Downton Abbey

[Olesia Rhoswen]

No being either British or rich ;Downton Abbey interest me mainly in the fact that it's one of the very few things on TV currently that has all white actors; and that it doesn't require sex and violence to keep up the pace.

Not for very much longer, unfortunately...


Downton Abbey to introduce first black character as hit show is set to explore race relations storyline


..."He's black and very handsome. A real man (not a boy) with charm and charisma".

The notes also state that whoever lands the coveted role should "ideally be able to sing brilliantly".

According to The Sun newspaper, the notes add: "Overall he should be a very attractive man with a certain wow factor."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...storyline.html

[White Winger]

Yes, truly,exactly, like it was, at that time....

Jump The Shark time! May the ratings sink like....well, a nigger trying to swim....

[SUNOFSPARTA]

Originally Posted by Olesia Rhoswen

Not for very much longer, unfortunately...


Downton Abbey to introduce first black character as hit show is set to explore race relations storyline


..."He's black and very handsome. A real man (not a boy) with charm and charisma".

The notes also state that whoever lands the coveted role should "ideally be able to sing brilliantly".

According to The Sun newspaper, the notes add: "Overall he should be a very attractive man with a certain wow factor."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...storyline.html

Regetable news.Thanks for the heads up.I'll scratch another off my list.

[Olesia Rhoswen]

Regrettable news.Thanks for the heads up.I'll scratch another off my list.

I can't imagine you'd have a list left!

Perhaps he'll be killed off early in a tragic racist conflict with intolerant British folk, and business will continue as usual.

Enough other characters have perished, it's not terribly unlikely.

[Jean West]

It amused me that Downton Abbey was advertised as a series that outed the snobbishness of the dying breed of English aristocrats, suggesting that was why millions were watching it.. Fat chance. They were watching it because watching Whites in a White world is easy on the eyes and pleasing to the sensibilities.

The presence of class differences is actually imbedded in most films, not just English and not just period pieces; it's only a little more noticeable there, because of the grand estates and beautiful English tailoring..

I despised the Shirley MacLaine first episode of the third season; hoping it was a one shot deal, I forced myself to watch the next week and was glad I did, since she didn't reappear. I was curious about the Jewish reaction--I knew there'd be one--so I looked around for signs. The first article I found was Jewish 'Downton Abbey' by Sarah Seltzer. She writes:

"Many of us were convinced that * thanks to her husband’s name, “Isidore Levinson,” and his fortune as a Cincinnatti dry goods manufacturer * there was strong evidence for Martha’s and her offsprings’s Jewishness. And we weren’t strictly wrong. It just seems that according to Downton’s creators, Isidore, a Jew, left the tribe behind him when he married. Renee Ghert-Zand discovered the truth, embedded in an official behind-the-series book: The tome contains a chapter devoted to “Mrs. Isidore Levinson,” which states that although, “Martha’s husband was Jewish, she herself is not, and their children were raised Episcopalians.” Well, you could have fooled me, since I thought MacLaine played Martha as Jewish. . .With Martha Levinson’s brash demeanor and over-the-top wardrobe, I thought producers were signaling not merely that the character is nouveau riche, but that she’s nouveau riche and Jewish. Ultimately, whether Levinson is actually Jewish or whether she just married a Jew and raised her children as Christian isn’t particularly relevant to her symbolism in the plot. The fact, for instance, that Martha would have had no issue marrying a Jewish man while the thought of any sort of “foreigners” renders the Downton clan apoplectic illustrates the difference starkly.
What Levinson represents, and what both Jewish and American characters have long represented in the tradition of British fiction and television, is the uneasy but fascinating relationship between the staid British gentry and the dynamic, untethered ways of “the outsider.”
________________________

An article by Gail Lerner in "the Forward's annual satirical Purim edition, the Backward", is entitled Downton Rebbe and features a somewhat nauseating photo (I think Maggie looks a little uncomfortable).


