‘Bridgerton’ Review: The Duke of Hastings Was My Early Valentine…and First Love is Hard.
I’ve loved to read since I was a child. I’ve loved books and movies, books with movie pictures in them, movies based on books. Words, manifesting.
My first pair of glasses at age 6 found my first “one true pairing” (OTP) in Ron and Hermione. The friendly enemies to lovers (but would do anything to save your life) trope appealed to me at the time. Thanks, TERF who shall not be named for my first recognition of my penchant for toxicity. Trashy love, you could call it, in a way.
As I grew into teenage fever, I delved into my literary and academic interests more and more, a proud and sometimes popular member of many book and television ‘fandoms’ and the lone champion of a lot of indie films.
In high school and college, I was a competitive actress and a tutor. I’ve always taught my summer camp students that the hardest emotions to portray in drama correctly are sometimes the positive ones.
Sometimes it’s hard to nail what love feels like without falling a little bit into it yourself.
So on Christmas, when I opened Netflix to watch the Grinch for the 50th time that week and instead saw Rege-Jean Page’s face riding in on my screen, presented by Shondaland and romance author Julia Quinn, I knew that I had re-opened something that 13 year old me would not have been unable to wait to devour. A decade later, she re-entered and I attacked each episode viscerally, in communication with friends. Upon my first time watching, it wasn’t until episode 4 of Bridgerton that I realized that I had not quite really heard a word that Daphne had said.
The show, for those initial 4 episodes, was a delight. I sang it’s praises and eagerly hoped for its success. I was not disappointed. Rege-Jean Page’s follower count blossomed, swelling from 50k to 300k to now, almost 3 million. And growing. And growing. As viewers, the almost 90 million people who watched and enjoyed, can look at the show and recognize that a credible tension exists between the idea of love and power; the very literal role of violence within determining what many people, especially white people, understand to be sexual or pleasurable since the dawn of time.
What we all know now and didn’t expect was the episode 6 scene that lacked any warning for marital rape. Old fans of the series have protested the material for years. I can’t say what would feel like labor to you and what might not, but a trigger warning most likely would not have been hard to do for a period drama. The main awfulness for me was the simple fact that an act of marital rape just wasn’t acknowledged as such, by the creators of both the book and the show, simply because it was done by Daphne. The heroine remains absolved of blame, to live life as an innocent and ignorant white woman, seemingly incapable of damage.
Seeing abusers in power, not just on the news or in my city, but in my fiction, even if only momentary, was unnecessary for this kind of escapist storytelling.
I am tired of being made by fellow creators to sympathize with terrible people, with people who commit crimes ranging from murder to rape to domestic terrorism and still get idealized at the end of the day…especially after this recent siege for power by Trumpers, Trumpies, and Trumpettes. The Bridgerton rape scene of 2020 is perhaps a finale, an accidental illustration of how a broader. artistic, acceptance of the conflation of love, economics, and ownership (ie. love as a good) can often begin. Within some interracial couplings it can just be a smokescreen for the physical pleasure white people derive from abusing their social and political dominance over Black people, subtle as it may be.
Seeing abusers in power, not just on the news or in my city, but in my fiction, even if only momentary, was unnecessary for this kind of escapist storytelling. The scene’s inclusion, without warning for survivors after such a tumultuous decade, is to suggest that there is a moral case for forcing someone to ejaculate in you and raise children, if you are pretty and ignorant and white and feel lied to.
The literary Daphne admits (to only herself — a common characteristic of Daphne is she does not apologize) being ashamed of her actions.
It is not lost on me also that the casting of Rege-Jean Page opposite Phoebe Dynevor highlights a lot of the issues with sexual racism and informed consent within the romance industry and how it permeates the ideology behind modern love today. In the books, Simon is white and the scene is way worse. The literary Daphne admits (to only herself — a common characteristic of Daphne is she does not apologize) being ashamed of her actions.
Daphne is an abuser who can detach from the event and lash out on who makes her feel as if she was wrong. There is no doubt she is wrong.
Astonishingly, or not, Daphne is a character who almost never says sorry or admits that she is wrong, the way her fellow society girl Marina can. It is compelling once you notice that Daphne has everything Marina wants…but wants only what Marina has…a child. And what sucks the most is that it feels as if this was Bridgerton’s one chance to move things around and get things right and they failed. How long will we keep failing each other and refusing to look at things as they truly are? Were we not all watching the same show? That was the real moral of the season 1 story — don’t coerce your husband into submission over a decision that affects the rest of your lives together. We all knew that at least.
If Daphne is to feel and be apologetic, it may look that way but it was never said. What can be said is that she enjoys lying to herself and others. What can be said is Daphne was only tired of pretending when her actions hurt Simon so much she almost lost her husband completely. Daphne is an abuser who can detach from the event and lash out on who makes her feel as if she was wrong. There is no doubt she is wrong.
I just wanted the creators to acknowledge that so generations of mothers stop justifying marital rape to their daughters and then condemning the women their son sleeps with for struggling with their son’s concept of autonomy and ownership.
My biggest hope in all of this is that those same parents and creators have kids who have Tik Tok and have been seeing #Bridgertok’s newest musical, and have read the millions of comments that have condemned Daphne’s actions and the shows other missteps over and over.
I’ve been seeing someone for a few months who knows I enjoy a television binge. Watching this show together has opened up conversations about what we would and would never do to each other or even another person. I’m glad that my Bridgerton idiots have reached high peaks. Their toxicity can now inspire new decade romances to have honest and healthy discussions around dating and family planning. Lord knows that this has never been more important.
Sometimes it’s hard to nail what love feels like without falling a little bit into it yourself.
What Daphne and Simon taught me is, when it comes to love, you never know when someone is lying…but you also never know when someone is telling the truth.
Yet still, it is awful to imagine how many rape scenes have been printed for consumption and money and have been confused for pleasure. For secretly wanting something, for being manipulated and pulled by humanity’s most powerful strings. Love and pleasure remain economically tied, multifaceted as the nature of humanity they reflect.
Once those ties break, we might find something different. All I want for season 2 is for Kate Sheffield, the new season 2 Viscountess, to be a baddie. Cast a dark skinned black woman, you cowards.
