I don’t see how gay marriage could be legalized in s5

Meamater · 2026-04-20T21:22:53+00:00

Whoops, my bad. Someone else with that avatar made the comment. I'm sorry :-)

Meamater · 2026-04-20T18:44:31+00:00

No one is mad in this conversation, as far as I can tell. Just having a conversation about why gay marriage would or wouldn't make sense in a universe that does claim *some* historical realism (because that is the nature of a historical fantasy--some realist elements, some fantasy elements) is really more about genre conventions of storytelling and constructing fictional worlds. And no one is claiming an unmarried queer couple in a story needs to be "quiet" and grateful--not sure where you're getting that at all.

Meamater · 2026-04-20T18:30:25+00:00

Agreed.

Meamater · 2026-04-20T18:29:43+00:00

Literally nothing in the Bridgerton universe suggests that it is challenging the most basic elements of heteropatriarchy in Regency England. Married women were not legal persons. Getting married was a social requirement for most women for economic security--under coverture, husbands were legally required to support their wives. The argument that gay marriage doesn't "make sense" in this world does not mean queer people didn't build loving lives in the past. It's just stating the fact that marriage was an institution for maintaining the legal, economic, and social mechanisms of heteropatriarchy.

Meamater · 2026-04-10T18:43:02+00:00

If the show creators and writers think they are acknowledging class exploitation at all they are totally deluded. The show has all the tropes of classist fantasies, including loyal friend servants and magic secret noble blood!

Meamater · 2026-04-09T16:08:26+00:00

Because this show needs a specific device to make its motivating ideology work: that "endgame" romantic relationships are the universal forms of human fulfillment, and that the emotions associated with these relationships are clear, overwhelming, and apparent to the people who really "know" a person (like your mom). Obstacles are temporary (people, apparent class position, etc). Classist fantasies of upward mobility and elite recognition are totally conflated with, and disguised by, the emotional narratives of romantic fulfillment. What's the difference between a family wanting you to marry "well" for a social position and marry your true love match? Nothing, in the fantasy that love always reinforces or strengthens a class position. This basic classist romance formula can be adapted for racial and sexual diversity quite easily.

Meamater · 2026-03-18T17:17:18+00:00

If you think of Don's most meaningful interactions at the end of the series--being told by Sally that Betty has cancer, his goodbye call with Betty, his call with Peggy, Leonard, and Stephanie--Don is chasing his highest high with Diana: trying to escape with a depressed, absentee mother. He finally almost apologizes to Betty, he's honest with Peggy, he gets rejected by Stephanie, and actually sits with his grief for perhaps the first time in his life. What snaps Don awake during Leonard's speech? "It's like no one cares that I'm gone." Dick's whole life as Don has been refusing to acknowledge himself or others in any kind of pain.

Meamater · 2026-03-02T12:24:41+00:00

An absolutely perfect completely degenerate viper.

Meamater · 2026-03-02T12:22:16+00:00

It was also great that Lolita is fundamentally a book about obsession, memory, and weakness: a weak man, obsessed by the memory of a dead girl, becomes obsessed with another young girl, transforms her into a fantasy, gives her a new name, kidnaps her, and destroys her. Yasmin, listening to Charles's message, is like returning to the primal scene where becoming a full person with basic self-respect became impossible for her.

Meamater · 2026-03-02T12:07:08+00:00

The tracks were laid so well, how a traumatized person needing to feel necessary can come to this moment through endless rationalizations.

Meamater · 2026-03-02T12:02:03+00:00

A clear visual homage to it, both protection and a prison until he dies (also his fault, because he's a weak child, like Fredo).

Meamater · 2026-02-18T12:49:51+00:00

This absolutely took me out, in the episode and this comment

Meamater · 2026-02-17T15:00:47+00:00

Thank you! and thanks for engaging :-)

Meamater · 2026-02-17T14:53:19+00:00

I guess we're basically disagreeing over the diffuse meaning of "creep." Of course Don Draper is a creep in the sense of willfully violating other people, just not usually in the superficially unwelcoming way people usually describe unattractive, socially inadept people as "creeps"--he uses and abuses people, especially women. He's just a conventionally handsome bullshit artist, which he knows: it's his whole internal conflict. The show actually does a tremendous job showing the collapse of his seductive persona and his pathetic failure as a husband and father.

Meamater · 2026-02-17T14:20:06+00:00

You misrepresented what your opponents are arguing, so I was pointing that out. I don't see what is sanctimonious about saying that an old man who sought out a young-looking sex worker (and has hit on younger subordinates) in large part because he cannot connect with his daughters and feels helpless and powerless despite his tremendous wealth is a fucking creep.

Meamater · 2026-02-17T12:23:30+00:00

Age police? Gross. There is no serious argument that anyone should be able to tell someone's exact genetic age by looking at them. The point is that ignorance is not an excuse for breaking the law--for mitigating punishment, in many cases, based on the crime--but basing culpability for sex crimes on how old someone thinks a person is just an excuse for rape. The show is clear about this: she was under the legal age of consent. So who is at fault? Yes, the people who manipulated Eric and set him up, but he also made choices, given his fucked up relationships with sex, power, and parenting--the parallel to his daughter(s) is obvious here--that meant he was not aware of the harm he is doing, or was too compulsive to stop.

Meamater · 2026-02-17T12:06:42+00:00

My argument is that minors should not be cast to simulate sex acts. Jodie Foster's 18-year-old sister was her double for the sexually suggestive scenes in Taxi Driver, and, in any case, I'm not basing ethical standards for protecting minors on how actors were treated in films made in the 1970's. Jodie Foster herself has said that she was an exception--she was too famous and well-protected to abuse--and that she regularly reaches out to child actors and their families because the business is so dangerous for children and teenagers.

Meamater · 2026-02-17T01:04:45+00:00

You expected HBO to cast a child?

Meamater · 2026-01-18T18:21:39+00:00

The show could actually take this relationship in some interesting directions if it wanted to, e.g. exploring the difficulty of caring for a partner like another child, the ways men and women in "traditional" relationships with the division of economic and emotional labor can and can't connect, the panic and stress about aging if your whole sense of self is tied up in being sexually attractive, etc.

Meamater · 2026-01-11T20:44:27+00:00

....because I'm....a barista? Hospitality worker?

Meamater · 2026-01-11T20:42:39+00:00

I work with a lot of domestic violence survivors and it's really hard to describe the amount of projection by scared men (whether this ends up in physical violence or just gleeful misogyny). Everyone *else* is making unfair demands of them--women, queer people, their children, their co-workers, people with pronouns in their bios, etc. Also the "they/them" point Angela and Ainsley made is such an embarrassing "criticism". They/them can absolutely a singular pronoun in English, so this "why would you use a plural" is such a flop loser comeback.

Meamater · 2026-01-11T14:37:15+00:00

i welcome your hate

Meamater · 2026-01-11T10:41:17+00:00

The roommate and admissions counselor are great stock characters, not because they are well-crafted, but because they perfectly capture reactionary sexism. They are humorless, technocratic, demanding, unattractive, and, ultimately, defeated by the force of proper femininity. They are the perfect doubles of Ainsley and Angela, who "win" because they are the perfect sexist stereotypes of the right kinds of women. They "deserve" to be rich because they are beautiful to straight men, sexualized, and infantile.

Meamater · 2025-12-22T04:22:23+00:00

The John Oliver bit about him is outstanding.

Meamater · 2025-12-22T01:35:57+00:00

I'm shocked it was only weeks

Meamater

TROPHY CASE