Cheating Tropes of Bridgerton
sorry edwina 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️#bridgerton @bridgerton pic.twitter.com/32mDviHx9C
— Jonny Bailey Memes (@baileysmemes) March 27, 2022
I enjoyed Netflix’s Bridgerton, but it has some classic cheater tropes. Let’s discuss: the Great Love That Is Bigger Than Us Both. The Shrew Who Deserves Her Husband’s Wandering Dick. And My Children Are Thrilled That I’ve Known Happiness.
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I confess when it comes to my viewing habits, I am a hopeless Anglophile. Give me the misadventures of foppish aristocrats in their stately homes! Jane Austen. Cozy murder mysteries. Every Dickens adaptation. Lady Violet’s withering stares in Downton Abbey. Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. (Okay, I’ll take Benedict Cumberbatch too, on hot buttered toast.) Swoon.
This BritBox predilection, however, requires me to quash my critical thinking. I’m not a fan of the monarchy or imperialism, yet damn, I want a Capability Brown garden and a lady’s maid. So it was only a matter of time before I watched Bridgerton, Shonda Rhimes‘ adaptation of Julia Quinn’s romance novels.
This time I had to quash Chump Lady, my alter ego.
Bridgerton is a Regency pick-me quadrille. Every plot line centers on whether or not some waist-coated dandy will choose a bride and thereby validate her existence. It’s not quite the Bachelor with Palladian architecture, but it does require you to smother your inner Andrea Dworkin with a jacquard silk pillow.
I don’t have an inner Andrea Dworkin, Tracy.
More’s the shame. Anyway, it’s a historical romance. So, put aside your judgement about male heirs, primogeniture, and women’s autonomy. Rege-Jean Page appears shirtless as the Duke of Hastings and I’ve lost all sentient thought.
I thought you were going to snark about Bridgerton tropes.
Daphne looks like an under-developed 12 year old and I absolutely do not understand this pairing.
Bridgerton cheating tropes. Hello?
Sigh.
The Great Love That Is Bigger Than Us Both
Warning: This post contains spoilers of Season 2 of Bridgerton.
The set up: Kate Sharma is the dutiful older sister of Edwina Sharma, who is slated to marry the Bridgerton Viscount and first born son, Anthony. As a fuckboy who visits prostitutes, Anthony does not wish to settle down and marry. But someone has to produce an heir, so he agrees to marry Edwina, the chump, whose only ambition is to be pleasant and pick out wedding china. Alas, Anthony is attracted to the wildly unmarriageable older sister Kate, who rides horses. (She is a feisty mustang! Who cares not for domestic home furnishings! She has contrarian opinions!)
The trope: Their love is too great to deny. It’s a force bigger than them both. They must succumb!
Cheat with your sister’s fiancé? HEY, IT IS A FORCE BIGGER THAN THEM BOTH! Can’t you see the way they look at each other? The smoldering glances? You cannot hold them responsible for the fickle fate of lust. These two crazy kids were meant for each other.
There’s also speechifying about duty over happiness. For reasons known only to the show runners, Anthony proposes to Edwina and nearly has a sham wedding. Look, it’s not Edwina’s fault that she’s not as enchanting as Kate. Kate has tried very hard not to be intoxicatingly gorgeous. Edwina will just have to be a good sport and recognize her obsolescence.
Edwina asks: “Was I so blind?”
Not: “Why the fuck did you lead me on, Anthony?”
are you two aware you’re at a family dinner #Kanthony #Bridgerton pic.twitter.com/FW3Sq5EFww
— kristen 🐝 (@swaying_daisies) March 29, 2022
As chumps go, Edwina’s faults are that she’s perfect, dutiful, and willing to marry a man she doesn’t love. (In fairness, landing a husband is the entire point of her existence.) At least she’s not a complete harridan who drove her husband to cheat like Lady Vivian Ledger.
