Occupy Rippen!: community and hierarchy on Downton Abbey
Spoilers for all of S1 below. I haven't seen any of S2 yet.
It’s more than a little precious, the way the show swings from climaxes which are so incredibly domestic and mundane, such as the stolen box, or over the top farce like Farouk’s death. (Oh, how I hope that will be revealed to have been an assassination.) And yet, I like the way the stuff of day to day life is treated with the seriousness we tend to give the small things in the moments they occur. As much as I love shows with explosions and world saveage, there’s a respectful, humanist kind of charm to portraying it all, and trusting that it’s showing human emotion well enough that we’ll feel for them all even if there’s no need to get particularly worked up about it.
Sibyl and Branson are perfect together and they’re the best ones. Sibyl’s relationship with Gwen is a little discomfiting but mostly cute. She is using Gwen’s goals as a way to play out her own adorably utopian dreams, but they are good, unselfish goals and she does really want to help. Also, A THING THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN ON AMERICAN TELEVISION: Bronson really is a left-wing radical, and he is also a genuine, pragmatic, good person. DO NOT WRECK THIS DUDE YOU ARE MY FAVORITE.
I started off at least making a show for myself of being skeptical of Lady Mary, but clearly that was a doomed effort. Her foot-in-mouth nastiness, her refusal to lock away her dissatisfaction with her life, her openness about her low regard for herself, it’s all unpleasant but entirely sympathetic. Mary is deeply conscious of power and status, and intelligent enough to be aware both of her own status (from wealth and from beauty) and still also conscious of her own powerlessness, and so she feels quite justified in lashing out at others - she has the observational acuity to know they’re all sinned against and sinning, and it doesn’t much matter in the long run what she does one way or another.
Lady Mary has this tiny piece of herself that…hasn’t quite given up, even if the knowledge that she might as well do so is sharp as a pebble in those terrible shoes. Mary can look at things and still think, no matter what, that’s they’re JUST NOT FAIR. She knows better than to think they’ll ever be fair, but she hasn’t given up her sense of justice. She’s angry at herself for having broken the rules about Farouk - even if in only desiring him for a moment, a moment in which he had forced himself into the room and made it clear that he was going to do as he pleased, regardless of what she said. And yet she knows in her bones that she didn’t do anything wrong. Love her.
Robert’s temper tantrum when Sibyl expresses her political views is the thing that rips the charade apart for me. Because this whole community thing is a psychological fiction. The servants can be dismissed at will; the daughters disinherited on a whim. That doesn’t mean it’s without value, merely that it’s not without cost. When Robert finds out Sibyl has even the slightest identity of her own, independent from what Daddy likes and dislikes, he freaks the fuck out. Her radicalization guilts him because it humanizes everyone aroud him, in this way he’s never had to face. He’s one of the most benevolent tyrants of his time, but his position around which he’s built his identity is inherently tyrannous.
Which is why I’m not as wild as I bet everyone else is about Burns and, to a lesser extent, Anna. I don’t dislike them; how could you? But I think they’re illustrative of the sad truth that the only grace available to people without options is that of how charmingly obsequious they can be in their compliance. Burns is trying to look noble during Carson’s investigation of him - trying very much to be noble, as to even ask for the truth to be heard seems to men like him to be begging - but of course he’s really clinging to the fiction that to be thought well of is to be respected.
So far, the show has handled his disability fairly honestly and well - yes it does affect Bates’ job, but no, it does not keep him from doing it with reasonable accommodations. You see the effect it has on him, that it’s so hard to ask; you see the way it impacts the people around him (and it does); you see that it’s a false zero-sum game revolving around the arbitrary desires of the Crowleys (even more so than the community setup at large), not something which actually has to happen. And because his disability is visible and because he is friends with the boss-man, he receives basically the kind of treatment he would be entitled to under a modern sUS framework. (Probably not in the UK, where there exists a reasonably solid social safety net? Anyone watching this show there? I know enough to know that it’s a really different context, but not enough to articulate that difference.)
