Downton Abbey: Race, Class, and Gender in Historical TV

Introduction: Personal Engagement with Downton Abbey

This paper examines personal media engagement with the television program Downton Abbey, with a particular focus on the way the program's high production values and contemporary hindsight sometimes clash with the outdated standards of the historical period portrayed. While one might expect a program set in an aristocratic estate in early twentieth-century England to critically evaluate the social, political, and cultural structures of the day, the program often does so only in a superficial, perfunctory way. This fact problematizes my own engagement with the program, because although I am attracted by its high production values and the nostalgic romance of a period story, these elements can sometimes serve to cover over the fact that the program is reinforcing some of the outdated social standards that held sway in Edwardian England.

In particular, the program has a noticeable problem when it comes to its portrayal of race, class, and gender. While race is nearly non-existent in the world of Downton Abbey, its absence is conspicuous precisely because the main characters never seem affected by it. In terms of class, the program has a number of opportunities to explore the ramifications of a system in which there is a permanent upper and lower class, but it largely focuses its discussion of class through the character of Tom, an Irish radical. Finally, while gender issues arguably receive the most attention due to the prominence of the character Sybil, even she is unable to substantially affect the program's otherwise traditional ideology, as she dies relatively quickly and unceremoniously — the program's most vocal radical voice is thus silenced. As a result, the viewer is left to consider whether the program's potentially regressive ideology is counterbalanced by the entertainment and educational value of seeing and learning about early twentieth-century England in such an immediate way.

Since its debut in 2010, Downton Abbey has turned into a genuine international phenomenon as well as something of a personal obsession — a television program that, if examined closely, can help demonstrate in vivid detail the problematic ideological issues that arise from practically any engagement with popular media. The widely popular and critically acclaimed ITV production follows the ups and downs of an aristocratic family and their servants in the early decades of the twentieth century. The program moves at a dizzying pace as it covers the years from 1912 to 1921 over the course of three series and two Christmas specials, touching on the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, violent political and religious upheaval in Ireland, and the emergence of early feminist movements, among other things. However, even as Downton Abbey examines the socio-political context of Edwardian England from the comfortable perspective of the twenty-first century, it cannot help but reproduce some of the very outdated assumptions and ideas it purports to examine, putting viewers in the uncomfortable position of enjoying a well-made, expertly produced program that nevertheless leaves one wondering about the dangerous ease with which potentially oppressive media insinuates itself into daily life.

Production Values and the Appeal of Period Drama

I chose Downton Abbey as the primary text of this study because its widespread popularity and my own personal interest have made it one of the most culturally resonant texts of the last few years. My engagement with this media is almost daily, and it represents a large portion of my media engagement in general — both because I view it so regularly and because its plot and production values make it stand out from other television programs. Each series consists of eight episodes, although the first series has only seven; in addition, there have been two Christmas specials.

My attraction to Downton Abbey stems from a number of sources. First, the production values of the program are excellent, allowing it to bring the material quality of the period and its characters to life in a way that has previously been impossible. In a very basic sense, then, one major appeal of the show is simply the period in which it is set, because the locations, costumes, and even the food the characters prepare and eat are rendered with exquisite detail. The program transports the viewer to an entirely different time and place, creating a visually rich world so precise and consistent that every detail of its presentation is as carefully measured as the distance between serving plates on a formal table.

In addition, the plot of any given episode gains extra importance and intrigue from the specific period in which it is set. Downton Abbey is not merely about the residents and servants of an aristocratic house, but about how those residents and servants adapt to the changes brought about by the twentieth century. The very first episode begins with the sinking of the Titanic, and subsequent episodes deal with the role — or lack thereof — of a rural, aristocratic family in the new Britain that is rapidly emerging. The program simultaneously creates a kind of fairy-tale romance through the costumes and customs of the upper class while showing all the work that goes into maintaining that appearance, all the while exploring what happens when this system is forced to adapt to external, historical forces. However, as will be seen, the show is very selective in its choice of which historical forces to represent and how to represent them.

The Absence of Race and the Pamuk Problem

My underlying motivations for watching Downton Abbey are two-fold. On the one hand, the program offers a kind of pleasant escape: as discussed above, it is very effective at creating a coherent, consistent world rendered in extreme visual and narrative detail. On the other hand, even though the show is fiction, it provides a very real look into details of life in Edwardian England that one would likely never encounter otherwise, such as the different hierarchies of power and prestige within the serving class. These two motivations sometimes come into conflict, because at times it seems as if the program's desire to entertain and delight overwhelms any need it might feel to explore the power hierarchies it is representing — or at least to explore them in ways that might challenge the underlying assumptions that inform those hierarchies.

