I want to preface this post with a pithy aphorism with which most people are familiar in some way:
No human is independent of context.
We are as much a part of our world as our world is a part of us.
Our various bits and bobs, chemicals and reagents, ideas and sensed experiences, individual connections and community collaborations — everything we are and everything we aim to become must negotiate constantly with our changing environments.
After all, we can only breathe what air there is to breathe, regulate what temperature there is to regulate, hold, reject, or slightly modify the beliefs that we come across in our day-to-day, and consume the media that there is to consume in our various ‘feeds,’ incorporating all this with a limited amount of personal nuance into who we as ‘individuals’ believe ourselves to be.
It’s a constant anthropic exercise in futile self-definition.
In short, and to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, we’re all banal idiots in some way, so try your best not to buy into the illusion that you are the exception. Always assume you are the idiot in any interaction, and work your way forward from there. You are not the hero, you might be the villain, and most likely you are not even a named character.
It’s safer for everyone that way.
‘The moment you measure, you modify.’
As an editor for scientific researchers, I can attest that a constant thorn in the side of any scientist is the hotly contested ‘observer principle’ — the idea that each moment we humans seek to measure ourselves or anything else against an external event, idea, narrative, or predicted outcome, we immediately alter the results of what we are trying to measure.
By contextualizing ourselves, we contain and thus limit outcomes and understanding to the circumstances that we can describe.
For quantum theorists, this means we come into being as random, unpredictable, chaotic particles that seek communion and connection via more predictable ‘waves’ that are made up both with and by our equally chaotic (when left alone, but when are we ever really alone?) particle peers.
For computer scientists, this means we establish a ground truth and prepare to live in the disparity between that known quantity and the illusive predictive outcome receding into the horizon of anticipated feasibility.
For social scientists, this means we connect the data dots into a framework that fits our understanding, available resources, and any parameters imposed by external funding.
For legal researchers, this means we prepare a lie (and it’s all lies!) that is rooted in concrete case law and dated legal documents underpinning the perceived dominant power structures.
For storytellers (and are all humans not straight-up narrative fiends aka ‘natural’ storytellers?), this means we build a plausible narrative that suits the characters and the audience (who are often the same) involved.
Plato supposedly said, ‘Those who tell stories rule society,’ but many popular storytellers tend to just codify, attractively package, and perpetuate society’s more surface-based rules for easy clicks.
According to the observer principle, to be the you that you are and the you that you want to see in your wider world at any moment in time is to constantly rip yourself asunder, to exist simultaneously as both a separate individual and as part of a larger whole made up of interdependent parts — be it family members, work colleagues, friends, enemies, or various characters in your personal or group narratives.
We busy, industrious humans, beset by endless and confusing happenings beyond our immediate control, must consistently employ our compromised tools of external evaluation to explain ourselves and, at the same time, contend forever with feeling misunderstood due to the gap between the unseen self and the self’s external apparatus, the body.
Psychological and linguistic research suggests this gap, frequently exploited by marketers of ‘lifestyle’ products (and everything, by the way, is a ‘lifestyle’ product, from your political ideals to your apps, sneakers, and favorite Netflix series) is where emotion is birthed.
An emotion is the binding charge that we co-create with our ecosystem to anchor us together moment-to-moment. Emotions are the mutually constructed manifestations we individuals use to measure our observed context. If you’re talking to a quantum physicist, emotions are the malleable surfboards we use to ride the wave of shared experience — or the piece of driftwood to which we cling as we sink beneath the wave’s surface, drowning due to our disconnect.
Emotions are the roller coaster we sign up for when we select, explicitly or implicitly, a theory, hypothesis, algorithm, partner, funder, or narrative.
Emotions are enmeshed in any story that we buy or sell. In any story, emotions are the addictive crack that drew our interest in the first place.
In fact, whoever we may think we are, we humans are all generally predictable in that we will usually buy the stories we buy (and marketers will endorse this privately if not publicly) because the story that we are buying helps us exercise, develop, and demonstrate the emotions we need or want to experience and express with a minimum of surface friction.
Even if we are expressing these emotions only with ourselves.
‘When the storytelling goes bad in a society, the result is decadence.’ — Aristotle (a reputed proud and brilliant misogynist, in line with social power paradigms of his time.)
