Netflix, Bridgerton, Marina and Edwina: The Lack of Empathy is STAGGERING

I'm officially entering my rage era and um henceforth channeling that rage to defend women from unwarranted hate bandwagons hi I'm lady genevia if you're here you're probably not new because I've made my fair share of videos about Netflix's Bridgerton I am going to talk about the show again today but before we do that it's of the utmost importance that I bring up the ongoing sagafra and wga strike happening in the States this isn't the usual disclaimer that I've already been saying in every video that I've published since the strikes began although I will once again share donation links in the pinned comment if you have the means and the will to donate to support the workers who are currently on strike but more specifically the reason I decided to make this video was in some way motivated by these ongoing strikes this might sound like I'm veering off in a completely different direction than the topic of this video but I promise you I will get there just hear me out and let me explain whenever I've made videos about Bridgeton I'm specifically talking about the Netflix series and more often than not I've had a lot of fun making these videos and engaging with the fans of the show who watch what I've published because there have been a lot of entertaining and interesting things in the show's material the World building the performances and just the overall Vibes of Escapist romance a lot of us have been hoping to see more story from this world season three has not come out yet though we can more or less presume that it's ready to go whenever the powers that be decide to schedule it for release and obviously it's no secret that I personally am waiting for or a Benedict Centric season which has been presumed to be season four all of this we know we being a reference to the show's fan base so why now am I circling back to one of my Bridgerton video topics that has been on a list I have written on Post-its that I placed on my door so I could Channel my inner cristario well I hate to break it to you but I'm gonna there was an article recently published by the LA Times with the title South Korean actors in Netflix originals want better pay the company refuses to meet with their Union as news of The Saga after strike broke in mid-july song Chang gone a 51 year old actor and current president of the Korea broadcasting actors Union was still waiting to hear back from Netflix a company that was proving to be difficult to get a hold of the phone number for its South Korea office was unlisted on the usual websites but several months earlier song had asked around until he finally managed to obtain the personal number of a Netflix Korea executive unhappy with the fact that the company didn't pay its South Korean actor's residuals a form of royalty paid to credited Talent when a show is reused after the first airing he had left several calls and text messages the situation struck him as absurd Netflix has a vast presence in South Korea yet at times it felt to him as though the company which outsources all of its production to local Studios wielded its influence from behind a curtain one of their first priorities when entering the local market should be to establish some channel of communication with groups like us song said but there's no answer at all the actors Union echoing similar concerns from South Korean writers and production workers says that Netflix has long profited from A system that underpays supporting actors and that better compensation is long overdue a Netflix spokesman declined to say whether the company would meet with the Union in a written statement the company said it follows all local laws and regulations and that as a streaming service and not a broadcast Caster it is not required to pay residuals it it the it flame Flames flames on the side of my face when Netflix arrived in South Korea in 2016 song and his colleagues at the Korea broadcasting performers Rights Association the Union's partner organization that collects and distributes residuals had held off on approaching the streamer a precondition for that conversation about residuals was Netflix's business successfully taking off here says Kim joo-ho Secretary General of the Rights Association it is clear that this precondition has been met and more Netflix a 160 billion dollar company owes at least some of its success to its South Korean Originals like squid game which remains its most watched series The streamer recently announced that it would invest an additional 2.5 billion dollars to acquire additional Korean content over the next several years Netflix has made a lot of money from South Korean content Kim said it's now time to to meet I strongly encourage all of you to read the entire article it's linked in the description box of this video it goes into a lot more detail about how a lot of the money has been going to book the big name Talent of that industry but the less established workers in the Korean industry have more or less had their pay completely dissipate and I was so angry reading this because the thing that consistently enrages me is Warfare by the bourgeoisie against everyone else that's one of many reasons why I didn't actually get around to editing my last two Queen Charlotte videos there was nothing entertaining there for me to provide the audience it was just escalating rage from me because of bad writing and pro-monarchy propaganda from that show I'm not having it you're not going to have your characters complaining that they're struggling financially because the colonies aren't paying taxes well you've got multiple palaces to hop around to I hope French people roll up and teach your subjects how to get down that would have been a much better television finale for the history books and for my viewing entertainment purposes death death to the enemies of the people of the Republic the total lack of empathy shown by Executives for the workers who create these magnificent works of art that Electrify and Captivate the audience be they Europeans