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1:24

Hello,

1:26

beautiful, hot and bothered listeners. We

1:29

have another special episode for you today

1:31

while we are on hiatus and busy

1:33

preparing for our next season. I was

1:36

lucky enough to guest on the incredible

1:38

podcast Material Girls in

1:40

order to talk about the show Bridgerton. Material

1:43

Girls is a podcast that looks at cultural

1:45

moments that were big, that were zeitgeisty at

1:47

the time, and uses scholarly

1:50

lenses in order to understand why

1:52

they were such a big deal when they happened.

1:55

So they look at

1:56

things like Prince Harry's book Spare, but

1:58

they also go back and talk about things like James

2:00

Cameron's Avatar. They had me on,

2:02

as I said, to talk about Bridgerton, which

2:04

I think we can all agree had a huge

2:07

moment in 2020. Season 3 is

2:09

about to come out. It got a spin-off series

2:11

called Queen Charlotte. All of this is by Shonda

2:14

Rhimes, the genius behind shows

2:16

like Grey's Anatomy. But I don't know

2:18

if you know this. Bridgerton was my

2:20

gateway into romance novels.

2:23

And in fact, if you go back and listen to season 1

2:26

of Hot and Bothered, you will hear an interview

2:28

with Julia Quinn, who we

2:30

were lucky enough to have on season 1.

2:32

And so it was an absolute delight to

2:35

go

2:35

and show off my Bridgerton

2:37

Bonafides on Material Girls. We

2:40

hope you enjoyed this special episode. And if you're like,

2:42

oh my god, Marcel Cozmann and

2:44

Hannah McGregor are amazing. I want

2:46

to spend more time with them. There are two things you can do. One,

2:50

go subscribe to Material Girls. And two,

2:52

go over and listen to our podcast, Should I Quit?,

2:55

where this week's episode is me talking

2:57

to Marcel Cozmann as to whether or not she should

3:00

quit drinking wine. Thanks

3:02

everyone, and we'll talk to you soon. Hey

3:05

folks, today's

3:08

episode is all about Bridgerton. We

3:11

talk about the books a bit, but largely

3:13

focus on the TV adaptation. If

3:16

you want to avoid

3:16

spoilers, skip this episode.

3:19

We also want to give you a content warning.

3:22

In the last 20 minutes of the episode,

3:24

in the final segment, we talk

3:26

in depth about depictions of sexual

3:28

assault and non-consent more broadly.

3:31

You can listen through Hannah's thesis in the final segment,

3:34

and then turn off the episode if you'd rather

3:36

not hear that part of the conversation. Take

3:38

care of yourselves.

4:09

Hello and welcome

4:11

to Material Girls, a scholarly

4:13

podcast about popular culture. I'm

4:16

Hannah McGregor. And I'm Marcelle

4:18

Cozmon. And for this episode,

4:21

we have a very special

4:23

guest. You know and I would love

4:25

her as the host of Harry Potter and the

4:27

Sacred Text, Hot and Bothered,

4:30

and Should I Quit, and

4:33

as the author of Praying with

4:35

Jane Eyre. It's Vanessa

4:37

Soltan.

4:38

Hi.

4:42

Thanks for making this podcast just for

4:44

me. It like hits every

4:46

pleasure center in my brain.

4:48

It is just for you. I have

4:51

so many questions about your relationship

4:53

to romance and

4:54

romance novels

4:57

and romance reading. But

4:59

I actually just want to start things

5:01

off by asking a little

5:04

bit about your own personal fictional

5:07

crushes.

5:08

Vanessa, who's your top fictional

5:10

crush right now? Right now, I

5:12

am just finishing my

5:14

reread of Emma by Jane Austen.

5:17

I have not read Emma half

5:20

a lifetime ago. I read it when I was 20. I'm now 41.

5:23

And

5:23

here's the thing, I would not want to be in a relationship

5:26

with Mr. Knightley, but he

5:28

hits like every kink

5:31

I have. Daddy? Yes.

5:35

Like older, wiser, wants me to

5:37

be the best version of myself, is

5:40

always out there like doing sacrificial

5:42

things. But as soon as someone is like you're sacrificing

5:44

yourself, he literally rides off on

5:46

a horse in the middle of a conversation. If you're

5:49

thanking him for something, he's

5:50

like, I don't want to hear it. Oh

5:53

my God, I love that one of your kinks is rides

5:55

off on a horse in the middle of a conversation. In

5:58

the middle of a compliment.

5:59

He's just

6:01

like, my ego is all set. I don't

6:03

need you to kiss my

6:04

ass. It's not the middle of a conversation. It's

6:06

the middle of a compliment. Oh, that's

6:08

important for clarification.

6:10

I love it so much. Okay, but in

6:12

order to honor my full sexual

6:14

identity, I also have to talk about

6:16

we are watching and rewatching

6:19

Paddington 1 and 2 a lot in

6:21

my house right now.

6:22

You have a young child. She's

6:24

not that young. These are perfect

6:26

films. They are 10 and 15. They

6:29

are so wholesome. Anyway, Mrs.

6:31

Brown played by Sally Hawkins

6:33

in these films is like an artistic

6:36

genius who is willing to

6:39

get up to shenanigans

6:41

and it like brings

6:44

a refugee into her house

6:46

because it's the right thing to do. She

6:48

draws on the wall. Her fashion.

6:51

She wears so many colors. I love

6:53

her.

6:54

I actually do feel like

6:57

stern daddy plus

6:59

chaotic whimsical

7:02

women.

7:03

Like that is your life.

7:07

Hannah, for those of you listening, just

7:10

spent like five days with me and my husband.

7:12

So this is an informed joke.

7:14

You know what? Truth-based joke and it's my

7:17

favorite kind.

7:21

Hannah, you already know this, but

7:23

for your sake, Vanessa, we're going to explain

7:26

our segments as we go, starting

7:28

with this one. Why

7:30

this? Why now? So

7:33

in this segment, we theorize why

7:36

a particular piece of pop culture became

7:38

a state safety in a particular

7:40

historical moment. Yeah. And

7:43

today

7:43

we are going to talk about

7:45

Bridgerton, specifically the

7:47

Netflix adaptation of the production

7:50

of Bridgerton. So

7:51

Vanessa Marcel, to start off,

7:54

I want to hear a little bit about your relationships

7:56

with Bridgerton, the Netflix series.

7:59

I also want to know whether you were

8:02

romance readers prior to

8:05

Watching it or have become romance

8:07

readers since tell me about

8:10

how you feel about romance

8:12

Vanessa I would love it if you went

8:13

first I'm happy to

8:16

so

8:16

depending on what we define as romance

8:18

novels, right? Like I loved

8:21

Jane Eyre and Jane Austen in high school and

8:23

college But I don't feel like that's quite what

8:25

we mean by romance novels Even though

8:27

those are canonically romance novels.

8:30

I became a big romance

8:33

reader in November of 2016

8:37

If you had asked me did you

8:39

start reading romance novels because Donald Trump

8:42

was elected It like did not

8:44

occur to me that that is what was happening.

8:46

You would

8:46

have been like coincidence Yeah,

8:49

absolutely do not occur to me I

8:51

a friend of mine emmy had sent

8:53

me this book that she loved she had sent it to me

8:55

on my e-reader Called The Duke

8:57

and I by Julia Quinn. It's not

8:59

on my e-reader for literal years

9:02

and I

9:05

was like trying to read I was just

9:07

very distracted and couldn't read and so I was like fine

9:09

I'll open this stupid book that is clearly

9:11

beneath me But like that's

9:14

where I am and like came

9:16

up for air

9:16

six hours later and was like was

9:19

stupid But

9:22

I do want to read the next one and

9:24

then it took me a really long

9:26

time to just like Accept that I was

9:28

a romance reader I finished the eight Bridgerton's

9:31

books and then I was like they mentioned

9:33

the smite Smith's in the Bridgerton

9:34

books I should probably read the force me

9:36

Smith books

9:37

And then I was like also check just

9:39

to check what's going on and then I'll be

9:41

a Julia Quinn completist But she's probably

9:44

the only good romance writer. Yeah. Yeah

9:47

Probably

9:47

other smart people agree that this is the

9:49

one that you can read and still be smart exactly

9:51

and then eventually I was just like

9:53

no amazing and I love

9:55

them and then can I make

9:57

my major Bridgerton flex?