________________________
But alas, Downton Abbey may not be deserving of gentle Jewish humor. The sordid truth is that Downton Abbey is a rip-off of Fiddler on the Roof. (Since I never saw the Fiddler film, I can't be faulted for not having noticed that "Tevye and Lord Grantham Are Strikingly Similar Figures.") But Michael Millenson did notice, and he describes the "startling similarities" in How 'Downton Abbey' Plundered the Story of 'Fiddler on the Roof'.
________________________

With Matthew's departure and the promise of one or more new "outsider"-type cast members, I won't be watching next season, but it was pretty good while it lasted, though not quite up to the very high standards of the original Forsyte Saga or the legendary original Upstairs, Downstairs.

[SUNOFSPARTA]

I've been watching Call The Midwife,which appears to be white -so far.

[Jean West]

In my previous post, I spoke of the Jewish reaction to Downton Abbey. When I first read that the next Masterpiece Classic would be a period piece about a flamboyant department store owner, remembering the "miracle" on 34th Street, I thought, hmmm, this might be a more concrete reaction than mere news articles.

NPR writes "At the unfashionable end of Oxford Street in 1909 London, an American retail tycoon arrives to jettison fusty British tradition and open one of the finest department stores the world has ever seen: Selfridges. Three-time Emmy winner Jeremy Piven (in his first television appearance since his iconic role as Hollywood agent Ari Gold in Entourage) stars as Harry Gordon Selfridge, the flamboyant entrepreneur and showman seeking to provide London's shoppers with the ultimate merchandise and the ultimate thrill."

Born in NYC, Jeremy Piven was raised in a Reconstructionist Jewish household, played the part of "Bernardo" in West Side Story as a teenager, and trained at the theater workshop founded by his parents, Byrne Piven and Joyce Hiller Piven (née Goldstein). His character is based on the real-life American-born British retail magnate who founded the London-based department store Selfridges, whose name was

Harry Gordon Selfridge

Harry_Gordon_Selfridge

Here's Piven's Selfridge:

And here's Selfridge:

I've always been interested in the way film people so often use Jews to portray non-Jews and non-Jews to portray Jews. In the article I quoted from in the previous post, the author was able to enjoy the MacLaine episode as Jewish, even though it really wasn't. For the same reason, Selfridge may be enjoyed by Jews as Jewish, even though he wasn't. The power of images to override truth--why was the leader of the basterds handsome non-Jewish Brad Pitt?

[N.B. Forrest]

Perhaps the ultimate fugly kike cheapskate:

Worst Tipper #1: Jeremy Piven

In 2007, Jeremy Piven reportedly showed up at high-end sushi joint Nobu in Aspen with a crowd of 12, without a reservation. After being seated and served, Piven told a manager while walking out, "Thanks for nothing." His tip? A signed Entourage DVD. An enraged Nobu employee apparently hurled the box at Piven as he was leaving. Piven was banned from Nobu, so we guess Piven and Nobu staff failed to hug it out.

[Ray Allan]

Downton Abbey really needs to end now. Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) is about the only reason I'm watching it now. Julian Fellowes is running out of ideas and won't allow any other writers except himself. The show has really gone into the toilet the past couple of seasons. It was bad enough having Shirley MacLaine guest-starring, but now the little blonde bimbo Rose character on the show fell for a black guy and now she is set to be the shiksa of a jew. There have also been off-handed references to the German National Socialist Party (it's now 1924 on the show) as "thugs", since Lady Edith's lover Mr. Gregson was presumed killed by them in Munich.

My idea for ending the show? Flash-forward to 1940 where an errant Luftwaffe bomb crashes down on the Abbey and kills everyone.

[SouthernNS]

I was so disappointed when they kiked and nigged it up. So much for that show.

[steven clark]

I only started watching Downton Abbey last year, and am kind of hooked on it now, since a girl friend of mine is pretty crazy about it, I like the acting and actors, and the period detail is good, although I'm not much into upper class British stuff; it's a sort of a Upstairs Downstairs redux.

