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0:20

Hey, hey, you're listening to It's Been a

0:22

Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. And

0:24

today on the show, we're talking about one

0:27

of my favorite shows, The Gilded

0:29

Age on Macs.

0:32

It's back with a second season, and I

0:34

am so excited because this is

0:36

my soap. These

0:38

are my stories. And my guest today,

0:41

author and culture critic, Brandon Taylor,

0:43

feels the same.

0:44

I love the ridiculousness

0:46

of the gowns, of the theater, of

0:48

it all. The minute they

0:50

were like, season two, I was like, I will

0:53

be seated. I will be ready.

0:55

We follow the families of railroad

0:58

barons, bankers, and the upper,

1:00

upper bourgeois, and watch the battles

1:03

between old money and new money

1:05

unfold. It's really about rich people

1:07

being mean to rich people at its heart. Though I

1:09

do think it thinks it has more on its mind

1:11

than that.

1:12

But one of the most interesting characters

1:14

on the show, and perhaps my favorite character,

1:17

is Peggy, an upper middle class

1:19

black journalist. Though she does

1:22

lead me and Brandon to have some

1:24

questions about how post-Civil

1:27

War black life is portrayed on the show. And

1:29

questions about why shows like this seem

1:32

to turn away from certain histories

1:34

and characters.

1:36

I called up Brandon to chat about the Gilded

1:38

Age, why we watch period pieces,

1:41

and why they might say more about our

1:43

own time than our nation's past.

1:47

Brandon Taylor, welcome back to It's Been a Minute. Thank

1:50

you, I'm happy to be here. Oh

1:52

my gosh, I'm so happy to have you. We're here

1:54

to talk about the Gilded Age, which

1:57

admittedly is one of my favorite shows

1:59

to watch. I'm very excited.

2:01

It's back and I do

2:04

have critiques of it though, which we'll get to but

2:06

what makes period pieces like the Gilded Age Like

2:08

so appealing to us like what are we looking for? The

2:11

pleasures of period dramas is that they're inherently

2:14

a sentimental form. They're a nostalgic form.

2:16

They present this aestheticized sculpted

2:20

Illusion of the past like we're not watching the past

2:22

like watching someone's dream of

2:25

an interpretation of the past very

2:27

often and Within

2:29

that dream you get problems out of

2:31

easy resolutions You get things that

2:34

affirm our own kind of like moral

2:36

coda and moral hierarchies

2:40

and there is a profound pleasure in that

2:42

and like despite all the sniping

2:44

and the horror of it all that Obviously

2:47

the newcomers are going to win. We

2:49

know what happened the gowns will be beautiful

2:52

I think we love it for that like the material spectacle

2:55

The sort of moral sensibility that affirms

2:57

our own values and mores and I

2:59

don't know that's why I love them plus all the papers

3:02

I love I love their little letter writing.

