It’s Time to Get Real About Bridgerton

TW: Rape

Spoilers

I like Bridgerton. I always feel the need to say that when I set out to critique a piece of media. I am a very strong believer that the way we can show how much we care about something is by discussing, dissecting, and deep-diving it. Perhaps it’s an English major thing, but critique is my love language. That being said, I don’t want to lessen the good, or skim over the bad, or ignore the mundane, in this show.

Because Bridgerton is an absolute phenomenon, I feel like things get lost in the hype. And I think it’s time to get real about what Bridgerton is, and what it isn’t; what the good, the bad, and the truth, of this show is.

Not every show has to be some groundbreaking, thought-provoking, masterpiece of writing, cinematography, and acting. Sometimes, shows are successful and enjoyable because they allow us to escape into a world far removed from our own, a world with pretty people, nice clothes, and overly-dramatized problems. Believe you me, I was ready for that after nine months of quarantine. I am happy to have Bridgerton around because I really love to have something eye-catching and fun on in the house. There are many shows I’ve watched for the same reason (Reign comes to mind). I listen to the soundtrack often, which embodies the delightful blend of a Regency, Jane Austen feel with a modern twist that makes the show so enjoyable.

But, being real, let’s not pretend that Bridgerton is more than that. I always appreciate shows that know what they are, and sometimes, it feels like the hype around Bridgerton forgets that this show is, primarily, very pulpy. I’m all for the pulp, but it’s not as though it’s changing people’s lives or perspectives, at least as far as I’m aware.

I enjoyed it, but I didn’t end up contemplating moral questions or debating larger topics because of it. I watch it to have a good time, and when I want that, this is certainly a show I come back to.

Definitely a reason to come back is Simon. Maybe I’m shallow, but I have a hard time really getting into TV shows that don’t have somebody very attractive for me to look at. Not everyone has to be Hollywood gorgeous, but I have to have someone I can crush on. And, when the whole cast is stacked with lovely humans like Bridgerton is, that’s even better, especially for a show that’s portraying something so stylized and idealized. As a visual medium, it makes sense for it to be aesthetic and beautiful.

Rege-Jean Page is certainly that. He has the “I’m picturing you naked” eyes down perfectly. I have watched that scene of him waking up shirtless in bed at least a dozen times. A bad boy charm is always delightful, too, and there is a lot of allure that comes with his walls and his damage. It speaks to a desire in a lot of women to be that special good girl who can reform the bad boy. It’s a very classic plot, and it certainly wouldn’t have stuck around if it didn’t do something for those reading or watching. So our Duke is a yummy pitstop and a fabulous distraction. Rege-Jean does a great job within the parameters of this show.

But since this is the time to be honest about Bridgerton, Simon is not a lot more than a cliche bad boy wrapped up in pretty packaging.

Again, let me say, that is not inherently a bad thing. I dearly love my Damon Salvatore, my Dean Winchester, even my Chuck Bass, all the way back to Heathcliff. But there’s a reason the bad boy is a cliche; it’s a trope that’s a shortcut to something that feels like emotional depth without actually being forced to write compelling story and interesting internal consistency of character.

Now, again, shortcuts can be helpful. Using archetypes and archetypal storylines have always been how we tell stories. The Hero’s Journey a la Joseph Campbell is showing how our most popular media, like Star Wars, is an archetypal story often based in Greek mythology. Tropes and cliches allow us to have an immediate and shared reaction to the same stimulus across many different demographics. Basically, when a bad boy pops on screen, we all have similar reactions, or, even one of just a few reactions, and can therefore meet each other instantly on common ground. This is incredibly helpful in making media with broad appeal.

It is not, however, conducive to deep, empathetic, and powerful storytelling unless you do a lot of work to adjust, confront, undermine, or in other ways develop the archetype into a complex and compelling character.

That work is not done in Bridgerton, because that’s not the kind of show it is. The characters stay archetypes. Simon is the brooding bad boy reformed by the naive but spunky virgin. In the nineteenth century, there was an entire genre of books devoted to this very specific plot, of a sweet girl able to turn a wild young buck into a loving, devoted, father and husband. It’s plenty of fun but, since I’m being honesty, it’s not exactly groundbreaking.