We’re understandably baffled and bemused by the very concept of the vast unknown outside our reach, much less within our own ever-changing persons.
This bafflement can result in us creating narratives that look good on the surface — that ride the wave — but ultimately dash any real-world hopes of individual security against the rocks of indifferent reality.
This brings me to Netflix’s Bridgerton, a ‘modern reinvention’ of the Regency romance first brought into being by Jane Austen.
Ms. Austen, a woman of the Regency period herself, used her novels to cynically pan the very idea of real romantic love as even feasible in her flawed, financially-driven epoch.
To Ms. Austen, romantic love was a fairy tale told to sheltered little rich girls so that they would go forth and procreate profitable alliances for their patriarchs.
To sell her stories via patriarchal publishers and thus, through a steady personal income, to shelter herself from entrapment in such an alliance, Austen wrote stories of romantic love.
However, not only.
Austen’s novels are full of pragmatic, temporally accurate economic observations (measurements — every main character gets nailed down to a yearly income) and dissatisfied but obligatory relationships that characters must navigate daily.
Austen’s world is one in which ‘happily ever after’ is tied to financial security and at least initial sexual and marital relations with someone you don’t hate.
Austen measured the success of her novels in her readers’ wry chuckles and knowing grins, not in the far-fetched fantasies of any inexperienced readers hoping to share the destiny if not the drive of Miss Eliza Bennet.
However, Austen, like so many great artists, did such a good job of delicately shredding her subject matter with such compassion for context that Austen’s audience, starved for any compassion at all, rejected the social commentary to instead embrace the fairy tale.
An audience tradition that Bridgerton bolsters with abundant aplomb.
‘After passion cools and fate intervenes, who else is a woman left with but herself?’— Lady Danbury (Bridgerton, season 2)
In Bridgerton, audience interest is reserved for certain members of the ‘ton’ or ‘fashionable society’ aka the wealthiest members of what was, at the time, one of the world’s wealthiest empires — the wealth of which sprang from horrible exploitation — including slavery and the slave trade, sexism, dramatic socio-economic inequality (in addition to slavery), legalized elite corruption, a strictly enforced caste system, imperialism, conquest, colonialism, etc.
To be a member of the ton, one had to be ‘old money’ which is to say, one had to inherit one’s wealth and accompanying titles from one’s ruthless ancestors rather than ruthlessly pursue it oneself.
This distance (or dissonance) from more direct and aggressive accumulation at the expense of the ‘lower’ classes allowed those who inherited to perceive themselves as ‘noble’ and ‘gentile.’
Meanwhile, the vast majority of those being exploited (oppressed, one might say) were regulated by a ridiculous hierarchy/caste system embedded not only in where which woman gave birth to you but in the work you were permitted to pursue, the education with which you were ‘gifted,’ the accent in which you spoke, the property upon which you could tread — even the clothing that you were permitted to wear symbolized your limited social position.
After all, the English have forever been masters of ‘Respectability politics,’ the strategy that forces the marginalized to express their legitimate frustration with an oppressive system through polite conversation.
‘Just keep looking at me. No one else matters.’— Lord Anthony Bridgerton (Season 2)
Both Bridgerton and its audience are products of ‘the Culture’ — ‘the Culture’ being one of the things that make us and that we make — one of a multitude of waves in which many of us particle-persons participate.
Within ‘the Culture,’ we humans scurry forward, little hamsters that we are, trapped in the side-less wheel of non-progress.
If we step off the sedentary spinning wheel, do we step into nothing or something better or our own buried feces or do we just disappear altogether because it’s all a cosmic farce?
Just keep swimming, swimming, spinning…
Why ‘The One’ Eternal Lucrative Lusty Love Trope is attractive in today’s culture.
I indulge in ‘the Culture’ of Bridgerton.
Yes, I admit that I ride the wave.
I unabashedly read and watch Bridgerton and I have been known to dabble in Bridgerton’s even more fantastical counterparts.
What are Bridgerton’s even more fantastical counterparts one may ask?
Let me give you a list — if you recognize yourself as ‘involved’ in one or more of these genres, you will automatically understand the appeal of the rest.
They are all incestuous kissing cousins (‘gentile nobles’) within the cosmic realm of the romcom-romdram (romantic comedies — romantic dramedies.) They include but are not limited to:
- Vampire-monster novels (Twilight, Phantom of the Opera, etc.)
