I enjoy watching Downton Abbey. I was hooked from the first show, before anyone could have predicted its success. I wasn't quite as engaged by the opening show of the third season, but that's the nature of a multi-season series. We know each character's crisis-situation, and watch them being resolved. In the first season we were engrossed trying to discover just what Mr. Bates' crisis-situation actually was.
I've read comments trying to explain the series' success, and in particular why it's been more successful in the States than in England. I have a theory, not the whole explanation, but more of it than has been recognized.
I spent ten days in December in London. Though we were out on the streets and in crowds most of the time, I did not overhear a single obscenity. True, we were in places like Bloomsbury, not the east end. But the visit made me aware that in the US I'm lucky to get through a day without hearing someone say "Fuck you, asshole," to someone else.
And I realize that is what Downton Abbey offers me: a world where people behave with grace under pressure. "Grace under pressure" is a virtue that has always been valued. In the mid-twentieth century it was exemplified by Hemingway, later by Clint Eastwood. Today, with the model of the European lady and gentleman being altered by hip-hop and immigrant cultures, I'm not sure what it looks like. In Downton Abbey aristos and servants alike may be prigs and snobs, but they never break into a string of contemporary American obscenities. I'm more than willing to spend an hour a week in a world like that. Escapism indeed.
I began this post thinking about whether bad language was as common a hundred and two hundred years ago as it is today. Because of its shifting conventions the novel is not a very good way to measure that. Let me follow up with the thought next post.
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