working on a show like Bridgerton or Koreans working on any number of successful K dramas on Netflix that lack of empathy was what completely set me off and it was the lack of empathy that poked on a memory of my ongoing brainstorming for why I even had the thought originally to do a video eventually unpacking some of my takes on the disproportionate negativity that's been directed towards Marina and eduina on Bridgerton now maybe it feels like completely separate issues but in my brain that was the sequence of events of the way my different trains of thoughts were colliding I've Had My Moments of going back and forth about whether or not it's right for me to speak about works of fiction that are Originals produced specifically for streaming platforms like Netflix so Netflix is is not the only company that entertainment industry workers have issues with but I have seen more than once members of these unions that are on strike say that they're not calling for Consumer boycotts of the works of art or even the platforms themselves also sag-aftra shared this Variety article on their official Twitter account saying that critics and journalists were still allowed to review and cover films and television series and that article as well as sag-aftra's endorsement of it was what led me to carry on with the videos I am and have been producing during the strike if anyone from sag-aftra would like for me to modify what I cover or how I cover it I am of course more than happy to adjust accordingly I did in fact email them right after the SAG after strike began and have yet to receive a response Marina's story in particular feels uncomfortably parallel to the type of anti-poverty rhetoric that a lot of people are brainwashed into believe leaving a lot of people who try to justify a select few individuals making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually or even billions as the heads of these companies that workers are going on strike against right now both in and out of show business they try to spend these fallacies that if you just work hard enough you wouldn't be poor it's this falsehood of claiming that if someone is poor if they're economically vulnerable that it's a moral failure or that it's simply happening because of a person's laziness when the truth of the matter is that the systems in place are specifically designed to exploit many for the benefit of a few Netflix's Bridgerton exists in a weird place and I've talked about this before where on the one hand they're presenting this romantic Escapist fantasy for the audience where people of different ethnic backgrounds can have these epic love stories and the love stories are epic Kate and Anthony put me through it and I had the time of my life through all of that but if you want to be a main character on this show you had better not be poor or work in class because that means you'll just be secondary to everyone else's story there is no meaningful action in Netflix's Bridgerton 2 and poverty on a systemic level it's not a politically radical show in that way it's serving romantic Vibes prolonged eye contact steamy love scenes and great great gowns beautiful gowns both Edwina and Marina have received a disproportionate amount of hate from many viewers and at the most superficial level of analysis I would put that at least partially down to the reductive lens that Hollywood media uses on women and they start this at a very young age you can just think back to a lot of the movies that are made for young girls young teenagers where you will have your Plucky protagonist and inevitably there is some sort of villainous woman who really has no personality apart from being a mean girl and romantic foe who is interested in the same white man as your protagonist I really hope I didn't just accidentally predict that it's infrequent that these quote unquote Mean Girls of these stories get to have a meaningful nuanced story those characters are just there to be a foe and that probably plays into broader cultural ideas that American Media loves to push about Heroes versus Villains US versus them so they can more easily make the audience accept warmongering propaganda against other countries but let me not go all the way down that train of thought or else we will be here all day that's suspicious that's weird this visceral outrage a lot of viewers have against Marina and Edwina is particularly absurd because neither one of them was ever a real threat so to speak to the love stories that they're getting caught up in the middle of you already know in season one that Colin and Penelope are eventually going to get their own season as long as the show runs long enough to get there and you know in season two that Kate and Anthony are end gaming all you need to do is just let the drama unfold and experience the full range of where the story will take these characters I hate to break it to you but I'm gonna Edwina is not a real character in the book I've read that book she had nothing interesting going on and it would have been a complete waste of charitra's abilities to hire her and then have her play the nothing Burger of the version of Edwina that is in the book if you want to be mad about me saying that you can go ahead and be mad and go read the book I'm not coming into your office to steal it off your bookshelf it still exists and you can still enjoy it charitra did not get anywhere near enough credit for the way she was serving face and I'm not talking about her being gorgeous which obviously she is but I'm talking about the face acting like what she does in that moment where Edwina thinks that Anthony is going to propose but then he backs off of doing so because he had to go and look at Kate and edwina's just trying to keep it together but you can clearly see that she's rattled you better give Miss charitra her flowers because she was serving a performance I've already talked before about Maslow's hierarchy of me needs to contextualize edwina's Arc in season 2 where she at first thinks that she's fine with being with Anthony even though his Grand