DA makes me understand the nostalgia for this type of life in a way that I really haven’t. And then this type of communitarian lifestyle would be terrible for me, I know. It gets to be both idyllic and cruelly stagnant. It doesn’t have the feeling of, you know, an expose, trying to catch these people out in any way, but because it shows their lives in sympathetic but neutral detail - sunlight is the best disinfectant, and also beautifully flattering. The social order gives both limitations and dependable structure. Most people are doing the best they can to get through their own day. Those who can’t hide are radicalized in one way or another, from Violet to Bronson. The characters most in favor of the shift toward a more fluid, corporatist society - Matthew and Sibyl - are the characters most advantaged on every level, and so they have the privilege of optimism, and the reality that the structures supporting them will remain invisible but strong.
Matthew’s evolution - not quite corruption, but his shift in expectations, from thinking he - it’s interesting. Because he really does start out opposed to it all, and then gets sucked in by his very real impulse to be kind. But it’s the privilege of being the putative heir that tips him into pushing Mary on his proposal, as much as their growing feelings for each other. (Dude, how awesome is his mom? And how much do you HATE him when he GIVES HER AN ORDER? He's become as autocratic as Robert in quite short order.)
The characters who are somehow in-between, one way or the other, they’re the ones who are the most invested in the way things work. Edith’s and Lady Mary’s brutal betrayals of each other - they have the chance to succeed or fail at their one occupation (marriage), and so that becomes this conflation of the things they are most powerless over (social expectations of femininity) and the only agency they have (to take the terrible gamble of consenting or not to lifelong situations they cannot possibly understand and don’t seem much to even want.) and so the biggest clash is between the two most powerful gatekeepers. Mary and Sibyl, man.
I really enjoyed that O’Brien gets to precipitate the personal tragedy of the miscarriage, which, wow, I did not actually expect the show not only to go there, but I love the way it’s played entirely for her personal drama. And her predicament leading up to it really exposes the total cluelessness of Cora. Of course O’Brien was terrified she might lose her job! But Cora can’t relate to the insecurity of someone who’s completely dependent on the goodwill of others whose esteem she can never earn; languidly asking O’Brien just what it will be like for her replacement is so casually, unthinkingly cruel, even (especially) from kind, good Cora. She really can’t comprehend O’Brien’s powerlessness. A small thing that causes so much damage, just like the soap.
I’m loving the snarky, misanthropic alliance between O’Brien and Thomas. Thomas in particular keeps the whole community picture from becoming too romanticized. Oh shit, do I love him in that last scene in the kitchen, where he points out the brutal imbalance in the servants’ investment in the Crowleys. He’s limited by the rigid class system, and therefore marginalized by his sexual identity rather than the emotional discomfort which will come with his ex the duke’s marriage. He doesn’t have the capital to be an iconoclast, but he is forced into being an individualist. Nobody’s looking out for Thomas but Thomas, and so he pulls his petty little schemes, if only to create for himself the illusion that he can. No different from Violet or Edith, but they have the insulation of status and familial ties, that their power plays have some fig leaf or another in front of them. Not so for Thomas. Thomas doesn’t get to act for his own betterment so we’re supposed to see him as crass and possibly sociopathic - but if he were permitted something to gain and more than a little to lose, I not saying he’d e a good person, but I’d guess he wouldn’t e a fundamentally bad one, either, and he’d get a lot more benefit in being Machiavellian for a good marriage or money, and much greater credit from the audience.
Thomas makes sense, and that’s true for the cast at large. I really enjoy how the show doesn’t manufacture drama with villainy. The Abbey is full of people who are mostly nice but sometimes selfish, rather than anyone who is actively vicious. The utterly fabulous Violet has really never thought of anything different than the social order of her life. Cora is a wonderful mother; Robert is deeply loving and tends toward kindness, even if of the most solipsistic sort. Possibly my favorite moment of drama is deeply human and good, of Mrs. Patmar’s terror of her whole ordeal. This sweet woman, used to having her own little domain but never being alone in it, dropped off in a distant city for a stranger to stab her in the eye. It’s a quiet moment, and she’s been a comic relief character thus far, but her experience gets the dignity it deserves.