3:04

I Oh my gosh, there

3:06

used to be so much more paperwork in life and

3:08

I love that Agnes needs a secretary Why

3:11

does she need a secretary? She doesn't have a

3:13

job. I know back in that time

3:15

I wouldn't have had a secretary

3:17

to do my correspondence, but the amount of

3:19

emails and text messages that I get That

3:23

I see and then I'm oh, they're so nice

3:25

and then I never respond to my secretary

3:27

wouldn't allow that My secretary will be sitting

3:30

and she would be taking out my correspondence. Yeah, I'm sending

3:32

it out Okay,

3:34

you are a 19th

3:36

century girly. We know you love the novel. You

3:38

know, you love a period piece We know that you have written

3:42

new forwards for Edith Morton

3:44

books, but you also

3:46

Like me have a somewhat tortured relationship

3:49

to the Gilded Age Can you tell me a

3:51

moment where you paused the show and

3:53

you were like, why are you doing this to me? Well,

3:57

there have been many moments like that but the one

3:59

that stands

3:59

out in my mind is, you

4:02

know, so the sort of ostensible protagonist

4:04

of the show is Marion Brooke, who

4:06

is a recently impoverished poor

4:09

relation of the Van Rijn family who has

4:11

come to New York, and she is aided

4:14

by a wonderful, mysterious

4:16

black woman named Peggy, played

4:19

by the incredible Dene Benton, and

4:21

they both start living in Marion's

4:23

aunt's house. And it's

4:26

incredible their friendship because it's like a black woman and white

4:28

woman being friends, and it's like very the color

4:30

of friendship, but in the 1800s. Oh

4:33

my gosh, you mean like the Disney Channel original

4:35

movie? Yes, correct. A seminal

4:37

classic. So the

4:40

moment that caused me to pause the show was

4:42

when Marion thinks that Peggy

4:44

is broke because she's black, and

4:46

she goes to Peggy's house to give

4:49

her a pair of old shoes, only

4:51

to be confronted with a woman who is

4:53

living in just like the glories of the black bourgeoisie

4:56

of the late 19th century. Like a full

4:58

brownstone, a full brownstone. Yes,

5:01

and her mother is played by Audra McDonald,

5:04

who looks horrified that this

5:06

white woman has brought used shoes into

5:08

her home. What did you think,

5:10

Miss Brooke?

5:11

That we would need cast off shoes?

5:15

I'm so sorry. I was

5:17

like, oh I see what they're doing. They're doing a microaggression.

5:20

It's like she's microaggressing Peggy,

5:23

and I was just like, these people have just

5:25

lived through the horrors of the Civil War. And

5:29

Plessy v. Ferguson is like right around the corner

5:31

and you expect me to believe that like that, that

5:34

like this is what you chose to carve out space

5:36

for.

5:38

Sometimes the shows like modern sensibilities

5:40

jump out, and I find those

5:43

to be the funniest, just

5:46

like the funniest moments.

5:48

Speaking for myself, when I go to

5:50

a show like this, I

5:52

am not necessarily looking

5:53

to see Ken

5:55

Burns' level accuracy, a history

5:58

of the United States. necessarily

6:00

what I'm looking for. But I don't know,

6:02

the point to me kind of creating these

6:05

scenarios and situations that these characters

6:06

can exist in is to imagine

6:09

different possibilities. Something that just feels

6:12

exciting from a historical perspective

6:15

and a story perspective. When you focus

6:17

too much on what makes sense

6:20

in 2023,

6:20

as opposed to what would make sense and

6:22

what would make an interesting scenario for

6:24

the late 1800s, you kind of miss out on some

6:27

of those opportunities. Yeah, I mean, the

6:29

show had a really, I mean, the

6:31

part where I sort of sat up the

6:33

most when there were black people on TV

6:36

in this show was when Peggy, well,

6:38

when Peggy becomes a freelancer, which is so

6:40

funny to me, but she, when

6:42

she goes to the black press and

6:44

they, she's getting the tour

6:47

of the black newspaper and there's

6:49

like this really great organic

6:50

conversation. Have you ever thought

6:52

about writing anything political, Ms. Scott? I

6:55

have. Don't ask her if she's a Republican.

6:58

Well, why should I align myself with either party

7:00

when I don't have the right to vote?

7:02

And when you think about

7:04

the fact that a lot of the men who were in

7:06

that scene are of an age that they

7:09

would have fought or their fathers would have fought

7:11

in the civil war, which ended right five

7:13

minutes ago before the opening of this show, literally,

7:18

it becomes really interesting and really

7:20

rich. And very quickly that

7:22

sort of gets shuttled off to

7:24

go hang out with the white people again. And

7:26

I was like, well, that's like really interesting. I would

7:28

love a show about the black press.

7:31

That would be really cool.

7:33

There's so much there. I mean,

7:35

even if you just only look

7:37

at Ida B. Wells, it's like, Oh, well,

7:39

okay. Like literally

7:41

that alone, her beef with Frederick

7:43

Douglass. Come on. Who doesn't want to

7:45

see that?

7:45

Okay. On that topic, it amazes

7:48

me that Frederick Douglass his name has not been

7:50

dropped once in this entire show.

7:52

Sure.

7:59

Clearly New York is overrun by

8:02

Frederick Douglass, not impersonators in the

8:04

sense of like Elvis impersonators but you know kind

8:06

of how- They're like acolytes. Exactly. They've

8:09

got to be out there.

8:11

Coming up,

8:12

what the Gilded Age says about our desire for

8:14

social order.

8:16

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9:45

And I think about

9:47

how Peggy, the Black character, is

9:50

presented. She's this journalist.

9:52

She's educated. She lives in this beautiful

9:54

Black brownstone, and it feels

9:57

like in this show, there's an attempt to include Black

9:59

characters.

9:59

characters as a part of this high society story. And

10:02

you note that the recently ended

10:04

Civil War has barely a whisper

10:07

of an impact on what's going on in the show. How do

10:09

the black characters of the show expose the dissonance

10:12

of period dramas

10:13

as a whole?

