Downton Abbey
Feb. 14th, 2011 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arf_she_saidA recent tipple of Gosford Park and Remains of the Day and some very favourable reviews led me to give Downton Abbey a go. I will now sum up the experience in two and a half minutes:
Elaboration, with pictures:
Oh England!
What you get with Downton Abbey is that special brand of Edwardian drooling that makes nods to the social change brewing in the 1910s, but only for the purpose of fetishising the grand crumbling edifice of the landed class.
Having already been saved once with an injection of American money in the form of a wife, Downton Abbey is again under threat when the Titanic sends a couple of heirs to the great beyond and a distant relative comes to claim her. Mr Middle Class initially refuses to be changed by the sudden wealth but he soon comes to understand how inesteemably, intangibly important Downton Abbey is.
Like the similarly eponymous Gosford Park and more literally Upstairs, Downstairs Downton Abbey is the primary structuring force of the show, separating servants into departments, servants from masters, men from women. In Gosford Park, both place and movie, concern with social boundaries has phsyical manifestations: rooms empty and fill according to ancient rules of presence and absence; doors crack open minutely to let privilege drip through.
Downton Abbey, on the other hand, is all symbol, the venerable embodiment of a familiar "English" that's more feeling than identity, all stoic honor, noblesse oblige and reliable, traditional categories. Crawley, Earl of Grantham, characterises himself as her custodian, not owner; custodian of her buildings and grounds, the end result of the accumulated wealth and care of generations, but also custodian of her place in a stratified society. He knows that far from dividing, she unites within herself, with a bare modicum of friction, all the classes -- at least all that matter, in this narrow representation -- in perfect symbiosis.
Grass, sun, bus, maaaaarvellous.
Downton Abbey may shower down the occasional gutter or parapet but her grounds and insides are simply impeccable, a fiddly, ornate and beautiful oldentimes of lace and up-swept hairdos, vast picture-frames, double-breasted suits and silver tea services. Her credits don't bother to beat around the bush; there's barely an inch of human skin in them.
What's the point of HD otherwise?
When we do get a focus on people -- when they take tea together and archly deliver lines that lay entirely bare their thoughts and desires -- they're shot with a tremendously shallow field of focus; colours are saturated and glamorously woozy, and the final image is post-processed with a gentle edges-and-foreground blur that evokes early twentieth-century vignette photography. Downton Abbey knows that if we wanted to watch Time Team or The Edwardian Country House, we would. What we want is smooth and creamy access to the past, an access that marks itself as respesentational (not investigational or re-creational) in ways that tie it to the legitimacy of Quality Period Drama.
Film actors, vivid colours, sharp edges and obvious post-processing; Boardwalk Empire, is that you?!
Watch out for those German strawberries.
Shots begin on chandeliers and furniture before eventually flitting down to the women gathered in their finery. All these objects are one in Downton Abbey's representative schema, which is why the footman Thomas, who operates within the show as a piece of furniture, constantly in the background, gaze averted (this non-look is always the most dominant action in a scene), is the most vivid and compelling character; he is the one instance where the argument the show pretends to make about the place of servants actually, accidentally, lands.
In contrast, the show duitifully makes the women struggle against subjection but doesn't care to imagine them as anything but objects; a rather mean and disingenous trick. One major character sits in a room as her family cheerily discusses the pleasant young gentleman who is usurping her inheritance. It's meant to be a gesture towards the limited prospects of upper-class women in 1912 but as she listens, we see... an extended shot of her ear. We're supposed to empathise with her but how can we when this is all she is? We're more interested in looking at her earring.
Hey you think maybe she's listening to something?
This complete disinterest in subtlety and empathy is echoed throughout. Men with gray hair or neat mustachios speak with gravitas about duty and honour while a few women borrow liberally from the deep emotional seas of Johanssen and Knightly, and Maggie Smith plays Maggie Smith (and thank god too as she appears to be the only actor with a sense of humour); The cinematography reverently caresses every object in its field; the writing lurches characters incoherently from scene to scene and skips whole years without signal.
Oh sure, some stuff happens to do with suffrage and the rise of fascism. The declaration of war serves as a rather hilariously histrionic exclamation point to the first season. But there's no actual narrative. Everyone is nice except for a couple of mean and nasty people who do mean and nasty things, everyone understands one another, and conflicts are resolved in the most predictable, straightforward fashion possible. The good end happily, the bad, unhappily.
But to point this out is to misunderstand the show. These people aren't real because reality doesn't attach to people in Downton Abbey but to itself in an oroborousian freakshow. Its gestures towards complexity are an excuse, a feint. It is pure simulacrum, representation for the sake of representation, a reference only to its own vision of Edwardian England, which equates historical accuracy with a house of things gorgeously arrayed, and assumes both projects ends in themselves. Steven Loyd Wilson notes that the show avoids criticism from a modern perspective and historical apologia, but of course it does: Downton Abbey's Edwardian ara needs no apology: everything was beautiful, hard work was appreciated, physical and emotional wounds were sutured by rich, caring strangers. Ultimately, the whole thing is as comforting, validating, and empty as the South Downs-iest, Garbaldesham Road-iest vision of creamy old England you could ever conjure.
Elaboration, with pictures:
Oh England!
What you get with Downton Abbey is that special brand of Edwardian drooling that makes nods to the social change brewing in the 1910s, but only for the purpose of fetishising the grand crumbling edifice of the landed class.