9:59

Yeah, yeah You

10:02

simply must

10:03

so I Decided with

10:05

my partner in crime Ariana Nettelman

10:07

to make a podcast about romance novels And

10:09

so we like blindly wrote to Julia Quinn

10:12

one night being like hey you

10:14

lived in the same dorm where I'm now a dorm Mom do

10:16

you want to be on our podcast and

10:18

she said yes Wow And

10:21

then we went to dinner with her because I happen

10:23

to be in Seattle where she lives and she was like Do you guys

10:25

want to know a secret and we were like yes She

10:27

was like Shonda Rhimes just picked up the

10:30

Bridgerton series Oh my god,

10:32

and I was like what

10:33

and she was like you can't tell anyone so

10:35

I like that is how Original

10:39

like

10:40

at the ground floor of Bridgerton I was I knew

10:43

before it was public y'all this

10:45

is an incredible like combination

10:48

of being both a hipster

10:50

and Public romance

10:52

reader. Yes. Yeah But

10:55

I said I just love secrets

10:58

and even even now that it's not a secret anymore

11:01

I love knowing that that secret

11:03

was gifted to you Yes, and

11:05

I love knowing that just

11:08

you know knowing you you kept it. I Did

11:11

and I gotta say like Julia Quinn

11:13

and I bonded because like

11:15

the reason she trusted me with the secret It's

11:17

like we were both like dorky Jewish women

11:19

who were like Talking

11:21

about which synagogues our families went to

11:24

in the San Fernando Valley, right? It wasn't like Julia

11:27

Quinn is awesome. She's not cool

11:29

in the same way that I'm not cool, right?

11:31

And so this is like bonding over we were

11:34

an Indian restaurant saying to that waiter.

11:36

No very mild We can't handle

11:38

any spice No

11:43

very mouth imagine we're from a people

11:45

where the spices dill yeah

11:48

Oh

11:58

Super hot sauce came to me

11:59

I really love that. But

12:02

that's my romance reading. It really started

12:05

out of a place of desperation and trauma of

12:08

not being able to read what I thought of at the time

12:10

as real books. And so desperately

12:12

plunging on this thing that has now become

12:15

such a big part of my life. Yeah, that is really beautiful.

12:18

Marcel, I

12:20

don't think you read romance novels, but

12:22

I think you watched Bridgerton. I did watch Bridgerton. I

12:24

have consumed a few romance

12:26

novels, and I do. You know this about

12:28

me, Hannah. I love love. Marcel

12:31

loves love. I love

12:33

love. And so

12:36

my not reading romance novels

12:39

doesn't come from a place of

12:42

a snark. It might have at one

12:44

time, but it's more just

12:46

that I feel like as a genre,

12:48

it's really, really... I don't

12:51

know where to start. You don't know where to start? Oh, Marcel.

12:54

But, but... Oh, no, no, no.

12:56

I know. I know. Let me

12:58

clarify. So

13:02

some romance novels that I have read

13:04

include all of the Outlander

13:07

series books. Oh,

13:09

Diana Gabaldon would be very upset with you. She

13:11

says that these are not technically romance novels. Yeah. Well,

13:14

that's extremely silly. She hasn't

13:16

read her own books. They are romantic novels.

13:19

They're romantic novels. I actually kind of

13:21

agree they're not romance novels, but they are. Yeah,

13:23

they're historical romantic novels. They're not

13:25

romance novels. I love them. They're

13:27

gateway romance, but Marcel, the difference, the really

13:30

key difference is that romance guarantees a

13:32

happily ever after at the end of the book. Yeah. Okay.

13:36

Whereas End of Outlander 2... I know. I

13:38

can quote. Do you want me to quote it to you right

13:40

now, then? And every time... No. Every

13:43

time you think things are going to work out for them, another war. I

13:45

know. Okay. Understood. But

13:48

I want to talk about what happened

13:52

somewhere around, you know, 2020

13:54

to make this, like, really widely-developed.

13:59

disparaged sort

14:02

of women

14:04

only book genre,

14:07

something that, you know, could afford

14:09

this kind of multi-million dollar adaptation.

14:12

So we're going to do

14:13

a little bit of historical context

14:15

here, and

14:16

then we'll get into some theory. So

14:19

Julia Quinn published the Bridgerton books between 2000

14:21

and 2006. The

14:24

TV adaptation was released in 2020. So

14:27

we've got like a lag of about 20

14:29

years in between for this to

14:31

go from something a friend sends you

14:33

on Kindle that you refuse to

14:36

read to something that 82

14:38

million people watched, which

14:40

is how many people watched the first season,

14:43

which set a record for being the

14:45

most viewed Netflix original series until

14:48

that record was broken by season

14:50

two of Bridgerton. You know, that's more

14:52

people than the entire nation

14:55

state called Canada. It's like, oh, yeah,

14:57

that's like twice, almost three times,

14:59

not quite three times, but it's like more

15:02

than twice as many people as the

15:03

entire country. Incredible. You

15:05

know how many people there are in Canada.

15:07

Okay, so I am really curious for us

15:09

to sort of collectively think through in this

15:12

episode what happened between 2000

15:14

and 2020 to facilitate

15:16

this kind of shift of romance from

15:19

something that women read

15:22

often in private, often with some

15:24

like attendant feelings of shame to

15:28

prestige television because like Bridgerton

15:30

is not just popular. It has won

15:33

awards. I was just at a wedding

15:35

where the bride walked down the aisle to

15:38

the score from

15:39

Bridgerton. Incredible. I

15:41

love it.

15:42

That is like not a piece

15:44

of culture that people are feeling ashamed

15:47

of. Nope. Something people are publicly

15:49

celebrating. You know, that

15:50

in part comes with like the prestige

15:53

of a producer like Shonda Rhimes. It comes

15:55

with the prestige of Netflix,

15:58

the prestige of just the the

16:00

budget. Yeah. Right? Like this is

16:02

serious culture, we can tell because it looks

16:05

really good. Some of the things

16:07

that predate this, I think we've got to look

16:09

at adaptations that

16:11

preceded it. For example, how

16:13

successful the adaptation of Outlander was.

16:16

Outlander is not

16:19

textbook romance, because it doesn't

16:21

have a happily ever after for the characters

16:24

at the end of the book. And that is like the

16:26

top genre requirement of romance,

16:29

if you're going to be shelved in the romance section,

16:32

those people have to be together

16:33

and happy at the end of the book, and it's not

16:35

going to get fucked up in a future book. That is the

16:37

promise that you have made. But part

16:40

of the success of the adaptation of Outlander

16:43

is that there are war scenes, right? And

16:45

so it was a perfect gateway, because

16:48

it's not really romance. There is such

16:50

hot romance and sex. But you're

16:53

like, whatever, I'm watching a war show about

16:55

like the Scottish Highlands, right? It

16:57

had a great cover. And like serious

17:00

history. Yeah. I

17:02

mean, I think that's part of why Outlander is a gateway

17:04

into romance for a lot of readers. I agree.

17:07

Yeah. Yeah, it was for me, right?

17:09

I could have started my story in 2009 when

17:12

I read Outlander and burnt

17:14

out my friend's flashlight doing it. But

17:17

you're a purist.

17:18

I'm a purist. I answered the question

17:20

as asked.

