The One, the Only . . .

What I Learned from  Downton Abbey and Poldark

Huh, Looks like a Pederson Family Reunion

Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. Mrs Dear Leader and I have watched the entire “Downton Abbey” series three times and now we're through “Poldark” for the first time and I think I’ve learned something: English people really speak funny. Okay, just kidding. No, seriously here's what I've learned: Change is a bitch - and also inevitable. On a positive note, we always get through it. 

If you haven’t watched Downton you would, of course, be one of the three people in America who haven’t and if so I’ll catch you up. Simply stated, it’s a series that follows the family of an English peer (Earl Grantham to be exact) from the years 1912-1926 and they live in an English manor called - duh - Downton Abbey. It has an “Upstairs/Downstairs” feel since the servants are as important to the story as the family. (That's doing it a disservice, it is a really great series with terrific characters that you get to know and care about - even the rotten ones!)

In addition to the interesting relationship issues of the Earl’s family and the staff at Downton Abbey (and there are some beauts!) the show is really about how all the the members of this fine household - upstairs and downstairs - are affected by the changes taking place in English society during these years coming out of the Victorian age. As you're watching the show it is kind of obvious, as an outside viewer anyway, that everyone is dealing with change differently. The Earl is a good man but can't imagine that cars will ever catch on; his mother is still struggling with accepting electric lights. Others are embracing change; the youngest daughter is interested in politics - gasp! One of the servants wants to get a job as a secretary - horrors! 

More importantly, as I reflected on this show - oh, maybe halfway through the second time - it dawned on me that change can occur suddenly and jarringingly or very subtly. For example, WWI hurled the family forward making a lot of their old beliefs immediately untenable; suddenly the genteel women folk learn to actually do something productive in support of the war, forcing them to change their entire perspective on their previous lives. On the other hand, simple little things like adopting electric toasters and hair dryers seem innocuous but eventually it becomes obvious that things like this mean fewer people are needed to accomplish some jobs in the big house - a very big deal. 

By the end of the series you see a family that once dressed for dinner every night in ball gowns and tie and tails with footmen, hand maids and valets become a more or less modern family (even if they still have a LOT of windows to clean!) 

Fourteen years. Not very long when you think about it but a huge amount of change.   

         










                                                            Ross Poldark (a twin of my younger self)

You may not have heard of "Poldark" yet, it's just starting it's third season, but it's becoming very popular. Based on a series of books (which I guess I will now need to read) it starts out in about 1783. It too is about an upper-class Englishman but has a clever twist – he is Revolutionary war vet returning to England after their defeat in the colonies. (His simple response when asked how the greatest army in the world could lose? “We were on the wrong side.”) Poldark is also a story about change and not in a good way; it’s kind of dark. It is about the very difficult times that the beginning of the industrial revolution was inflicting on “certain” people and, in fact, changing everyone.

When Cap’t Poldark comes home his dad is dead and the family estate is kaput; the mines played are out, the land is fallow and whole thing mortgaged to the hilt. Oh yeah, and his fiancée has run off with his cousin. Poldark is a changed man when he returns, as vets usually are. He was essentially a gambler and playboy when he left but is now a serious guy. Anyway, there are essentially just two classes of people is this story: the tiny group of bankers and “elite” that own everything (of which, however shakily, Poldark is one) . . . and toiling masses that work for them. 

At one time, they all worked in the fields but when the industrial revolution came along the the workers moved to the mines and the factories. In the new, "modern" world they are no longer in control of their lives, just working for "the man."  Oh yeah, and there’s no food stamps, healthcare, social security – nuthin, zero, zip, nada. But Poldark is a good man; he treats his workers well, pays top dollar and is interested in their welfare. This, of course, is anathema to his fellow gentry and thus begins the drama to bring him down. An interesting irony here is that the “bad guy” is the grandson of a blacksmith – not a landed gentry - who has pulled himself by his bootstraps (and some really crappy dealings) to become the richest (and rottenest) banker in town. Huh.  

In "Poldark", the change in society for everyone is grinding on without resolution, just doubt and fear and pain for many - and for a loooonnnnngggg time. Even as the industrial revolution eventually brought many great things, it wasn’t without incredible pain and suffering for a lot people caught up in that change. In other words, the change might have been inevitable but it certainly wasn't painless for everyone. 

Oh, and it might also be a lesson about a small group of people having all the money.

Anything here ring a bell? 
              

I don’t want to make too much of these shows - I know they are just stories - but it’s hard to miss the similarities between these fictional characters and real people that are so distressed today. 

As a wise man once said, history may not repeat itself but it does rhyme. We’re way past the end of industrial revolution and apparently about at the end the information age moving to . . . I’m not sure what. There are a lot of moving parts to the change that we see all over the world and we have a lot of folks that are struggling with those changes: social, economic, cultural - you name it. And, of course, everything moves faster today making it that much more difficult to deal with. But there is also such a thing as progress and I'm pretty sure that you can't have progress without change. (Admittedly, one guy's progress could be another guy's step backward.) In any event, just like some change, you may not LIKE it but progress IS going to happen.

Obviously not all change is good - keeling over, divorce, running out of vodka - but we have to be really careful when deciding what part of change we want to fight. I'm no expert (and have certainly done my share of bitching about change) but maybe it would be helpful to be good students of history.  

And be willing to change even if you don't want to?

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. George Bernard Shaw

A great and appropriate song - RIP David

David Bowie Ch Ch Changes

Feel free to let me know what you think.

NOTE: I hope you’ll read my previous post about the elites – it’s related.