- Royal fiction (marry a prince/duke/viscount…)
- Marry a celebrity (a lot of fan fiction here…very parasocial…)
- Marry a wizard/fairy/god/magically gifted creature (see no. 1, but less physically tortured/torturing)
- Marry a ‘laird’ — adjacent to no. 2 but he’s more ‘macho,’ and (usually) so is she but like not on the surface — she’s a feminine she-man, a tough broad with great boobs and a strong right hook in a low-cut bodice with a bitter backstory and an aversion to tears…
- ‘Marry-a-billionaire’ type novels where we-the-audience get to pretend we are Lauren Sanchez/Kate Middleton only less strategic and more esoterically ‘enchanting’
- Superman/Lois Lane, IronMan/Pepper Potts, Prince T’challa/Nakia, Batman/James Bond/rando girl/Robin — type stuff (see nos. 4 + 6)
- Christian romances where the guy doesn’t get it till the wedding night but somehow ‘knows’ this is the only girl for him that ‘God’ (aka the Author) created
- Most Westerns and the ‘buy-a-wife’ stories
- Various shifter and werewolf ‘pack’ fiction (see also nos. 4 + 6/7)
- Any reality TV-related media in which the romantic premise becomes ‘unexpectedly real’ after the novel’s midway point
- (One of my and Netflix’s favorites) The perky small business owner lady who never stops working but somehow has perfect hair and physique and who first hates but then loves and, we presume if it is not made explicit in the final scene of the movie, marries the good-natured son of the capitalist monopoly owner who planned to buy up her business and turn it into another profit-generating outlet of his AI-infused monstrosity. What economical and narrative efficiency! Now the inherited mogul-son doesn’t even have to buy the annoying little enterprise that was somehow holding back his oligarchic vision. With the (assumed) marriage, he possesses both the business and the trophy wife/former owner. Kismet. Darcy never had it so good with Miss Eliza Bennet (she lacked a dowry, remember?)
Review the list.
These are ALL the same story, just with slightly altered details: one lucrative and lusty lover mates for life with our pretty protagonist.
The plot (summarized):
A sort of poor, usually literate, effortlessly attractive, ‘good’ girl (often clumsy) marries ‘up’ (concerning socio-economic expectations) without a prenup because he is willing to give her everything always and forever until death (or a stake or something) do them part.
She is young, lovely, generous, and kind — not a fan of the existing caste/class system but not overtly opposed.
He’s freakishly rich and sexually desirable and needs some serious social-emotional learning/re-branding to maintain his prestigious position in the existing caste/class system, which he heads in some mystical, magical manner that is systemically morally questionable.
But ultimately he’s a good guy, a victim of fortuitous circumstance.
#sorrynotsorry
Bridgerton expertly marries ancestral wealth and power to the inclusivity myth.
Let me preface my explanation in this next section with what psychologists and frequentist statistics call a ‘confidence interval.’
I have limited patience for inherited wealth (save for any that I inherit.)
I’m an American by culture, and Nepo babies are a favored target of American media and mass culture.
Nepo babies (i.e., beneficiaries of nepotism) are the privileged offspring of The Haves. Nepo babies, vernacularly speaking, are the child-adults who didn’t ‘earn’ their privilege (whatever that means) but certainly exploit it and rarely for the advantage of the less-enfranchised (known in common parlance as The Have-Nots.)
Regency Nepo Babies or ‘Imposter party of two?’ — Benedict Bridgerton (Season 1)
The ‘old’ European nobles we see represented in the somewhat phenotypically diverse Bridgerton ton represent a (literally) more colorful version of a traditional ‘breed apart.’
In addition to being historically bred (sometimes with a little too much genetic overlap — see any mention of the Hapsburgs dynasty from Austria), these illustrious ‘old world’ aristocratic hypocrites were known for screwing and then screwing over their lesser associates.
By the way, this evidence-based observation suggests that genetically (vs. materially), we’re all descended in some way from some king or queen because most kings and many queens were known for f*cking around.
So I figure that I, like most of us, am the great-great-great grandchild of some ‘great’ royal but because my ancestors were begotten in rape, adultery, or just good illegitimate fun, I didn’t get my fair cut of the family inheritance.