17:20

Okay,

17:24

so I feel like HBO

17:27

has really kind of shifted

17:29

our expectations for, you

17:31

know what, I'm about to say a real truism. I

17:33

feel like HBO has really shifted our expectations

17:36

for prestige television, when they literally

17:38

fucking defined it. Yeah, yeah,

17:41

that's fair. But one of the things

17:43

that I think is really interesting is how

17:46

much unbridled

17:48

passion and sex is allowed

17:51

in HBO shows.

17:54

So like, whether it's like Sex in the City,

17:57

or like True Blood, or Game

18:00

of Thrones. Like all of these shows

18:02

are like people have sex and people enjoy

18:05

sex and we're gonna show people enjoying having

18:07

sex on television.

18:09

Yeah, and that is definitely

18:11

part of what primed viewers

18:14

to watch romance adaptations

18:16

though as we will discuss in the next segment

18:19

They had to tone the sex way down in Bridgerton

18:22

for the adaptation Wow Yeah,

18:25

so we've got I think two sort

18:27

of interesting parallel histories because we can

18:29

talk about sort of the prestige

18:33

adaptations of romance novels

18:35

and what shifts in the TV

18:37

space to make that possible and

18:39

then I think we also need to talk about What's

18:42

happening in the actual world of romance reading

18:45

at the same time? Marissa you made a face

18:47

like you thought I made a face because I just suddenly

18:49

thought of Fifty Shades of Grey because when we Talked about

18:51

this. I made the joke that Fifty Shades

18:53

of Grey walked so that Bridgerton could run But

18:55

that is a funny joke because there

18:58

are many other things that walked so

19:00

that Fifty Shades could run I think

19:02

that that's right other things are happening at

19:04

this time like technology, right? The reason

19:06

that Fifty Shades of Grey was as

19:08

successful as it was is because of e-readers,

19:11

right? People weren't ashamed To

19:14

read it because you didn't know what

19:16

they were reading. Of course And

19:18

so suddenly you could privately read in

19:21

public. You don't get Fifty Shades of Grey without

19:23

that And you know again, we

19:25

can talk about I read Fifty Shades of Grey long before

19:27

I read Bridgerton and The

19:30

thing that blew my

19:31

mind the first time I read Fifty Shades of Grey I was

19:33

like don't you understand what the actual fantasy is? The

19:35

actual fantasy is a guy sends you a

19:37

computer and sends you

19:39

the internet installation guy Right,

19:42

like it's not the sex. It's

19:45

like it's that a woman wrote a

19:47

man He

19:49

doesn't just get her a car. He gets her an insurance

19:52

policy, right? Like yeah, and I

19:55

Was like this is the hottest fucking thing

19:57

I've ever read and again, I wouldn't have read it

19:59

if I didn't

19:59

have my Kindle and couldn't have read it inside it.

20:02

And so like the technology aspects

20:05

of this and like the multi-faceted like

20:07

amazingness of this I do think it's

20:10

complicated

20:10

how we got here.

20:12

It's complicated in the public private

20:14

dimension is a thing I really want us to delve

20:17

into more because it's so interesting

20:19

to think about this parallel of romance

20:21

going public in the form

20:24

of adaptations

20:25

in the form of prestige

20:27

literary coverage. So in 2018 Jamie

20:30

Green becomes the debut New

20:32

York Times romance columnist

20:35

like

20:36

bringing romance into the public

20:38

sphere of literary conversations in

20:40

a way they never have been before. So

20:43

we've got this conversation happening being like

20:45

don't be ashamed of reading romance, romance

20:47

is real literature, romance should be taken

20:50

seriously and then we've got

20:52

the rise of e-readers and

20:54

people just being like I'm reading smart

20:57

on the train. And the change

20:59

of romance covers right this is when

21:01

romance covers go from the Fabio

21:03

model which obviously it hasn't been Fabio

21:05

for years. The defabiofication. Yeah

21:08

to cartoons. Explain for me

21:10

because my relationship to romance

21:13

is very limited. If we weren't on

21:15

a timeline right now I would go and physically

21:18

get for you one of the first romance novels

21:20

I ever owned which has classic

21:23

just like incredible cover art.

21:26

Fabio was literally that's his claim

21:28

to fame. Totally. I think I feel

21:30

like those of us who have seen parodies

21:33

of romance like we know the like open shirt

21:35

and the muscles and the horse and

21:37

the long hair and the wind but what happened? So

21:40

then about seven years ago yeah they

21:43

started doing these like very cute

21:45

cartoon drawings and

21:47

the wedding date by Jasmine Guillory was

21:50

the most prominent early one of these

21:52

but the kiss quotient by Helen Huang

21:55

often these are books written by women

21:57

of color and like there's real pushback

22:00

by women of color who write romance novels

22:02

to be like, nope, I want dark skinned

22:05

black women on the cover of

22:07

my romance novel. Don't draw a flippin cartoon.

22:10

So they have become more socially acceptable

22:12

to read in public because of these cartoons. But

22:15

right like this pushback, don't make it fucking acceptable

22:17

to read in public, or this should

22:19

actually be acceptable to read in public. So it's

22:22

been really interesting, like the evolution

22:24

of this public private sphere that you're talking about.

22:27

Yeah, and the trends that we're talking about just

22:29

are continuing to escalate. Like

22:33

in 2021, Penguin Random House romance

22:35

sales went up 50%, which

22:37

is huge. And

22:40

I got a theory about why it is

22:42

and I think it has a lot to do not only with pandemic

22:44

comfort reading, but with women leaving

22:47

the workplace in record numbers during

22:50

the pandemic. And that is all

22:52

context I think

22:54

that

22:55

will help us to theorize

22:58

the rise of romance a little more.

23:06

I hope everyone is ready to theorize

23:08

romance for a while in the

23:10

theory we need. So I'm

23:13

going to be drawing primarily here on the work of

23:15

American literary and cultural studies scholar

23:17

Janice Radway who brag I was on

23:20

a panel with once.

23:21

How cool are you?

23:24

Yeah, yeah, that's my claim to say I

23:27

may not have gotten any secrets from Julia Quinn,

23:29

but I did co present with Janice Radway

23:31

at the MLA. Oh no, I think that's cooler. I love

23:34

Julia Quinn, but Janice is

23:37

an icon. She's so cool. She

23:39

was talking about zines that's her new research area.

23:42

But we're not talking about her zine research. We

23:44

are talking about her field defining 1984

23:47

book, Reading the Romance, Women,

23:49

Patriarchy and Popular Literature.

23:51

Vanessa, are

23:53

you familiar with Janice Radway's work? So

23:56

I'm in the middle of a move and I have

23:58

a little box of books. that I'm like, these

24:00

are the books that I need with me until the day of

24:02

the move. The last load

24:05

in the car is purse,

24:06

dog, and small box of books.

24:09

And reading the romance is

24:11

in my small box of books. I like

24:13

can't do things without it.

24:16

I can't do my work without it. It's seminal.

24:18

Oh, no, it's not gross. It's ovule. It's

24:22

ovule. It's

24:24

vaginal.

24:25

It's vaginal. Say

24:28

what you will about reading the romance. It

24:30

is definitely vaginal.