AND ALSO. “We can’t have him assassinated. I suppose.” GIRL. DARE TO DREAM.
It’s more than a little precious, the way the show swings from climaxes which are so incredibly domestic and mundane, such as the stolen box, or over the top farce like Farouk’s death. (Oh, how I hope that will be revealed to have been an assassination.) And yet, I like the way the stuff of day to day life is treated with the seriousness we tend to give the small things in the moments they occur. As much as I love shows with explosions and world saveage, there’s a respectful, humanist kind of charm to portraying it all, and trusting that it’s showing human emotion well enough that we’ll feel for them all even if there’s no need to get particularly worked up about it.
Sibyl and Branson are perfect together and they’re the best ones. Sibyl’s relationship with Gwen is a little discomfiting but mostly cute. She is using Gwen’s goals as a way to play out her own adorably utopian dreams, but they are good, unselfish goals and she does really want to help. Also, A THING THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN ON AMERICAN TELEVISION: Bronson really is a left-wing radical, and he is also a genuine, pragmatic, good person. DO NOT WRECK THIS DUDE YOU ARE MY FAVORITE.
I started off at least making a show for myself of being skeptical of Lady Mary, but clearly that was a doomed effort. Her foot-in-mouth nastiness, her refusal to lock away her dissatisfaction with her life, her openness about her low regard for herself, it’s all unpleasant but entirely sympathetic. Mary is deeply conscious of power and status, and intelligent enough to be aware both of her own status (from wealth and from beauty) and still also conscious of her own powerlessness, and so she feels quite justified in lashing out at others - she has the observational acuity to know they’re all sinned against and sinning, and it doesn’t much matter in the long run what she does one way or another.
Lady Mary has this tiny piece of herself that…hasn’t quite given up, even if the knowledge that she might as well do so is sharp as a pebble in those terrible shoes. Mary can look at things and still think, no matter what, that’s they’re JUST NOT FAIR. She knows better than to think they’ll ever be fair, but she hasn’t given up her sense of justice. She’s angry at herself for having broken the rules about Farouk - even if in only desiring him for a moment, a moment in which he had forced himself into the room and made it clear that he was going to do as he pleased, regardless of what she said. And yet she knows in her bones that she didn’t do anything wrong. Love her.
Robert’s temper tantrum when Sibyl expresses her political views is the thing that rips the charade apart for me. Because this whole community thing is a psychological fiction. The servants can be dismissed at will; the daughters disinherited on a whim. That doesn’t mean it’s without value, merely that it’s not without cost. When Robert finds out Sibyl has even the slightest identity of her own, independent from what Daddy likes and dislikes, he freaks the fuck out. Her radicalization guilts him because it humanizes everyone aroud him, in this way he’s never had to face. He’s one of the most benevolent tyrants of his time, but his position around which he’s built his identity is inherently tyrannous.
Which is why I’m not as wild as I bet everyone else is about Burns and, to a lesser extent, Anna. I don’t dislike them; how could you? But I think they’re illustrative of the sad truth that the only grace available to people without options is that of how charmingly obsequious they can be in their compliance. Burns is trying to look noble during Carson’s investigation of him - trying very much to be noble, as to even ask for the truth to be heard seems to men like him to be begging - but of course he’s really clinging to the fiction that to be thought well of is to be respected.
So far, the show has handled his disability fairly honestly and well - yes it does affect Bates’ job, but no, it does not keep him from doing it with reasonable accommodations. You see the effect it has on him, that it’s so hard to ask; you see the way it impacts the people around him (and it does); you see that it’s a false zero-sum game revolving around the arbitrary desires of the Crowleys (even more so than the community setup at large), not something which actually has to happen. And because his disability is visible and because he is friends with the boss-man, he receives basically the kind of treatment he would be entitled to under a modern sUS framework. (Probably not in the UK, where there exists a reasonably solid social safety net? Anyone watching this show there? I know enough to know that it’s a really different context, but not enough to articulate that difference.)