You can imagine my (working class) resentment.
Confidence interval over.
Back to Bridgerton.
‘It is most natural. Much in the way that rain soaks a field in autumn and in spring, flowers grow.’
— Lady Violet Bridgerton explains sexual reproduction for the first time to her twenty-one-year-old daughter on the night before said daughter gets married. This is, of course, anachronistic aging for modern audiences; a real Regency lady would be married at a much younger age.
(Season 1)
I, like so many, love to fantasize that I can make up for any hereditary lo$$ by becoming the exception to the immorally rich rule by just being so amazingly me that some (slightly less inbred) noble will take notice and raise me to the moneyed rank of wife (with no prenup within a legal system that guarantees I’m entitled to at least half in perpetuity. #Doyourresearch.)
In my emotional (non-prefrontal) amygdala in my brain, this marriage into the vampirical class (that is, my spiritual union to a member of the blood-sucking and predatory one-percenters) precludes any morally gray complicity on my side.
If such a financially advantageous marriage were to happen to me, it would be because I was ‘in love’ and my love made my lover-the-vampire-werewolf-monopolist-Duke ‘better’ and the world should really thank me.
Sure, he’s still a vampire-werewolf-monopolist-Duke, but he’s a vegetarian vampire-werewolf-monopolist-Duke thanks to my feminine, self-effacing, civilizing influence.
I’m like his eye-catching moral muzzle and how much can any one of us change society anyways?
Plus I’m a girl and misogynistic Regency society basically gives me no other option than to weaponize my victimhood to deflect any accountability I might have for reducing entrenched socio-economic inequality.
Let me and my vegetarian vampire-werewolf-monopolist-Duke enjoy our expensive, imported champagne in peace in our palace.
Refill, please, my under-employed-soon-to-be-roboticized peasant.
I’m an aspirational myth for the masses.
Cheers.
Owning things is fun. Maintaining them’s a bitch.
All myths require a certain amount of cognitive dissonance if they are to move from fabled fabrication to founding legend to personal fairy tale to inherent social belief system (to go from a particle to a wave, if I’m aiming to be consistent in my metaphysical metaphors.)
Thus we birth our paradigms (aka sideless spinning hamster wheels; please see the relevant meme above and note the speed of our new AI hamster. We nourish him a lot more than we do that other, carbon-based one.)
And, until the paradigm disintegrates around us (and many of us with it: paradigm change literally shatters worlds), a certain amount of universal individual investment is required if we are to sustain our current social practices, assumptions, and related expectations (aka keep the wheel spinning, spinning, spinning until the robots take over and kill us.)
Bridgerton helps modern nag-hags like myself work that essential cognitive dissonance muscle.
As do many well-watched and widely read romcom-romdrams (scroll up again to see the inexhaustive list.)
Whatever complaints you may have for capitalist conservatives, clarity in life-long gender expectations is not one of them. This is why conservative fairy tales endure: consistency, like inherited wealth, breeds complacency.
Til death do us part, the one with the boobs is dedicated to the domestic sphere, and the one with the dick will not desert her (at least in terms of financial support) because he religiously succumbs to the accepted social paradigm as expressed in the initial marriage contract and/or first sexual contact.
NO Takebacks!
Virginity in this system does not come with caudal autonomy (i.e., you can’t regrow just that part — not without external surgical intervention anyway.)
This applies even if the bountiful beau is a hot half-lizard — yes, lizard-shifter fiction Regency romances are a thing.
Welcome to the future.
Roles and responsibilities according to Bridgerton et. al.
Just to review for those overwhelmed by lack of influence and submerged in individual obligation to their imagined community, aka a lot of caretakers who happen to identify as women these days, a group that often finds these narratives addictive:
She is not responsible for his participation in the terrible inequality that permeates society; she is merely the beneficiary of his affluent adoration and she ‘trickles down’ what she can to the kind souls who are financially contracted to support her luxurious lifestyle.
He is also independent of societal blame because (it is implied that) if he absconded from his elite rank a la Prince Siddhartha, then the wobbly ranks of socioeconomic stability that rest upon his broad, well-built frame would descend into violent chaos.
The social tableau is fixed.
Accept your birthright and be grateful.
Just keep swimming (#spinningsidelesswheel.)
Some fun further reading and watching:
