The Relevance of Race and Class Issues Through the Ages

ADAPTING SOURCE MATERIAL WRITTEN YEARS PRIOR AND SET IN EARLIER TIME PERIODS COMES WITH THE CREATIVE CHALLENGE OF WHEN TO USE HINDSIGHT AS A STORYTELLING LENS

WHEN ALDOUS HUXLEY was writing “Brave New World” in 1931, he was envisioning a futuristic world in which humans were genetically engineered into a caste system. Those who were deemed the most intelligent were on top — the aptly named Alphas — but no one looked around or within to question why things were like this or if it was the best way. No one except a man from the “old” way of life who entered their so-called utopia. The idea “that you’d rather be worry-free than engage with the world around you” present in Huxley’s book was at the heart of what showrunner David Wiener wanted to depict when he set out to craft the first season of his Peacock adaptation of “Brave New World.” But Wiener’s version comes almost a century after Huxley’s, and the novelist’s version of the future didn’t 100% come to pass. “He didn’t have the benefit of the 90 years of history that we have,” Wiener says. “The book is challenging, it’s a little out of date, and there are some elements that aren’t as relevant anymore, so for us it was about, how do you take the crystals that feel really true of that book and pass them through the culture of our own time?” Wiener is hardly alone in wanting to mold source material for a modern audience by allowing hindsight to shape certain elements. The showrunnners behind series such as TNT’S “The Alienist,” Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere” and both HBO’S “Lovecraft Country” and “Perry Mason” also allowed their larger perspective on events of the past to alter period-specific tales of race and class issues. They created projects that illuminate previously underrepresented areas of historical discussion while also highlighting how far sensibilities have evolved from the last time these stories were told. “We all come into the world with biases and prejudices and shortcomings and gut reactions to situations based on so many things, but if you don’t examine those, how do you grow, how do you expand, how do you challenge?,” says “Little Fires Everywhere” showrunner Liz Tigelaar.