Having already been saved once with an injection of American money in the form of a wife, Downton Abbey is again under threat when the Titanic sends a couple of heirs to the great beyond and a distant relative comes to claim her. Mr Middle Class initially refuses to be changed by the sudden wealth but he soon comes to understand how inesteemably, intangibly important Downton Abbey is.
Like the similarly eponymous Gosford Park and more literally Upstairs, Downstairs Downton Abbey is the primary structuring force of the show, separating servants into departments, servants from masters, men from women. In Gosford Park, both place and movie, concern with social boundaries has phsyical manifestations: rooms empty and fill according to ancient rules of presence and absence; doors crack open minutely to let privilege drip through.
Downton Abbey, on the other hand, is all symbol, the venerable embodiment of a familiar "English" that's more feeling than identity, all stoic honor, noblesse oblige and reliable, traditional categories. Crawley, Earl of Grantham, characterises himself as her custodian, not owner; custodian of her buildings and grounds, the end result of the accumulated wealth and care of generations, but also custodian of her place in a stratified society. He knows that far from dividing, she unites within herself, with a bare modicum of friction, all the classes -- at least all that matter, in this narrow representation -- in perfect symbiosis.
Grass, sun, bus, maaaaarvellous.
Downton Abbey may shower down the occasional gutter or parapet but her grounds and insides are simply impeccable, a fiddly, ornate and beautiful oldentimes of lace and up-swept hairdos, vast picture-frames, double-breasted suits and silver tea services. Her credits don't bother to beat around the bush; there's barely an inch of human skin in them.
What's the point of HD otherwise?
When we do get a focus on people -- when they take tea together and archly deliver lines that lay entirely bare their thoughts and desires -- they're shot with a tremendously shallow field of focus; colours are saturated and glamorously woozy, and the final image is post-processed with a gentle edges-and-foreground blur that evokes early twentieth-century vignette photography. Downton Abbey knows that if we wanted to watch Time Team or The Edwardian Country House, we would. What we want is smooth and creamy access to the past, an access that marks itself as respesentational (not investigational or re-creational) in ways that tie it to the legitimacy of Quality Period Drama.
Film actors, vivid colours, sharp edges and obvious post-processing; Boardwalk Empire, is that you?!
Watch out for those German strawberries.
Shots begin on chandeliers and furniture before eventually flitting down to the women gathered in their finery. All these objects are one in Downton Abbey's representative schema, which is why the footman Thomas, who operates within the show as a piece of furniture, constantly in the background, gaze averted (this non-look is always the most dominant action in a scene), is the most vivid and compelling character; he is the one instance where the argument the show pretends to make about the place of servants actually, accidentally, lands.
In contrast, the show duitifully makes the women struggle against subjection but doesn't care to imagine them as anything but objects; a rather mean and disingenous trick. One major character sits in a room as her family cheerily discusses the pleasant young gentleman who is usurping her inheritance. It's meant to be a gesture towards the limited prospects of upper-class women in 1912 but as she listens, we see... an extended shot of her ear. We're supposed to empathise with her but how can we when this is all she is? We're more interested in looking at her earring.
Hey you think maybe she's listening to something?
This complete disinterest in subtlety and empathy is echoed throughout. Men with gray hair or neat mustachios speak with gravitas about duty and honour while a few women borrow liberally from the deep emotional seas of Johanssen and Knightly, and Maggie Smith plays Maggie Smith (and thank god too as she appears to be the only actor with a sense of humour); The cinematography reverently caresses every object in its field; the writing lurches characters incoherently from scene to scene and skips whole years without signal.
Oh sure, some stuff happens to do with suffrage and the rise of fascism. The declaration of war serves as a rather hilariously histrionic exclamation point to the first season. But there's no actual narrative. Everyone is nice except for a couple of mean and nasty people who do mean and nasty things, everyone understands one another, and conflicts are resolved in the most predictable, straightforward fashion possible. The good end happily, the bad, unhappily.
But to point this out is to misunderstand the show. These people aren't real because reality doesn't attach to people in Downton Abbey but to itself in an oroborousian freakshow. Its gestures towards complexity are an excuse, a feint. It is pure simulacrum, representation for the sake of representation, a reference only to its own vision of Edwardian England, which equates historical accuracy with a house of things gorgeously arrayed, and assumes both projects ends in themselves. Steven Loyd Wilson notes that the show avoids criticism from a modern perspective and historical apologia, but of course it does: Downton Abbey's Edwardian ara needs no apology: everything was beautiful, hard work was appreciated, physical and emotional wounds were sutured by rich, caring strangers. Ultimately, the whole thing is as comforting, validating, and empty as the South Downs-iest, Garbaldesham Road-iest vision of creamy old England you could ever conjure.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:29 am (UTC)CREAMY OLD ENGLAND!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 11:56 am (UTC)Oh, I've been meaning to rewatch that. Thanks for the reminder.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:18 pm (UTC)Also, Cary Elwes.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 12:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 01:27 pm (UTC)Holy crap, it's after midnight. Why am I still awake. You might have to carry on this debate without me, old chum.
cary elwes knows nothing of your human schedule
Date: 2011-02-14 01:31 pm (UTC)Интернет-магазин Health and Beaute
Date: 2013-07-05 06:14 pm (UTC)Интернет-магазин Buynice
Date: 2013-10-15 06:41 pm (UTC)