Nostalgia amongst younger generations, along with the movie industry’s creativity slowing to a crawl, has led to a revived desire for period dramas; their philosophical messages, passionate love stories, and the chance to escape into a different time, into a literary classic. Their attraction resides mostly in the worlds they allow audiences to explore and to imagine themselves belonging to, and to forget their mundane problems.
Yet increasingly this attraction is eroded by the industry’s inability to separate today’s beauty standards from period adaptations of literary classics. What emerges is a conflict of interest, in which studios attempt to lure in the academic book-loving audience that has been desperately waiting for an adaptation of their favourite story, as well as attracting other audiences based on the actors’ conventional beauty.
Social media has been rife with outrage over such castings, most notably with Margot Robbie’s upcoming interpretation of a supposedly 18-year-old Catherine Earnshaw, whose original description she juxtaposes entirely. Bridgerton’s Penelope Featherington and Francesca Bridgerton also offer us examples of this phenomenon, as the show slowly distances itself from its Regency style in both costume and makeup.
Although “iPhone face” typically reflects recently popular beauty standards in facial features, such as small button noses and high cheekbones, it is not necessarily the casting that makes the phenomenon so disappointing to behold. Actors cannot be expected to change their facial features on a whim simply because their character did not have as prominent cheekbones as they do. However, the industry has an obsession with accentuating these features in order to beautify characters to modern audiences that may not have otherwise been interested in literary adaptations. Many reached their limit at Bridgerton’s use of acrylic nails and fake lashes and felt the magic of the show had slipped from it.
The result of all this is the loss of the primary reason for which period projects are in demand at all; the element of escapism. It is admittedly hard to instruct our imaginations with taking us back to the early 19th century and into Wuthering Heights when we’re wondering why Margo Robbie’s historically inaccurate wedding dress looks like something we spotted in a bridal store window just last week.
Many defend the issue by pointing out that these are adaptations of literary classics, and that if we want the original story, we should just read the books again. This is a fair criticism, but to what extent is it justifiable to sacrifice the credibility of a story for the sake of artistic liberty, or maximising box office revenue?
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