Bridgerton, Trash, and the Costume Drama Conundrum

The critical discourse around the new Netflix show foolishly dismisses its surprisingly deft cultural commentary

It was perhaps inevitable that Bridgerton, the new costume drama from Netflix, would come in for its fair share of criticism. It is, after all, a costume drama and, as Clarisse Loughrey noted some time ago, the cultural intelligentsia simply loves to heap scorn on the genre. As Loughrey reminds us, it’s no accident that this is the case, considering that the costume drama is one of the few genres of film and television that consistently emphasizes the experience and interests of women. While some costume dramas might manage to attain a significant level of critical appreciation--2018’s The Favourite is a notable example--for the most part these sorts of films are largely regarded as trivialities, little comfits that may be sweet but don’t offer much sustenance. 

Nor is this phenomenon limited to the popular press; it’s also prominent in academic studies of historical dramas, which frequently bracket out costume dramas for having nothing meaningful or significant to say about the past. For example, two notable scholars of history and film, Robert Burgoyne and Robert Rosenstone, both argue that the costume drama shouldn’t be regarded as a serious sort of historical film. 

And Bridgerton is also a Shondaland production. As everyone knows, Shonda Rhimes is well-known for her soapy productions, and her ABC shows Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder are well-known for their high-octane mixing of melodrama, sex, snappy dialogue, and convoluted plotting. While her numerous shows on network television have been successful in terms of ratings, critics tend to look at them with a mixture of bemusement and thinly-veiled contempt. 

Which brings us to Bridgerton.

For those who haven’t seen it, the series is based on the novels of romance author Julia Quinn. The primary plot focuses on the romance between Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon, Duke of Hastings (Rege-Jean Page). The two begin a courtship as a ruse--to help her regain her status as the belle of the season and to help him avoid the attentions of throngs of young women and their meddling mothers--but it soon blossoms into something else. Conflicts ensue, and they ultimately end up happily married with a baby. Sundry other plots concern the other members of the Bridgerton family--particularly eldest brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey)--and the members of the Featherington family, most notably Marina (Ruby Barker) who is pregnant and unmarried, her cousin Penelope (Nicola Coughman), and Penelope’s domineering and manipulative mother (the divine Polly Walker). Looming over it all is the presence of a gossip pamphlet written by a figure known only as Lady Whistledown, whose poison pen can spell ruin for even the most promising young woman. It is, in short, a delightful confection that is a mixture of soap opera, costume drama, and melodrama. 

Given its generic location, I was both unsurprised and a little dismayed when I saw the title of Sonia Saraiya’s review for Vanity Fair: “Shonda Rhimes’s Bridgerton is Delightful Trash.” Though the actual review of the series itself is fairly laudatory, it ends by damning with faint praise. “It could not be more removed from our reality; if it were, we might be tempted to wage a class war or two,” she writes. “But by so thoroughly placing its cast in the land of wishful fantasy, the show snips all the strings tethering us to the here and now. Bridgerton is a satisfying inversion of tropes, a bonfire of our period-drama vanities. That’s about all the insight it delivers—but this holiday season, eight hours of getting the hell out of the real world is a precious gift indeed.”

Mel Evans, in a similarly smug review in Metro, calls Bridgerton trash and then goes on to argue for its value as escapism. There’s nothing really valuable about it, she assures us, but it sure is fun to look at and to help us escape the humdrum nature of our daily existence. 

Now, one can argue, as a friend of mine recently did, that people don’t necessarily mean to be dismissive when they refer to something as “trash.” In his more generous reading of the term, it’s just a way for people to talk about a series that isn’t particularly deep or nuanced. I would argue, however, that you can’t divorce the word “trash” from its implied value judgment. When critics call some aspect of popular culture--whether a book, a TV show, or a movie-- “trash,” the word is doing two things simultaneously. On one level, it establishes the object’s cultural value, or lack thereof. At the same time, it also elevates the status of the person using the term, to show the rest of the commentariat that they have the sort of elevated taste that allows them to see when something isn’t worthy of analysis or deeper appreciation. 

It probably goes without saying that the term “trash” has most often been used to refer to soap operas and melodramas, genres that, you guessed, focus on women. How shocking, right?

