#One day I'll get my glossy big budget regency era but with gay marriage love story between two emotionally stunted gentlemen

[asha-mage]

Here's a pride month flavor musing for you:

There's something to be said about the fact that even when works of period art are deliberately using a fun house mirror version of history so they can have more modern/progressive sensibilities for either race (Bridgerton) or feminism (Mrs Masiel) they still almost always maintain a period accurate attitude twords homosexuality and queerness.

It's almost like this weird tacit acknowledgement that though we can expect the audience to accept a desegregated British Aristocracy or a 1950s house wife doing stand-up comedy that speaks to modern feminist struggles, we can't expect an audience to accept gay people having happy fulfilling lives and relationships in the same way. Queerness still has this edge of enforced tragedy, secrecy, and shame to it. Of course Shy Baldwin is forced to marry a woman in order to keep his fame and to loose his best friend after nearly being outed. Of course Suzie's one romance is a tragic heartbreak that embittered her to love and left her "happy to be alone". Of course Reynolds and Brimsley must steal moments in secret and ultimately be separated- without even a passing explanation as to why their not together in the "later" timeline. Their is certainly no scene of them reuniting in the same way George and Charlotte get. Reynolds and Brimsley are queer, it's assumed they don't get to be happy and end up together, even as the show lauds the undying and unyielding love of a interracial Queen Charlotte and King George.

I know that it's just a reflection of where our society is and yet....I can't help but wish it was different. I love all these big budget glossy period pieces that look back at our history and ask "what if it had been different? What if we had been kinder and more accepting and less hateful?" and I genuinely do believe that is a question worth asking. I just think it's a question worth asking for everyone.