Downton Abbey, Rape, and an Annoying Modern Habit

                I like “Downton Abbey.”  Sure, it’s really just a nighttime soap opera, but it’s a good one, a beautifully-shot one, and one that teaches you a little bit of history while killing off its stars in more believable ways than “General Hospital.”  Matthew died in a car crash.  Sybil died in childbirth.  It’s the early 20th century.  These things happened.  Nobody from the upstairs or the downstairs has yet died in an around-the-world blimp race crash when an angry Mongolian shot them with a slingshot loaded with Acme Blow-Up Powder. 

                This week one of the downstairs mainstays, Anna, got raped by the manservant of an upstairs suitor for the recently-widowed Lady Mary.  And then the media went ape-shit.  Apparently, the creator of the show was “in the soup”, threatened by viewers as they thrashed at media regulators when it first aired in England twenty-six years ago (there’s a lot of lag time).  Whenever anything remotely realistic happens on TV, other than a zombie attack, someone’s sure to get up on a really tall soapbox and say some inane stuff that the media will take seriously. 

                Rape happens.  It’s not new.  It wasn’t new in Britain after the Great War.  It was awful then.  It’s awful now.  It’s not pretty, but it is real.  And isn’t art SUPPOSED to reflect life?

                Since my girlfriend is a rabid Abbey fan and a hard-core internet addict, she forwarded me a whole bunch of reaction pieces from people who loyally watch the show.  And, since it’s about rape, there were some understandably strong reactions.  What wasn’t understandable, but is common, is our desire to throw the warm blanket of modern values onto the past. 

           I must’ve read fifteen articles about how a fictional character should have reported her violation to the authorities, the fictional authorities.  Here’s the deal:  if they want to recreate an accurate time and place, Anna probably wouldn’t have reported her rape to anyone, ever, not her husband with his violent and righteous past, not her employers, not the police, not even Mrs. Hughes.  She wouldn’t have said anything.  Is that tragic?  Of course it is.  Is that the way it would have happened?  Yep.  If it were the duty of historians and TV-show-runners to import modern ideals onto a decidedly non-modern setting, then we’d be complaining about Don Draper’s lack of environmental concern because he puts his cigarette butts out on the street.  People used to throw used beer cans out of their car windows when they were driving all the time, as recently as the 70s.  In parts of Texas, they still do. 

                Whitewashing the past and looking at it through the prism of the present helps no one.  Complaining about the actions of fictional characters means that you spend too much time posting your poorly-thought-out opinions onto the casserole of nonsense that we call The Internet.  Yes, I get the irony that this is a blog.           

          (Photo courtesy of ITV and The Internet.)