What can often come of this, and I think clearly shows up in both Simon and Daphne, is that characters feel either like they simply make choices in order to further the plot rather than from emotional or internal places, or they feel incredibly immature in their logic and decisions.

This is spoiler territory.

Daphne makes few of her own decisions, but rather responds to the external stimulus. Part of that is due to being a woman limited by her circumstances, but plenty of Regency heroines had a lot of agency while still operating within existing systems, so it isn’t just that.

Instead of actual agency, we get a nod in the direction of female empowerment.

She punches a creepy suitor in the garden, a moment I enjoyed deeply, and takes her sexual pleasure into her own hands, literally. Both of those are well enough, but they are again not motivated from deep, individualistic emotional places. Wanting to punch someone who is getting rapey and wanting to explore and experience your sexuality are emotions and desires common to the entire human race. Again, an archetype, not a character. Her actions are there to do something in the plot, and more often than that, the plot moves her.

Daphne’s lack of agency might be a commentary on the way women have historically been sidelined in their own lives. She does perpetrate a scam on all of London society, but instead of being a commentary, it turns out she and the Duke are not, in fact, deceiving others, but deceiving themselves about their own hearts.

It is what a sweet, light romance requires, and that is delightful. But it is not a grand critique on inequities in past, or present, society.

Simon exists more in the second category, with immaturity of character rather than lack of it. We get a rich backstory with him, his stutter and his absent, horrible father.

Every bad boy needs a tragic backstory, and this one has some weight that I found impressive.

I’m going to wade into some discussion of the black experience and minority expectations, and I will do my best to address it well, but as a young, 21st century, white female, my knowledge of the experiences of people of color is not firsthand. That being said, I hope I can do justice to this argument, and, please, read others who have this lived experience.

Simon’s backstory hits on an idea of minority excellence, that people of color have to be not only as good as their white counterparts but in fact better. To succeed in society, they have to be so good, so gifted, so excellent, that society can’t help but recognize them. That is of course a deeply damaging idea, and true equality would never require that. Simon’s story felt like a strong nod in that direction that fascinated me, however, it wasn’t delved into any deeper, he got over his stutter, and resented his father. Nothing about the systems that brought his father to those conclusions and to despise his own son, just another bad boy’s tragic backstory.

So Simon is reduced to immaturity in his decisions. His unwillingness to father children comes from a deeply wounded place, and that, again, could be interesting. It’s not mined and explored, though, and is instead papered over when he acquiesces to his wife’s way of thinking after a rainstorm convinces them both that life doesn’t have to be perfect.

A sweet scene, to be sure, but very shallow. He hasn’t delved into his past and examined what it was that made him feel he didn’t want children. It isn’t an emotional confession of his past, his fears, his shortcomings, to his wife; it’s nothing that requires emotional growth from him. Daphne simply finds letters to his father and reads them. It’s convenient. It’s gets us quickly to the reconciliation of two leads, with a romantic exchange in the rain, without too much sticky and complex emotionality.

Simon also has every right not to want children. Just because his wife wants children does not mean he owes her that. It certainly should have been a conversation they had before they got married, though that would require some emotional maturity on either’s part, and some honesty about their thoughts and feelings.

Still, no matter the circumstances, no one owes another person any piece of them, not their body, and not their lineage.

I can’t get real about Bridgerton without talking about “that scene” between Daphne and Simon where Daphne commits rape. I was genuinely appalled and disgusted by this scene, not because of the scene itself — I think talking about marital rape is important, and acknowledging and validating male victims is necessary — but because of how it was handled in the aftermath.

I do not know a single show that would have their leading man purposefully ejaculate into his wife when he knew she did not want to become pregnant. That’s horrifying. Daphne did the same. I will acknowledge that Simon would not be the one carrying a child after this encounter, but that does not lessen it as a sexual assault.

She is forcing a physical act from him that he did not consent to. She is a rapist. And we are supposed to root for her after that?

