#i'm honestly not trying to be rude i'm just covid addled and thus sleep deprived to all hell

[navree]

This might be a jump that I’m only doing in my head, but so often a young girl not looking her age or not ‘acting’ her age is seen as enough of a reason to not treat them as their age. Like when pple say ‘ girls mature faster’ so some 20 year old guy can be ‘dating’ a 16 year old if she is posing on insta looking like a model in her 20s. Or like how a 13 year old black boy will get treated and seen as an adult while a white 13 yro still thought of as a kid.

So I just dunno if saying the show got it wrong from day one cause ‘if Elizabeth looked super young everyone would have understood it’s abuse’ is right. I don’t think Alicia looks her age, and I definitely get a young vibe from her performance. And the show states repeatedly her age and that she’s ‘a child’, if people still see it as a romance just cause they’re not automatically getting the ick watching it, I don’t think that’s really fair.

I get your point that with a younger actress the material would have been tamer, but the show obviously decided it was going to go there with the abuse which is why they didn’t cast someone super young, I don’t think that’s a fault of casting or Alicia, but a decision by the creators. But tbh even if the scenes had been much milder, I wouldn’t have liked to see the ’ ep 2 ‘rooster’ antics if Tom Cullen in his mid 30s was ripping the bed sheets off an 18 year old actress, never mind a younger one. I wouldn’t have been more tuned into Elizabeth’s age and abuse cause I’d be far too preoccupied seeing the actors behind the characters.

So I want to make it very clear since I guess that was opened to being misconstrued, I do not blame Alicia for taking the role and doing her job. It is not Alicia's job to manage the material, ask for rewrites, or do anything other than what she is paid to do, which she is doing. At no point am I blaming Alicia for choices made by the creators and nothing negative I say about the creative decision of the show is meant to be a negative about Alicia. Good? Clear? Great.

As I've said in my post, I haven't watched this show beyond clips. The information I'm getting is information from reviews and history/period drama reviewers I know across social media platforms that I've been engaging with on the subject (and also my mother who is watching the show, is as into the Tudors as I am, and is offering me her takes as she goes along). Take what I say with a grain of salt because I am currently not the audience watching the show (and probably won't be until the first season is finished).

But, all that being said: which is it? Is the show saying that Elizabeth's abuse is being excused by her abuser as her being "mature for her age", the way you mentioned, or is it repeatedly trying to let the audience know that she's "a child", the way you mentioned? And more importantly, my issue isn't about the show "going there" wrt to the abuse and my being upset it's not tame, my issue is that what the show is "going" towards is portraying a man in his forties fucking a fourteen year old in real time, that they're getting away with because they cast actors who have a more similar age gap to Elizabeth and Edward VI than Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour. My issue is that they are using Alicia being a grown woman, and thus not under the purview of things like child pornography laws, to make this as sexy and eroticized and graphic in the worst ways.

Like I said in my OG post, the problem is that the show's apparent mishandling of this abuse (particularly egregious, given how Anya Reiss was really hyping up that they were meant to be handling this sensitively and the end result is........This), combined with Alicia very much looking like an adult woman and not a girl who is meant to be starting this show who's been thirteen for less than half a year, offers ambiguity and thus cover for Seymour for people who aren't well versed in the history and are tuning into this show because they know who Elizabeth is and maybe saw Young Bess back in the day and were curious. They are presenting a scenario where, instead, of seeing someone barely into her teens being abused by a man practically the same age her own mother would have been, they're seeing two adults engaging in a tantalizing push and pull thanks not only to the apparent writing choices, but the choice to have Elizabeth be played by an adult.

On the subject of "I wouldn’t have liked to see the ’ ep 2 ‘rooster’ antics if Tom Cullen in his mid 30s was ripping the bed sheets off an 18 year old actress, never mind a younger one.", yeah, that's kind of my point. No one should be liking anything that's going on, nothing portrayed should be Open To Interpretation, considering how determined they were to hammer into everyone's head in pre-release material that they understood that the Seymour situation was abuse and they were going to sensitively handle it as such. Appropriate casting would have actually helped add to the story they were telling (assuming that's the story they wanted to to tell) by producing visceral shock and disgust and horror in the audience at Elizabeth's treatment at the hands of an adult man. Having it be two adults with the same age gap as my parents cheapens that.

Sorry to talk about GOT again cuz that's a shitshow if I ever saw one but the season 2 throne room scene with Sansa is legit awful to watch, meant to be awful to watch, and emphasizing the point of the scene, that Joffrey is awful and Sansa is in real danger and everyone is too scared of him to intervene save one of our core protagonists Tyrion, enhanced by the fact that Sophie was similar in age to her character (and it was still toned down from its source material due to the actress's age). And there's also things like cuts, filming tricks, editing, the use of body doubles in case things start running the risk, and obviously having appropriate counseling and anything else necessary available to the actress, so that they can avoid breaking the law and avoid causing undo harm to this hypothetical actress while still showcasing the abuse as abuse while having to deal with the fact that they don't get to add in ahistorical graphic sex scenes.

If you think I'm being unfair to Alicia, my apologies, none of these issues are with her and as I said, I think she's a good actress. If you think I'm being unfair to Anya, the rest of the writers, and their casting department (since casting is ultimately up to the creatives), then you are well within your rights to do so. But I am also well within my rights to feel that the casting choices made, compounded by the writing choices made, doesn't sit right with me, causes problems, and ultimately cheapens the tale they've told us they're telling, but failing to actually deliver on because of these factors.

#personal #answered #anonymous #becoming elizabeth #i genuinely do apologize if this is coming off as overly hostile #i'm honestly not trying to be rude i'm just covid addled and thus sleep deprived to all hell #and that tends to dull my abilities to not be super blunt #and also that means this answer is a bit all over the place #ultimately feel the way you want. enjoy it or don't. agree with it or don't. #mine is one opinion in a long list of them and if you're liking the show and what it's doing: great! happy for you! #but that doesn't mean i have to or that i'm somehow not 'getting' something with a critique #that i've had for a while and that i've seen become a problem in hollywood and that other people agree with me on