DA makes me understand the nostalgia for this type of life in a way that I really haven’t. And then this type of communitarian lifestyle would be terrible for me, I know. It gets to be both idyllic and cruelly stagnant. It doesn’t have the feeling of, you know, an expose, trying to catch these people out in any way, but because it shows their lives in sympathetic but neutral detail - sunlight is the best disinfectant, and also beautifully flattering. The social order gives both limitations and dependable structure. Most people are doing the best they can to get through their own day. Those who can’t hide are radicalized in one way or another, from Violet to Bronson. The characters most in favor of the shift toward a more fluid, corporatist society - Matthew and Sibyl - are the characters most advantaged on every level, and so they have the privilege of optimism, and the reality that the structures supporting them will remain invisible but strong.
Matthew’s evolution - not quite corruption, but his shift in expectations, from thinking he - it’s interesting. Because he really does start out opposed to it all, and then gets sucked in by his very real impulse to be kind. But it’s the privilege of being the putative heir that tips him into pushing Mary on his proposal, as much as their growing feelings for each other. (Dude, how awesome is his mom? And how much do you HATE him when he GIVES HER AN ORDER? He's become as autocratic as Robert in quite short order.)
The characters who are somehow in-between, one way or the other, they’re the ones who are the most invested in the way things work. Edith’s and Lady Mary’s brutal betrayals of each other - they have the chance to succeed or fail at their one occupation (marriage), and so that becomes this conflation of the things they are most powerless over (social expectations of femininity) and the only agency they have (to take the terrible gamble of consenting or not to lifelong situations they cannot possibly understand and don’t seem much to even want.) and so the biggest clash is between the two most powerful gatekeepers. Mary and Sibyl, man.
I really enjoyed that O’Brien gets to precipitate the personal tragedy of the miscarriage, which, wow, I did not actually expect the show not only to go there, but I love the way it’s played entirely for her personal drama. And her predicament leading up to it really exposes the total cluelessness of Cora. Of course O’Brien was terrified she might lose her job! But Cora can’t relate to the insecurity of someone who’s completely dependent on the goodwill of others whose esteem she can never earn; languidly asking O’Brien just what it will be like for her replacement is so casually, unthinkingly cruel, even (especially) from kind, good Cora. She really can’t comprehend O’Brien’s powerlessness. A small thing that causes so much damage, just like the soap.
I’m loving the snarky, misanthropic alliance between O’Brien and Thomas. Thomas in particular keeps the whole community picture from becoming too romanticized. Oh shit, do I love him in that last scene in the kitchen, where he points out the brutal imbalance in the servants’ investment in the Crowleys. He’s limited by the rigid class system, and therefore marginalized by his sexual identity rather than the emotional discomfort which will come with his ex the duke’s marriage. He doesn’t have the capital to be an iconoclast, but he is forced into being an individualist. Nobody’s looking out for Thomas but Thomas, and so he pulls his petty little schemes, if only to create for himself the illusion that he can. No different from Violet or Edith, but they have the insulation of status and familial ties, that their power plays have some fig leaf or another in front of them. Not so for Thomas. Thomas doesn’t get to act for his own betterment so we’re supposed to see him as crass and possibly sociopathic - but if he were permitted something to gain and more than a little to lose, I not saying he’d e a good person, but I’d guess he wouldn’t e a fundamentally bad one, either, and he’d get a lot more benefit in being Machiavellian for a good marriage or money, and much greater credit from the audience.
Thomas makes sense, and that’s true for the cast at large. I really enjoy how the show doesn’t manufacture drama with villainy. The Abbey is full of people who are mostly nice but sometimes selfish, rather than anyone who is actively vicious. The utterly fabulous Violet has really never thought of anything different than the social order of her life. Cora is a wonderful mother; Robert is deeply loving and tends toward kindness, even if of the most solipsistic sort. Possibly my favorite moment of drama is deeply human and good, of Mrs. Patmar’s terror of her whole ordeal. This sweet woman, used to having her own little domain but never being alone in it, dropped off in a distant city for a stranger to stab her in the eye. It’s a quiet moment, and she’s been a comic relief character thus far, but her experience gets the dignity it deserves.
AND ALSO. “We can’t have him assassinated. I suppose.” GIRL. DARE TO DREAM.