24:33

And Marcel, since this is an

24:35

audio medium, people couldn't see you hold

24:37

up your copy just now. Tell me about

24:40

your relationship to Radway scholarship. I

24:43

was introduced to Jan Radway by

24:47

my thesis supervisor at the time,

24:49

Julie Rack, who was helping

24:52

me to figure out how

24:54

to theorize women's science

24:57

fiction and fantasy writing. Because

25:00

it turned out at that point in my dissertation

25:02

work that nobody had written about

25:05

the specific texts that I wanted to

25:07

write about. And I was having a

25:09

really hard time learning how to theorize

25:12

why these women would be

25:14

writing in this genre

25:17

and why it is relevant

25:20

that women were reading it. Anyway,

25:22

even though Radway is talking about romance,

25:25

it was really helpful for me in terms of

25:28

learning how to understand

25:31

women's reading as a practice

25:33

and as a kind of practice that

25:36

exists outside the very

25:39

classically theorized political

25:41

spheres of the importance

25:42

of literature. Yeah,

25:44

beautifully said. And that was Radway's

25:47

field-defining intervention. I

25:51

just read in the 1994 re-release

25:53

of Reading the Romance, there's

25:55

an updated introduction. She's

25:58

reflecting back from. a perspective

26:00

of a decade on writing this book

26:03

and recognizing some interesting things

26:05

like she was doing a

26:07

thing in the States that was basically

26:10

in trying to invent cultural studies

26:13

while cultural studies was simultaneously

26:15

being invented as a field in the UK by

26:17

the Birmingham School and

26:19

that sort of there's like this parallel development

26:22

happening at

26:22

a moment when the sort of

26:24

you know big intervention with all of these scholars

26:27

starting to say maybe

26:30

our job's not just to look

26:31

at like great works

26:35

quote unquote of a culture and to

26:38

assume that like by looking at the great

26:40

works that's the way we best understand

26:42

a culture like maybe we should actually

26:44

be looking at the things that people

26:47

really read and

26:49

so that was like a mind-blowing intervention

26:52

in and of itself the idea that we should study

26:55

popular culture but then

26:57

on top of that

27:00

Radway was like well it's not just enough to

27:02

take

27:02

sort of the methods that we've

27:04

developed to study great works

27:07

and use those on popular culture because

27:09

like if you try to read a

27:11

romance novel using like the

27:14

new critical lenses that you would

27:16

use to talk about modernist poetry

27:19

like it's

27:20

not it's not going to thrive

27:22

under that particular lens

27:25

so you also need new methodologies

27:28

and one of Radway's big interventions

27:30

was the idea of ethnographies of reading.

27:34

What's an ethnography? An ethnography

27:37

is a genre of writing

27:39

that

27:39

emerged out of anthropology as

27:41

a discipline and it's essentially

27:44

a sort of study of the

27:47

way people do something so

27:49

usually sort of really embedded in that

27:51

cultural context and it's a way of like

27:54

really looking at all of the like

27:56

cultural and social minutia

27:58

that surrounds a particular. particular kind

28:00

of cultural practice. So

28:02

Radway's doing an ethnography

28:05

of romance reading in this book.

28:07

In her big follow-up, A Feeling for Books, she actually

28:09

does an autoethnography,

28:11

which is where you do an ethnography of yourself,

28:15

in order to theorize the book of the

28:17

Month Club. And, like, lo

28:19

and behold, we've got an expert

28:21

on ethnographies of reading here,

28:23

because

28:24

Vanessa, I believe you have, in

28:27

some ways, written sort of an autoethnography

28:30

of reading. Wow, that's neat.

28:33

I love what that makes me sound like. It

28:35

makes me sound like an academic. Oh

28:37

my God, my mom is so proud right now. It's

28:39

what she wanted me to be. I wrote what I

28:43

call a collection of sermons

28:46

using Jane Eyre as the

28:48

liturgy instead of the Bible. So yes,

28:51

and explore my relationship with Jane

28:53

Eyre. I mean, it's mostly

28:56

not about my relationship with Jane Eyre. It really just

28:58

is, my book is an attempt to say

29:00

you can treat anything as sacred. You

29:02

can live your life in conversation with whatever

29:04

text you want to. And if that is

29:07

Sex in the City, it's like, great. Just do

29:10

it, do it well, do it with passion. And my

29:12

text is this very disturbing

29:14

romance novel from

29:17

the 1830s. But yeah, I

29:19

just think that books

29:20

are

29:21

a great place to go to for meaning making. And

29:23

it doesn't have to be the Bible. Yeah,

29:26

yeah, 100%. And the

29:29

way that we make meaning

29:31

with books is personal and

29:33

specific.

29:34

Right. And I will say like, a

29:37

book that blew my mind. So I

29:39

was studying at Harvard Divinity

29:41

School and trying to figure out my

29:43

own methodology for treating secular things as

29:45

sacred. And just for fun, I read

29:48

Bab Feminist by Roxanne Gay. And

29:51

it blew my mind because

29:53

she was writing highly intellectual

29:57

and scholarly essays mixed with the

29:59

Bible.

29:59

with memoir personal essays, one

30:02

that really blew my mind is using Hunger Games

30:05

as a text, right? And I

30:07

was like, oh my God, you can do all three

30:09

of those things at once, right? And so

30:11

I feel like I'm sure there are

30:13

other authors that Roxanne

30:16

Gay is on their shoulders and other authors who are

30:18

doing it at the same time. But she was

30:20

the first author who I came across who was like, look,

30:22

I live my life in conversation with Hunger Games.

30:25

And let me talk to you about

30:28

my body and mental health and sexual assault

30:30

in conversation with the Hunger Games. And I was like,

30:32

okay, yeah. Yeah,

30:34

and I think cultural studies as a discipline,

30:37

I think in a lot of ways

30:38

paved the way for this

30:41

rise of a particular kind of pop

30:43

culture, criticism, writing

30:46

that brings memoir in because

30:49

it legitimized the idea that

30:51

we are living our lives in

30:53

conversation with all kinds

30:55

of popular culture and that

30:58

the relationship we have to popular culture

31:00

is significant and worth talking about.

31:03

Right, and there's a huge rise in this kind

31:05

of books in the 2000s, right? Like

31:07

My Life in Middlemarch, How Proofs Can Save Your

31:09

Life, right, like these are very niche,

31:12

like kind of typical kinds

31:14

of books that are complicated.

31:18

I have thoughts on them that are not relevant to this conversation.

31:21

Complicated. So

31:25

in addition to sort of bringing this ethnographic

31:28

lens in and saying like we should talk about what people

31:30

do with books, another key

31:33

intervention of reading the romance lies

31:35

in how Radway thinks about communities

31:37

of interpretation. So Marcel,

31:40

I'm gonna ask you to read this quote, and this is from that 1994

31:43

revised introduction to the book.

31:47

Quote,

31:48

it was the women readers

31:50

construction of the act of romance

31:53

reading as a declaration

31:55

of independence that surprised

31:57

me into the realization that

31:59

the meaning of their media use

32:02

was multiply determined and

32:04

internally contradictory and

32:07

that to get at its complexity

32:09

it would be helpful to distinguish analytically

32:12

between the significance of the

32:14

event of reading and

32:17

the meaning of the text

32:19

constructed as its consequence.

32:21

What the book gradually became then was

32:25

less an account of the way romances

32:27

as texts were interpreted than of

32:29

the way romance reading as

32:31

a form of behavior operated as

32:34

a complex intervention in the

32:36

ongoing social life of actual

32:38

social subjects, women who

32:41

saw themselves first as wives

32:43

and mothers." Okay

32:47

beautifully beautifully read Marcel can you

32:49

explain to us what that quote tells us? So what

32:51

I'm getting from this long quote here

32:54

is that Radway is saying that

32:56

when we look at romance reading and

32:58

we look at people who are reading

33:00

romance novels what is

33:02

interesting is less the

33:05

texts that they are choosing

33:07

and more about the practice

33:09

so more about what it means to the

33:11

reading subject to carve

33:14

out space for themselves in

33:16

their lives and how we kind of see

33:19

this as a pattern across like a demographic

33:22

of people.

33:23

Yes a hundred percent

33:26

and Radway gets into like they do

33:28

have preferences you know her romance

33:30

readers they have preferences for particular kinds

33:32

of stories and she does a study of what they

33:34

prefer but at

33:36

the heart the intervention that comes

33:39

from her conversations with these readers

33:41

is that first and foremost it's the fact

33:44

of reading as an act of

33:46

independence as a sort of clawing

33:49

back of a chunk of your day to do

33:51

something that is non-productive and

33:53

solely for you and that's

33:55

the piece that feels radical to them.

33:57

And it's just important to me

33:59

to see

33:59

that two of the super

34:02

consumers of romance novels

34:05

demographically are people in nursing

34:07

homes and people in prison. Interesting.