10:14

Well I

10:17

think the role of the black characters in the

10:19

show is

10:20

interesting because I do feel like yes

10:22

there is this sort of very progressive attempt

10:24

to make a more diverse

10:27

and quote-unquote accurate period drama

10:29

like there were black people in New York. Yeah. Many of them

10:31

were displaced to build things like Central

10:33

Park and the cathedrals

10:36

of the Upper West Side. Yes,

10:38

yes, yes. And not that that history is really talked

10:40

about at all. And so they're there I think

10:43

to be set dressing more than anything else. And

10:45

what I find interesting is that like

10:48

yes they get these you know we get allusions

10:50

to the black bourgeoisie and the black middle class. We get

10:52

allusions to black wealth. I think there is a reason

10:54

why American period dramas are very often

10:57

set in cities in the Northeast and

10:59

the West. I mean

11:02

it's a big reason. And the reason

11:04

is slavery. Like the reason, yes.

11:07

Because a sentimental form requires

11:09

the upholding of bourgeois

11:12

values and Protestant values and so that

11:14

sort of requires that it end on this redemption

11:16

arc because of the nature of like visual media

11:18

and like film and TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You

11:21

kind of can't do that if you're in the South

11:23

in any period before like 1970. Like

11:27

you just you can't. It's not

11:29

gonna work. I

11:29

mean but it also like I feel like it kind

11:31

of

11:32

barely works in the

11:34

Gilded Age. Like barely.

11:37

I have this theory that the American

11:39

period drama, the

11:41

handling

11:41

of race is always gonna be

11:44

well it doesn't have to always be kind of awkward. People

11:46

could try a little something different. But I think the

11:48

reason for this awkwardness that maybe doesn't

11:51

always exist in like

11:53

British

11:53

adaptations that are really popular is

11:56

that like

11:57

the the British did a lot of their

11:59

colonial

11:59

bidding like offshore. Whereas

12:04

like we did all of our colonial

12:07

bidding

12:07

without we, not you and me, but

12:09

white people, the

12:12

Americans

12:12

did it in house. If you're

12:14

watching Downton Abbey or something like that, somebody

12:16

can make

12:16

an oblique reference to sugar or rice or

12:20

tobacco. They can just sort of

12:22

gesture at something off screen.

12:25

On the Gilded Age and in the United States and

12:27

in

12:27

these period dramas in the US,

12:29

a family source of money

12:32

could be an enslaved person who,

12:34

or formerly enslaved person in this case,

12:37

who's newly free and walking along beside

12:39

them. You can't get around that fact. There's

12:41

no gesturing off screen to

12:43

where this wealth is coming from. Yeah. And

12:46

there's a reason why the Brits

12:48

weren't writing books set in Jamaica

12:51

because that colonial

12:53

violence. Yeah. Like in America,

12:56

the violence at home was the violence at home and it was inescapable.

12:59

I do this game now where when someone, when

13:01

I hear about an American family

13:03

business that's been in, that's been in operation

13:05

for over a hundred years, I'm always like, I

13:08

like leaning in, I'm like, did you guys have slaves? Did

13:10

you have slaves? And

13:11

how'd you get the money started business a hundred years

13:13

ago? Shockingly, the answer is very often yes.

