I see your point :). I'm a sucker for good history in fiction, and when you look at Downton like that, the show is simply flawless (well, at least in my opinion - I don't know that much about the Edwardian period to pass some sort of "serious" judgement).
I'm not sure how I feel about Ethel stuff... What I really liked was that, when it comes to sex, Anna is just one step behind Ethel (like, last episode, when she offered Mr Bates she would become his mistress), and the characters have different standards when it comes to Anna! I know I shouldn't be all "YAY, INJUSTICE", but it's just... so human? I read the Ethel - Mrs Hughes - Anna relations as saying that Anna wouldn't get immediately sacked if she was caught with Bates. The characters simply don't like Ethel, so they apply the harshest existing standard to her. And of course it's not fair, but it also shows that people had complex sexual morality back then. They were more eager to forgive some things than the other, they had their favorites; there was no organized "system" abusing women, it was a very complex and subtle structure with details and shades and "grades of evil". I like this depiction. It's fair. If there was a strict system, a set of rules that always worked, we would be well rid of it by now, and we aren't, we still have some pieces here and there. So the fact that there are double standards in Downton kind of helps to explain our reality.
Still, I'm not sure if there really should be a girl punished for having sex shown on TV, and all with no proper comment. So I like this artistically, I guess, but I have my doubts when it comes to the message it sends to the audience.
It's a big and broad problem, actually. Because how do we depict stuff like women abuse, or slavery, or shocking violence in contemporary historical fiction? For example, I'm really curious how do English-speaking people respond to Branson. Because I grew up in Eastern Europe, and culture there is full of images of different "types" of communists (well, not now, but it's not like you don't watch older movies or read older books, right?), so I instinctively put him being a "freedom fighter" in quotation marks, and I expect him to start abusing people in the name of freedom (of course it's a cliche in my head, and reality is never that simple, but it's not like I can help it). So how do you people read Branson? Are you surprised by his behavior in the last episode?
I know those questions may sound a bit silly; it's just that people's reactions to ideologies like communism are so culture-specific, because countries had so different experience with those beliefs, and one rarely has the occasion to ask people about it.
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Thank you :).
I see your point :). I'm a sucker for good history in fiction, and when you look at Downton like that, the show is simply flawless (well, at least in my opinion - I don't know that much about the Edwardian period to pass some sort of "serious" judgement).
I'm not sure how I feel about Ethel stuff... What I really liked was that, when it comes to sex, Anna is just one step behind Ethel (like, last episode, when she offered Mr Bates she would become his mistress), and the characters have different standards when it comes to Anna! I know I shouldn't be all "YAY, INJUSTICE", but it's just... so human? I read the Ethel - Mrs Hughes - Anna relations as saying that Anna wouldn't get immediately sacked if she was caught with Bates. The characters simply don't like Ethel, so they apply the harshest existing standard to her. And of course it's not fair, but it also shows that people had complex sexual morality back then. They were more eager to forgive some things than the other, they had their favorites; there was no organized "system" abusing women, it was a very complex and subtle structure with details and shades and "grades of evil". I like this depiction. It's fair. If there was a strict system, a set of rules that always worked, we would be well rid of it by now, and we aren't, we still have some pieces here and there. So the fact that there are double standards in Downton kind of helps to explain our reality.
Still, I'm not sure if there really should be a girl punished for having sex shown on TV, and all with no proper comment. So I like this artistically, I guess, but I have my doubts when it comes to the message it sends to the audience.
It's a big and broad problem, actually. Because how do we depict stuff like women abuse, or slavery, or shocking violence in contemporary historical fiction? For example, I'm really curious how do English-speaking people respond to Branson. Because I grew up in Eastern Europe, and culture there is full of images of different "types" of communists (well, not now, but it's not like you don't watch older movies or read older books, right?), so I instinctively put him being a "freedom fighter" in quotation marks, and I expect him to start abusing people in the name of freedom (of course it's a cliche in my head, and reality is never that simple, but it's not like I can help it). So how do you people read Branson? Are you surprised by his behavior in the last episode?
I know those questions may sound a bit silly; it's just that people's reactions to ideologies like communism are so culture-specific, because countries had so different experience with those beliefs, and one rarely has the occasion to ask people about it.