Dear Editor,
Netflix’s series Queen Charlotte does a great disservice to democracy, even aside from the fact it is intended to be a fun and fanciful revision of British history.
It places 18th century England in the framework of a quiet civil rights and gender rights movement sponsored by the monarchy. It also suggests that the great divide in western society has always been race and gender.
That is a false division that is contradicted by the program’s own black and female characters, who fit like comfortable gloves and slippers into the exclusivist and oppressive aristocratic class in England.
The program’s creator, Shonda Rhimes, accepts monarchy if monarchy accepts racial minorities and women into the entitled class. Has Rhimes forgotten that titled nobility is prohibited by constitutional law in this country and for good reason? She has.
What good does it do to add blacks and women to the 1% class when that tiny class of multi-racial, mixed-gendered nobility then sings the praises of political power belonging exclusively to the wealthy?
We need only think about wealthy Republican blacks and women in positions of power today, like Clarence Thomas and Kari Lake, to understand the danger of going down that road.
