1 March

We watched the latest series of Bridgerton on the weekend. Why do people love period dramas? I think for a reason that links to what I post about a lot. Period dramas are pretty much all about one thing. Social status, and the hugely complex ways that people negotiate it. When you look all of it is about rank and position, and how that impacts people’s lives. Kids in a school playground do the same thing, constantly. So do adults. This is the core of human life being shown, which is why we’re drawn to it. All art reflects the cultural times. Today status is as important as ever, but the lack of hierarchies to control it - the great movement of populism, towards ‘equality’ - creates entirely different challenges. Our modern drama is the fight for identity, to be seen at all in a world where status rivalries are uncontrolled. Unlike Bridgerton’s people, we’re not so much negotiating our position within existing complex hierarchies. We’re ‘performing’ our identity, in the absence of those hierarchies. It’s also why our times and art are more violent, because the fight for status is uncontrolled and the individual faces an existential encounter with the universe, alone.