The Shrew Who Deserves Her Husband’s Wandering Dick
Warning: spoiler alert for Queen Charlotte!
The setup: Lady Vivian (mother to the future Lady Bridgerton) is a sour-faced racist who doesn’t want her family consorting with brown-skinned people like Queen Charlotte and her court.
The cheater trope: The chump must be detestable. This way, the cheater Lord Ledger looks positively saintly by contrast. And what better way to welcome the African diaspora into your social circle, than to fuck a fellow nobleman’s wife.
(Okay, in fairness he waits until Lord Danbury is dead, but he too is detestable.)
Lord Ledger isn’t a bitch like his wife. No, he’s kind and forward thinking! He calls his daughter Violet “Brain” affectionately. (Which is why she grows up to be a neurosurgeon broodmare of eight children.) He breaks the racial barrier by asking Lady Danbury to dance. (Cue THE LOVE THAT IS BIGGER THAN US BOTH trope.) Then he takes her for a nature walk, seduces her, and gives her a party hat.
Does Lady Vivian get a party hat?
Who? No. We’ve established that she sucks. Ergo her husband’s dick is free to wander. We are ROOTING for his dick to wander. Which is why…
My Children Are Thrilled That I’ve Known Happiness
Years later, Lady Violet Bridgerton realizes that Lady Danbury, her dearest and oldest family friend, had an affair with her father when she discovers the party hat. The kind of party hat that her dad used to make for her.
(My cynical Chump Lady take on this is that Lord Ledger’s glue stick got around. He probably made a lot of party hats for a lot of singular “special” women.)
But Lady Violet is not disturbed by this discovery. She and Lady Agatha Danbury are closer for having both loved Lord Ledger. Even Lady Violet understands that her mother sucked and deserved to be cheated on. What matters most is that Agatha and Lord Ledger knew happiness. However fleetingly.
@aynsley_broom Replying to @Laura I’m sorry but this works too well😅😂 #queencharlotteabridgertonstory #lordledger #agathadanbury ♬ original sound – 🌒
Isn’t this what every cheater wants? For everyone to be happy that they’re happy? Alas, Lord Ledger stays with his hatchet-faced wife For The Children and Lady Danbury just has her party hat to keep her company. Edwina goes back to India and finds a husband. No hard feelings for Kate, she just conveniently lives a subcontinent away. The perfect chump to the end — out of sight and out of mind.
I watch for the wardrobe.
Women, including the upper class, were so vulnerable legally and financially during the time period. I’m grateful that piece has improved for 21st century chumps. At least they had vocabulary for the behavior including “rogue” and “cuckhold”. My lawyer slipped the phrase “Indignities” into my divorce filing.
Anybody wanting to fulfill their anglophilia without the infidelity should check out Sense & Sensibility (the 1995 version). Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay and played the role of Elinor.
For anyone unfamiliar with the premise: It’s 1811, and the Dashwood family has just tragically lost their father. Now the estate is going to his surviving son, which means his widow and daughters are being thrown out and need to find husbands to survive.
The movie is shockingly feminist, focusing on the women and their outrage at the injustice of the legal system. Their suitors are also thoughtful and view the women as their equals, which comes as a pleasant surprise for a time period where women were property.
So grateful to live in an age where I can control my own money!
My mother used to use the old fashioned word “cad.” Works for me.
Blackguard! Scoundrel! Upon my word, what calumny!
Honestly @CL how about a Friday challenge on BBC cheater tropes? Coz this got me started and I feel a suppressed vent about to burst out 😬💣💥
My lawyer used the term Fi’n creep and F’n scum. Though not in the paper work
My southern gentleman attorney sometimes used the same terms when he was fired up. It cracked me up once we got to know each other. At first, it was a little overwhelming because his face would also get red, and he’d pound the table. Then, if I laughed, he’d laugh and say, “I can be a bit passionate about my profession, can’t I?” Sure, why not?