34:10

And that

34:11

is true across gender, right? And so like

34:13

this idea of reading

34:15

toward

34:16

hope, toward a happy

34:19

ending, while in these places

34:21

that we traditionally think of as places of being

34:23

trapped, like being a housewife

34:25

in the 70s when Radaway was doing the

34:28

bulk of her research, 70s and 80s, that

34:30

seems like another kind of trap to me.

34:33

Yeah.

34:34

Yeah. Yeah.

34:35

That's so, that's a really powerful

34:38

parallel of like, you know, who are

34:40

the subjects who are in positions where they have

34:42

really minimal agency

34:45

in terms of how they spend their day-to-day lives

34:48

and how does reading figure

34:50

as a sort of space of imaginative escape?

34:53

There tends to be disdain for people who read

34:54

for escape. And I think that that is

34:57

a disdain that emerges from people who have a lot

34:59

of control over what their day-to-day lives look like.

35:01

Well, and I think too, the other

35:03

relationship between say, housewives

35:06

and people in nursing homes and people in prisons,

35:08

I think for people who don't

35:11

know what that life

35:14

entails, it is

35:16

assumed that they have nothing to do

35:18

all day anyway, as though it is

35:20

some kind of like life of leisure

35:23

to know that somebody in that

35:25

space is taking time to

35:27

read a romance novel. It's like,

35:30

well, not only do you have all this time

35:32

that you could do anything with and be productive,

35:35

instead you're choosing to spend your already

35:38

very leisurely existence doing

35:40

something very selfish. So there's

35:42

like layers of

35:44

willful misunderstanding and

35:46

disdain

35:47

for these practices. Yeah.

35:50

And isn't that just the case of the

35:52

cultural practices of all marginalized groups,

35:54

just layers of willful misunderstanding and

35:56

disdain?

35:58

Yeah. The other thing that I think is a little bit of a

36:00

feel like I have to say in this

36:02

context is like I

36:04

just always have to misquote Ursula

36:06

K. Le Guin, which is right like people

36:08

talk shit about escapism, but you

36:11

rarely escape two bad places,

36:13

you escape two, right, like places

36:15

of hope, you escape out of prison,

36:18

you escape two beautiful places. And

36:20

so we need escape in order

36:22

to imagine a better world so that we

36:24

can build that better world. Like these

36:27

are radical acts to be engaging

36:29

in

36:29

and like deeply important ones.

36:33

Okay, yes.

36:35

And

36:37

when we start to actually talk about

36:39

the content of romance

36:41

as a genre, we do have to talk

36:44

about what people are escaping into and what

36:46

kind of fantasy is being

36:48

presented as the one you want to escape to.

36:51

So I'm going to ask you Vanessa

36:53

and you Marcel to read

36:56

two Radway quotes back to back.

36:58

And then we're going to discuss the tensions

37:01

inherent therein.

37:03

Quote, I tried to make a case

37:06

for seeing romance reading as a form

37:08

of individual resistance to

37:10

a situation predicated on the

37:12

assumption

37:13

that it is women alone who are responsible

37:16

for the care and emotional nurturance

37:18

of others. Romance reading buys

37:20

time and privacy for women,

37:23

even as it addresses the corollary

37:25

consequence of their situation, the

37:28

physical exhaustion and emotional depletion

37:31

brought about by the fact that no one within

37:33

the patriarchal family is charged

37:35

with their care. End quote.

37:38

Quote,

37:39

does the romance is endless rediscovery

37:42

of the virtues of a passive female

37:44

sexuality merely stitch

37:46

the reader ever more resolutely into

37:49

the fabric of patriarchal culture?

37:51

Or alternatively,

37:54

does the satisfaction a reader

37:56

derives from the act of reading itself

37:58

an act shet- chooses, often

38:01

in explicit defiance of others'

38:04

opposition, lead to

38:06

a new sense of strength and independence.

38:10

Romance authors assert that the

38:12

newly active, more insistent

38:15

female sexuality displayed in

38:17

the genre is still most adequately

38:20

fulfilled in an intimate, monogamous

38:22

relationship characterized by

38:25

love and permanence." End

38:27

quote.

38:28

So

38:30

romance, is it

38:32

patriarchal

38:33

or is it feminist?

38:35

Discuss.

38:36

OK.

38:40

Obviously, the answer is both. But you

38:43

know what I say. You know. You know

38:45

the secret answer is always both. But sure,

38:47

sure, sure.

38:47

I know. I'm sorry. So

38:49

yes, it's incredibly patriarchal. But

38:52

why is this the place where we

38:54

are attacking patriarchy, where

38:57

it is giving women's pleasure?

38:59

No. So we're attacking

39:01

it everywhere. We're attacking it everywhere. Don't even

39:03

worry about it. Sure. Not we, but society.

39:06

Why is society like, and that is patriarchal.

39:09

I'm like, do you know what else is patriarchal? The

39:11

gender wage gap. Go fix that.

39:13

And then you can address romance

39:16

novel patriarchy. We

39:18

are using the tool of our oppression to

39:21

enjoy ourselves. Leave it

39:23

to us. And that is the Feminist

39:25

Radical Act. Thank you for coming to

39:27

my speech. I will stop. I

39:29

think that that is so,

39:32

so beautifully framed, Vanessa. Because

39:34

you are totally right. Everything

39:39

we do is in

39:41

the service of the patriarchy.

39:43

It is so hard

39:46

to get out of it. And so

39:48

why is it that it's only

39:50

when a marginalized group engages

39:53

in some kind of pleasure? Like,

39:55

I think about this all the time, whenever TERFs

39:58

get really pissed off about it.

40:00

how like trans women who really

40:02

like lean into femininity, it's like

40:04

well you're saying that you can only be a woman

40:07

if you wear like lipstick and shave.

40:09

And it's like well okay sure but also

40:11

so are all of these other women. So

40:14

what if we're like. Right. Why do you only get mad?

40:17

Yeah, you're only getting mad at this

40:19

one group of people and it's the most

40:21

marginalized group of people. So

40:23

yeah I think you really, I think

40:25

you really articulated it. The

40:27

thing I can't like whenever sort of somebody

40:30

says like oh you know books like Fifty Shades

40:32

of Grey are setting feminism back. I'm

40:34

like okay but our

40:37

reading, our women's reading,

40:40

women's reading of romance accelerates

40:43

with our liberation. Like it

40:45

just does. It's like we read

40:48

more romance as we become

40:51

freer. So that does

40:54

suggest

40:54

that it's however it is operating in

40:56

our lives. It is not

40:58

sending us back.

40:59

The other thing I'll say is just that I really do

41:02

think reading romance novels for the last seven

41:04

years has taught me to demand more

41:06

of men. I'm like oh it is

41:09

completely fictional but I think almost

41:11

every romance

41:11

novel I've read, I think that there may be three

41:14

or four exceptions

41:14

have been written by women.

41:17

But it feels possible when you're in that

41:19

imaginative space and it is Mr.

41:21

Winterborne, it is actually Mr. Winterborne.

41:23

It is not Lisa Cleepas who is like

41:26

showing you that a man can take your

41:28

headache very seriously

41:31

and your headache can be a problem for

41:33

him, for him to help you solve.

41:36

And then I can act like my

41:38

headache really matters around my

41:40

husband and because I act

41:42

like it matters, my husband's not a monster

41:44

so he acts like my headache matters.

41:47

Whereas before I think I would have hidden my headache

41:49

and been like it's just a headache because everything

41:51

else you read about headaches is represented in Victorian

41:54

times. They're like women getting the vapors. So to your

41:57

point Hannah, I think that they are instrumental.

42:00

in our liberation, not only representative

42:03

of like the furthering of

42:05

feminism.

42:07

I love that. I really love that.

