It was a sad Sunday night last week. Downton Abbey's second series was over. I feel like a kid who can't wait for the next Harry Potter book or movie to be released. Those Brits really know how to tell a good story. Being an Upstairs Downstairs fan back in the 70s made me an easy convert to Downton Abbey. The PBS series, Upstairs Downstairs, was also set in the world of pre- and post-WWI era in England. Much discussion everywhere, or as my new friend, Mary Ellen, so poetically puts it, much ink has been spilt, about why this PBS program has such a devoted viewing audience on Sunday nights. We Upstairs Downstairs fans were a small quiet group back in the 70s: rarely did I find someone to discuss the series with. Downton watchers are a pretty common lot, and it is fun to discover that many of your friends are watching the series too.
When visiting my daughter last month in New York, I overheard discussion of the series in two different restaurants on the Upper East Side near Lexi's apartment. One such conversation was in one of those small Jewish deli places, so small that you feel like you should join in the conversation going on next to you. A woman in her early thirties was explaining a recent Downton Abbey episode to her date sitting across the table from her. I found myself rubbing elbows with her date as I ate my matzo ball soup and it was all I could do not to jump into their conversation. The young man was doing an excellent job of feigning interest, though men generally do seem to like the series as much as women. The man told the woman he would tune in for the next episode after the football season was over. At an English restaurant, I overheard a group at the bar planning the menu for their weekly Downton Abbey Sunday night dinner parties. I might just try that when the new season begins! Any takers?
Many critics are embarrassed and assail the American Downton fans, insinuating that we should all feel guilty because to watch is to delight in the abhorrent British class system depicted in the series. Gosh, don't these critics understand that our American belief that we live in a country without a class system is a delusion? Fans watch Downton Abbey to learn about how a class system works. Can't these critics just let us enjoy our Anglophilia in peace? Some credit must be given, however, to the Downton series compared to Upstairs Downstairs. The writer, Julian Fellows, goes to great lengths to give equal time to plot lines for both the aristocratic and servant classes.
The recently popular novel and movie, The Help, is the story of the relationship between white housewives and their black maids in the American south of the 1960s. As in Downton, the lives of the servant class are given equal time in this story. The day-to-day social interaction between the housewives and the maids in The Help is much more cruel and harsh than the relationship between Lady Grantham and her maid. The servant class in both stories do get their revenge: a bar of soap in Downton becomes a lethal weapon and an unusual chocolate pie in The Help is served up to the unsuspecting prima donna. The last episode of Downton ended with the servants' ball at the mansion: upstairs aristocrats dancing the night away with their devoted downstairs servants. In The Help, white women felt outraged if their black maids used the family bathroom. The idea of a servants ball in 1960 Alabama is rather unimaginable, given the bathroom fetishes of these southern belles.
Social class makes for good drama. Both of these immensely popular stories, one in the early part of the 20th century and one in the middle, depict human beings who enjoy the good life thanks to those whose life is not so good. The sort of thinking that justifies a class system can justify a lot of bad behavior towards the not-so-fortunate group. Other people do all the grunt work for the group that does little all day but dress up for dinner. In The Help one group has babies, the other group raises those babies. One group lives in a mansion or a nice rambler while the other lives in shacks or small rooms in the mansion. Sometimes it is even necessary to build separate toilets for those who do all the child raising, cooking, and silver polishing so those in the grunt-free group don't have to be exposed to their germs.
Ah yes, it is good that in America we don't have a class system. On New York's Upper East Side, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the baby carriages being pushed along the streets contain white babies being pushed by black or Hispanic women. In our country, one group can make doctor's appointments, while the other group has to sit in the emergency room for hours before being able to see a doctor. The fruits and vegetables we enjoy eating everyday are picked by those who make a subsistence wage while hoping not to be arrested and deported. The smart phones the majority of us now carry (except for Luddites like my husband) are made in China where workers live and work in conditions few of us can imagine.
I will miss Downton Abbey, but thank goodness the show Bethenny Ever After made it's second season debut on the Bravo channel Monday night. In the first episode of this reality show we find Bethenny, again in angst, talking with her therapist. The pressure of having made 100 million dollars upon the sale of her Skinny Margarita cocktail to Jim Beam is just too much for her to handle. She is in the process of buying a huge New York City apartment that she wants to be perfect. We all know what that must be like. Talk about pressure! Granted her apartment in Manhattan isn't the size of Downton, but still: how do you get good help nowadays?
The recently popular novel and movie, The Help, is the story of the relationship between white housewives and their black maids in the American south of the 1960s. As in Downton, the lives of the servant class are given equal time in this story. The day-to-day social interaction between the housewives and the maids in The Help is much more cruel and harsh than the relationship between Lady Grantham and her maid. The servant class in both stories do get their revenge: a bar of soap in Downton becomes a lethal weapon and an unusual chocolate pie in The Help is served up to the unsuspecting prima donna. The last episode of Downton ended with the servants' ball at the mansion: upstairs aristocrats dancing the night away with their devoted downstairs servants. In The Help, white women felt outraged if their black maids used the family bathroom. The idea of a servants ball in 1960 Alabama is rather unimaginable, given the bathroom fetishes of these southern belles.
Social class makes for good drama. Both of these immensely popular stories, one in the early part of the 20th century and one in the middle, depict human beings who enjoy the good life thanks to those whose life is not so good. The sort of thinking that justifies a class system can justify a lot of bad behavior towards the not-so-fortunate group. Other people do all the grunt work for the group that does little all day but dress up for dinner. In The Help one group has babies, the other group raises those babies. One group lives in a mansion or a nice rambler while the other lives in shacks or small rooms in the mansion. Sometimes it is even necessary to build separate toilets for those who do all the child raising, cooking, and silver polishing so those in the grunt-free group don't have to be exposed to their germs.
Ah yes, it is good that in America we don't have a class system. On New York's Upper East Side, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the baby carriages being pushed along the streets contain white babies being pushed by black or Hispanic women. In our country, one group can make doctor's appointments, while the other group has to sit in the emergency room for hours before being able to see a doctor. The fruits and vegetables we enjoy eating everyday are picked by those who make a subsistence wage while hoping not to be arrested and deported. The smart phones the majority of us now carry (except for Luddites like my husband) are made in China where workers live and work in conditions few of us can imagine.
I will miss Downton Abbey, but thank goodness the show Bethenny Ever After made it's second season debut on the Bravo channel Monday night. In the first episode of this reality show we find Bethenny, again in angst, talking with her therapist. The pressure of having made 100 million dollars upon the sale of her Skinny Margarita cocktail to Jim Beam is just too much for her to handle. She is in the process of buying a huge New York City apartment that she wants to be perfect. We all know what that must be like. Talk about pressure! Granted her apartment in Manhattan isn't the size of Downton, but still: how do you get good help nowadays?
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