To call Bridgerton trash, then, is to dismiss, at a stroke, the surprisingly sophisticated ways in which it engages with the world of Regency England and, more broadly, to the experiences of women in the past. To be clear: I am not arguing that this series is in any way historically accurate. I’m sure that many academics are already sharpening their quill pens to demonstrate just how inaccurate it is, in everything from hairstyles to corsets to Queen Charlotte’s racial identity. What I am arguing, however, is that it doesn’t have to be accurate to say something meaningful about the past and about women’s role in it. 

Take, for example, the costume and color palette. Much has been made of the way in which Bridgerton is a veritable orgy of visual delight, and it’s true. This is a Shondaland show, after all, and there’s hardly a scene that doesn’t include some sort of ridiculously beautiful gown or piece of statuary. On one level, of course, sartorial choices tell us much about the characters and their motivations. For example, while Lady Bridgerton is frequently seen in shades of blue, suggesting her simplicity and sedate nature, the much more flamboyant costuming of Polly Walker’s Lady Featherington, which typically appears in shades of green with floral patterns, emblematizes both her more complicated personal morality and her more straightforwardly ambitious personality.

However, as much as costumes and decor are delicious to look at, they are also reminders of the burdens that each of the characters bear as they struggle to make their way in this world that is so obsessed with appearance. In some ways, the exquisite London of Bridgerton is a gilded cage for the characters, both male and female alike. There is, for example, an entire plot in which the Featheringtons have to contend with the fact that their patriarch’s gambling has left them destitute, which means that they won’t be able to wear new gowns to the most recent ball, a stunning social gaffe that could lead to their public shame. After all, the entire reason that Lady Whistledown’s gossip paper is so powerful and so dangerous is because it shapes public perception at all levels of polite society, right up to the queen herself. If you fall afoul of her vicious pen, she can spell your ruin, often by simply making a cutting aside in her pamphlet. All of the female characters find themselves ensnared in this vicious web at one time or another, though it falls particularly heavily on Marina, who finds her reputation in tatters after her pregnancy is revealed in Lady Whistledown’s pages. 

There’s no question, though, that the show intends us to see Daphne and Simon as the show’s most imprisoned characters, since both have to contend with gendered expectations of their world. For Daphne, the pressure to marry is part and parcel of being a woman in the 19th Century. Without the guarantees that a marriage would bring her, she faces the unpleasant possibility of being a--gasp--spinsters. Simon, on the other hand, has to contend with his vow to his abusive father that the ducal line will die with him, the expectation that he will marry a respectable woman, and his desire for Daphne. Though at first even their desire confounds their efforts to find happiness with one another, it is ultimately desire--and their ability to actually say what they feel for one another--that leads to their happy ending.

It’s also important to point out that the society that Bridgerton depicts is as stifling for men as it is for women. Simon, as already mentioned, finds his actions circumscribed by his own stubborn male pride and the toxic masculinity of his father, and Anthony, Daphne’s brother, finds his desire for an opera singer thwarted by the fact that their stations keep them separated. And, while the show may not be as queer as some might have originally hoped--leading to well-founded charges of queer-baiting--it still has a rather poignant moment when a queer artist speaks of his frustration that he can never openly express his love for another man. 

Given the centrality of sexual desire and female experience to Bridgerton’s plot and aesthetic, it’s not surprising that mainstream critics would seek to dismiss it as mere escapism and soap opera. It’s hard to imagine critics calling Game of Thrones--which also featured convoluted plots, ridiculous moralizing, and lots of sex--as soap opera. Why? Because it does such a good job of locating itself within a specific generic tradition, i.e. the epic. And, as everyone knows, the epic is about important things: the fate of kingdoms, destiny, grand conflicts between good and evil. And, of course, it’s primarily about men. Add to that the fact that it was produced by HBO--which has made stories about men part of its brand identity--and it’s easy to see why Game of Thrones was almost guaranteed to attract the sort of critical approbation that Bridgerton was never going to attain, no matter how high-profile the name attached to it, how beautiful the clothes and scenery, and no matter how strong the acting. After all, it’s not TV. It’s HBO.

Bridgerton might be beautiful escapism, but it also has something to say. We should be wary of those who dismiss it out of hand.