Julian Fellow on the 'Prediment of Beg Gay' 'Downton Abbey'

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 ACTOR SAYS GAY ROLE HURT HIS CAREER — BUT IS HE RIGHT?
• ROB JAM-COLLIER SAYS HIS CHARACTER’S GAY ROMANCE IN ‘DOWNTON ABBEY’ MOVIE IS ‘LOVELY’
• ‘DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA’: JULIAN FELLOW MOLED THOMAS BARROW AND GUY DEXTER AFTER SEVERAL REAL-LIFE GAY CELEBRI
• NEW DOWNTON ABBEY MOVIE SH A LIGHT ON THE ‘HORRIFIC’ TREATMENT OF GAY MEN 1920S ENGLAND
• THE DIRECTOR OF “DOWNTON ABBEY” OPENED UP ABOUT THE MOVIE’S TOUCHG 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.

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

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. 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?

DOWNTON ABBEY ACTOR SAYS GAY ROLE HURT HIS CAREER — BUT IS HE RIGHT?

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.

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

Increasgly, sexologists, policians, and wrers began to promulgate the ia that the behavrs were signifiers of homosexualy, to be surveilled and curtailed.

‘DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA’: JULIAN FELLOW MOLED THOMAS BARROW AND GUY DEXTER AFTER SEVERAL REAL-LIFE GAY CELEBRI

Compton Mackenzie, pictured send om the left the ont row, wrote several works about gay men.

NEW DOWNTON ABBEY MOVIE SH A LIGHT ON THE ‘HORRIFIC’ TREATMENT OF GAY MEN 1920S ENGLAND

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.

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

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. Thomas Barrow, Downton Abbey‘s valet-turned-butler, whose dark journey durg the seri saw him take some wrenchg steps to try and “cure” himself of homosexualy, received a much more hopeful treatment the new feature film of the same name. The film, which troduc Barrow to a world he has never seen before, a clanste unrground social scene where gay men n openly nnect, where he's led by Richard Ellis (Max Brown), part of the royal entourage that has e to vis Downton.