Your Better Class of Reality
by NIH television critic Farrell Childe
Lenny Bruce observed that obscenity laws defined pornography as dirty screwing (as he put it), while fancy screwing was considered to be literature. "If a guy can tear off a piece of ass with class," Mr. Bruce said, "then he's cool, but if the author depicts factory workers who are not experts with stag shows, then it's obscene."
PBS seems to have decided on a similar approach to the so-called reality genre. Let the commercial networks have their tawdry Fear Factor and The Bachelor, where most of the viewing pleasure comes out of the humiliation of the contestants. PBS is going to show your high-toned reality shows, shows like Manor House.
Manor House is a production of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It involves having a group of contemporary Britons live as did the residents of a stately home of 1905, some as the family and most as the servants.
The intent of the program is clearly educational, which is more than can be said for much of PBS's educational programming. We are continually provided with historical facts about the Edwardian era (which, we are repeatedly told, coincided with the reign of Edward VII – imagine!). As is usual with educational television, though, the history taught during one two-hour instalment could probably be conveniently provided in a two-page written summary.
Most of the show is taken up not by historical information but by the story of the relationships between the members of the household. Unfortunately, none of this is very Edwardian. It consists mainly of the servants complaining about how much work they have to do and how unfair it all is.
Granted, that is a valid comment about the Edwardian age. Servants worked like galley slaves then. However, we only need to be told this once or twice. We don't need to be hit over the head with it every couple of minutes throughout the series.
Furthermore, a fact which has not been mentioned in any of the episodes I have seen so far is that in the Edwardian era people of the ages of most of the present-day servants – that is, the early twenties – had usually been in the workforce for a long time. They were accustomed to responsibility, something which many of the present-day servants were clearly not accustomed to. Consequently the responses of the modern young people to their Edwardian jobs have in large part been not responses to the different standards of Edwardian society, but simply responses to having to work for a living.
I am not exaggerating. The present-day servants often do not understand why they cannot shirk their duties. Some have longed to return home so that Mum could take care of them. The point that contemporary work life, although for the most part preferable to the life of an Edwardian domestic servant, is still often hard and still usually leaves the contemporary employee vulnerable to the arbitrary and unfair decisions of employers is not mentioned, and seems to be completely lost on the young people who are so exercised about the unfairness of it all.
But perhaps the producers never intended that the young people's responses should enlighten us about the Edwardian age. In the end, Manor House tries to keep our interest the same way those vulgar reality shows do, by portraying humiliation. The servants are humiliated by the deference they must show to the family (they must face the wall, for example, if a family member comes across them while they are doing housework), they are humiliated by their almost complete lack of privacy, but most of all they are humiliated by the arduous, never-ending, and completely pointless labour they must perform.
Why do I say it is pointless? Because the producers of the show made the poor bastards do it for three months. They could have accomplished the same goal by having them do it for a week or two. What they ended up with was an overworked group of young people, some of whom seemed to be undernourished, placed in conditions in which they must inevitably come into conflict with each other, with the senior servants, and with the toffs upstairs. And you can imagine the fun that ensues, if your idea of fun is watching people who have been run ragged trying and often failing to keep a grip on themselves.
It could have been worse, I suppose. They could have been more faithful to the Edwardian era and cast fourteen-year-olds as servants. I imagine there are laws in Britain against cruelty to children, though.
Or instead of Manor House they could have produced Whorehouse, an evocation of the enthralling life of an Edwardian bordello. I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned that – they might like the idea.
Posted on May 15, 2003 Your Better Class of Reality © Coolth, 2003
