UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

Upstairs, Downstairs is an award-winning television series made in the early 1970s that tells the story of one British family from 1903 to 1930 in 68 hour-long episodes. The family upstairs, the Bellamys, is a wealthy titled family involved in politics; the servants downstairs take care of them. When the series starts, Queen Victoria has been dead a couple of years, and her oldest son is now King Edward VII. This episode takes place in early 1909, and it’s about the King visiting the Bellamy household for a dinner party.

Historical points

Manchester United: With Manchester United you can clearly see that the British were interested in football like always, but it’s not very important in this chapter. It just makes us clear that the British have been interested in football since 1910 and probably before that too.

King Edward VII: A very important historical point of this chapter was the King Edward VII because practically the whole chapter was about him. He was king of the United Kingdom and emperor of India from 1901 until 1910. From this episode we can learn that he was the most important person during that time because the family was very excited to have him eat dinner with them although his mother Queen Victoria though he was a young foolish man.

Hierarchy: I think this is the most important point of the chapter because in the whole episode how there hierarchy everywhere. First of all, the ones that lived upstairs had a higher position that the ones that lived downstairs. Then, there was the noble hierarchy, where the King was in the highest position and just below him the Lords. This episode shows how the hierarchy was at that time because there has always been different ways of hierarchizing people.

MODERNISM IN THE ARTS

Visual Arts

Le dejeuner sur l'herbe

This painting was one done when the Modernism was just starting. I think this picture was too much just to start the Modernism because it shows 2 men with a high social level with 2 hookers although I find very interesting how Eduard Manet (author of the painting) was brave in doing it. What I also find interesting is that the painting is not so much focused in sharp lines; it’s more focused in color and light.

Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue

This painting was done later when the Modernism had already begun. I think it’s a little silly to consider this as art because it’s just made of lines and colors; I know this is abstract art, but I can’t find what Piet Mondrian (author of the painting) was trying to express. This painting was a part of the Modernism but I think is kind of odd because it looks too simple.


Music

Here I listened some music from the Modernism in the Arts. I found 4th of July from Charles Ives very interesting because I like how it all started very slow and clam but the it turned more enthusiastic and louder. Of course it's very different from the music we listen right now, but I think this was part of the Modernism because they were introducing to music different ryhtms. In 4th of July you can clearly hear how it gets louder, I think it's just like a horror story, it starts calm but as time passes it gets more enthusiastic. 


Poems

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) United States

From “Sunday Morning”

We live in an old chaos of the sun, 

Or old dependency of day and night, 

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, 

Of that wide water, inescapable. 

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail 

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky, 

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink, 

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

“The Snow Man”

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

This poems were part of the Modernism, I think that in this part of the Modernism there was not a big difference with poems before. Wallace Stevens (the author of the poems) makes both simple things into something very emotional. In the first one, he wrote about how a sunday morning was like first with the sun, mountains, animals and at the end how at the end of the day the night will come. He turns all of these simple things into something beautiful. In the second one, I think the author talks about how winter is but what he expresses his feeling saying how a snow man feels like, what surrounds a snow man during that time. I find very interesting because when I read that title I thought it was going to be something simple but when I read the whole poem I found how authors expressed their feelings in such a beautiful way.