictional texts in a manner that links the post-historical and post-factual to the post-racial. Focusing on Bridgerton (historical romance) and The Handmaid’s Tale (historically inspired dystopia), I examine recent color-conscious casting in order to assess a post-factual approach to representation. Bridgerton offers an improbable and ungrounded re-casting of race and class that is not flagged as an Alternate History, while The Handmaid’s Tale enacts an historically blind appropriation of African American enslavement that I characterize as a “racial couvade.” Both adaptations provoke the following questions: Is diversification compromised by historical misinformation even in so-called light entertainment? What if factual agnosticism sanctions the casual portrayal of facile post-racial societies? So far, Simulated Diversity offers more superficial diversion than meaningful diversification, appearing often as a product placement that, with uncomfortable echoes of historical enslavement, commodifies and reifies people of color.