Downton Abbey and Human Goodness

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

itv.com

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, / Would men observingly distil it out.
–Henry V (Shakespeare)

Period drama is one of my favourite genres of film and television. When I was in graduate school I had a group of friends that would get together on Sunday evenings to watch fare of the Brideshead Revisited and Merchant Ivory variety, though we would sometimes branch out to Ingmar Bergman or other “haut” cinema. That being said, I am never up-to-date on the latest culture even when it comes to this genre, and it was only earlier this year that I began watching episodes of the wildly popular Downton Abbey television series. I was sceptical at first that it may be over-rated, but quickly discovered that the accolades are well-deserved. It is a very fine production.

A Jesuit companion who recently lent me his library copy of the second season (which, sadly, I had to return only a couple of episodes in) commented to me that the show’s strength is its depiction of human nobility. Each of the characters, whether “upstairs” or “downstairs”, has an opportunity to behave nobly, and, no matter how small the action itself, to do something great. I think this is a real insight. Indeed, I might go a bit deeper and say that it shows us something about human goodness.

Those Darn Dark Ages

By John D. O’Brien, S.J. 

Credit: www.zazzle.ca

Occasionally you can hear people referring to a period in history called “the dark ages”. Usually it is expressed as something like this: “We’re not in the dark ages anymore!”, or, “What is this, the dark ages?”, and especially this: “That would take us back to the dark ages!” It is a deliberately exaggerated epithet intended to convey the belief that we have evolved beyond something the speaker disagrees with—usually quite strongly.

The trouble is, it is intellectually lazy at best and downright malicious at worst. The implicit assumption, of course, that there was a time (before ours naturally) when things were really, really “dark”. Life was akin to that portrayed in one of those depressing medieval films, where it is raining all time, feral children wrestle with dogs in the straw, the nobles are invariably conniving and corrupt, and the Church is suppressing all learning and, well, civilization. Most scholars know this image is pure bunkum, and if you want to make any medievalist cringe, try using the phrase in his or her presence.