Downton Abbey: Diverse Social Classes Live Together As Family

The success of nostalgic British television series in the evenings is remarkable.  Shows such as Foyle’s War, Call the Midwife, and Downton Abbey take viewers back to the fruits of the British Empire, allowing an escape from the aggressive pop culture fare otherwise available from standard commercial-rich networks.  By comparing a historical past to the present, the British fare is all about real diversity–a primer on how classes can respectfully and profitably live together while retaining separate identities.

       In the Edwardian world of Downton Abbey, the aristocratic Crawley family live under the same roof with each other.  They intermingle throughout the day, with the Crawleys teaching  the servants from poor and uneducated families the how-tos of the genteel lifestyles.  In terms of etiquette and manners, the servants were often little distinguishable from the extended family.

      Nor was the world of Downton Abbey sanitized or idealized.  Both the servants and the family depended on each other, living in harmony and a social equilibrium not possible today.

     No, they weren’t “equals” in the trendy (snobbish but false) political sense today.   Downton people had lives that were wholesome and kept in mutual check.  Is the boss or CEO the “equal” of the housekeeping staff in our large corporations?  In a technical or legal sense, yes, but not socially.

      Do upscale, computer-rich “Yuppies” like to mingle after-hours with the green-card laborers who return to lives of poverty in comparison?  Not for a minute.  Classes are as segregated today as they ever were.  At least in Downton Abbey, they lived together, knew each other, and learned how to be human together.

       Is it really that better in our stratified society, where unemployment and crack-infested neighborhoods must depend on welfare to subsist?  Are the down-and-out in such neighborhoods really free or is the word just one more example of empty hype in that setting?  Or “Does the World of Downton Abbey Offer Solutions to America Today?“