I did roll my eyes at the black character. It was so obviously a modern attempt at PC, especially when the old dowager endorses interracial marriage. The marriage of the Jew is kind of interesting, though. I think the young lady is a bit of a ditz, and I was also surprised the Lord of the manor married a Jew.
It's a nice demo how Jewish money and 'old breeding' interact, esp. since the old British types needed the yankee money to keep things going. Also, I liked the reaction of the Jewish father to his son marrying the girl. The father was angry, called the girl a shiksa, and his anger was very realistic, and reminds us that not all Jews are anxious to mingle with us. I rather liked him.
I do agree Lady Mary is the character I like the best, and Fellowes writes very good period dialogue for her and her world. Sort of a tempered down Noel Coward, but her dlalogue and manner of speech is very accurate.

I do wonder about all the Jew loving. It's really very open, and I see a lot of that in the BBC now.

I do agree that I'd like to see the series wrap up after a final season. It's ready to wink out.

[Ray Allan]

I like Mary's character and she does have good lines. Michelle Dockery is smoking hot, too. She is a lot like her grandmother Violet in personality and that's obviously where she gets it from. I agree the PC stuff with the negro character Jack Ross and now this jew thing is a turn-off. But Cora, the Countess of Grantham's father was a wealthy American jew named Levinson and Robert, the Earl of Grantham married into her family, so I can understand why they are not too upset about Rose's marriage to a jew.

Actually it would be interesting to see things flash forward to WW2 and even the 1950s and 60s as an example of how the English aristocratic class dealt with all the massive social and societal changes in Britain and the rest of the world. It's already happening in the 20s on the show, but from what I've read, Fellowes doesn't plan on taking DA out of that decade and will end before 1930. Probably for the best, since the plotlines and writing are faltering at this point.

[steven clark]

A new version of Upstairs Downstairs came out a couple of years ago, and it was very big on being anti Nazi, and dribbling in minorities here and there.

I also think Downton Abbey is for the upper class and the 'sophisticated' American literary class who, even in the early 1800's, were very anglophile. People complained American writers never got the opportunity English writers got. Like Gore Vidal said, our ruling class is a copycat of the British class.

On the abbey, while I found the school teacher a bit of an obnoxious leftist loudmouth, I am glad to see the servants becoming more democratic and realizing their days as domestics are closing. I'm always pulling for the little guys. As for the teacher, that was pretty much leftist thought. Orwell did a lot of reporting on the English leftist attitude.

[SouthernNS]

Originally Posted by Ray Allan

I like Mary's character and she does have good lines.

I quit liking Michelle Dockery's character after she fucked that shitskin in the second or third episode. But since the writers decided to make her mother a kike, and therefore Lady Mary herself a kike, I guess it doesn't really matter who she spreads her legs for. It turned into marxist filth so quickly.

I'm certain they killed off the dog because her name was Isis, and they didn't want to offend the sandniggers.

I like Mr. and Mrs. Bates, but I'm not going to watch the show just for them.

I'm done with it.

[Ray Allan]

Actually the Turk Mr. Pamuk, in that Season 1 episode tried to force himself on Mary by appearing in her bed--she didn't initiate it. Then the guy died right there, creating a potential scandal that other members of the Crawley family and staff (it was Cora, Edith and Anna, if I recall) helped to cover up.

In addition to Rose's nigger and jew-chasing, we have the widowed Mary this season fooling around with that Gillingham character, having a secret rendezvous with him at a hotel. I know people have always done things like that, not just because it's the Roaring 20s and people in England had had enough of all the Victorian Era repression. But it does show how the jews implemented the Protocols and worked to subvert Western culture and morals even at that early stage and they had already engineered the Bolshevik Revolution and destroyed Russia. Great Britain and the United States were now getting the same treatment and it was in full swing in Weimar Germany. So naturally, Fellowes and the PC producers have to do the obligatory bashing of Hitler and the nascent NSDAP on the show.