declaration early on in season two is not one where he's promising romance to her but promising that he will provide fulfill his duty his obligation all of that jazz but once her more basic needs are met because she feels more secure after becoming engaged to Anthony and she's able to move up Maslow's hierarchy that's when she starts to question the lack of romantic love in their relationship now if you haven't heard me explain all of that before you can go watch my video about I think it was either the hand stuffed video or The Not So hidden feelings video I explain it more in depth but considering how well those videos performed I'm just going to assume that if you're watching this you've already heard me explain that and that is why I want to offer something new on top of that because it's something that I've already explained I've been ignited so to speak to dig into this animosity towards these characters because of what I'm seeing as a lack of empathy that is rampant and manifests among people in many ways on a systemic level I'm going to draw a parallel between the Kate Edwina Sisterhood to another fictional Sisterhood that being of cat and Bianca in 10 Things I Hate About You and I'm also going to bring up Zack Snyder's Man of Steel if you're confused by these references just hear me out in 10 Things I Hate About You cat is often hostile towards her peers she wants to keep people at a distance eventually you find out that before the main timeline of what shows in the movie she had hooked up with Joey a very icky boy at their school um I think I like the white shirt better yeah it's it's more expensive damn I was going for thoughtful he's awful and violent and has been pursuing Bianca for the entire movie when cat finally tells Bianca that she had previously gone out with Joey and the exact circumstances under which their relationship ended Bianca gets really upset that cat never told her then why did you help Daddy hold me hostage it's not like I'm stupid enough to repeat your mistakes I guess I thought I was protecting you by not letting me experience anything for myself could you make the argument that cat was being irresponsible for not giving Bianca the full story so that she would be able to make an informed decision about whether or not she wanted to continue to pursue something romantically with Joey sure could you make the argument that Bianca exhibits selfish behavior in the film because she leads Cameron on so that she will be able to go out with Joey he never wanted to go sailing with me did you well okay no not actually well then that's all he had to say could you make the argument that Bianca can sometimes come across as a whiny character also sure where did you come from planet loser as opposed to planet look at me look at me being hostile or being whiny these are not exactly likable traits but both of these women feel like three-dimensional beings in this story they're given the space to be flawed to make mistakes and then they learn and grow from that and that's part of why this story in this film is so compelling ultimately their relationship is made stronger over the course of the film can you one night forget that you're completely wretched and be my sister please please it's for making my day bleed oh that's for my sister oh and that's for me I'm just food on over and let you whack him get him again get them for me does not give Edwina all of the information to make an informed decision choices Kate conceals the fact fact that their family is economically struggling even more so than the regular Baseline state of just being a woman that exists in this time period And whatever their economic class is supposed to be middle class upper middle class I'm not really sure but you catch my point Kate doesn't mean any harm by not telling her but she is still being deceitful regardless of her good intentions Edwina can at times come across as juvenile or naive but how can you expect her to be informed when she's not being provided with the full picture you view your Youth and naivety as a hindrance but it's a shielded you in many ways you do not remember when upper died when the world fell out from beneath us I think that the audience more easily accepts Kate's flaws because she's the end game love interest she gets more focus in the story and also because there's a certain type of audience that seems to prefer fictional women who have more characteristics in common with that archetype of a quote unquote strong woman is Edwina being too Petty in her anger towards Kate for lying to her about what was going on between her and Anthony that's debatable and highly subjective after the dinner blow up that they had with the Sheffield Kate continued to still keep things from her I think a lot of people don't really take into consideration that that is edwina's first real heartbreak it's not about her having a Fallout with some boy who played with her feelings it was her sister one of the closest people to her that's someone she loves so deeply and that's exactly why it hurts her so much if it's just some random catty lady at one of the balls that they attend saying some backhanded comment I think Edwina would be more than capable of keeping her composure and just letting it be water off a duck's back to give my directness do you have any thoughts about children other than the fact that I decided however many I have my Lord I shall feel misfortunate together with my husband to your child the best course I'm very sensible ever since the vi count has been courting me I have sensed you and not being entirely truthful but now I know I was right what are they doing stop leave leave me believe me plotty she will make a most excellent Queen your majesty could I have been such a fool you lied to me again and again he told me you told me we had been all secrets to rest but no it's precisely because she loves her sister so much that the deception hurts her to the levels that it does so the story lets her be upset it lets her feel her feelings but in the grand scheme of things of course there's no good