In December 2020, Netflix viewers embraced the first season of Bridgerton with open arms and a tremendous amount of pent-up longing. A few COVID-19 variant waves later, the newly released Season 2 joins a chorus of other shows and films that focus on the blissful freedom to do it — and the dangers of quelling the urges. While the characters in Bridgerton, Ti West’s recent horror film X, and HBO Max’s gay pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death are of different ages, they all show that believing there is an expiration date for sexual desire is dangerous.
[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for Bridgerton, X, and Our Flag Means Death.]
Take Bridgerton Season 2: As the aging, formerly wealthy Baroness Portia Featherington finds herself penniless after the death of her husband, she awaits which young man will take the title “Lord Featherington” and rule the fate of her family. It turns out to be Lord Jack Featherington, a distant relative whom she has never met, who (after some intrigue on both sides) eventually turns out to be a sly crook. The two Featheringtons scam the whole ton to make money, but when her gambit is about to be exposed, Portia falls into a scam of seduction. Lord Jack takes advantage of her status as a widow and promises to marry her if they flee to the States.
Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Though she eventually wriggles out of his grasp, Portia considers his proposal; After all, Lady Featherington is no exception in a season that deals with the deep pains that sexual urges can induce. The woman wants to get laid and almost flees to America with a known crook (and her daughter’s fiancé) to do it. The possible deception of everything doesn’t matter, at least for a second. Like the young adults who crowd Bridgerton’s many balls, Lady Featherington is eager to love and be loved, and since losing her husband she has found no way to acknowledge this. Lord Jack may be the wrong way, but at least he’s still a way.
Lady Featherington shares this longing with X’s antagonist, Pearl, although the two channel the frustration in different ways. Much older than Portia (perhaps late 70s to Portia mid 50s), Pearl lives on a 1970s farm that has just been rented by a group hoping to make some “cinematic” porn. But as Pearl watches her pretty young guests run around and fuck, something inside her catches fire. She does her best to hire her own husband like she used to when they were young, but is gunned down. (He has a heart condition and fears sex will make it worse.) So she vents her frustration by killing the porn production crew one by one.
X certainly plays with the idea that old age is horrible and twisted more than anything. But Pearl’s sexual fixation allows the film to twist the trope into something more nuanced. It’s not that she wants youth so much, it’s that she wants to feel wanted and fulfilled, which is how the porn performers describe themselves.
Photo: A24
And while this porn team can include “old or young” in their list of who free love is for, X seems intent on allaying their audience’s uneasiness at the idea that someone Pearl’s age might still be in need of sexual fulfillment . While West constantly draws parallels between the garish, physical allures of porn and horror — as in his seduction scene, which punctuates with Pearl being enchanted by the Final Girl — the sex scene between Pearl and her husband seems to intertwine the two sides. In a film of blood and violent deaths, the sex sequence between the two characters in their 70s elicited the loudest nervous groans from the audience in my theater. Yet X demands that we face our own unease about 70-year-old sex: most wouldn’t go as far as cheering for Pearl (although you have power if you do), but the film insists that their pent-up energy has to go somewhere . And if X’s gory climax proves anything, it’s that the effects of sexual frustration certainly shouldn’t be discounted.
If this longing is acted upon, it can be liberating. In Our Flag Means Death, the unlikely meeting of novice gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet and Edward “Captain Blackbeard” Teach sparks something between them that neither fully understands. At first (in a clever case of queer representation) both simply think they want what the other has. Stede wants to gain respect and rule the seas as a pirate like Blackbeard. Teach, who asks Stede to call him Ed, wishes for a softer, more comfortable life.
In the end, the two realize that they are in love. But as they struggle to understand their feelings and how best to express them, they feel vulnerable, even trapped by convention. They both struggle all season to understand the drastic changes they long for (for themselves and others) – why should a romantic relationship be any different? In the final moments of the season, Stede has sorted out his emotions and set out to sea to capitalize on his affections. But Ed, feeling spurned and vulnerable after expressing his longing, reverts to his old violent ways.
Photo: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max
Although the stories of Stede, Ed, Portia, and Pearl deal with varying degrees of sensuality and are set in different time periods (1717, 1814, and 1979, respectively), they reach the characters’ frustration at a stage in their lives where their gender is life do not feel in line with what is expected of them. This feeling is inherently harmful and makes them all feel vulnerable and lash out in their own ways: violent, in Ed and Pearl’s case; or by deciding that they can accept a half-life, in Stede and Portia. And while older on-screen sexuality is certainly not new (every topic recently covered by the 2018 classic book club speaks to something already swirling around the zeitgeist), it’s important to remember that lust isn’t is when people are clamoring for more sexual stories on screen just for young ones.
While you might not agree with how they handle it – believe me, Pearl’s actions are extreme and unwise, but there’s a lot of fan art apocalyptically saddened by Ed’s choices here – these characters remind us that we are aging sensuality deny at our own risk. After all, we all make it there eventually.