Downton Abbey and It's Historical Lessons

Downton Abbey is addictive, and besides its wonderfully gossipy nature that's probably most of all because it shows a world caught up in such fundamental change.  World War I is the defining event of the past 100 years, it presages everything, from World War II and the Shoah, to the Cold War, to women's suffrage, to globalization, to decolonization, to the conflicts in the middle east. World War I and its deciding aftermath at Versailles defines our world to this day.  The characters in Downton are living through that rending tumult.  Their lives are not as much their own as they might hope. They're being forced to make decisions that the world they grew up in has not well prepared them for. That world is ending. This of course this isn't a new phenomenon, the world is always being remade.  But I think that two things make the world of Downton particularly ripe for current obsession.  One is that its world is different enough from our own to attract fascination, but not so different as to be incomprehensible.  And the second is that by living before so many of the defining moments of our age gives their world a sort of graceful wonder.  There are values on display, especially a certain gallant honor, that I think we find sadly missing in our modern world that has only recently come down from its temple built to greed. That honor would be prized above happiness is shocking to our sensibilities that prize happiness above everything. Of course the characters at Downton are also corrupted by all the pre-progressive mores of Edwardian England, especially the Crawley family and their spoiled remove from life's inconveniences, which is sadly not so incomprehensible to our time.

This isn't to say that the picture Downton portrays is wholly accurate.  Especially with regards to its depiction of the War, it is far too antiseptic.  It displays tragedy, yes, but not nearly with the necessary gruesomeness and tragic meaninglessness to give the Great War its due. Perhaps because it is so hard for anyone who has grown up with the Iraq and Afganhistan Wars as their touchstone for what conflict feels like as a nation this is understandable, but World War I existed on a wholly different scale.  Why Lady Sybll says that "It seems as if all the men I ever danced with are dead," she is speaking for every woman her age in Britain.  Every class, every city, everyone in Britain felt the pain of the war intimately.  We haven't seen anything like that since World War II.  I think it would be impossible in a mini-series to do it justice. I think perhaps only a documentary could recreate the kind of terror and tragedy experienced by the soldiers and their families and friends back home. But I love that Downton has tried because it is such a defining period in our world, and people should be exposed to it however imperfectly.