There aren’t that many cultural phenomena that transcend generations these days, but one of them has recently arrived in the form of a veddy British period piece called “Downton Abbey.” As everyone reading this probably already knows, the PBS series traces the fortunes of a wealthy, titled family—and their below-stairs domestic servants—before and during the cataclysm of World War I.
My husband and I found ourselves glued to it during its first season. Now my twenty-something son and daughter have discovered “Downton Abbey” and appear to be equally mesmerized—just the way my mother and I were both enthralled by the remarkably similar British series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” shown on PBS back in the 70’s. (Of course these days, thanks to the miracle of time-shifting, we don’t all have to watch “Downton Abbey” at the same time. My son and daughter watched the first season only recently, courtesy of Netflix, and my husband and I didn’t get around to watching Sunday night’s season premiere, which we had recorded, until Monday night. My daughter, who had already seen it, joined us for the last 20 minutes and helpfully provided dialogue a split second before it was voiced by the characters. She, in turn, had watched the premiere with a couple of friends who had already seen the entire second season, which has already been broadcast in Great Britain, on the Internet.)
I can’t help but wonder why so many of us Americans are fascinated by the spectacle of the dying British class system (it’s not just me and my family, of course—guests at the dinner party my husband and I attended Sunday night were clearing out before 9:00 so as not to miss the show). This week’s New Yorker quotes the American actress Elizabeth McGovern, who portrays the American-born Countess of Grantham, explaining it this way: “We are so similar and yet so profoundly different. In England, you are always having to read the signs. No one says exactly what they mean.”
True enough, but I wonder if there’s more to it than that. In a way, I think part of what fascinates us Americans about the series is what’s more out in the open—specifically, the way class is treated so matter-of-factly. Everyone knows his or her place, and even the servants are vigilant about policing class lines (at least some of them are). People may cross the boundaries, and they seem to be doing it more frequently under the pressures of war, but at least it’s clear where the boundaries are.
Meanwhile in this country, we go to great lengths to deny that class exists at all. Virtually all Americans think they belong to the middle class—a 2006 Gallup poll found that 1% of Americans identified themselves as upper class, and 6% as lower class, despite the fact that at the time 12.3% of Americans were living below the federal poverty level. And Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum recently denied that there were any classes in the United States at all.
And yet just a few days before he said that, the New York Times reported that there’s actually less economic mobility in the United States than in Canada and Western Europe—including that bastion of class oppression, Great Britain. Basically that means that if you’re born poor in the United States, it’s going to be harder for you to move out of that status here than it is in the land of Downton Abbey. (And yes, the British class system isn’t what it used to be, but there’s still a franker acknowledgment of the existence of class than there is here.)
Mr. Santorum may try to distinguish between income and class (he’s quoted in that Times article as saying that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America,” so at least he acknowledges that much). But when what you’re talking about is multi-generational poverty—and the relative abundance of that in this country is apparently the reason we have less mobility—it’s really a distinction without much of a difference. Generations of low income produce a certain kind of culture, just as generations of high income do.
Anyone who thinks we live in a classless society just has to take a look at my hometown, Washington, D.C. Things aren’t quite as stratified here as they used to be, partly thanks to gentrification—which, before it pushes out low-income residents often produces an interesting mix of people within a given neighborhood. But you’d be hard pressed to find many residents of the Upper Northwest quadrant of D.C. whose income is below the poverty line, while other areas (specifically Wards Seven and Eight) have plenty of people in that category. (I had to mention the Upper Northwest, since that’s ostensibly the subject of this blog!)
Maybe we’re so fascinated by the frank acknowledgment of class distinctions in “Downton Abbey” because it’s a relief not to have to pretend such things don’t exist. It’s understandable that some Americans feel an impulse to deny that there are classes in this country. After all, our founding was premised on a rejection of titles and aristocracy and everything that went with them (although believe me, few if any of the Founders would have gone so far as to reject the idea of class). And a classless society is surely a laudable goal. But let’s not confuse aspirations with reality.
Meanwhile, we can all tune in to “Downton Abbey” and feel smugly superior to these people with their antiquated but somehow charming notions of where they all rank in the social scale, whether we really are superior or not.