42:09

That like imagining the

42:11

possibilities of being nurtured

42:13

then brings into your day-to-day

42:15

life a different kind of behavior in

42:18

terms of your understanding of

42:20

the ways that you deserve care.

42:23

Yeah, no, and I think it's really true.

42:25

Like until I read Fifty Shades of Grey,

42:28

it did not occur to me that one of the reasons

42:30

I don't like gifts is that I have

42:32

always experienced gifts specifically

42:34

from men as a burden, right?

42:37

I'm like, thank you for this.

42:39

I can't actually use it, right?

42:41

Like it's battery operated and I can't

42:44

afford those batteries, whatever it is, right? Like even

42:46

in the most basic levels. And

42:48

then I was like, I never totally articulated

42:51

that to myself. And then in Fifty Shades of

42:53

Grey, she gets a computer and I'm like, what the fuck

42:55

is she going to do with that? And then the internet

42:57

setup guy comes and I'm like, imagine

43:00

a man who sends

43:02

the internet guy, right? And

43:05

then like, I'm like, oh, it's not that I don't like

43:07

gifts. It's that I hate thoughtless

43:10

gifts. You don't want somebody to

43:12

give you logistics. Right. Or

43:14

like cost me money. I need

43:16

things to actually be thought out in order for them to be

43:18

helpful. And romance novels like taught

43:21

me that I can expect and

43:24

ask for them. I love it. Okay.

43:27

I really want us to get into talking about Bridgerton.

43:29

But before we do that, there's one other thing

43:31

I want to bring into the conversation, because

43:34

I do want to talk about the sex

43:36

of it all. And there are

43:38

many ways in which reading the romance stays

43:40

relevant. But when Bradway

43:43

gets into the specifics of romance novels,

43:45

it's extremely romance novel from the 1970s. And

43:48

the genre has changed. So

43:52

I'm going to bring into conversation a very

43:54

contemporary article. This was published this

43:56

year in a special issue of a popular

43:59

collection.

43:59

journal about Bridgerton. This

44:02

article in particular is by

44:04

Kyra Hunting. It's called From Private

44:07

Pleasure to Erotic Spectacle Adapting

44:09

Bridgerton to Female Audience Desires.

44:12

And what Hunting does in it is basically

44:14

a close reading of how the sex

44:17

was adapted between Julia Quinn's

44:20

first two Bridgerton novels and the first

44:22

two seasons of the Netflix series. And

44:24

her main argument

44:26

is that the

44:27

sex on the Netflix adaptation

44:30

is way tamer and

44:32

that it needs to be both

44:35

because in television

44:38

as a medium

44:39

more work has to be done

44:41

to distinguish like

44:44

prestige television from pornography.

44:47

And that is something that like the Bridgerton producers

44:50

have done a lot of work to maintain like really

44:53

diligently sending takedown

44:55

notices to keep all the sex scenes off Pornhub

44:58

without really caring if they're on YouTube.

45:01

Like it's okay for them to be YouTube they can't be on Pornhub

45:03

because they can't be porn. But

45:06

romance novels have been blurring

45:09

the lines between romance and erotica

45:12

for way longer. And

45:15

a big part of why that blurring can

45:17

happen and why the sex can get like pretty

45:20

fucking risque in romance novels is

45:23

because of the private way women

45:25

consume that content, right?

45:27

You're not like sitting down in the living room with your friends

45:30

or your partner and watching it. You're

45:32

like, you're reading that book. It's

45:36

all up here. So Marcel,

45:38

would you please read this one quote

45:41

from Kyra Hunting?

45:43

Quote, for romance novel fans,

45:45

smut to varying degrees

45:47

is an accepted and desirable

45:50

convention in the genre. Many

45:52

romance novels not only depict but are

45:55

designed to produce erotic

45:57

pleasure. As a premium show

45:59

on Netflix associated with a prominent

46:02

media brand, Shondaland, the

46:04

Bridgerton series draws on its perceived

46:07

pushing of boundaries regarding sexual

46:09

depictions for marketing appeal, while

46:12

also policing boundaries around

46:14

its aestheticized eroticism and

46:17

its appropriate uses."

46:19

End quote.

46:20

So if there's

46:22

less room for ambivalence, especially

46:25

around things like consent and power dynamics

46:28

in television meant for the female

46:30

gaze than there is in romance novels,

46:33

and if television

46:35

viewing is a more public activity

46:37

than romance reading, then arguably

46:41

some aspects

46:42

of what women enjoy about

46:44

reading romance is inevitably

46:47

lost in an adaptation like Bridgerton.

46:49

And that

46:51

claim leads me to

46:53

my thesis statement.

46:55

And

46:58

that means

47:00

it's time for our next segment.

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This week's episode of Hot and Bothered

47:43

is brought to you by Dipsy. Consider

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49:02

Okay,

49:04

Hannah, it's the segment. In

49:06

this essay, I will. So it's time

49:09

for you to make a bold, critical

49:11

assertion.

49:12

You're going to make

49:15

the Internet meme come to life. And

49:18

Vanessa and I are going to take it apart.

49:21

Can't wait.

49:22

While the mainstream success

49:25

of the Netflix series Bridgerton signals

49:28

a watershed moment in the mainstream

49:30

acceptance of romance novels as

49:33

a legitimate form of cultural production, the

49:36

adaptation of romance to

49:38

the small screen disrupts

49:41

many of the distinct pleasures of

49:43

romance reading. Pleasures

49:46

that might more accurately

49:48

account for the surge in

49:50

romance reading during the pandemic.

49:54

What

49:54

both the novels and

49:56

their adaptation have in common, however,

49:58

is the construction of a new narrative.

49:59

of the past as a fantastic

50:03

space that despite its

50:05

heightened gender restrictions

50:06

offers viewers a

50:08

fantasy of escape

50:09

from the hazards of modernity.

50:12

In this essay I will...

50:15

Oh Hannah it's so good it's perfect

50:17

you just you really you got it you

50:19

got it you don't even need to finish it's

50:22

so perfect. I think that this

50:26

is really right. I wrote

50:28

an article for Slate about

50:32

the adaptation of season 2 of

50:34

Bridgerton and that I think

50:36

that season 2 of Bridgerton made

50:38

a mistake. There is a huge difference

50:41

in the book and the season. So

50:43

in the book the discount

50:46

that loved me Kate and Anthony

50:49

get engaged very

50:51

early it's like very different and

50:54

they get engaged because

50:56

Anthony has this trauma

50:58

because his father died of a bee sting in front

51:00

of him and a bee

51:02

lands on Kate's breast and the

51:05

bee stings Kate on her breast and

51:08

he goes into trauma response and so sucks

51:11

the bee sting out of

51:13

Kate's breast and this is like one-third

51:15

of the way through the book and they get caught

51:18

in that compromising situation and

51:20

so he's like great we gotta get married I'm a gentleman this

51:22

is what we do we get married and

51:25

then as many people

51:26

know in the series it's

51:28

totally different right like they have that bee

51:30

moment but actually they don't get together until the very

51:33

end of the series this is not a you

51:35

know trapped together situation and I

51:38

think that the reason that Shonda land did

51:40

that is because books 1 & 2 of Bridgerton

51:42

in season 1 and therefore seasons 1 &

51:45

2 of Bridgerton would be very similar right

51:47

there's this trapped together caught element

51:51

but that is one of the virtues of romance

51:53

is that you actually get to

51:55

explore

51:56

the differences of nuance

51:58

because of the similarities

52:01

of tropes. And you can actually

52:03

get this really interesting

52:05

comparison of Anthony, the hero

52:08

in season two of Bridgerton, and

52:11

Simon, right? These are two men who were

52:13

traumatized by their fathers, one because

52:16

he hated his father and the other because he loved his

52:18

father and lost him. And that

52:20

is very interesting, right? But

52:23

you lose the nuance of that comparison

52:25

by trying to make seasons one and two

52:27

so different, by not giving into the

52:29

genre

52:29

of it. And I, yeah,

52:32

I think again, this is about adaptation,

52:34

right? People would be saying people who don't know romance

52:37

well would be like, oh my God, this is just like last

52:39

season, right, whereas romance

52:41

readers are like,

52:42

yes, and that's the point,

52:44

like that's the brilliance. And

52:46

so I, yeah, I think that your point

52:48

about sex scenes, right, we can

52:51

see that same point enacted

52:53

in different places in this adaptation process.