He also called my STBX “the boy”. He refused to call him by his name or by “your husband” because he was being so immature. My STBX was in his 60s. That also cracked me up.
Gosh, he made a horrific experience tolerable. I mean, who laughs with their divorce attorney? He was also a tight hugger but always asked. Of course, I wanted the hugs!
Ironically, the judge signed off the day after he retired. He got it done.
I have laughed with my divorce attorney. I think he enjoys the banter because I don’t sit there crying. I have an excellent case. I’m sure it has made his job easier. We aren’t cavalier about any of it but klootzak is such an idiot, one can’t help but laugh at how pathetic he is. We’ll get this job done and OMG will there be a party. He is about retirement age, too, but I doubt he will ever retire. He loves what he does. It’s obvious. And he is much happier having the chumped client than the FW!
Mine said it was very rare to laugh with a client, so he appreciated the light-hearted attitude. His associate took over my case for closeout and transferred to a new firm, and he said that was one of the things he loved about his mentor — the wild humor in a very tough profession.
Sadly, my attorney had a heart attack during a five-day malpractice trial, and his partner had to step in to finish it. I never got into the details with him other than he wasn’t in the hospital long and rested at home for two weeks before returning to work, so I gather that it wasn’t too bad. He said it was time to hang it up before something like that happened again. His dad (a retired appeals judge) was in hospice, and the lease on their suite was up for renewal. He said that God often spoke to him in three’s so it was time. He closed the firm entirely.
A friend in the legal community told me that he had run into my older attorney on the golf course several times, so he’s doing well. That’s good.
What a grand exit for him!!! My sister had an affair with her Divorce attorney..beautiful single mom, cheater gangster for the X. Absolutely should not have happened to attorney and client but Cinderella story. The attorney married my sister 5 years later. He became fabulously wealthy but my sis fell out of love with him after 2 kids with him. She had an affair on him and I told him about it. He divorced my sister within a few months. No attorney would represent my sister in the county…such is life. Is that love story???
Rake! Cad! I found it funny that Anthony will fight to defend Daphne’s honor. God forbid she marry a man like himself.
I love your lawyer. Worth every penny!
It pains me when I see infidelity portrayed as being in some way glossy, sophisticated and consequence free in on-screen drama, be it historic, modern, factual or fictional. It isn’t any of these things; it’s abuse.
LFTT
Completely agree with you LFTT. As an Archers fan for most of my life, I am struggling with an affair story line running currently. I appreciate that they are allowing the adult son to vent his rage with his mother (married) and her boss (single but also the son’s boss). The chump father is shown as a decent, kind man who doesn’t understand why his life has suddenly fallen apart. Even allowing for all of this (and I think the writer may have been getting some perspective from CL and CN), it’s still painful to listen to.
I find it socially corrosive in a bigger sense since glamorizing cheaters necessitates dehumanizing/demonizing victims. Even if couched in romantic fluff, that message is still a fractal of everything wrong with human history– the thing that inspired the title and core message of Chomsky’s and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent.
Maybe it gives too much credit to Shonda Rhimes’ mainstream drek to argue that it somehow relates to, say, the public shrugging over droned wedding parties and charred babies in little oil rich countries to the east and the like but I think mass entertainment that entices viewing audiences to exercise their mental victim-blaming/perp-coddling muscles probably contributes to inching societies towards ugliness and brutality over time.
In any case, I think great art does the opposite which is why I thought Gosford Park was a masterpiece but cringed through half of Downton Abbey (except when Maggie Smith had lines). Without Altman’s usual hardcore ethical subtext, the same writing team schlocked the latter up with a lot of completely reverse messages (rapists are only of the lower ranks, never the muckety mucks who never over-exploit power; good servants adore their masters; servants who get knocked up by the mucketies courted their own misfortune with their tacky low characters; class rebels either adjust and drink the Koolaid or are punished with loss and unhappiness; infidelity is just a minor dalliance with no real victims and ambitious women can solidify their status by covering up muckety cheating, etc.) which were probably much more palatable to corporate sponsors but created awkward scenes and rashes of treacly dialogue that were barely actable despite the talented cast. You can literally count the attempts to reconcile insidious bullshit messaging because male actors in particular are forced to gloss these clunky moments over with the same sappy virtue-signalling/noblesse oblige “Stan Laurel” smile.