13:16

So like I was watching a video about the Tabasco

13:18

sauce and they're

13:21

like, they've had this factory for over like 150

13:24

years. And I was like, Oh, wouldn't it be so funny if

13:26

like they were involved in slavery? And

13:29

apparently Papa McElhaney, he was

13:32

like a soldier in the Confederate army. He was a clerk

13:35

in the Confederate army, his wife's

13:37

family plantation. There's

13:39

an island. There's that word again. There's

13:41

an, there's an island named after

13:44

them, the Avery Island. And,

13:47

and after the civil war, the family was

13:50

like ruined financially. And there are all

13:52

of these letters among the Avery brothers,

13:54

sort of reflecting over how the

13:57

war has caused a change in labor

13:59

conditions in the the south and that they're

14:01

struggling to find workers. And

14:03

so McElaney, the guy who started

14:05

this Tabasco, he started making

14:08

it as like a side hustle as

14:10

a way to sort of get some change. And the factory was made

14:13

on the island, on Avery Island, where

14:15

it still is today. And in that video,

14:18

the workers in that factory were black. And

14:21

all I could think about was they

14:24

probably grew up here and they are probably

14:26

the descendants of the people who

14:29

were freed, who used to work on

14:31

this plantation. And

14:34

they're still here. And they don't

14:36

mention any of that in this video at

14:38

all, of course. And it starts

14:41

out as a joke. And I'm like, did you guys have

14:43

slaves? And then I start looking and very often

14:45

the answer is yes. That to

14:47

us is over 100 years ago. But

14:50

at the time of like the events

14:52

that take place in the Gilded Age, the kind

14:54

of wealth that we think about today as having these

14:56

dark roots,

14:57

it wasn't that long ago at that point. It's

15:00

like that could have been somebody's uncle,

15:02

cousin, father,

15:04

grandfather, who was

15:06

enslaving people or

15:08

like you said, stealing land

15:11

or practicing real deal, ethnic

15:13

cleansing. There in all of this in mind.

15:16

How do you square everything we've

15:18

just discussed with your enjoyment

15:20

of this kind of period drama?

15:23

Yeah. Yeah.

15:26

Well, I think

15:26

the way that I think about it is the way that I guess

15:28

I think about everything, which is that these

15:31

things don't make it impossible

15:33

for me to engage this work or to

15:36

enjoy this work. I think it deepens

15:39

my engagement with it. And like part of the enjoyment

15:41

is being able to begin to pick

15:43

it apart and to think critically about it. That's

15:46

what I love to do is to sort of think deeply about the stuff that

15:48

I'm taking in. I don't know. But

15:50

enjoying a show just looks like clapping

15:53

for it the whole time.

15:54

What does how we construct

15:57

our past in shows like these say

15:59

about?

15:59

our own fears and fantasies today.

16:03

Us making that show to sort of look

16:05

back at that time period says

16:08

something about the moment we're in, in which we kind of

16:10

long for the

16:13

illusion. Not knowing that it was

16:15

an illusion even as it was happening, but we sort

16:17

of long for a time when like

16:20

rich people behaved badly,

16:23

but in a way that was like witty and coy

16:25

and like there were these structures in society.

16:28

I think that we are in a having

16:30

felt these like great seizures

16:32

in our society, these great upheavals

16:35

of the uprisings of 2020 and Brexit and the atomization

16:41

of society. It makes sense that Julian

16:44

Fellowes is like pining for

16:47

a tightly organized constrained

16:49

society. The creator of the show, yeah. Right,

16:51

like it makes sense that he would dream

16:54

of a show like the

16:57

Gilded Age. Modernity has like raided

17:01

society of meaning

17:03

and unity and cohesion

17:06

and we're now this atomized, like

17:08

Balkanized archipelago

17:11

of Phyphdoms and tribes. What

17:13

does Julian Fellowes imagine? But

17:18

it's like the comfort of order. Exactly, the Gilded

17:20

Age. And

17:25

so here we are again reimagining

17:27

ourselves and you see it in shows like Succession,

17:29

you see it in shows like Billions,

17:31

these shows in which like we are recasting

17:33

the wealthy as like we're putting them back

17:36

in Olympus and we're watching the

17:38

gods duke it out, right? Like it makes

17:40

sense that after all of that we would

17:43

sort of want to sort of reconfigure

17:46

all of this stuff and so I think yeah, a show like the

17:48

Gilded Age says that

17:50

we're in a place where we're hungry for dreams

17:52

of order. That's a very very

17:54

very interesting point.

17:56

Of course when we watch these films

17:58

and TV shows, Everything

18:01

in a period drama or this sort

18:03

of period drama needs to be historically

18:05

like extremely

18:06

to the letter historically accurate But

18:08

I wonder what would a less

18:10

Historically

18:11

dissonant or discordant version

18:14

of a period piece like this

18:16

Look like you wrote a wonderful

18:18

essay about the Gilded Age on sweater weather and you talked

18:21

about the element of the gothic and how that

18:23

Might fit into this tale

18:26

that

18:26

would make sense for you. Talk to me about that Yeah,

18:29

so I think a sort of more gothic

18:31

take would just be to let some of

18:34

the sort of simmering darkness of the social

18:37

context leak into the show like

18:39

the sort of simmering social unrest that is going to

18:41

lead to Plessy v. Ferguson the

18:43

sort of Brutality of the

18:46

Civil War not just for the black people but the white

18:48

people like it lingers so strongly

18:50

in society That's why they're trying so hard

18:52

to have these parties And I

18:55

think it would look like

18:57

in the same way that Edith Wharton does in

18:59

the House of Mirth capturing

19:02

the whole slimy spectacle

19:04

of the underbelly of this social world

19:06

and Examining the

19:08

lives of the poor characters examining

19:10

the lives of the working characters Ironically

19:14

letting some light and life in you know Like

19:16

why hasn't there been a series of scenes

19:18

at a dance tavern at a bar? And

19:21

for me the gothic just looks like that holding those

19:23

things in tension with this

19:25

very staid moral parade

19:29

or pageantry that's happening on

19:31

the surface

19:32

And thinking about the gothic I imagine

19:34

that that would have a completely different tone and audience

19:37

than The

19:38

people who currently watch the gilded age, right?

