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Weird to watch again after watching Downton Abbey

posted 5 years ago by mobocracy (845)
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I saw this twice before, in the theater when it was released and again on video at some point before Downton Abbey came out.

It's almost distracting to see it again after having watched all of Downton Abbey because of how much of Gosford repeats in Downton Abbey.

I will say I wish Downton Abbey had a bit more of Gosford's darkness to it. To the extent that Downton Abbey had scandals, they were all a bit light and frothy. You would have expected some of the same scandals (the lord of the manor taking liberties with maids, his wife's sexual indulgences, a grittier staff) as Gosford had, but to the extent they existed it was more situation comedy than drama.

[–] GordianNott (137) 5 years ago

Downton Abbey definitely whitewashed things both upstairs and downstairs. I think that aristocrats taking sexual advantage of servants was more common than Downton would ever hint at, though with Robert as the only nobleman in the house (and being very proper), I guess that reduced the chances of that happening. (He did dally with the widowed maid, Jane, but that was consensual.)

[–] mobocracy (845) 5 years ago

I think there were probably a lot of sexual liberties taken, I guess I wonder how it all worked.

Could you get away with raping a servant just because of your title? Did female servants simply see a little sexual harassment as expected, perhaps even going along to get along or gain some kind of advantage?

Does the Housekeeper (being older, and more experienced) simply understand this and structure the staff in a way to keep the most vulnerable/youngest female staff away from the lord of the manor?

[–] GordianNott (137) 5 years ago

Those would be my guesses, just based on present-day human behavior. Probably not rape as in attacking someone in a dark alley and physically overpowering them, more like Harvey Weinstein pressuring women into it or they'd lose their job, so in that sense they would appear to go along with it no matter how much they hated it. And probably a lot of stories from other servant women too about "that's the way it is."

Just speculating, or mostly speculating. A relative traced our family history back to late 1800s Sweden where there was a milkmaid on a noble estate who didn't list a father on the birth record for her baby. We were left to wonder if it was a manor lord or maybe a boyfriend or maybe a fling with a stranger, but the family legend (yes, not reliable) was it was the manor lord or one of his sons who wanted to keep their name off the record.

[–] Heisenberg (6277) 4 years ago

I kinda felt the same way as you do, but after watching Gosford Park again (and I've seen it at least 10 times) after Downton Abbey, I think I appreciate how Downton is a fantasy of this upstairs downstairs setting, and I like that.
It's too obvious and done a million times to see that the rich take advantage of the poor, or consider servants as lesser human beings, or in general they don't communicate in the same language and belong to different worlds. Any of these concepts, and many more about division and class war, has been done a million times. And Gosford Park, which I appreciate and like a lot, if anything seems less interesting after watching Downton Abbey, and less original.

Only thing I wish they removed from Downton is the soap opera factor of many of its storylines (people dying, being persecuted, or sudden resolutions that are too easy or didn't earn their importance etc).
But the lightness and niceness of upstairs vs downstairs and the mutual respect for one another, is fresh and nice and it is what defines Downton and elevates it.
I wish they made a stronger point of how Downton Abbey was maybe different than other houses of the time and had this marvellous sense of community that other places, like Gosford Park, never knew.

[–] mobocracy (845) 4 years ago

I don't know, but I kind of suspect that the manor houses that kept going -- or at least didn't utterly collapse -- probably did have a fair amount of community and mutual respect, especially once you got into the 1920s and beyond. Britain took a lot of losses in WW I, which would have made labor more expensive, plus the general increase in opportunity for blue collar workers would have forced manor houses to improve working conditions/status in addition to absorbing cuts in expected services to the aristocratic members in the house.