By Frederick Dixon:
Alright, I confess, I’m a Downton Abbey addict. That cosy soap of life above and below stairs in the very different, but still recognisable, England of nearly a century ago is just what I need when I’m in the mood to blob out in front of the telly. Whether or not it’s a realistic portrayal of that life is another matter; no doubt my grandmothers, both of whom were in service before the Great War, would have had something to say about it, but they’re both long gone.
One of the charms of Downton was that it managed to steer relatively clear of political correctness – only relatively, as the tolerant acceptance of a homosexual footman (surprisingly played as an unpleasant and manipulative character) does not ring true for the period. Nevertheless, relatively clear it was…until now. Alarm bells rang even before the present series started when we learnt that it was to feature a “handsome young black band leader”. According to the author, Tory peer Lord Fellows, he felt that the programme needed greater ethnic diversity – really, in the England of the 1920s? I wonder if someone had a word in his ear? The inevitable has happened and our band leader has been seen in a clinch with the flighty, but very young and very pretty, Lady Rose. Very daring for the Twenties and certainly only the beginning of a story line which will run for the rest of the series, (although those sensitive to racism might query this stereotypical portrayal of a black man as a skirt chaser).
What will become of this story we don’t yet know, but I can make certain predictions – the nastier characters will be racist about the relationship but will be corrected by the nice characters who will teach us all a lesson in “inclusiveness” and “tolerance”. I hope I’m wrong but precedent is not encouraging. And precedent there is in abundance, I’m sure that I don’t need to tell anyone reading this article that mixed race relationships are the norm in television dramas and advertisements even when their inclusion seems excessive and unrealistic.
Or are such representations excessive and unrealistic? Are they not in fact realistic accounts of how things are today, although hardly in the 1920s? Let us look at some of the facts, or alleged facts, reported by government statisticians and university researchers:- nine per cent of children are either mixed race or live with adults of different ethnicities, the proportion of mixed race persons in the United Kingdom increased by 80% between 2001 and 2011, the proportion of ethnically mixed households increased from one in twelve in 2001 to one in eight in 2011.
Extraordinary and rapid change, but if one burrows into the figures a slightly different picture emerges. The percentage of under sixteens who are mixed race is not nine per cent but under five cent, the difference being accounted for by “reconstructed families”; a quarter of the very rapid increase in the mixed race proportion of the population is due to the immigration of mixed race persons (where from?) rather than to births in this country; the increase in the numbers of ethnically mixed households may well be due in part to the rapid rise in the number of students living, as they do, in shared accommodation – “white British” with “white others” for example. So what we are seeing here is an exaggeration, surely conscious, of the extent of race mixing. This exaggeration has become something of a habit, for example when the “Conservative” commentator Fraser Nelson in an article for the Daily Telegraph on the 6th January 2012 stated “…one in five British children is categorised as mixed race, ethnic distinctions are blurring and in a way that few worry about.” His figure, wildly exaggerated, seems to have been plucked out of thin air.
Why this constant exaggeration? To validate the establishment view of how our society should be, to dismay and demotivate those like us who still have a traditional view of the nature of Britishness. But we must never allow ourselves to become demotivated for the destruction of an ancient, unique and accomplished racial identity – our identity – is a grave sin against Nature which created the races of mankind, and indeed against God who in His destruction of the Tower of Babel and scattering of the peoples to the ends of the Earth gave us a poetic account of the same process. Far from demotivation then, we must be fired with the absolute determination that sin will not win, that right will prevail.
As for Downton Abbey, will I stick with it? Well, we’ll see.
By Frederick Dixon © 2013
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Will Mossop
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Can’t say I have ever watched it nor intend to.
The distortion of our relatively recent history on the television and radio is disgusting.
Peaky Blinders on BBC2 was another recent case in point. Five minutes of the first episode was enough for me. Off it went.
No doubt before too long there will be a moslem character on Downton because as was recently said as part of a recent BBC documentary (I forget it’s name, the off button was soon pressed yet again) in relation to moslems in Blackpool “of course they have ALWAYS been here”.
I’m looking forward however to the remake of Roots with Ross Kemp as Kunte Kinte however. Or did I dream that?
Thank goodness I do not pay the licence fee despite the monthly threats from Capita.
To pay for my own brainwashing – now that would be sad.
Max Musson
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Ross Kemp as Kunte Kinte? I had him down for the part of Chicken George!
frederickdixon
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There’s already been a Moslem character, I think it was in the first season. This was Mr. Pamuk, a Turkish diplomat, which made my enjoyment wobble a bit. But he soon disappeared when he died in scandalous circumstances (Lady Mary’s bed), thus setting off a another story line which ran for a couple of seasons. Hopefully our young Negro will also swiftly disappear, but I doubt it.
Crusader66
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It’s called brainwashing or mind programming.
SerpentSlayer
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I’ve been avoiding Downton ever since I saw the advertising of a negro musician and noticed the pretty young blonde lady, known for being a bit wild, had become main cast.
It really was too predictable and sickening for my liking.
I delve into the past as a means of preparing for the future apart from the horrific present, I’m sure most of Downtons viewers do also, whether they realise it or not.
They can count on my renewed disinterest and dislike from now on. I had thought master Fellows a respectable fellow, having seen him give good account of himself in two seperste episodes of ‘Sharpe’. He has lost my respect.
frederickdixon
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Couldn’t agree more.