reason for Edwina to stay mad at Kate that's why when Kate has a near-death experience Edwina realizes oh yeah this situation is not important what's important is my sister whom I love with every cell of my body I don't care about these issues we've been having I only care about her being okay big haste when you were unwell all I cared about was you getting better and seeing how unwilling so many viewers were to accept the layers and nuances of the Journey of Kate and edwina's relationship reminded me a lot as a conflicted semi-retired dceu fan of The Grudge a certain section of Cape Twitter has had about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel for about a decade now let me briefly catch you up because I have no frame of reference for how much or how little overlap there is between the Netflix's Bridgerton fandom and the Zack Snyder's DC EU fandom in Man of Steel Zack Snyder took a deconstructionist approach to telling the origins of Superman and not showing him as this glossy picturesque superhero who already knows how to do everything with ease they made sure to challenge the character in an interesting and meaningful way the main villain of this story is General Zod who is a Kryptonian military leader who wants to commit genocide of everyone on Earth so that he can remake the planet to become a new Krypton so the kryptonians can live again because he has this codex he can use to let all of krypton's kryptonians be born again even though you already saw a Krypton being destroyed Kalel successfully destroys the Machinery that was being used to terraform Earth and General Zod is emotionally devastated by this so he goes on even more of a rampage than he already was General Zod is determined to go out in battle because that's what he's been born and bred specifically to do be a military goon so the climax of this battle comes when Zod is using his laser eyes to move towards some innocent Earth civilians Kalel is holding him in a choke hold and is begging him to stop and Zod responds never never so Kalel stops him permanently and this devastates him because he's never taken someone's life and this was also as far as he's aware the last person that was still alive from his home planet this movie came out a decade ago and you will still find people throwing Tantrums on film Twitter on film YouTube because people are outraged that Superman would take someone's life even though Christopher Reeves Superman was perfectly fine with doing the same thing he took Zod out permanently in his movie but for some reason there's a certain type of viewer that keeps having this negative response to these emotionally probing stories stories where you really push a character and you challenge them you put them in a situation that does not have a simple solution there will be consequences to their actions and they will have to feel the emotional weight of what happens and you as the viewer are also made to feel that emotion I don't think that this Kate Edwina relationship Arc in Netflix's Bridgerton is all that challenging for me to process emotionally I look at it as a well-executed nuanced storytelling approach which I especially appreciate being that they are the leading women who get to be so interesting and compelling and I also know that in the end it all works out between them you get to see them happy and dancing together in the final episode but for some reason their relationship Arc comes across as two emotionally challenging to a certain section of the show's audience who would have possibly responded more favorably to an extremely simplistic take on things one where Edwina has zero emotional investment in pursuing a marriage match with Anthony the Viscount Bridgerton and when things switch for him where he's now getting involved with Kate it's hardly even a blip on edwina's radar that would have been really boring and uninteresting for me personally to watch I am very appreciative of the writing team of the main Bridgeton series on Netflix for giving more Dimension to these sisters and their relationship when adapting it from The Source material now circling back to Marina I cannot emphasize enough how little patients I have for the anti-marina rhetoric one of the things I haven't brought up yet but I will briefly mention now is that I do believe that sexism and racism do come into play to varying degrees for the negativity that Edwina and Marina have received I wouldn't say that they're the entire cause of the negative backlash I think there are multiple factors some of which I've already been explaining but from my point of view I think Edwina and Marina are more harshly judged than Penelope and Eloise when they do something that some viewers find to be unlikable I think Penelope and Eloise proportionately are given more grace compared to Edwina and Marina though I do know that all of these women have their fair share of overly negative responses from different corners of the audience but with Marina's story besides the misogynoir lens coloring some viewers opinions of her or the reductive hero versus villain lens of seeing a woman as a foe and obstacle to the Love Story you're waiting to see play out in full the main issue I want to raise about Marina is the anti-poverty or generally classist train of thought that impacts how certain people judge her Marina's story is heartbreaking she comes to stay with the featheringtons to be able to go out into society to try to find a marriage match just like the rest of the featherington girls as well as the other young ladies of the taunt and it's eventually revealed that she already had someone she was in love with but he went off to war before he did that he and Marina had consummated and she comes to realize that she's pregnant single mothers already have a rough go of it today and the 21st century if they live in a country that is not set up to support the well-being of all people any country with an active monarchy is most definitely not set up to support the well-being of all people I don't fully understand how people can so willfully misunderstand