Dearest gentle reader,
I have a confession to make: I love Bridgerton. Bridgerton is the television equivalent of a macaron.
Although it’s billed as a “historical romance,” we all know what this Netflix television series, created by Chris Van Dusen and with the legendary Shonda Rhimes on board as executive producer, is really all about: glorious Regency fanfiction.
To explain my love for Bridgerton, I would like to use a recent incident involving British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Sunak has been mocked and criticized for indulging in Haribos and Twix. Some people even argued that he is promoting unhealthy habits and doesn’t care about tooth decay in small children, if he flaunts his favorite snacks like that.
I am not a Rishi Sunak groupie. However, I think that online hysteria about people enjoying things is pathetic. It’s a Twix, it’s not a snuff film or a crack rock or any of the other questionable things that some people enjoy.
Bridgerton is full of fashion, drama, fantasy, gorgeous nudity, and exaggerated acting. It’s low necklines and exotic flowers and exuberant feathers and digitized landscapes of a London of yore. A London that never existed, to be sure — but who cares? The whole point of good fanfiction is that it’s not so much believable as it is indulgent; a fantasy that you fantasize along with.
When I was younger, I loved Byron. As I matured, my views of him dimmed — poets are messed up to some degree, but there is a reason why Byron wished so dearly for oblivion, and it’s not an attractive one.
Now that I’m watching Bridgerton, I find myself comparing it to the fantasy vision of Byron I had in my head when I got to play a gradually transforming, scowling cherub statue in a high school play based loosely on Dracula — a fun Byron that never really existed, except for the places where we made him up.
Sometimes, we can all use a little fun.
We spend a lot of our time wringing our hands over the past, and often rightfully so, lest we’d like to repeat it. However, sometimes it’s good to put some lipstick on a ghost, dress it up in an extravagant necklace, and make it not care, and that’s what Bridgerton is doing. It’s another form of art, and this artform is actually about today, the present, our desires and guilty pleasures and the way we have been rethinking sex and race and societal pressure and the way women simply look good with their tits pushed up. It doesn’t have to be serious in order for it to have meaning.
One aspect of Bridgerton that I find fascinating as an American is the fact that it sells an American audience an idea of a very sexy London. I personally think we Americans like that, because there’s a kind of quaint nostalgia in there — Americans often don’t know what to make of Brits (I know that feeling is mutual), but we do go wild for an accent, posh or otherwise.
In that sense, Bridgerton is an amusement park ride. It doesn’t make us reckon with our British cousins, it simply allows us to marvel at a soft, marshmallow version of them. From a distance.
I’ve never thought of actual London as particularly sexy, though that is probably not London’s fault but my own. I do like the fantasy vision of the city presented on Netflix. And if Brits hate that, just think of the tourism it is already inspiring. I am talking about girly tourism, not the loutish kind.
Call me a lady Tilley Arnold stan already pic.twitter.com/YCYA1MnYRl
— ε|ꪖ𝕣𝕥|ꫝ🫧 🐘 (@elenaeaea) April 15, 2024
Quite a few words have been written on Bridgerton’s characters — by serious people, by fun people, and by fun and serious people — and I will not do that here. But I would like to point out that the one character I see myself in is Tilley Arnold.
If you know Tilley, you’re probably wondering right now as to the meaning of my statement and whether I am as idealistic as I sometimes profess to be, considering I see myself in her. The truth is, I am both an idealist and a pragmatist. I desire true love, but I also value the importance of having discreet staff.
If you know what I mean — good for you.
If you don’t know what I mean, I suggest you sit down with a frivolous drink of your choice, and watch some Bridgerton.