"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, March 27, 2014

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 7 – “A Rebellious Woman” (2014)

 
We continue to take turns highlighting the younger main cast members who cut more dashing figures (Athos is back on top today,) but we also get huge swathes of Richelieu in this episode.  I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a third of PC’s screentime for the entire season can be found here.
 
Richelieu has his hands full dealing with an aristocratic woman who’s committed the grave crime of championing women’s education.  Going far beyond embroidery and needlework for the upper classes, she teaches equality, the sciences, and social justice, to name a few.  She even – gasp! – believes women shouldn’t be treated like broodmares sold to foster “good matches.”  Clearly, a person like that can’t be allowed walking around.
 
Initially, Richelieu’s chief interest is financial; the country is in need of a new lady, and the fortune of a disgraced aristocrat could furnish it nicely.  He prepares for a little underhanded mudslinging to unseat his new foe, but the arrival of an emissary from the pope requires him to up his game.  As it happens, Richelieu could use some extra brownie points with his Holiness, and making an example of a woman-educating “heretic” is just the thing.  The time for discrediting clearly has passed:  it’s a full-fledged witch hunt now.
 
It’s always interesting to see how period pieces handle social issues, and “the woman question” is a good one.  I have a soft spot for watching intelligent female characters do battle in worlds where all the power is in other hands, so that aspect of this episode appeals to me a lot.  However, I’m not sure how realistic it is that all the musketeers are so respectful of the intellects and beliefs of the other sex.  It’s a tricky conundrum – is it even possible to keep period characters likeable while maintaining historically-typical attitudes?  Something tells me the past didn’t have nearly as many open-minded people as film and television would have me believe.  (Of course, they were probably much dirtier and had far worse teeth as well.) 
 
On the one hand, that feels disingenuous, but on the other, I don’t want to root for characters with horrendously outdated prejudices.  It’s why I ultimately didn’t mind how Downton Abbey handled things with Thomas in series 3.  In the back of my head, I was going, “No way would this have happened,” but in my heart, I didn’t want to hear these characters saying vile things about him.  It was bad to enough to hear Carson’s “sympathetic” reaction that it wasn’t Thomas’s fault nature had made him into something foul and twisted; I don’t know if I could’ve handled more outright hate and continued to like anyone on that show.
 
And yes, I realize this may seem at odds with what I said earlier about my appreciation for The Musketeers’ efforts at diversity.  While the show makes nods to racial issues, especially with Porthos, I’ll admit that it’s fairly unrealistic on that front too.  I’m not sure why it doesn’t stand out to me as much as the gender stuff does here.  Maybe it’s because racial inequality has only been dealt with sparingly, as opposed to this episode’s very intentional exploration of gender inequality, and so the musketeers’ enlightened attitudes are more evident?   Maybe it’s a white privilege thing, and I need to make a more conscious effort to recognize it?  Maybe it’s because the good of more open casting trumps the bad of sanitizing historical prejudice?  I don’t know.  I’ll try and keep my eyes open on this subject.

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