52:56

Yeah, absolutely, a sense that some

52:58

of the characteristics of romance as a genre

53:01

that create the characteristic pleasures

53:04

of reading romance get lost

53:06

in the adaptation in part because of

53:09

different norms around representing

53:10

sex. But you're right, also because

53:12

of

53:13

different norms of how narrative is

53:15

expected to work and like the

53:18

role of novelty versus

53:20

familiarity and they're

53:23

making it prestige television.

53:26

Other genres of television don't have expectations

53:29

of novelty in the same way and absolutely thrive

53:31

in the space of like tiny variations

53:34

on a theme. But like in the model of prestige

53:36

TV, it's like things need

53:38

to keep growing, escalating,

53:42

changing.

53:45

And so because

53:47

of the genre, we have this new type

53:49

of TV, but the TV

53:52

adaptations betray what's so beautiful

53:54

about the genre to some extent.

53:58

I have a question. I'm wondering, if

54:00

the unintended

54:02

benefit of that is that viewers who

54:05

enjoyed the series and decide that they want to

54:07

read the books then are

54:10

able to retain some of that

54:13

reading for the first time pleasure

54:15

that often gets lost when you know

54:18

the ending because the story

54:20

takes on different twists and turns.

54:24

I think yes

54:25

and I think that there are other benefits too,

54:27

right? Like the novels don't

54:29

have diversity and I don't think that

54:32

Bridgerton has handled diversity in

54:34

its shows

54:36

brilliantly. I

54:38

think that is flawed but I love that it's

54:40

trying to and like why

54:42

should beautiful actors not be able to

54:44

be in regency dramas

54:47

just because they were you know because

54:49

it's a continuation of forms

54:51

of oppression that existed in the 19th century, right?

54:54

That we can't cast black actors in these roles and

54:56

so I'm excited for that and so yeah some of these

54:58

deviations are just for the good

55:01

you know I absolutely think

55:03

and yeah one of them being I hope that people then go

55:06

back and read the books and are like wait what?

55:09

You're so funny you're boobing in front of people. This

55:12

is way hotter than the TV

55:15

show. My goodness. It's gonna be. Vanessa

55:18

on your point of the racial diversity

55:21

in the series. That is a thing I'm really

55:24

interested in like the conversations

55:26

around when we think about

55:28

sort of the role of fantasy and escape

55:31

in historical romance in particular

55:33

because you know

55:35

we talked a little bit when talking

55:37

about Radway about sort of

55:39

the way that romance readers

55:42

are escaping into

55:44

a fantastical world but it's one that

55:46

is often more at least on

55:48

the surface seems to be more restrictive

55:50

in terms of gender norms but

55:53

anybody who reads historical

55:55

romance knows that

55:58

the history these characters are being dropped

56:01

into has very little

56:03

to do with actual history. Like it's

56:05

really not about the actual past,

56:07

it's about the

56:10

past as

56:11

a fantastical construction

56:14

of a place like it's another

56:16

genre of fantasy, right? Like like

56:18

Regency is a fantasy construct like

56:21

Middle-earth is. Absolutely.

56:24

And the main way I read the racial

56:27

diversity of Bridgerton was

56:30

not as a sort of historically

56:32

accurate corrective because like there

56:34

were people of color in England during the Regency

56:37

era, we just know that.

56:39

But as an extension of who that fantasy

56:41

is allowed

56:42

to be for,

56:43

because if it is a fantastical

56:45

space where we can

56:47

like escape, then like everybody

56:50

can escape there, right? Oh

56:52

totally. My critique of it is

56:54

just that I think season one in particular,

56:56

Bridgerton did kind of a

56:58

half-assed job of it. Yeah. I want

57:00

either that argument, right? Where it's

57:02

like either actual representations

57:05

based in accuracy because there were people of color

57:07

in England at the time, or we're just

57:10

doing race blind casting, like

57:12

let's just go with it. Or there

57:14

is a reason why there are people of color in

57:17

the ton and like in that society

57:19

and we're going to tell you that story. And

57:21

instead what season one of Bridgerton did was

57:24

pretend it was race blind casting for

57:26

like the first four episodes. And then there was like

57:28

one conversation that's like, we

57:31

get to be here as Black people because

57:33

of this one thing. And you're like, okay,

57:36

that's not enough information. You

57:38

know, and I think that they've done some correctives of that.

57:41

Some of the correction that they did of that was in the show

57:43

Queen Charlotte, which I think does a huge

57:45

disservice to mental health, where

57:48

King George has like

57:50

some mysterious anxiety

57:52

induced bipolar disorder that like

57:55

doesn't exist in reality. So

57:57

I agree with you Hannah,

57:58

but just like this.

57:59

fantasy, right? Like dragon middle-earth

58:02

fantasy. I think that there are more and less responsible

58:04

ways to be creative

58:06

within the fantasy space. And

58:09

I also love there are some more

58:12

accurate romance novels, right? Bringing

58:14

Down the Duke really does a great

58:17

job of like doing a historically

58:20

accurate, you know, view

58:23

of Blue Stockings at Oxford at a certain time

58:25

in the like object poverty they would live

58:28

in, right? Like different novels handle

58:30

this differently, but I do think that there

58:32

have been moments where the Bridgerton series has handled

58:35

these like beautiful opportunities

58:37

for fantasy

58:38

poorly. A

58:40

hundred percent. And that the,

58:42

you know, one of the big arguments

58:44

in Hunting's article that I referenced in

58:46

the last segment

58:48

is that the combination

58:50

of attempting

58:52

to adapt the complexities

58:55

of romance and novel sex, which

58:57

very frequently plays with

59:00

consent and aggression. That's

59:03

really common kind of in the DNA

59:05

of modern romance novels. And

59:07

bringing that onto the screen,

59:10

even in a sort of toned down fashion,

59:13

while also introducing racial

59:16

diversity, created a dynamic

59:19

in the relationship between Simon

59:21

and Daphne that was, as

59:24

many people have discussed, really

59:26

distressing because

59:27

Daphne does.

59:29

It's a white woman assaulting a black man. It's

59:31

a white woman assaulting a black man and forcing

59:33

him to impregnate her, which has really

59:36

harrowing historical resonances

59:39

that like were not responsibly handled in

59:41

that first season

59:42

at all. And again, I think

59:45

that you're speaking to this like co-watching

59:48

and just the way that we assume more people watch TV than

59:50

read any single book in

59:52

reading a piece of genre fiction. When

59:54

you are reading it yourself, you

59:57

know intuitively that representation

59:59

is a piece of genre fiction.

59:59

does not mean condoning.

1:00:02

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Something being shown

1:00:04

to you is not the book saying

1:00:06

it's okay. Yeah. Right.

1:00:10

That doesn't mean that the author thinks it's good. Right?

1:00:13

And you're like, so yes, it's really creepy

1:00:16

that Daphne does that, but whatever. It's also hot.

1:00:18

And like, I got turned on by it. And

1:00:20

this is a safe space where I can get turned on

1:00:23

by X, Y, and Z things. But

1:00:25

as soon as it becomes a TV show, right, and you're

1:00:27

sitting there and watching it with someone else,

1:00:29

you're like, I don't think that's okay.

1:00:32

Right?