Cry Havoc!
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Good article and I confess that I too am a fan of Downton, but the recent “addition” has soured my pleasure. I will stick with it until we start getting the revisionist version of our history. I liked your positive view that, in the end, we will prevail; though I spend most of my time angry and depressed and what is happening to our country.
Michael Woodbridge
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We have to recognise that we’re up against a vicious enemy in the Media which will only relinquish control once we’ve eradicated it. To watch any form of mass-entertainment these days is to accept that within a saccharine coating lurks a filthy and deadly poison. I haven’t housed a television for seventeen years, I value my mental health too highly to want to succumb to psychic poison. (I remember Nick Griffin referring in a speech to “those who’re unlucky enough to have a television”). If we just want to crash out in front of a good film we can still obtain our entertainment via the internet, the choice is endless. Otherwise why not choose a good book or better still a sport, chess or bridge?
Film producers face getting the sack if they defy the enemy. A prime example of this is the case of Brian True-May who was sacked from ‘Midsomer Murders’ in 2011. A reminder of the controversy I print below. ( I shouldn’t complain too loudly because the production team did leave me a bottle of champagne to compensate for any inconvenience whilst filming down my road. something I plan to drink tonight as it happens.)
Midsomer Murders producer suspended over race row,
The producer of ITV1’s Midsomer Murders has been suspended after saying the drama “wouldn’t work” if there was racial diversity in the show.
Brian True-May, who co-created the series, told the Radio Times the long-running drama was a “last bastion of Englishness” and should stay that way.
Production company All3Media told the BBC Mr True-May had been suspended pending an internal investigation.
ITV said it was “shocked and appalled” by the producer’s comments.
“We are in urgent discussions with All3Media…who have informed us that they have launched an immediate investigation into the matter,”
Mr True-May told the magazine: “We are a cosmopolitan society in this country, but if you watch Midsomer you wouldn’t think so.
“I’ve never been picked up on that, but quite honestly I wouldn’t want to change it,” he said.
Of his all-white portrayal of rural life in Britain’s murder capital he said: “Maybe I’m not politically correct.”
Steve
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I thought “Midsummer Murders” was racist but for different reasons, which was would a white community like that have a murder rate akin to an inner city Broadwater Farm type of place?
The evidence is that it wouldn’t.
Florian Geyer
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I too was a big Downton fan. I have avoided watching the new series for exactly the same reasons. I suppose it had a relatively long run before pressure was applied to PC it up. At least there were no black actors shoehorned into parts where the character is clearly supposed to be white, as happens so often with Dickens and Brontë adaptations.
Raedwald
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They do it because, as the aim is to make Britain into a land where ‘White British’ (personally I despise this label, British people are English, Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish) are a minority, or in a more perfect world for them, simply no longer exist as a unique people, then they are well aware that they need to re-write British history.
Those in power are more than aware of the absurdity of classrooms in our cities, packed to the brim almost, or often completely, filled with black, Arab or Asian children, and expecting them to feel attached to learning about Iron Age Britain, the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, William the Conqueror, the Hundred Years War, the War of the Roses, etc…
They know it’s absurd, so they aim to literally claim that it is ‘false history’, that blacks, Asians and Arabs have ALWAYS, apparently magically since it defies all geographical, social and physical realities, been here, and inserting non-White characters into these shows is how they do it. Actually, considering DA is set in the 1920s, it’s a lot more modern than previous attempts, such as re-writing Friar Tuck as black, the same for Guinevere (different programme), as well as others.
Steve
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I avoid it, if the sheeple like it, I tend not to.
How did “The Village” turn out in the end?
With regard to propaganda as entertainment, I came to the conclusion that old programmes like “Love thy neighbour” or “Alf Garnett” type programmes that are remembered as racist in less enlightened times, were in fact designed to show racists as wrong & misguided, to be laughed at, not with.
Max Musson
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The serial, ‘The Village’ appears to have been curtailed early. Possibly because it received mostly critical reviews.
Steve
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Good riddance then, I guess Downton has probably peaked too!
MsBridgit
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I watched the latest episode of ‘Upstairs downstairs” until it secumbed to inclusiveness when a Mr Patel arrived on set. I grabbed for the remote. I know what they are doing and I am not fooled by it. It did occur to me Downton Abbey was screaming out to be diversified but I could not think how they could do it. What they did was to copy an Agatha Christie episode by bringing in an all negro American Jazz band that was on tour.The plot is not important the message is critical ……………….. They cannot help themselves. I stopped watching ‘Wire in the Blood’, I stopped watching ‘Midsomer murders’ . It is a form of Multicultural Propaganda
Mister Vikingaxe
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I have not watched television in many years, but do still own one, only to watch DVDs, old films from the 50s and 60s are especially good.
Modern day TV is certainly there only to brainwash and dumb-down the viewer, and IT WORKS!
My own mother used to be what might be described as “traditional”, you know, not especially keen on gays and immigrants, but without being overtly hostile or rude. After decades watching shows like eastenders and coronation street she now thinks it’s all super and everyone should just get along. I cannot see any other way she came to such a conclusion other than via television. Don’t forget that newspapers and magazines are just as guilty! They have over the past few decades normalised all sorts of unpleasant things which in years gone by were kept quiet for the public good.