Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, says he does 'not
fully understand' why his television drama of the aristocratic
household has been so fabulously successful. Really? Well let me
tell him. Or, rather, let the new. post-DNA-sequencing science of
evolutionary biology tell him:
1. It is about a fairly well-defined group of people. It's not too
small (it's larger than one family) but not too large either (smaller
than 100-150 people). It is a resonating replica of the typical
scavenger-hunter-gatherer group in which our predecessors spent
millions of years. It expresses the same repertoire of social
behaviours that were shaped by our environment in that era and then
locked into our genes which, in their myriad of possible
orchestrations, produce surprises (and their subsequent stresses) as
well as regularities.
2. But the most powerful of all the social behaviours is that of
status, and Downton Abbey is stuffed full with it, both in those
people above stairs and below stairs. Higher status is closely
correlated with more, or better, sex by the male, or more, and
better, economic security for the sake of her children in the case of
the female. The choice of male partners by females and differential
numbers of ensuing offspring is by far the most defining and shaping
evolutionary determinator of human-ness, way above a fairly low
threshold of 'survival of the fittest' which even the inept can meet.
There we are then. Downton Abbey will never be a great work but it
recapitulates the brilliance of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
about a small group or Leon Tolstoy's War and Peace or Thomas Mann's
Buddenbrooks about many small groups. Most of the audience of Downton
Abbey will have never read those books but can still respond in the
same way as the most discriminating literary buffs. Mirror neurons of
the brain, which resonate inwardly to what is seen outwardly, act
similarly in all who watch television plays or read novels about
status dramas in groups.
Oh, and by the way, Lord Fellowes, if you do not fully understand the
reason for the huge success of Downton Abbey, experienced television
producers certainly do. Those of ITV are falling over themselves, as
you know, for you to write another series of Downton Abbey and, in
the case of BBC, to revive Upstairs, Downstairs, a similar production
of some years ago. (Before too long we will probably be sick of
these dramas in aristocratic settings but Austen, Tolstoy and Mann
show us otherwise.)
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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