From ‘Downton’ to Golden Globes, it’s all downhill

“When it comes to torture,” Amy Poehler said Sunday night as she opened the Golden Globes award ceremony, “I trust a lady who spent three years married to James Cameron.” Yuk, yuk, YUCK.

That same evening on PBS’s “Downton Abbey,” the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) admonished granddaughter Lady Sybil, “Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.” Now that was clever.

I love Amy Poehler — who could not? — but her remark was yucky on several counts. It was a cheap shot at director Cameron in an inappropriate forum. But far lower on the taste scale, it made light of the waterboarding scene in a movie directed by Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow. “Zero Dark Thirty” portrays the “enhanced interrogation techniques” practiced on al-Qaida prisoners as effective in helping find Osama bin Laden — a controversial view countered by foes of torture, among others.

Less serious but unpleasant nonetheless, Poehler’s line oozed with the phony suggestion of intimacy between the stars and fans. Common to this and other self-celebrations of show business, the familiarity con also specializes in close-ups of stars’ faces after some joke. When we see Dustin Hoffman laughing, we’re supposed to be happy because he is.

The old Hollywood award show was a place to “see” the stars. The dirt stayed in gossip columns. Their actors’ agents may have slipped an occasional snippet to the columnists, but the dish was not supposed to be traced to the tinseltown aristocrats themselves. Most tried to exude an air of dignified glamor and elegance. Glamour minus elegance is mere glitz.

“Downton Abbey’s” enormous global success — aside from the eyefuls of Edwardian English luxury in costume and decor — is the characters’ obsession with manners and maintaining a public facade of rectitude. That required not sharing embarrassing or otherwise problematic details with outsiders.

It doesn’t matter whether the situation involves Lady Mary’s reckless tryst with a Turkish diplomat or head housekeeper Mrs. Hughes’ possible diagnosis of breast cancer — the characters try keeping it to themselves and select confidants. Much of the suspense revolves around whether they succeed.

(As an aside, this third season does try the patience on believability. The first was controlled in the number and nature of personal conflicts. The second got fast and loose with credulity, especially after the paralyzed Matthew suddenly rose from bed as a fully functional marital partner for Lady Mary.)

This third season buries us with complications, a good third of them improbable. Is it plausible that the Earl of Grantham lost the family fortune by putting all the money into one stock? Must we buy into Matthew’s high-minded but ridiculous reason for not wanting to apply his prospective newfound fortune to helping the family keep Downton? How likely was it for Lady Sybil to show up at Downton with the chauffer she had eloped with last season — an Irishman bearing Republican sympathies? One or two of those unlikelihoods would have sufficed.)

Anyhow, we may cringe as Martha Levinson (Shirley MacLaine), the Countess of Grantham’s American mother, rubs her English in-laws’ noses in the reality of their sad finances and scoffs at their proprieties. But we applaud her targets’ ability to speak back without crossing the boundary into downright rudeness.

The Dowager Countess’ reproof of Lady Sybill’s vulgar comment — a slightly off-color reference to sex between a sister and her elderly husband-to-be — cuts deeper than a charge of indiscretion. She’s saying it’s not funny.

Keeper of the old-school formalities, the Countess speaks with pointed indirection to hilarious effect. She is a favorite with Downton audiences. We don’t expect clever repartee to invade Hollywood award shows any time soon. But jokes about torture are not amusing. Can’t they bring it up a notch?

Froma Harrop is a Providence Journal columnist. Her email address is fharrop@projo.com

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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