strange and random happenstance: Regé-Jean Page

This is the miniseries everyone holds up as the gold standard? THIS!?! This screed of hate where anyone viewed as "other" dies horrifically!?! THIS!?! I am honestly baffled by anyone loving this series. We are introduced to two lovely characters, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. Hari was born in India but educated in England at the same school as Daphne's brother. Returning home Hari is shocked by his decline in status and finds work at the local newspaper. Daphne is in India because all her family have died during the war and she can't volunteer anymore as an ambulance driver due to a heart condition and has been shipped off to her last living relative. Despite their differences love blossoms between Hari and Daphne and you think, I could really enjoy watching these characters for the next fourteen episodes defying the odds and finding a place for themselves in this world. Then after two of the fourteen episodes they make love only to be brutally attacked in the aftermath with Daphne being repeatedly raped. Hari's imprisoned and tortured for presumably being the rapist while Daphne ends up pregnant and dies in childbirth. After the third episode we're concentrating on an entirely different cast and the viewer is left with whiplash. Because they were obviously punished for daring to love outside the bounds of "proper society." This happens again and again. There's Barbie Batchelor, a queer coded disaffected missionary who is driven to madness because the object of her affection died by self-immolation. So we have two gays to bury in quick succession. Then there's Ahmed Kasim, the love child of Regé-Jean Page and Jason Momoa, who dies because he was making eyes at a white woman. The biggest "transgressor" though is Tim Pigott-Smith's Ronald Merrick. He is not only a closeted homosexual, but he dons brownface to get down with his bad self. Again, he is brutally killed. Although I would argue that he totally deserved it. This miniseries is so full of hate against the other that I don't know how anyone could like it. Sure, the scenery is amazing, the locations are to die for, but I don't actually want to see people die for them. This weird moral center is thrown off even more by the fact that if you're a woman who gets knocked up, well, as long as it's with an attractive white male, that's totally cool, even if you decide to have an abortion. I just don't get it. Was The Jewel in the Crown popular because the English love to relive the glory days of Empire and this shows that when they left everything went to shit? I honestly just don't get it. I was so looking forward to watching this show but slogging through thirteen hours of this hate just broke me. How can anyone watch this more than once let alone the rumored yearly viewing parties? Please, if there's something I'm missing please tell me because this is just hate on hate on hate and I hate it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Art Malik, British Empire, Brownface, Daphne Manners, Fifty-Five Years a Masterpiece, Gay, Hari Kumar Queer Coded, India, Jason Momoa, Regé-Jean Page, Ronald Merrick, Susan Wooldridge, The Jewel in the Crown, Tim Pigott-Smith

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: January 5th, 2000
Format: Kindle, 1053 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Daphne Bridgerton is just Daphne. Being raised with a bevy of boys she's everyone's best friend and no one's romantic ideal. Sure she's had a few annoying suitors, but no one to whom she could see herself marrying. Enter Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings. He is best friend to her brother Anthony and a confirmed rake. Simon's background makes him unwilling to marry and father a child because of his own bleak upbringing. Therefore doing the season in London might be his version of hell as all the ambitious mamas throw their daughters at him. He needs protection. What he needs is Daphne. A smart girl willing to enter into a fake relationship with him. He wouldn't be the only one to benefit from this arrangement. The idea is that this will raise Daphne's stock among the men of the ton and at the end of the season she will break off their engagement and she will have her pick for her future husband. The ruse starts off surprisingly well, after they are seen together Daphne awakes the next day to a room full of suitors clamoring for her attention. This has NEVER happened before. But there is a problem they didn't foresee. Simon realizes he doesn't like all these other men plying their troth to his Daphne. Since when did she become his Daphne!?! He could never give her the life she wants, a family of her own. He will NEVER have children. His line ends with him. So when he and Daphne are compromised, he is will to die rather than force her into a marriage that could never be what she wants. He and Anthony meet at dawn, but Daphne is there, Daphne agrees that she could live a life with him, a life without children if he just lives. Yet what would happen if she were to realize it wasn't a matter of Simon being unable to have children as just being unwilling? That would mean their marriage is built on a lie and how can that be a marriage? How can they build a life together with a cloud hanging over them? Maybe they would have all been better off if Anthony had killed Simon.

As I write this it's six months since Bridgerton first aired and I have yet to watch it because I wanted to read the books first and as you can imagine the success of the show created quite a demand at my local library so it took six months to actually get a loan of the first three books. So all I knew going into the books is that Regé-Jean Page has a very nice ass and that there is a rape. So I wasn't prepared for how fun and witty the book is. I just adore the whole Bridgerton clan and their clamorous family activities! This of course has made me even more excited to watch the show, but I am determined not to start until I know the identity of Lady Whistledown, because I have heard tell that this happens in the show sooner than in the books. But my delight in this book aside, the fact is the rape is something to that needs to be discussed. I don't know why but I was under the impression this series was written far earlier than it was having a vague idea it was written in the eighties. I'm guessing this misconception came about on my part because I didn't think a more modern romance would feature a rape in the context of a marriage. Mores and morals are constantly shifting and what we view as acceptable is always changing. While rape is never acceptable, the older the book the more prevalent it's used as a plot point, that's just the way it is. So to have Daphne force Simon just felt wrong. Moreso because it really didn't need to happen. At all. Daphne and Simon get to this breaking point in their marriage after only a few weeks of knowing each other and being wed. The reason it happens is a combination of lack of knowledge and a lie of omission. Daphne doesn't know the first thing about sex and Simon phrases his unwillingness to have children as an inability to have them. I just felt that if the two of them had waited and talked things out they would have reached the same conclusion that they both want a family and children without Daphne forcing Simon. But force him she does and therefore no matter how fun this novel is it will also always be tainted. Also I would like to point out to Simon that there were better methods of contraception than the pull out method, which is only 78% effective. And condoms did exist, though that one would have been harder to explain to a naive wife.