There is always this air of sophistication or sensualness around infidelity in books and TV; the reality is it’s just two dogs humping.
I don’t understand why pop culture glamorizes infidelity. Is there any other betrayal we do this with? Any other form of abuse? I can’t think of one.
I think it has to do with a society that worships sexuality in unhealthy ways. If society were to say that this is not good, then it may bring into question other issues around that. I also think society thinks the wounds are not physically visible, therefore, no harm and no foul. Yet the mental and emotional wounds surrounding infidelity are probably worse than a physical one.
I was just thinking about this because the series Firebrand starring an unrecognizable Jude Law as Henry VIII goes the opposite direction of glamorizing lasciviousness by making the sex scenes as nauseating as possible. I think they even got an obese butt double for Law just to feature the king’s massive, jiggling ass in the act as poor Katherine Parr suffocates underneath him.
Lie back and think of England indeed!!!
“two dogs humping.”
I say two pigs grunting in the back seat, but yours is a little classier.
I’m a huge anglophile too, but I couldn’t make it to the end of episode 1 of Bridgerton. I found it a revolting mockery of the genre, a poorly casted shallow 1 dimensional caricature of especially the women characters. The heroine has no depth nor wit nor any redeeming quality that would command that role, but I guess we have to love her and the show in service to their woke activist slant? No. And I’m black & African. It’s an insult to everyone. Plus its open vulgarity and general lack of subtlety & decorum is just anachronistic for the era it supposedly depicts.
But yes, the cheater tropes storyline was probably the death knell for me too.
Amen. I turned it off after two episodes. If I peeked at later segments, it was only to confirm my initial impression. It wasn’t just the romanticization of cheating and classism but the awful dialogue and cartoonish character development. The costumes aren’t even that great. I also found it unsettling that important gestures like multiracial period casting and including plus-sized characters who aren’t just relegated to comic relief were tainted by an attempt to distract viewers from the rest of the politically putrid subtext– if you could call it “subtext” since there’s nothing subtle about the message.
Not that I don’t find badly written shows that don’t even bother to virtue-signal (GOT is set in a fantasy realm, so why are all the elites blond? Why do gay characters always meet violent ends? 50 rapes in 11 episodes??) or well-crafted moral relativism even more unsettling (Scorsese’s Age of Innocence).
Wow. I didn’t react to it that strongly. I saw it as fluffy escapism with beautiful sets and costumes. But like most things in the romance genre, it could not escape common cheater narratives. You gotta have an obstacle. And that’s usually the chump. Also Nicola Coughlin as Penelope Featherton was pretty awesome. I’m a huge fan of hers since Derry Girls.
With any movie or show, I suspend my judgment while watching & return to reality afterwards. However, I know people who wish they could live in this “romantic” Bridgerton time. So there are definitely those who get caught up in the wistful romanticizing. They also tend to be attracted to drama too. The ex’s Schmoopie posted “my prince has finally come” memes after D-day. After 3 marriages & one common law husband, she still believes in that??!! Bahaha, I knew then she was a Bridgerton drama type. Now her & FW torture each other in attempts to keep up the Bridgerton type drama that threw them together in the first place. Must be exhausting!! I’ll take actual fun over drama any day!
The “my prince has come” bullshit is the romantic excuse of Love Conquers All….including established marriages and families apparently. I would prefer less “romance” and more responsibility. I think if you were in love with someone enough to make kids with them and a home, you can put some effort into love and romance WITH YOUR SPOUSE and that would actually improve the marriage instead of finding sparks with strange and blowing up everyone’s life. I always like to point out the end of Romeo and Juliet as a not too unrealistic attitude towards runaway love…..they all dead!
Ditto. Schmoopie in my situation was a huge Shonda Rhimes hag to the point she was quite spookily trying to live out the plot of Gray’s Anatomy– thought she was the embodiment of Meredith Gray and FW was the equivalent of Dr. McDouchy (making me McDouchy’s “frigid bitch” of a wife I guess?). FW had no clue that half the corny crap the AP said to him was borrowed directly from the GA script.
I thought it was completely psychotic. I also found it hilarious that, after sugar coating adultery and “superiors fucking underlings in professional settings” and selling that toxic hash to generations of TV viewers, Shonda Rhimes and the actress playing Meredith were shocked (I tell you, shocked!) when McDouchy actor Patrick Dempsy basically parroted the plot by fucking one of the show’s interns while married. It was fine to profit from moral relativism but they didn’t like the same sewage lapping up on their turf lol.
I’m at kind of a disadvantage when discussing these shows as I don’t think I’ve watched an actual series since the 90’s. Steadily at least. I have just found too many negative messages in too many shows whether it’s support your local police state, or let’s fall in love and fuck up our families, etc. And from the few movies I’ve gone to the in the past 20 years the quality of writing, film, etc, in general has really decayed. I tend to use older references like Dr. Zhivago, or The Women, or Brief Encounter, or any of this other assorted bullshit they used to call “women’s films” or weepers. Or the big one – Gone With the Wind with “Ashley, Ashley, Ashley” …..although at least Scarlett grows up enough at the end to realize that she loves her own husband…or at least wants him back.
Somehow I don’t feel I’m missing much, lol. Back to “Kaiju #8” and “Solo Leveling”…..
Ya easy to romanticize something until it bites you in the ass!!!
Didn’t Dempsy understand the cynical principle that this ethical bilge was only for the plebes and to sell ad spots, not for the creators of it to practice in RL and especially not when the creators socialize with his wife?
Rhimes and Pompeo being offended by Dempsy’s fuckwittery and firing him for it might have been admirable if they hadn’t both profited from the promotion of adultery and power-imbalanced workplace bonking.
OK these were hilarious scripts.!!!+! I read CL while I walk the halls of my 55 plus place and laugh out loud! No one pays attention because somehow the 55 plus includes 110 plus and many are walking or riding around with dementia .so I fit in. OK so we do not need to go so far into th past for British cheaters with Royalty. Let’s go.to Diana, Charles– lady Camelia Or rather Quern C. But but Diana was unstable!! She had revnnge affairs, she took her kids to AIDS hospitals!!!! Stop her!! Who is showing up now as the winner King and Queen? Royal cheaters are fine as long as your great great grandma cheated too and hidden love must live via the generations…arranged marriages crush the loins of true love!! Chumps in all the movies I’ve watched are plain or too smart or have allergies. The Sparkles?? Where did they go? Please tell me there are other shows that are not cheater friendly. Give me some movies to watch!! Love u Chump Nation and Chump lady!!!!
Even right now they say the big problem with Prince William and Princess Kate is that he’s cheating with some broad named Rose Hanbury who used to be a friend of Kate’s. This shit never ceases. I think Kate has put her foot down and they’re not used to that.
Yeah. King Cheater and Queen Sidepiece. Thank goodness my ancestors rid us of the British monarchy.
2Xchump, I’ve having trouble with blurred vision today. Read your first line as “I walk the halls of my 55 room palace…” Stopped to clear my vision, laughed with you and read on.
🤣🤣🤣
Grandma chump is a name for me too!! Actually it is my safe place here at 55+apartments. My XHCheater had a woman from another country 22 years younger and I KNOW he won’t be looking for me here. I ran away and left him the house and filed. He used to Track.me down where ever I was, grocery store, walking at a park..he would just pop up..i thought it waa cute!!!! Actually. He was more showing me I could run but I couldn’t hide from him. So here where I live, it used to have locked outside doors but maintainance is lacking so all the doors were damages in wind storms. STILL, if my XHCheater comes looking for me, as soon as he sees the lines of ♿️ wheel chairs and walkers instead of his preferred age group of just- out -of -teens, well he will high tail it outta here. All in my desire for MEH coming up!!
In that era, everyone smelled like French perfume over feces and sour butts, menstrual pads and outhouses or servant carrying chamber pots filled to the brim. Outside people dragged horse manure in on their shoes and dresses. They used chamber pots under their gowns at Balls. The wigs slipped and the old men and woman had no teeth. Bad breath was rampant and diseases tortured everyone.with smells and drainage.Everything smelt funky. Pity the servant class for what they had to endure in the kitchen,bedroom, and banquet halls. Did that spoil it for you?
My grandmother remembered being a child and gagging over the way adults smelled in the first half of the twentieth century before the popularization or advent of indoor hot showers, deodorant, tampons, electric washer/driers and dental insurance. That’s the thing that period fantasists seem to miss– that, even if you were rich and had armies of servants, clothes were very labor intensive to make and wash and so weren’t washed that frequently. Generating enough hot water to take a full bath was a feat so even royalty mostly took cowboy baths, rarely washed their hair and just covered up the stink with perfume. Can you even image what most people’s breath smelled like before things like commercial floss and toothpaste, antibiotics and regular dental care?
I gagged reading this. So grateful to live in the 21st century.
Oh, and Henry VIII’s perfectly healthy older brother and original heir to the throne dying young of “sweating sickness”– aka, hantavirus– because castles were rarely ridden of rodents and Henry’s court having to change castles every season to leave time for the mountains of shit stored in basements to be cleaned out.
Wow, I did not know sweating sickness was hantavirus! And there was such a wave of it through the country. If only they didn’t kill off the cats because of bullshit about witchcraft!
Poor kitties. 🙁
I don’t watch these kind of shows generally, mainly I watch anime and old Mystery Science Theater 3000 reruns. That’s about it these days. But in general, the entertainment field heavily supports adultery and promiscuity of all kinds because the people in it are highly unstable and that’s what they’re like. Most seem to come from messed up families, they live lives in fantasy pretending to be other people (just like FWs, hmmmmm) and go on to have messed up families. So I think this is their go to mode – they excuse and promote their own behavior. Also, they love “forbidden love” themes because of the inherent drama involved. I’ve been thinking a lot about liars and the nature of their lies and drama. Drama particularly applies here. I think they inherently enjoy the ENERGY that comes from creating drama, I think it must energize them in certain ways, like vampires maybe, some people feed off various kinds of energy, especially negative energy. Also fresh drama wipes out prior drama. So if you get caught lying about one thing, just create another drama as a distraction. Get your victim caught up in something new, especially if you can go on the attack, and try to push the old drama into the past. Drama – it’s what’s for dinner!!!
On another note, these kind of stories really depress me because I think they condition the general public to accept or even want to be promiscuous or adulterers. They put the idea in people’s heads and they only show the fun or tragedy or romance of the “forbidden love”. How often do they show the heartbreak and broken families and devastated children that result? Rarely, if ever. The entertainment field, especially Hollywood, is used frequently as propaganda and often promotes unhealthy things – including drug use, cigarette smoking, etc. Women for example, rarely smoked before seeing their screen idols like Bette Davis doing it…that’s what popularized smoking among women….which led to all the health problems that I think were known even then. The System often promotes things that are unhealthy for us but profitable or useful for them.
