‘Bridgerton’ On Free Speech

Everyone’s favorite alt-Regency era multiracial aristocrat romance drama just returned to Netflix with Bridgerton Season 3 Part 2. The premise either appeals to you or it doesn’t, and there’s not much point litigating the worldbuilding at this late stage. What distinguishes the new episodes is the show’s surprising decision to stake out an alarmingly conservative position on free speech and journalism.

First, some context. Bridgerton has many gimmicks, and probably its least well-known one is the Lady Whistledown character, the nom de plume of Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan). Lady Whistledown delivers harsh rebukes to whoever’s a huge jerk in any given storyline via her widely printed social column. Penelope’s status as a wallflower allows Lady Whistledown to make such accurate attacks based on insider knowledge.

The one character with the strongest, most consistent dislike of Lady Whistledown is Queen Charlotte, played by Golda Rosheuvel. Lady Whistledown’s catty critiques of social life in Bridgerton often read as an assault on Charlotte’s authority as the person who manipulates English aristocratic connections for her own political purposes. Queen Charlotte opens up Part 2 sensing a moment of weakness in Lady Whistledown. Lady Whistledown’s critiques are not as sharp as usual because Penelope is in requited love,  the topic of Part 1. Now, Charlotte stokes the conflict by offering a bounty for Whistledown’s identity.

What’s shocking about the bounty plot is that it’s an entirely new angle that calls into focus just how alien this entire era of history is just two centuries later from a modern free speech perspective. The Queen can easily afford to out a journalist. The apparently flippant nature of Whistledown’s gossip column is besides the point. What’s stopping Charlotte from utilizing whatever resources are at her disposal to suppress any speech about other topic she doesn’t like?

Because Whistledown only functions as a popular author due to her anonymity, any exposure effectively ruins the usefulness of the nom de plume when it comes to telling harsh truths about the social order. Queen Charlotte is also smart enough to tell when and why Whistledown is pulling her punches. Ultimately, Whistledown risking herself for the honor of a particular family allows Queen Charlotte to greatly narrow the search.

But fortunately for our heroine, it turns out Queen Catherine was an honorable opponent all along. Charlotte accepts merely finding out that Penelope is Whistledown as satisfying, since the columnist offers a spirited defense of her actions in the context of its practical benefit to the crown. Happy ever after. This turn isn’t surprising; a whole prequel series featured a sympathetic Charlotte and this is Bridgerton, after all. Of course there’s a happy ending.

What’s more surprising is the way the script and source novel frame the Whistledown character both ways. Lady Whistledown is popular and important because she serves as a check on entitled power. But in order to save herself, Penelope vindicates the legitimacy of Queen Charlotte, and makes it quite clear that her only desire is to maintain aristocratic ritual, not destroy it. Satisfying Queen Charlotte is treated as a triumphant vindication of Lady Whistledown, making her identity more than a mere gossip columnist. Yet, in that very same breath, Penelope disowns the whole idea of Lady Whistledown as an agent for meaningful social change.

Set as it is 200 years in the past, I could cut Bridgerton some slack for not adhering to principles of liberal democracy as we know it. The thing is, Bridgerton itself isn’t that nice to its setting. Every half hour or so, the show makes a reference, some more ham-handed than others, about women only being allowed a future through marriage, with no other paths available. Penelope herself uses this as a defense of Lady Whistledown, noting that before her turn of good fortune in Part 1, her marital prospects were atrocious. The gossip trade apparently earns Penelope quite a bit of side income, which wraps up a mostly unrelated side plot. Multiracial gentry aside, Bridgerton is quite open about the fact that the society it lives in still has prejudice.

That’s why the climax of Season 3 Part 2 of Bridgerton fascinates me so much. It’s such a perfect encapsulation of the contradictions the story has to take for granted in order to indulge the fantasy of fancy Regency era costumes while still being politically correct for a mixed audience. Bridgerton continues to be a big hit for Netflix largely because it can maintain its romantic and romanticist themes. The show even manages to frame itself as wholesome in spite of, or maybe because of, a notoriously long  six-minute sex scene intended to climax three seasons’ worth of sexual tension. Even a threesome subplot feels weirdly gentlemanly thanks to this tonal discipline.

Bridgerton is only poised to get even more queer next season; the setup here is deliberately aiming for that. Even if Lady Whistledown could crack down on that segment of royal society for political reasons if she felt like it, Queen Charlotte wouldn’t do such a thing because she’s a good person.

And maybe that’s the real fantasy of Bridgerton. Not the romance or the costuming, but the idea of having stiff, yet well-meaning rulers who appreciate friendly competition and won’t go scorched-Earth on any threat if the alternative is ceding even an inch of their power.