The Dirty Secret of Downton Abbey 

From AlterNet:

In the world of "Downton Abbey," the classical liberal is the hero. It is he who will save the arch-conservative from his excesses, and if said conservative can get with the program, from financial ruin. Cousin Matthew, the benevolent middle-class modernizer who arrives to inherit the ancient estate, is the hope of the future. Tom, the revolutionary chauffer, is absorbed into the aristocratic family fold where his radical speeches yield little more than a crisp: “Are you quite finished?” by the Dowager. Feminist advances consist of young ladies gaining permission to wear sassy dresses and engage in journalism while having their underwear ironed daily (cue Roiphe’s sigh). Being gay is anachronistically rendered a suitable topic for polite conversation, and all is right in BBC-PBS realm. As Matthew maps out his plans for the estate, you can almost hear the strains of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” in the background as noblesse oblige gives way to capitalist innovation that has rendered the current underclasses of both Britain and America little better off than their forebearers.

If we look closely, we can see, in the form of Matthew, that something is lurching toward us to be born. Some rough beast that eventually emerges to replace the pompous conservatism of the landed aristocrats with the chill robotic efficiency of the supply-side capitalist. Classical liberalism, which took its inspiration from Bentham and the Mills’ emphasis on utility as opposed to custom and later the belief in unrestrained self-interest, opposed the ancient privileges of the aristocracy. But it also tended toward the protection of the new privilege of the capitalist. Over several generations, it threw labor just enough bones to keep it from revolting, and then, when the threat of communism subsided, largely abandoned it. The Matthews, in just a few generations, produced the Thatchers, the Reagans, and the Romneys. That is the dirty secret at the heart of "Downton Abbey."

More here.

Okay, this is all true.  Can't disagree with any of it.  Downton Abbey, in the end, does not provide the kind of picture of the class struggle I'd like to see.  But four episodes into the first season I think it's safe to say that it very definitely presents a picture, at least, of the class struggle.  And for my money that puts the show light years ahead of anything else on television: acknowledging at all that social class exists, that it shapes our lives and opportunities, that it results in winners and losers, and making it a part of its continuing narrative, is something that you just don't see anywhere else.

Part of the reason why Downton Abbey can do this is because it airs on public television.  TV in the United States, almost without exception, isn't much more than a sophisticated marketing device.  That is, the whole point, usually, is to attract people to advertising with entertainment as bait.  So you don't want the bait spoiling the overall purpose, which is why you rarely see images or encounter ideas that might make viewers question the whole capitalism thing.  No, advertisers want people to buy stuff, and to aspire to buy even more stuff.  Juxtaposing the haves against the have-nots, people who cannot possibly aspire to buy even more stuff, gets in the way.  So, generally, we only see affluent people on television.  Even the poor people are doing pretty well most of the time, when they're not just stage props.  You NEVER see anybody questioning the system.  But PBS, which is funded by viewer and corporate donations, is somewhat insulated from the pro-capitalist imperative of television.  I mean, all the corporate donations PBS receives make the situation somewhat problematic, but there is definitely more freedom to rock the boat in this context.

But yeah, Downton doesn't do much more than rock the boat a bit.  I mean, PBS is beholden, to an extent, to those corporate donors, so there's no way they're going to stick a stake into capitalism's heart live on television.  PBS is also a professional organization, one relying overwhelmingly on white collar workers who see their fates tied with the same bourgeois white collar workers running the day to day operations of the corporations who fund the public television network.  No surprise that white collar worker Matthew Crawley is an early good guy for the show; he's just like the people running PBS, just like their counterparts in the for-profit sector.  Actually, there's an overall media bias toward this particular social class simply because this is the social class that operates the media, whether it's ESPN or NBC or NPR.  So yeah, thus far in my viewing, there really does seem to be a rah-rah capitalism element deeply embedded in the show.

Really, the social class getting the short end of the stick is the old European aristocracy, which barely even exists anymore, and certainly has no defenders in the US, so it's pretty easy to take pot shots at them.  But don't get me wrong; I have as little sympathy for old money as I do for our own 1%, the American business-fueled nouveau riche.  It's just that it would be nice to see some pot shots taken at the capitalist class, as well, which was already in full swing totally exploiting and oppressing the working class by 1913, the year in which Downton's first season is set, instead of setting them up as implicit heroes.  On the other hand, I think, given decades of anti-communist and anti-socialist hardcore propaganda and oppression, that's a bit too much to expect.  That is, you've got to crawl before you can run.

The bottom line is that Downton Abbey, for me, goes a very long way, relative to the overall television landscape, toward exposing class relationships, which, in the US, ostensibly do not exist.  America is supposed to be a "classless society," which is, of course, a very useful fiction for the capitalist class.  So when we watch the show, and see it all laid out in front of us, and it feels familiar because, in spite of the "classless" lie, our lives aren't too terribly different from the lives lived by these characters, we have taken an enormous cognitive step forward in bringing reality to the surface.  Socioeconomic class really does exist.  Some people live in opulent splendor, while millions more live on the edge.  This is not a flight of the imagination.

This is all a very good start, I think.

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