There are so many examples of this but one that always occurs to me is DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. Here you have the scrumptious Omar Shariff, married to a lovely sweet woman, Geraldine Chaplin, and yet….he yearns for the ineffable Julie Christie and they have this whole bullshit romance that ends up with them apart forever, yada yada. Fuck Geraldine Chaplin, she’s no Julie Christie in a fox hat. Sigh. There are a lot of things I love about Doctor Zhivago but I hate that plot element and I hate Julie Christie’s character and she should have been impaled with a Siberian icicle. Worse….she should have ended up with Rod Steiger (I kid actually, I love Rod Steiger.) But that’s what they do….promote the forbidden love bullshit at the expense of actual families and society in general suffers as each family is a brick in a building that gets torn down bit by bit.
I actually hate that film and the novel it was based on. It barely registers with Dr. Zhivago when his little son Sasha dies from starvation and neglect after Zhivago abandons his family. The whole novel– which really isn’t that great in a literary sense and was only promoted in the west and made into a blockbuster film because it was critical of the Soviet regime– reads like Pasternak’s self-exculpation and use of political atrocity as an alibi for cheating on his second wife Zinaida with the author Olga Ivinskaya and then even leaving Ivinskaya to rot for a period in a Siberian gulag for her association with him while he enjoyed the amnesty and protection of fame.
Guilt is ugly, isn’t it?
I just realized in writing my comment that I don’t remember Dr. Zhivago’s WIFE’S name, but I remember his mistress Lara….because of course they had that beautiful theme written for the character. The wife doesn’t get any lovely tinkling sounds….probably more like a Sousaphone.
Holy shit – I don’t know anything about Pasternak and his own seedy life – yeah this is an apologia for himself obviously – and I’ve never read the novel. The idea that his son Sasha dies from starvation and neglect while Zhivago is whoring around with Lara and her fox hats just absolutely revolts me. But…that kind of fits in with what we know of cheaters and how they so often abandon their children as well as their spouses. The movie is a tough choice for me because visually it’s so splendid and it has one of my favorite examples of Communism in Action with the scene of everyone sharing the house when Zhivago comes back from war. But the romance between Zhivago and Lara is absolutely revolting to me, and it was even when I was a kid. I remember thinking, why doesn’t he take care of his wife, she’s a pretty lady and a nice woman and she loves him. Julie Christie is like a cardboard cutout, but they’re so often like that, aren’t they. So many of these shows end up being apologias or excuses or propaganda for, the cheating of the people who create them. Ordinary people, even ME AS A CHILD, hate this shit because it’s wrong no matter how pretty you make it look.
I’ll always love Rod Steiger though, and what my husband and I call, the Rod Steiger School of Romance. There’s a reason Rod was never cast as a romantic lead, lol.
I remember seeing clips of the film as a kid and being icked out with Christie who, though despite being close in age to the actress playing her mother, strains herself to play the naive teenager while still “exuding sensuality” (whispery voice, pouty infantile expressions, sexy chewing of nails). I didn’t know any actual kids who acted like that and thought it was creepy. Whether it was the actress’s choice to do this or the director’s, it was badly done and obviously meant to explain why Rod Steiger’s character rapes her (because she’s sexy and rapists never rape people who aren’t sexy) and of course why Zhivago coldly casts off his family for her.
Then I remember Zhivago’s wife starving Sasha in order for Zhivago to get a full meal and Zhivago getting angry at her for it. Douche. Double douche when he gets news of Sasha’s death and barely reacts. Yet from the swelling music, it’s clear we’re supposed to sympathize that his son’s death only makes him want to get back to the age-regressing marginal actress with the bleached bouffant.
I read the novel later and tried not to be biased by the film but the stupid shit that was in the film was also in the book. Obviously it’s tragic that Pasternak, originally a passionate Bolshevic, felt betrayed by Stalin’s antisemitic atrocities but his wife was also Jewish and it didn’t justify victimizing a fellow victim. His hypocrisy reminds me of what Esther Perel states is the basis for her “life-affirming cheater” theory: that the Holocaust survivors she grew up with who were chronic adulterers tended to live better and longer than the ones who shriveled up from trauma– never mind that the chumps of these “life-affirming” adulterers were probably also camp survivors. In the end it sounds like what Perel bases her message on is a kind of cannibalism.
