Downton Abbey: A New Era giv s sole gay character a happy endg

Contents:

• DOWNTON ABBEY'S THOMAS BARROW AND THE FUTURE OF THE GAY PAST
• THE ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ MOVIE’S GAY STORYLE ALMOST HAD A DARKER ENDG
• ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ DIRECTOR DISCS THE REALI OF CRAFTG A 1920S CLOSETED GAY ROMANCE
• ROB JAM-COLLIER SAYS HIS CHARACTER’S GAY ROMANCE IN ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ MOVIE IS ‘LOVELY’
• THE DIRECTOR OF “DOWNTON ABBEY” OPENED UP ABOUT THE MOVIE’S TOUCHG GAY STORYLE
• DOWNTON ABBEY’S ROB JAM-COLLIER REVEALS REACTN TO ‘HORRIFIC’ GAY STORYLE

DOWNTON ABBEY'S THOMAS BARROW AND THE FUTURE OF THE GAY PAST

Thomas Barrow (Rob Jam-Collier)—former footman, would-be blackmailer, and early morn homosexual everyman—is now head butler on staff, givg him ample opportuny to teract wh the visg stars, and particular, wh the bonair Guy Dexter (Domic Wt). Is Thomas an accurate unveilg of historil homosexualy, hidn but fully formed, jt wag for to notice his existence? Hello to the future of the gay past.

In the film, dienc will see Barrow the ntext of a wir gay world for the first time: visg a secret gay bar, dodgg police harassment, and possibly even fdg love. "I thk one of the thgs that Downton Abbey don’t get right is that actually a great al more of those young men who were service were homosexual. Barrow is stantly regnizable as a morn gay man, even if he never que those words.

Gooch//Getty ImagOn the one hand, this feels like an elaboratn of that famo gay liberatn slogan “we are everywhere, ” expandg to be “we were everywhere” also. On the other hand, seems to remove sexualy om the doma of history entirely, suggtg that the experience of beg gay has always been the same, no matter the place or perd.

THE ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ MOVIE’S GAY STORYLE ALMOST HAD A DARKER ENDG

While everyone else the show be, Barrow already qutn for queer Downton Abbey fans, then, is this: Is Thomas an accurate unveilg of historil homosexualy, hidn but fully formed, jt wag for to notice his existence?

Or is he a backward projectn of our current ia of what means to be gay, an anachronism disguised as a revelatn? Like Thomas Barrow, Alec Scudr seems preternaturally gay, fully aware of his sexual sir, that they are exclively for men, and that they mark him, irrevobly, as a different sort of person. In the post-Edwardian perd, upper class men were more likely to already unrstand the world terms of heterosexuals and homosexuals, wh a bright and absolute le dividg the two.

But whereas Scudr and Barrow seemed to thk of themselv as gay, el-Adl experienced his sire for men differently. Increasgly, sexologists, policians, and wrers began to promulgate the ia that the behavrs were signifiers of homosexualy, to be surveilled and curtailed. Compton Mackenzie, pictured send om the left the ont row, wrote several works about gay men.

‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ DIRECTOR DISCS THE REALI OF CRAFTG A 1920S CLOSETED GAY ROMANCE

BettmannA workg class man like Thomas Barrow, livg the untrysi, was unlikely to have accs to this kd of rmatn about gay inty. As s passed, the neat fictn of bary sexualy beme broadly acknowledged “tth, ” leavg ls and ls space for middle-dwellg, workg-class men like Buckgham and an earlier and earlier age, people would be tght— streets as much as schools—that homosexuals existed, that they were unlike other men, and that any apparent “middle ground” was actually a slippery slope head straight to hell.

ROB JAM-COLLIER SAYS HIS CHARACTER’S GAY ROMANCE IN ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ MOVIE IS ‘LOVELY’

Barrow might have been an implsible outlier at the begng of the show 1912, but by the 1950s, workg class men who intified as homosexual were throngg the streets of London. In the new film, Thomas Barrow (Robert Jam-Collier) gets to vis a gay bar lled Turton's.

But once they're si, Thomas se that 's a secret bar filled wh gay men drkg, dancg, and generally havg a good time. A Vice article about the history of UK gay bars not that 18th century spac for gay men to meet that were known as "molly ho" are well-documented, but that siar meetg spac existed long before that.

Historian Peter Ackroyd told the Guardian 2017, "As a percentage of the populatn, there were as many gay bars 18th-century London as there are today.

THE DIRECTOR OF “DOWNTON ABBEY” OPENED UP ABOUT THE MOVIE’S TOUCHG GAY STORYLE

" In 1912, a bar lled The Cave of the Goln Calf, Bra's "first 'gay bar', as we know today", opened London, but was around for only two years.

DOWNTON ABBEY’S ROB JAM-COLLIER REVEALS REACTN TO ‘HORRIFIC’ GAY STORYLE

It wasn't until the Sexual Offens Act of 1967 that homosexual relatnships were crimalized, but that did not mean that there was full equaly Bra.