In the pages of British Vogue, Ms Hanna Flint is dismayed that new adaptations of works by Emily Brontë and Jane Austen have,

How very dare they.

Says Ms Flint,

Richness and relevance, and imagination, being determined by race, of course.

I’m not at all sure what historical inclusivity might mean, given the racial demographics of rural England at the time of Brontë and Austen, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, what Ms Flint seems to want sounds more like ahistorical inclusivity. And whether incongruous, politically corrected racial casting choices constitute “imagination,” rather than a following of Very Modern Fashion, is a question I leave to the reader.

“Why Is The Next Wave Of Period Dramas So White?” asks the headline of the article, with the obligatory note of disapproval. An understood tutting, one presumed of its readers. Yet I’m struggling to picture Ms Flint making demands that period dramas produced in China and set in the Han Dynasty be adjusted so as to accommodate “excluded or marginalised” actors who resemble Jack Hawkins or Charles Gray.

Ms Flint, “a mixed-race woman, of British and Tunisian heritage,” informs us that, despite her enthusiasm for the genre, “I was left somewhat cold by the news that all these remakes had cast the protagonists as white once again.” Yet this train of thought terminates before reaching the possibility that others, perhaps some larger number, might be left somewhat cold by modish anachronism and jarring contrivance.

It seems to have escaped Ms Flint that, for many, the appeal of period dramas is, as it were, a holiday in time – a brief respite from modernity, its politics and paraphernalia, and perhaps even from those “diverse, multicultural surroundings” that Ms Flint feels should be the foundation of all drama and period-specific programming.

Whatever its merits in terms of modern “workforce inclusivity,” ahistorical, racially ostentatious casting does, for many viewers, risk breaking the spell, making any suspension of disbelief more difficult, while shifting the focus away from then and back to now.

Previously and related, on sex-swapping Bond.

Time, I think, to dip a toe in the world of academia. Specifically, some lively rumblings on the relative importance of electricians and sociology lecturers. I suppose you could start here, with this, but there are plenty of tangents and pith, and moments of slightly comical indignation.

Among those moments, this one:

Societies lived without electricity for millennia. Some still do. Don’t give me this shit.

By contrast, societies have ALWAYS needed individuals to assess their societal needs and propose solutions.

That by nature is The Sociologist. https://t.co/A0xifaYrXW

— Tim Gill (@timgill924) July 22, 2025

You see, Dr Tim Gill, our associate professor, is “an authority on society and everything in it.” Being an “intellectual,” he can “diagnose entire societies.” And then issue instructions to people of less importance.

Update, via the comments:

From one of Dr Gill’s own students:

A data point, I suppose.

Quoting this,

Rafi adds,

Which does rather suggest a gap in his model of the world.

At one point, Dr Gill boasts of never having used a lawn mower. Because apparently that’s a credential. Readers may also note Dr Gill’s use of the word handyman, complete with connotations of something other than respect. Still, you’ve almost got to admire the imperviousness of someone who responds to accusations of being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality by being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality.

Regarding Dr Gill’s rumblings of alleged profundity and intellectual heft, commenter Chow Bag draws our attention to this.

No laughing at the back.

And it must be quite strange to be rendered indignant by something – assumptions about a field, its standards, and the kinds of people it attracts – that your own indignant replies are pretty much confirming.

The thing is, the field of sociology needn’t, I think, have become so disreputable. I see little that’s inherently dubious about an attempt to study human society. But the field’s near-total occupation, or colonisation, by smug, delusional leftists, with all of their blind spots and baggage – and the consequent near-ubiquity of faulty default assumptions and predestined conclusions – has, inevitably, taken a toll.

The kind of people who, like Dr Gill, want to use a pretence of academic rigour to propagate their own rather weird and implausible political preferences.

Which is why we get supposed social scientists who find it problematic that Wikipedia entries written by men about pop culture topics that tend to be liked by men are often longer and more detailed, more nerdy, than entries by women on topics that are more likely to be of interest to women. As if men and women were somehow – and must be – identical in their psychology, their preferences and priorities, and as if any difference in Wikipedia entry length must be a result of some social oppression, some invisible downtroddenness.

And likewise, it’s why we get a social science lecturer being bewildered by the inegalitarian distribution of litter, and fretting about how to “narrow the gap” in discarded fag packets and food-smeared detritus, while studiously avoiding any acknowledgement of obvious differences in behaviour between social groups, as this would presumably offend his own egalitarian assumptions. And who gives no thought, none at all, to how the litter gets there in the first place. As if it just fell from the sky, randomly, like overnight snow.

And among Dr Gill’s peers, thinking of this kind is hardly uncommon. Hence the reputation.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.

And in classroom surrealism news:

Because a mentally ill, self-harming woman, one seemingly forever on the verge of tears, is now a “positive example of masculinity.” A role model for primary-school children.

Food preparation of note. || Possible downside detected. || Shall we dance? || Aerodynamic simulations. || “Diversity would be great… I just don’t think I could live anywhere where there’s, like, one group of people.” || Hyenas deterred. || Today’s word is organised. || I believe the term is hoe. || Bespectacled woman brings language lecture. || Marble. || Bathtime cunning. || Incoming. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || Trolling Antifa. || But she doesn’t look the type. || Pigtails and braless. || But he’s under the umbrella of womanhood. || He waited all week. || On the eye-widening folly of Net Zero. Previously. (h/t, Samizdata) || “Post-conflict fellatio,” butt decoration, and other chimp behaviour. || And finally, one for all those gentlemen out there in search of a “relaxed, fuller appearance.”

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, comment editing, upvotes, custom avatars, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

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For newcomers, some items from the archives:

Black Women Climb Hill.

The defining triumph of our time.

Progressive Dining Protocol.

When the neurotic eat out.

Radical Farce.

On Vanessa Engle’s three-part documentary series Lefties.

Deleted Scenes.

Laid-back driver meets wound-up cyclist. Strangeness ensues.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Oh, and consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.