{"id":10775,"date":"2015-02-13T00:11:53","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T08:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=10775"},"modified":"2015-02-12T21:16:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T05:16:35","slug":"mixed-welcome-at-downton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/02\/13\/mixed-welcome-at-downton\/","title":{"rendered":"Mixed welcome at Downton"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Downton Abbey<\/em>, Rose (Lily James) is smitten with Atticus Aldridge (Matt Barber). (photo from pbs.org\/wgbh\/masterpiece<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Jewish characters have finally joined the impeccably attired throng at Downton Abbey, and it\u2019s not an altogether happy day.<\/p>\n

While Lord and Lady Grantham welcome the arrivals with exquisite manners and the perfectly calibrated amount of modest warmth, series creator and writer Julian\u00a0Fellowes is a good deal less hospitable. He has devised a nuclear family of cardboard cutouts that fit unflattering Jewish stereotypes and generate viewer antipathy.<\/p>\n

Before we rush to judgment or leap to conclusions, however, we should allow for the possibility that the uncomplimentary presentation of the Aldridge family in Season 5 is merely a teaser for Season 6 (and beyond, given the series\u2019 extraordinary popularity in the colonies). It\u2019s not a stretch to imagine Fellowes using the Aldridges as a means of exposing and examining British antisemitism as Downtown Abbey<\/em> rolls into the late 1920s and early 1930s.<\/p>\n

As everyone knows, PBS\u2019s hit Masterpiece series has long featured a character with Jewish ancestry. Lady Grantham, aka Lady Cora Crawley, is the American-born daughter of the late Isidore Levinson. Cora is Episcopalian, like her mother, but she doesn\u2019t view Jews as \u201cthe other.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must reveal a spoiler, namely that Lord Grantham\u2019s niece, Rose, doesn\u2019t see Jews as different, either. That is, not when they\u2019re as hunky as Atticus Aldridge, a square-jawed banker\u2019s son who chivalrously shelters Rose with his umbrella in one of the least-inspired meet-cutes in the annals of television.<\/p>\n

One could trace Rose\u2019s open-mindedness to last season\u2019s colorblind liaison with a black jazz singer, and her naive modernity to her fight with Lord Grantham over bringing a wireless into the sacred realm of Downton Abbey. But\u00a0Atticus is so assimilated and so devoid of personality that he wouldn\u2019t register as Jewish if he didn\u2019t tell us. In other words, Rose is smitten with an Englishmen of her status and breeding, and whose Jewishness is incidental rather than fundamental. In fact, the moment when he confides that he\u2019s descended from Jews who left Odessa after particularly brutal pogroms doesn\u2019t belong to him but to his listeners \u2013 bitter, broke Russian expatriates of the pre-Revolution regime who insult Atticus over their shoulders as they walk away.<\/p>\n

Now, Atticus is of the right class and has parents of means, and those are the credentials that matter in Downton\u2019s rarefied world. However, his perpetually unsmiling father, Lord Sinderby, is less sanguine about his son\u2019s involvement with a shiksa, and the utterance of the epithet stamps him as intolerant and clinches our dislike.<\/p>\n

There are certainly valid arguments against intermarriage, and Fellowes could have written an impassioned monologue for Lord Sinderby that expressed the costs and worth of Jewish identity, and the weight and meaning of traditions and rituals. Instead, Lord Sinderby has a couple angry lines that leave the impression that he prizes money and influence above all else. While much is made of Lord Sinderby\u2019s family values, namely his hatred of divorce, it\u2019s presented as evidence of his inflexibility and anachronism rather than allegiance to vows and moral behavior. As for Lady Sinderby, she is totally gracious and agreeable, but in an unwaveringly superficial way.<\/p>\n

To keep things in perspective, Downton Abbey<\/em> is an upstairs\/downstairs soap opera that is generally more concerned with the romantic complications of its female characters (Rose, in particular) than with the big picture of class-conscious Britain. I find the series most interesting, though, when it invokes and reflects the changes in British society after the First World War (and evokes contemporary parallels). Fellowes has introduced a story arc that\u2019s tailor-made for illuminating antisemitism between the wars. On those grounds, I\u2019m already anticipating Season 6.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Downton Abbey, Rose (Lily James) is smitten with Atticus Aldridge (Matt Barber). (photo from pbs.org\/wgbh\/masterpiece) Jewish characters have finally joined the impeccably attired throng at Downton Abbey, and it\u2019s not an altogether happy day. While Lord and Lady Grantham welcome the arrivals with exquisite manners and the perfectly calibrated amount of modest warmth, series […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[801,3173,3174,3175,3176],"class_list":["post-10775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-antisemitism","tag-downton-abbey","tag-julian-fellowes","tag-lily-james","tag-matt-barber"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}