19:41

Maybe yeah, it's certainly a

19:43

different tone certainly a different tone I

19:45

thought a different audience that I mean I think that

19:48

I yes I think that the people who would tune in on

19:50

purpose to a more gothic the gilded age

19:53

Would be different, but I think you

19:55

would find that there's a lot of overlap It's

19:57

like killers of the flower moon like a lot of people

19:59

probably went into that thinking that they

20:01

were going to get like a classic Western tale in

20:04

which like a white man saves a bunch of brown

20:06

people right and what they get is something much

20:08

darker and much closer to a Gothic

20:10

and so it can be done brilliantly

20:13

and beautifully. Well

20:16

Brandon thank you so much for joining again this was so

20:19

much fun you were the exact person

20:21

I wanted to talk to you about this. Oh it's always a

20:23

blast with you thank you for having me.

20:26

Thanks again to Brandon Taylor his

20:28

latest novel is the late Americans and

20:31

you can find his essay on the Gilded

20:32

Age on his newsletter.

20:46

Hey Brittany. Hey Brittany. Hey

20:49

Brittany. Hey Brittany.

20:51

It's Jeremiah from Berkeley, California. I know

20:54

you've been super excited about Jada Pinkett Smith's

20:57

new memoir. Now that it's out I'm

20:59

curious to know what your thoughts are how are we feeling about

21:01

it. Thanks a lot.

21:02

Jeremiah first of all thank you so much for

21:04

calling in with this question

21:07

about Jada's

21:09

memoir called Worthy.

21:12

I know we talked about this before

21:15

this is back when y'all a couple weeks ago were sick

21:17

of hearing about the Smith's

21:20

personal business and I said

21:22

for the record I'm loving it but

21:25

honestly I've been listening to it on audiobook

21:28

it's been such an edifying listen. She

21:32

is so engaging

21:33

in the way that

21:36

she tells her own story. So

21:38

far I'm loving the book I'm right

21:40

at the point where she has decided

21:43

to leave college and is heading to Hollywood.

21:45

I will say she has yet to

21:46

meet will though at the point that I'm at so things

21:49

might take a turn but she has

21:53

a really great way of reflecting

21:56

back on her life and

21:58

like

21:58

looking at it

21:59

with the intimacy that

22:02

you want from a memoir, right? Where someone's

22:04

telling you how something made them feel or think,

22:06

but there's something that I have heard from some

22:08

people that they're kind of like not into

22:11

that I've been loving, which is at the end of

22:13

every

22:13

chapter of the book, she

22:15

has these like reflection questions for

22:17

a listener.

22:18

Wow, let me tell you.

22:20

When I heard these reflection questions, I

22:23

was like, I need to start a sister circle

22:25

book club so I can discuss

22:28

it with my friends. So

22:30

I have been enjoying like the whole self-help

22:33

aspect of it all. For me as

22:35

a 35, almost 36 year old millennial

22:37

woman,

22:37

it feels like such a

22:38

throwback to those

22:41

memoirs that used to be on Oprah

22:42

and her book club. It's

22:45

kind of fun to realize that I'm

22:46

finally at the point in my life where that's

22:48

apparently something that I'm very into as well. Anyway,

22:51

Jeremiah, thank you so much for calling in.

22:54

I've really been enjoying Jada's book and it's

22:56

a pleasure to talk about it.

23:01

This episode of It's Been A Minute was produced by

23:03

Barton Gerdwood, Alexis Williams,

23:05

Liam McBain, Corey

23:07

Antonio Rose.

23:08

This episode was edited by Jessica

23:11

Placzak, Belal Kureshi. Our

23:13

executive producer is Verilynn Williams.

23:16

Our VP of programming is

23:17

Yolanda Sangwini.

23:18

Our senior VP of programming is

23:20

Anya Grundman. All right, that's

23:22

our show for today. I'm Brittany Mooff. See

23:25

you next week for another episode of It's

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