With the genders reversed, we as an audience don’t wish for the woman to just get over it and get back into good graces with her husband after a rape. I’m envisioning a particular scene from Mad Men, where I certainly wanted her to get away from him as quickly as possible, if not much worse. I was not hoping for them to find their way back to each other.

Moreover, it’s particularly appalling to see it executed between a white woman and a black man. Historically, black male sexuality has been both fetishized and feared. Mayella Ewell from To Kill a Mockingbird exemplifies how black men were often at the mercy of white women because of horrifyingly racist standards of law and social systems, and how their power over their own bodies has been systemically stripped away. This scene brought all those thoughts to mind, and left me more than a little queasy.

Certainly, I have blind spots here. There is history I have missed, parts of identity and lived experience I don’t understand, but this was my personal response to this piece of the story. And I was deeply uncomfortable with being asked to continue to care about, and to empathize with, Daphne’s character after this encounter.

It seems impossible to swing away from that.

I’m going to try, though, because even though Simon and Daphne were the focus of this season, I found I was far more interested in, and far less disturbed by, the other characters and storylines.

I loved how they showed a variety of ways to be a successful and remarkable woman. Everything from the Queen’s awesome power and Lady Danbury’s powerful grace and wild streak, to Eloise’s vocal bucking of norms to Lady Violet’s gentle but firm rearing of her brood. Each woman brings something unique and enjoyable to the table, each both fitting some norms of the time and breaking free of others. The emphasis on and time devoted to the friendship of Eloise and Penelope is welcome as well. Female friendships are absolutely integral in the personal development of young women, and they are so often ignored,

There are, of course, cliches and archetypes within these ladies as well. Eloise is absolutely a stereotype, a modernized and simplified Lizzie Bennet that is cropping up more and more. This character bucks the system of female disempowerment in ways that make us want to stand up and cheer! But then don’t really pan out. I expect she, like most mass-market literary ladies, will be forced by her story to settle down. Sure, her match will be kind and understanding, and it will seem like she got what she always wanted, but she’ll still fit neatly into our heteronormative ideals that have carried through since before Bridgerton is set. It will be a comfort to those norms that even an aspiring literary spinster like Eloise, like Jo March, will be happily settled into wife- and motherhood soon enough.

I’ll stop criticizing things that haven’t happened yet, and say that, for now, I enjoy Eloise.
I enjoy the diversity and variety of female characters (sans Daphne) and look forward to seeing their further development in future seasons.

Now, let’s talk about sex.

Bridgerton sex scenes have been talked about like crazy. I was neither shocked nor impressed by any between Simon and Daphne. It felt like the kind of thing that would have made me gasp when I was twelve years old, but stopped getting me hot under the collar by the time I was sixteen. The sex scenes, like the characters, are immature.

Real heat comes from emotions. Lust is a basic one, and even love can be a basic one. The best sex scenes do far, far more than portray two characters making love or going at it; they are a discussion, just like any scene, of themes, ideas, and characters.

I have not yet mentioned Outlander, but here, I can’t avoid it.
Everything Bridgerton tried to do with sex, Outlander did it first, and Outlander did it better.

The closest Bridgerton gets to real, great sex scenes is between Anthony and Sienna. They are fraught, complicated, loving, angry, quixotic, and sexy. They don’t feel gratuitous or strained because they are doing more for the story and the characters than just an excuse to show hot people’s skin on camera.

Here’s my litmus test. If you can plug in any two people into the sex scene and none of the context or emotionality is lost, then it’s probably not necessary to the story.

So, it’s been a couple months since Bridgerton came out. I think it’s definitely time for us to be honest about it.

My honest opinion? It’s bright, pretty, and fun. It’s a nice shared experience for us that doesn’t require much thinking or feeling beyond the cursory motions of shallow storylines. I’d like to remind everyone that it’s perfectly good to enjoy this show; I do too. But let’s not lie to ourselves about what it is and what it does.

Popular is not the same as good. Sensational is not the same as groundbreaking. Controversial is not the same as brave.

So let’s enjoy it for what it is, and not try to make it something it isn’t.