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I was flicking around before bed when I came across a show called Manor House. It's the spinoff of 1900 House, a series where a normal English family has to live as a British family would have at the turn of the Century We Usually Mean When We Say That. I'd never seen any of Manor House until now, but it seems more interesting.
Instead of having one family go apeshit alone, you have people from various walks of life taking on the roles within a stately home of the Edwardian Era. This closing episode follows each cast member as one describes the fear or joy at resuming modern life. The people that played the upper class family were a regular family, but in the real world the wife is a surgeon and the husband runs a flooring company. They also had a daughter played by an unrelated woman used to being a "freelance marketeer" in our time.
This woman was bugged out the most and looking forward to her return to Earth. "In this time, a woman is either a child or an object, " she reflected. She only felt useful when she dealt with the horses in the stable. That sounds perfectly Freudian to me (I had typed that as "Freudina", a world I'd like to give a meaning).
The staff, even with their shitty lots in the Edwardian realm, seemed the most saddened to leave. The women, most of whom were either professionals of some sort or in stages of youth, seem glad to see how far women had come because they didn't have to stay in these roles.
The show did a a great job of picturing the transitions. You see the family walk to the door in 1913 garb and the door opens to them in 2003 mufti. The second best transition was seeing one woman in garb while clothing flaps on the clothesline. Flap, she's obscured. Flap, she's back, still in Edwardian. Flap, she's got this very smart black coat and a look of absolute urbanity.
The best? The last. The master of the servants. They've got him walking around the manor. I had begun to think he had already turned back and truly was a stuffy dude. Then he pulls a big gate shut and he's dressed like... ummm, a bum. (He's actually an architect, so he's only a bum if you're an engineer.)
It's this guy that had said "it wasn't the money that kept Edwardian society going; it was the rigorous structure of class." This is a summary of what he'd learned.
They all hugged on their way out (two of 'em schtupped, which is more like it). Hugging doesn't seem very British, which I suppose is the very point. Britain isn't very British anymore.
The most popular acts in the UK have been decidedly non-British -- Super Furry Animals, for example. They're so Welsh that they still record entire albums in it. Trance is more European than it is anything of a kingdom.
The collapse of the British Empire seems to have done England a world of good. Then again, I'm not there. It just seems like massive doses of drugs, Americans and home-brew music have unwound the national psyche much more cleanly than the attempts to struggle on behalf of ridiculous social orders.
Now the U.S. is on this decidedly empire-centric kick. We fight wars and we never leave the places we go. The locals don't want us. We don't want our tax money wasted there when there's so fucking little of it here. The president, having been brought to power by Caesarean section, doesn't fathom this. Even right-wingers are tired of it. Why can't we all get back to our favorite pastimes -- Amendments 1 through 5?
Maybe I shouldn't be so wistful. We could learn something from the former British, but it may be the wrong stuff. Empire works when a single schmuck is allowed absolute authority over an isolated area intimidated by advanced technology, when there isn't as much micromanagement over what said schmuck will do to "the natives". Most people that want to run America like a corporation don't realize that. They also forget that making fiefdoms is how we originally got to be a nation.
Oh wait, they don't read their history. This way, they can repeat it more thoroughly.
-man from the TV detector van, Ps/d
Instead of having one family go apeshit alone, you have people from various walks of life taking on the roles within a stately home of the Edwardian Era. This closing episode follows each cast member as one describes the fear or joy at resuming modern life. The people that played the upper class family were a regular family, but in the real world the wife is a surgeon and the husband runs a flooring company. They also had a daughter played by an unrelated woman used to being a "freelance marketeer" in our time.
This woman was bugged out the most and looking forward to her return to Earth. "In this time, a woman is either a child or an object, " she reflected. She only felt useful when she dealt with the horses in the stable. That sounds perfectly Freudian to me (I had typed that as "Freudina", a world I'd like to give a meaning).
The staff, even with their shitty lots in the Edwardian realm, seemed the most saddened to leave. The women, most of whom were either professionals of some sort or in stages of youth, seem glad to see how far women had come because they didn't have to stay in these roles.
The show did a a great job of picturing the transitions. You see the family walk to the door in 1913 garb and the door opens to them in 2003 mufti. The second best transition was seeing one woman in garb while clothing flaps on the clothesline. Flap, she's obscured. Flap, she's back, still in Edwardian. Flap, she's got this very smart black coat and a look of absolute urbanity.
The best? The last. The master of the servants. They've got him walking around the manor. I had begun to think he had already turned back and truly was a stuffy dude. Then he pulls a big gate shut and he's dressed like... ummm, a bum. (He's actually an architect, so he's only a bum if you're an engineer.)
It's this guy that had said "it wasn't the money that kept Edwardian society going; it was the rigorous structure of class." This is a summary of what he'd learned.
They all hugged on their way out (two of 'em schtupped, which is more like it). Hugging doesn't seem very British, which I suppose is the very point. Britain isn't very British anymore.
The most popular acts in the UK have been decidedly non-British -- Super Furry Animals, for example. They're so Welsh that they still record entire albums in it. Trance is more European than it is anything of a kingdom.
The collapse of the British Empire seems to have done England a world of good. Then again, I'm not there. It just seems like massive doses of drugs, Americans and home-brew music have unwound the national psyche much more cleanly than the attempts to struggle on behalf of ridiculous social orders.
Now the U.S. is on this decidedly empire-centric kick. We fight wars and we never leave the places we go. The locals don't want us. We don't want our tax money wasted there when there's so fucking little of it here. The president, having been brought to power by Caesarean section, doesn't fathom this. Even right-wingers are tired of it. Why can't we all get back to our favorite pastimes -- Amendments 1 through 5?
Maybe I shouldn't be so wistful. We could learn something from the former British, but it may be the wrong stuff. Empire works when a single schmuck is allowed absolute authority over an isolated area intimidated by advanced technology, when there isn't as much micromanagement over what said schmuck will do to "the natives". Most people that want to run America like a corporation don't realize that. They also forget that making fiefdoms is how we originally got to be a nation.
Oh wait, they don't read their history. This way, they can repeat it more thoroughly.
-man from the TV detector van, Ps/d
