FOUR MOTHER CONTINENTS

The titles and credits for “Damages,” the Glenn Close vehicle that features Rose Byrne as a rival but also a sort of “daughter” and potential inheritor, are based in part on monumental sculptures by Daniel Chester French which stand in front of the Old Custom House in Manhattan.  Here’s a link to info and photos of the statues.   http://www.yeodoug.com/resources/dc_french/continents/dcfrench_continents.html  

Asia, America, Europe and Africa are each portrayed as a woman, the “mother” and symbol of the continent concerned, surrounded by subservient men and other symbols, including skulls, tigers, ravens.  The women, racially appropriate, are seated so that they will have laps, the natural “home” for children long after they are born (lower down anatomically) and nursed (higher up).  I doubt this conceit was conscious for French, who was part of that Victorian culture that preferred the covert, the implied, the secluded and the transitional even as they built and mercilessly maintained an empire, insisting on their social status quo in the face of suffering.  Australia was the most hidden of all, not even represented, only a prison.

The series “Damages” explores a generation gap in terms of the tension between law and justice.  Though it isn’t directly about the British Empire, it slantwise addresses the familiar avarice of those in power, always pretending to obey the law while searching for loopholes and angles, always pretending to be a representative of the Greater Good while destroying indigenous cultures and individual idealists.  The Close character plays the game while the Byrne character is troubled by it.  Queens Victoria and Elizabeth I and II are never mentioned but surely as women they struggled with the same issues while they tried to reconcile love and justice, agonizing over the worthiness of their children while protecting the interests of their larger “family” -- the nation.

I have a tendency to confuse these Beaux Arts sculptors, their images all cowls, wings, wreaths, drapery and bare arms -- intended to hint at the imagined glory that was “Greece”.  (Saint-Gaudens was invited to compete for this job, but declined.)  They revere death as a dignified event.  Behind it all is a practical understanding of how things work.  (French had a collection of various bird wings to study for structure.)  On the surface the assumptions in these monuments are antique, but in other ways they are more relevant than ever, partly because war between the structures of governance and the interests of commerce is still unresolved. 

These monuments are cut stone, rather than cast stone or bronze, and so required a small army of skilled studio assistants, the same as any video production.  But French, with all his love of elegance and gardens. never imagined the bespoke suits and public parks of this series, much less the blood -- though it is relatively minimal by American standards.

At the same time that I was watching “Damages” by streaming Netflix, I was watching the renewed “Upstairs, Downstairs” via discs, so I had reason to ponder why the American legal series is compelling while the Brit one, is flat, esp. the second year when Eileen Atkins and Jean Marsh, who as young women had conceived of the series, left the new version, Atkins because of disliking the scripts and Marsh because of health.  Clearly the new version of “Upstairs, Downstairs” took a very modern view of Eaton Place, entirely forsaking the cloying diplomacy that makes the tart observations of old ladies so welcome.  The old ladies, grandmothers, uphold justice for all -- often outrageous if not scandalous, but always practical -- which is why we love them on “Downton Abbey.”  The old men do not undertake this obligation, even when they sit enthroned on the judge’s bench wearing their silly wigs.  They are creatures of compliance and tradition.

The four statues are situated in front of the Customs House in Manhattan.  Customs duties are an institution that provides income for nations, not from its own citizens but through commerce with other nations.  And yet the statues, originally meant to portray the invention of boundaries (the 19^th century was so invested in delineating, categorizing, and naming), represent continents, geological areas limited by seas rather than nations.  They were places connected by ships (before airplanes) and seaports, therefore susceptible to control in ways that commerce no longer enjoys in this day of Internet shopping.  The smuggling and human trafficking of those times now continues in resourceful secret ways, evading all customs duties.  The Beaux Arts building is sited on Bowling Green where Dutch settlers believed they had bought all of Manhattan.  On their terms of law, they made a transaction that simply didn’t exist for the indigenous people who were already there.  Their purchased ownership was an imagined reality and yet they have imposed it everywhere and yet the indigenous continues to exist: the rights and practices of doing whatever you can do until someone stops you.  Even if it’s defined as criminal.

The task of the mother in traditional terms is to transmit her culture to her children, and the wise father will have chosen her for the value of her cultural bequest.  But people are never as wise as they ought to be and no culture exists that isn’t full of contradiction, injustice and death.  The concept of motherhood itself is riddled with scandal and suspicion, a mixture of gift and punishment, entrapment and protection, always the cradling lap until it becomes the Pieta, Mary with the dead Jesus across her lap, and yet there’s always the possibility of a woman simply standing erect so that there is no place for a child.  She becomes Minerva, who is never depicted sitting, whose breast is armored.

When first built, the Customs House stood solitary and imposing, representing domination and triumph.  Now it is crowded among glass skyscrapers.  Ash from the World Trade Towers, burning and collapsing nearby, fell on those laps and symbols.  At one time the building was scheduled for demolition, but was defended by admirers and now houses some of the Museum of the American Indian in its “lap,” so to speak.  Irony and justice travel together.

The second year of the second version of “Upstairs, Downstairs” was shallow and sensational because it was only a glamour and prurience checklist.  Old ladies were the least of it:  Jews, Sikhs, orphans and monkeys had no complete stories.  Famous names and dishes, history rushed along without consideration, pretty faces that soon became indistinguishable.   There was a kind of contempt for the period, as though they were too old-fashioned to take seriously, just an excuse for costuming.   I don’t know whether this mocking tone was the fault of the writer or the foolishness of the producers -- probably both.  “Damages” is far more fun.  But if you’re reflecting on motherhood, the statues of the “Four Continents” are more enduring.   You could learn a lot, leaning on their knees.