or refuse to show empathy for Marina when the show is so Direct in presenting the life and death Stakes of her circumstances Porsha fetherington upon realizing that Marina is pregnant takes Marina to the working class area of the Bridgeton universe and tells her outright that this is where Marina and her baby will end up if she doesn't suck it up and finds some gross man to marry why have you broke me here because I wanted you to see your future firsthand should you refuse to follow my instructions hate me this is what your life will be if you do not agree to be married the show then proceeds to further put Marina through the ringer of going well here's just some really gross men they're awful so suck it up and marry one of them show me a smile girl I beg your pardon your teeth I want to see them I'll go get you out of here I would do everything it takes to make sure you get out of there you don't belong in there why exactly are you so willing to Baby the feelings of this generationally wealthy white man call in but somehow the conclusion you come to is that the greatest moral outrage of season one or one of them anyway we're not talking about the main couple is Marina trying to hook up with him so she can save her unborn baby from living in poverty when Colin finds out the truth he goes on his little speech about how he would have been willing to help her if she had only told him the truth from the beginning but first of all I don't know that that's true he might genuinely believe that that's what he would have done but he's generationally wealthy affluent sought after I'm sure he has options his family did not approve of the match even before they knew that she was pregnant do you know about myself people are looking there congratulate the happy couple I do not presume to know that he would have done that for her but besides that Marina doesn't know him that well why is she supposed to presume that he would help her out like that when she's a vulnerable young woman in full survival mode Portia fetherington is not her mother nor is she her friend Marina has no one she sees that is fully ride or die for her when I see the level of vitriol some people have for Marina the total lack of empathy people have for her perspective and circumstances I can't think of anything else but the way that economically vulnerable people in real life including single mothers are criminalized how many stories are there of mothers who are being criminally charged or even convicted for stealing diapers or baby formula from supermarkets or of lying about their home address to try to help help their children attend schools with better resources and I need to remind people that these criminal charges and convictions for these types of things are disproportionately levied against black and brown women if you can't even show empathy to a fictional economically vulnerable single mother to be who also happens to be black how am I supposed to believe that you have it in you to show the level of empathy that is needed to economically vulnerable people in real life now I don't want anyone to misunderstand me I'm not saying that you can't have any negative reactions to fictional characters doing what you perceive as bad things you can feel a whole array of emotions when watching stories and that is ultimately a testament to the collective labor of the people who have created it and are not being paid enough for that but I merely wanted to share these thoughts finally because I personally believe that there is some amount of overlap up in the complacency too many people have with the systemic injustices in place that affect billions of people all over the world and the disproportionate amount of misplaced anger people instead direct towards fictional stories and characters how much overlap well that can vary from person to person and of course there's cognitive dissonance to think about it's also not even getting into how often audience negativity towards fictional characters bleeds into hostility being sent towards the performers who play them so admittedly part of my motivation to talk about this negativity I've perceived towards Marina and Edwina long before these strikes were even happening was out of a hope to remind people that even if none of the points I bring up are able to sway your opinion towards being Kinder in your perspectives towards Marina and Edwina as fictional characters at the very least please don't let that bleed into how you treat the performers who have worked very hard to bring these characters to life anyway this whole stream of Consciousness ended up being considerably longer than I had anticipated when I decided to speak my mind but hopefully those of you who were wanting me to Hype up these two characters feel that I've given you something satisfactory after all these months of waiting please be sure to like comment and subscribe to support my channel I also have a patreon where I post bonus materials like I'm a DVD from the 2000s and I'm also giving early access to my videos the ones that aren't time sensitive with an embargo this video you've just watched my patrons had the option to watch it early before all of you next video will be far less exasperated and more so optimistic and hey if this video performs well perhaps I will be motivated to not take as long to do an Edwina Friedrich video that's another Bridgeton topic on my ever expanding video to-do list be back in the next one bye

Channel: LadyJenevia

Views: 24,496

Keywords: Bridgerton, Netflix, Benedict Bridgerton, Luke Thompson, Video essay, Season 2, Review, Jonathan Bailey, Simone Ashley, Charithra Chandran, Shelley Conn, Luke Newton, Nicola Coughlan, Phoebe Dynevor, Claudia Jessie, Bessie Carter, Ruth Gemmell, Florence Hunt, Polly Walker, Golda Rosheuvel, Adjoin Adoh, Julie Andrews, Kate Sharma, Anthony Bridgerton, LadyJenevia, Prince Friederich, Freddie Stroma, Regé-Jean Page, Rege-Jean Page, Theo, Calam Lynch, Marina, Ruby Barker

Id: 4YsRchwpHmE

Length: 32min 31sec (1951 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023