1:00:32

Like it actually is representing you because

1:00:34

it's become a social experience. And

1:00:37

so yeah, it's harder to remember that representation

1:00:40

isn't condoning behavior on a

1:00:42

TV show that has, you know, three times

1:00:45

the size of Canada watching it. Is

1:00:47

part of the issue,

1:00:49

perhaps that we as a culture

1:00:52

are not very good at taking

1:00:54

the experiences of

1:00:57

male survivors of sexual assault

1:00:59

seriously. Yeah. Yeah, for

1:01:01

sure. It's part of like the reason

1:01:04

why that was able to make it into

1:01:06

the series at all, despite

1:01:09

the fact that sexual

1:01:11

violence and romance novels has

1:01:13

become really unpopular

1:01:15

since the seventies and

1:01:17

eighties when it really had its heyday is

1:01:19

that one of many functions of

1:01:22

patriarchy is that we don't think of men

1:01:24

as potential victims of sexual violence because

1:01:26

men are always positioned of women,

1:01:29

of women or of men. Yeah, men. Yeah,

1:01:31

totally, totally, totally. Men are the aggressors

1:01:34

as depicted in patriarchy. And

1:01:36

if a man is

1:01:38

subject to sexual violence, it's emasculating,

1:01:40

which, you know, ties into sort

1:01:42

of homophobic depictions of male

1:01:45

sexual violence. But like we've got rom

1:01:47

coms where

1:01:49

we see men being assaulted

1:01:51

and it's just played as a joke in

1:01:53

an era when that would not be done

1:01:55

with female characters, for sure.

1:01:57

It also shows

1:01:59

about

1:01:59

our society that we think

1:02:03

that if you can physically, literally

1:02:06

get out of the situation, then it's a little

1:02:08

bit your fault that you were raped. Right?

1:02:11

Because I think that part of the argument is that

1:02:13

Simon is bigger than Daphne. So

1:02:16

did she really rape him? He could have thrown her

1:02:18

off of him, right? Like he could have

1:02:20

literally removed her from him. And

1:02:23

so like there's also just this belief that rape

1:02:25

is like an AB proposition and

1:02:27

that unless you are being bound

1:02:29

and gagged, it's

1:02:31

not really rape. Yeah. And in

1:02:33

the book, it plays on ongoing sexual

1:02:36

power dynamics between

1:02:39

them, including

1:02:41

the fact that he does physically overpower

1:02:43

her in earlier scenes. Again,

1:02:46

in a way like I am a

1:02:47

truly, guys, I read 71

1:02:50

romance samples this year so far. Oh my God, you're my hero.

1:02:53

I am a voracious

1:02:55

romance reader. And

1:02:58

I like watching Game of

1:03:00

Thrones on screen, for example,

1:03:03

made me like physically ill. Like

1:03:06

watching on

1:03:07

screen depictions of things that

1:03:09

happen in books

1:03:10

I read makes me feel a lot

1:03:13

worse because they're just not

1:03:15

the same medium and they just

1:03:17

don't function the same way.

1:03:19

And part of that difference is

1:03:22

undeniably the function

1:03:23

of both private consumption

1:03:26

and what goes in hand in hand with the sort

1:03:28

of private internal nature

1:03:30

of reading, which is the function of our imaginations.

1:03:34

But like that's what makes it possible

1:03:36

for me as a reader to picture

1:03:38

things in the way that I need to or want to

1:03:41

or will most enjoy. And it also

1:03:43

is what makes the act of

1:03:46

reading itself feel

1:03:48

liberatory in the moment you're doing it

1:03:51

because you are like escaping

1:03:54

into your own imagination. And

1:03:56

when you are being crushed

1:03:59

on all sides. by the soul-deadening

1:04:02

banality of living under

1:04:04

late capitalism escaping

1:04:06

into your own imagination flaps.

1:04:12

Yeah,

1:04:13

I know we're wrapping up this segment, but I would

1:04:15

like to

1:04:16

just return to the pleasures

1:04:20

of Washington Bridgerton in addition to

1:04:23

the pleasures of reading romance

1:04:25

novels. One of the, I

1:04:27

think Hannah, to speak to that point of

1:04:29

the soul-crushing banality of late capitalism,

1:04:33

the Bridgerton

1:04:34

sets

1:04:35

are so luxurious and

1:04:38

so gorgeous in Technicolor,

1:04:41

right? Like they're so over

1:04:44

the top saturated in colors.

1:04:48

And I think it does a very good job

1:04:50

of illustrating the feelings

1:04:54

that you are encouraged to have via

1:04:58

color when you're watching this as a fantasy,

1:05:01

as a kind of fantasy genre. It's

1:05:03

a fantasy on every level, right? It's a

1:05:05

high-functioning family with eight children,

1:05:08

all of whom love each other and tease each other the

1:05:10

perfect amount and like sneak cigarettes

1:05:13

together and right, like who doesn't

1:05:15

want to be a part of that family? It's also the benevolent

1:05:17

rich person, right? These are super

1:05:20

rich people who are good. I mean,

1:05:22

like who doesn't want that fantasy? It's

1:05:24

a London mansion with wisteria,

1:05:27

right? Who doesn't want that fantasy? And then

1:05:29

it's like Taylor Swift covers

1:05:31

in violin, right? Like it

1:05:33

is just designed

1:05:36

to be this fantasy space. And

1:05:39

I'm just, I gotta say like when

1:05:41

I watched that first episode, I was like, thank

1:05:44

you. Like I have been waiting my whole

1:05:46

life to be catered to

1:05:48

and I have taken every scrap you've

1:05:51

thrown at me and then like, sure,

1:05:53

Sex and the City of the Movie, like thanks for trying.

1:05:56

And then some scraps like Mamma Mia. I'm

1:05:58

like, you did it!

1:05:59

You did it, you gave me what I wanted. And

1:06:02

Bridgerton, right, like, it's not perfect.

1:06:04

It did not give me everything I want in the world.

1:06:07

But I was just like, thank you for trying. You

1:06:09

are trying so hard to cater to

1:06:11

me. I am in your head and I

1:06:14

just love it. Like, keep trying, you're doing

1:06:16

great. Yeah, I

1:06:18

love that though. I love that idea of the sort

1:06:20

of the visual and aesthetic design

1:06:23

being an attempt to externalize

1:06:27

the experience of imaginative

1:06:30

escape. That like, what is the

1:06:32

visual vocabulary of

1:06:34

imaginative escape into another

1:06:38

time and space and how, you

1:06:40

know, the series sacrifices historical

1:06:43

accuracy over and over and over

1:06:46

again. I mean, sacrifices doesn't

1:06:48

even care about it because the

1:06:51

purpose it is putting history to

1:06:54

is a sort of fantastical

1:06:57

one that is about, totally about

1:06:59

the emotions that it's going to

1:07:01

evoke for the viewer.

1:07:04

I can't wait for the like, architectural

1:07:07

digest article to come out that

1:07:09

is like, Bridgerton changed landscape

1:07:11

architecture, right? Like, everybody,

1:07:14

like there's a shortage of wisteria and lavender

1:07:16

because everybody wants it in their

1:07:19

garden. I just like, I'm,

1:07:21

this is gonna be real, right? Like, whose

1:07:24

eyes see that and don't like

1:07:26

feast on it and be like, me want more.

1:07:30

Yeah, I mean, me want more. Gun to my

1:07:32

head, I couldn't tell you what wisteria looks like but

1:07:35

I take your point. It

1:07:37

looks like the cover of Bridgerton. Wait

1:07:39

for it. It looks like a fantastic escape

1:07:41

from the patriarchy. It's really those

1:07:43

flowers.

1:07:44

Imagine a cascading waterfall

1:07:47

of lavender. That is what wisteria looks

1:07:49

like. Hot.

1:07:53

Hot.

1:07:57

Material Girls is a witch, please.

1:07:59

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If that sounds like an awfully long

1:10:14

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I really think you should listen.

1:10:48

Thanks, Hannah. That's so nice.

1:10:51

We'll be back next episode to tackle

1:10:53

another piece of pop culture through a

1:10:55

whole new theoretical lens. But

1:10:58

until then, later

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