When considering Downton Abbey from the perspective of a critical theorist, three central themes or problems become apparent. Two are discussed fairly frequently on the program itself, albeit in sometimes disheartening ways, and one is conspicuous because of its absence. Specifically, while the program frequently highlights the emerging notions of feminism and class solidarity that were developing near the beginning of the twentieth century, concepts of race are almost entirely absent — largely because the show is populated entirely by white people. Race, gender, and class are of course extremely broad categories, and almost any media engages with these concepts either implicitly or explicitly. As will become clear over the course of this analysis, Downton Abbey exhibits a consistent, problematic approach to these concepts that vacillates between shallow acknowledgment and outright offensiveness.

That a program focusing on an aristocratic family in early twentieth-century England is populated entirely by white actors should not come as too much of a surprise, and one might be inclined to write off this lack of non-white actors as a result of the show's devotion to historical accuracy. However, there are a couple of problems with this justification. For one, the claim of historical accuracy is only sufficient to justify the program's lack of non-white characters if one is willing to assert that there were definitively no non-white people with whom any of Downton Abbey's residents might have interacted. While non-white residents of a rural English town would likely have been rare in Edwardian England, it seems altogether absurd to suggest it was impossible — which means the lack of non-white characters is ultimately the result of a decision on the part of the show's creators. Even if this omission was not intentional, that only demonstrates the comfortable complacency that can arise from white privilege.

Above and beyond the general absence of non-white characters, when Downton Abbey has featured a non-white character in a prominent role, it has relied on such pervasive and outdated tropes that one cannot help but react with disgust at what appears to be an almost intentionally racist portrayal of a minority. This is most evident in the character of Kemal Pamuk, a visiting Turkish diplomat who stays at Downton Abbey in one episode. Although the actor who plays Pamuk is British and would likely qualify as "white" by today's standards, it is clear that he is intended to represent a kind of "other" — in the same way that Irish and Italian people were excluded from the category of "white" for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Aside from some of his physical features and manner of speech, what truly marks Pamuk as belonging to another "race" is the fact that his character is almost entirely constructed from racist stereotypes relating to the supposed sexual promiscuity and aggression of non-white men. While in the United States these stereotypes are most frequently associated with black men, in Europe they extend to those ethnicities with which white Europeans have had more immediate contact. As such, the "exotic" Turkish diplomat is burdened with a characterization that focuses exclusively on his supposedly uncontrollable sexual appetites. Pamuk kisses Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the aristocratic family, without her consent, and later goes to her bedroom unannounced. However, once the two begin to have sex, Pamuk dies suddenly, and the episode turns into a dramatic farce in which Mary, her mother, and her maid must move Pamuk's body back to his own room without alerting anyone.

As Sharon Marcus notes, Downton Abbey owes some of its plotting and pacing to the stage melodramas of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and so certain elements of the Kemal Pamuk episode can be understood as artifacts of that legacy (Marcus 2012, p. 445). Pamuk's death and the subsequent scramble to return his body are simultaneously funny and horrifying, and the viewer is almost inevitably drawn into the drama. However, this entertainment ultimately distracts the viewer from the fact that it is rooted in a racist portrayal of a non-white, non-European character — a portrayal that resonates even more when one considers, for example, the difficulty Turkey has faced in its attempts to join the European Union. Furthermore, it is difficult to avoid charges of racism when Downton Abbey's only major non-white, non-European character is portrayed as uncontrollably — even mortally — sexual, and when that character could have been replaced by a white European without any other change being necessary. It is extremely difficult to accept the implicit proposition that the only non-white person to visit Downton happened to embody a well-established racist stereotype.

Conclusion: Entertainment, Ideology, and Historical Representation

The problematic nature of Downton Abbey becomes clear because the very thing that makes it so entertaining is also what makes it potentially oppressive and even dangerous. By rendering the early twentieth century in such exquisite detail, the show is able to convince viewers — including, at times, myself — that its representation of history is the way "it really was," when in fact this representation is entirely permeated with the gender, class, and racial privileges of the show's creators. While it would of course be difficult to make a program about an aristocratic family that is entirely devoted to criticizing the privilege and excess of that family, Downton Abbey's presentation of radical movements and ideas — combined with its near-complete absence of non-white characters — ultimately serves to reinforce and justify the otherwise obviously unjustifiable power structures that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century and that linger to this day.