Should period drama be more racist and sexist ?

[Ayaan]

Just read books written in the period. I've been reading fiction written in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The amount of casual bigotry is just mind-blowing.

[cronus]

Racism hasn't gone away. It's been subliminated. At most they were more honest in the past, not base brutes. Do you really believe the kind of literature and music that evolved in the 19th C could have come from modern day Republicans?

[Rum]

Who said it did?

Cars. Always too clean in period movies!

[FBM]

Also almost everyone should be smoking like a crematorium chimney, drunk off their ass most of the time while spending their lucid moments scratching themselves, while struggling with rickets, kidney stones, gout and all manner of ailments and the streets practically an ocean of horse dog and rat urine in which there are continents of animal dung. Much like Redcar was when I last visited.

A bit like that Hogarth picture...



I think gin may have been involved...

[/fbm]

[/rEv]

[pErvinalia]

[rainbow]

Truthful is better, but I don't expect the entertainment industry to ever be able to get that.

It was once popular for ladies' dresses to be cut below the nipple. I demand this be represented accurately in period dramas.

In pre-missionary Africa, topless was the norm.

[cronus]

Hogarth says nothing about the past. It's a snapshot without a camera....no need for photoshop by that method.

[Tyrannical]

A lot of faux history pieces, even those that pretend to be accurate are designed to show not historical accuracy but that past historical behavior was wrong.

[mistermack]

Even going back just a few tens of years, you can see the difference.

If ''Oliver'' was made today, they would definitely tone down the depiction of Fagin as a grasping ''stereotypical jew'' that Dickens wrote.

The musical was not considered controversial in it's day, but it would be, if they didn't tone it down today.

[Hermit]

Oh, and Maurice Chevalier explaining what virginity is about in that blockbuster musical Gigi. Not a single complaint about likening it to a matchstick for decades. Everyone agreed with the allegory. "Keep your virginity, girl. It's the most valuable thing you can to bring to your wedding." There was no equivalent advice for the boy who got her pregnant.

[laklak]

Not a single incident of sodomy in Master and Commander, Captain Blood, Mutiny on the Bounty or Hornblower flicks. No jungle love in Gone With the Wind, though Mandingo covered that. Arthurian castles were shining towers of silver and white, not rude piles of stone filled with rotting rushes and pig shit.

[Svartalf]

Period drama ought to be bloody

[hadespussercats]

Period drama ought to be bloody

[klr]

The further back in time you go, the more racist and sexist were real people.

That is generally glossed over in period drama. You get no real idea of just what real-life conversation was like back in those days, especially when concerning race or sexuality or women.

Is it a good thing that we give a false idea of the past, or should we portray it, warts and all? Is being ''nice'' more important than being truthful ??

I read the OP as "more racy and sexier".

[MrJonno]

Broadwalk empire pretty sexist and racist (and extremely good)

Most adult period drama (ie those with swearing and nudity) does touch on these topics where appropiate

My biggest problem with drama is mainly the lack of swearing in it, I simply can't take any adult conflict without someone at least occasional saying shit or fuck.

Nudity always adds to a drama but I can accept that sometimes you can have serious drama without any (especially if it involves schools)