I watched the first few episodes for general interest and quit. The sex and cheating is such an essential part of the plotline, and it turned me off. Just sayin’.
My thing is more along the line of mystery and detective shows. Sure, there’s sex and cheating there, but it’s a secondary feature to solving the case. That’s my thing.
My inner Dworkin doesn’t tolerate anything created by Shonda Rhimes who’s entire career seems to be bent on rationalizing mate poaching, sort of like how David Mamet’s writing is just a bunch of macho catchphrases, “surprise twists” and character development wrapped around an excuse for men to hit women.
My guess is that Mamet’s wives should have gotten combat pay and Rhimes has a lifelong history of obsessing over married dudes and hating on their partners and, similar to child molesters, they’ve spent their lives trying to normalize their offenses in public opinion. Mamet has occasionally been contracted to write stuff that doesn’t contain his usual “bitch slap climax” but I’m not sure Rhimes has written anything that didn’t justify cheating/poaching with all the typical toxic supporting tropes. There was even an academic paper on the pernicious sexism couched within pseudofeminism in Gray’s Anatomy which I’m pretty sure was what inspired the “Pickme” epithet.
Maybe it’s not even my inner Dworkin that prevents me from watching Rhimes schlock but just the ghost of my grumpy women’s lit professor. I suspect that trying to sell moral relativism and make hideously unethical characters appear “sympathetic” and “woke” requires so much awkward warping of supporting characters, dialogue and plot points in service of the core lie that, in the end, the story is never going to shine with “essential human truth” the way great literature does. At least Mamet can be zingy in his covert psychopathic crusade for moral erosion but Rhimes is just a really shitty writer. Case in point, gag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax4Hu1zuGkI
Meredith: “pick me, choose me, love me”. You let a guy have that much power over you, Meredith? Meredith?!
I watched a few episodes of the first season on streaming, and that’s what I kept thinking too. I guess that’s why I haven’t bothered watching any more of it.
I was like “Move on. This guy lied to you and involved you in cheating. This isn’t a person you want to be involved with.”
I’m pretty cynical about relationships, I guess. In my opinion, a lot of the time, the f***ing you’re getting isn’t worth the f***ing you’re getting.
I could never figure out how anyone that simpering and suck-uppy could get through medical school.
The books aren’t as bad. I don’t recall Anthony consorting with prostitutes, for example, although historical romance novels generally assume that the man is busy having sex before meeting the soul mate, usually with a widow of the appropriate class, and the woman must avoid the slightest hint of impropriety until after she is married and then she can cheat with the likes of the Viscount.
Well, to be fair, in the days of marriages of convenience, and little or no availability of divorce, there was often a tacit agreement between partners that after the requisite heirs were produced, each partner was free to go his/her own way. So long as they were discreet and maintained appearances.
I’m also a sucker for Anglophile costume dramas. I loved Downton Abbey, including the movie. I haven’t watched Bridgerton yet, but I won’t be surprised by the tropes.
Sadly, the tropes you mentioned are prevalent in SO MUCH entertainment.
Throw me in with Chump Lady on this one…as much as I have come to loathe the Our Culture is Best Empire and human suffering at the hands of the hands of the British, Im still a sap for all things British on tv.
WhenI need my anglo-fix, I tell hubby to find a show where the word “whilst” will be used.
Not only did I watch Bridgerton, I visited some of the set locations in England.When I watch the show though…I get really mad when the men who are expecting virginal wives frequent brothels…I normally scream “Syphillis was incurable back then!”
For a more real depiction of the pain of disease-spreading, check out a recent movie with Emily Blunt :”The English”