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Date Posted: 08:30:00 01/04/05 Tue
Author: Chris
Subject: Key scenes
In reply to: Tony Lang 's message, "Re: Mindset of "unworthiness"" on 07:52:55 01/04/05 Tue

If I remember correctly , the butler got the job because of his father who was the butler before him.

It was the other way round, the father had lost his job. Lord Darlington was looking for a butler assistant and Stephens proposed his father. So the father became the assistant and subordinate to his son and also to Miss Kenton, which caused much trouble because they were so much younger. To make the situation even more embarassing, the father made many mistakes because he became senile. That "generation conflict" was a fascinating sub-story or side-story of its own.

The most telling part of the film was when he was questioned by one of the guests, in front of all the others. The objective of this questioning was to make him look stupid to prove a point. He was cruely used to show that in the guests opinion that it was a waste of time to ask the opinion of the man in the street, and that democracy had no use.

Yes, you remember correctly, that was one of the key scenes. It showed the complete disrespect of the upper class for the rank and file people like the butler. The bitter truth is, however, that in a way the point he wanted to make was even true, though of course it was cruel, arrogant and abhorrent behavior. The opinion and education and knowledge and even moral norm of the masses is indeed usually very low. Only because autocrative regimes are much more dangerous we do all prefer to have democracy. (I conclude that it should be an important goal of any democracy to increase the level or education, knowledge and moral of the population and provide them with all necessary information. Here, all current democracies are failing extremely, including the US.)

You may compare me with him, but you have to admit that I can argue my point.

Hope you understood me correctly. I did not compare you with Stephens, I compared you with Lord Darlington. I think Lord Darlington was pretty informed and able to argue, too. He had a huge library and in the movie you see him picking books from the library. He also loved peace very much and was a gentleman. However, the tragedy was that he failed with his mission and in his morality, because he still was not informed enough, naively wanted to believe what he wanted to believe, and made compromizes for what he believed to be a good sake (end justifies the means philosophy), for instance in his decision about the Jewish personal.

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Replies:

Re: Key scenes -- Tony Lang, 13:27:57 01/05/05 Wed