Substance and Vanity at the Palace: Monarchy and Royalty
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Culture&Society Substance and Vanity at the Palace Monarchy and Royalty Beyond the Twentieth Century Neil Blain Do the British Really Lose Sleep over Camilla? Neil Blain is the head of Department of Film A true story: a woman has a hair appointment in Glasgow, Scotland on the & Media Studies at University of Stirling, day of Diana’s funeral in 1997. Upon stepping out of the car on an empty street, in Scotland, UK. she finds the salon closed and curtained. There is a six by four feet black and white photo of Diana in the window, flanked by lilies in funeral urns. She tries the door. After a pause, several locks are disengaged from within, the door opens and an elderly lady in black appears and quickly ushers her inside. The door is closed and locked behind her. Customers are having their hair styled or colored. Three tele- visions, draped in black cloth and surmounted by black candles, are showing the funeral: Elton John is performing in Westminster Abbey. Her stylist appears, dressed in scarlet to signify her disapproval of all this hypocritical kitsch. They both listen silently to Elton. In the summer of 2007, there was a debate in the United Kingdom about whether it would be appropriate for Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and the second wife of Prince Charles, to attend a church service marking the tenth anniversary of the death of his first wife, Princess Diana. The “Camilla debate” ultimately prompted a series of other discussions on the role of the monarchy and royalty in the face of a changing British society. A response to these issues is hardly a simple task and requires a thorough analysis of the matter at hand. Winter/Spring 2008 [57] SUBSTANCE AND VANITY AT THE PALACE For those who wish to participate in royal family, objectivity constantly seeps public discourse about Britain’s quintes- away in the struggle to establish simple sential royal case, it is often easiest to facts about both parties. Most of what we uphold the myth that British subjects, as imagine about the British public opinion a social, cultural and psychological col- on royal matters results from superficial lective, are deeply interested in their polling, which offers few revelations. monarchy, and that they begin the day by Social psychologist Michael Billig gave a exchanging opinions on the domestic significant number of the British popu- activities of the royal family. Moreover, lation the opportunity to discuss their they do this in an equally mythical space thoughts and feelings concerning the dubbed by the BBC as the “the breakfast British royal family at the end of the tables of the nation,” despite the fact that 1980s.1 Robert Turnock created a field much of Britain no longer eats breakfast. study of emotional responses to Princess Rather, Britain has shown many signs of Diana’s death in 1997. Billig’s findings social and cultural disintegration, and challenged the conception that Britons both the breakfast table and the notion of are incessantly preoccupied with royal a unified nation have become nostalgic matters. In one exchange, a confirmed tropes. These facades, then, are but- royal admirer attempted to get her dis- tressed against signs that today Britain senting son to admit that he has watched indeed consists of a complex, unstable, royal weddings. He replied, “I can’t and increasingly rancorous brew of con- remember my feelings at the time, but I stituents, only partially comprehensible remember watching it on television.” to one another. Even the idea of a stable The mother refused to accept that he past often invoked is illusory; national could not remember how he felt. broadcasters have their own stake in reas- During Diana’s funeral, the media in suring themselves that there exists still Britain seemed to take on a maternal some residuum of a collective which can role, cajoling the audience to admit that be addressed. they truly cared. This sentiment was In a summer when the London press repeated after the deaths of Princess published statistics showing that over half Margaret and the Queen Mother. When the mothers of babies born in greater a reporter found himself on the empty London were born outside the UK—over streets of Windsor watching the Queen a fifth in England as a whole—news Mother’s funeral, he felt compelled to broadcasts broodingly monitored the invest his audience with imminent numbers of east Europeans entering the engagement: “At the moment Windsor is UK. Along with the issue of British Mus- quiet, really exceptionally quiet. There’s lim populations placed at the fore of hardly anybody about…I think people are media coverage and the completion of preparing to watch [the funeral] on tele- Scotland’s nationalist First Minister’s vision rather than come out onto the initial one hundred days in power, the streets at the moment.”2 In simple terms, United Kingdom, that lies at the heart of the reporter merely speculated that the royal mythology, appears more than ever absence of people at the funeral must not to be nothing but a mythic convenience. have anything to do with an apathetic In this matter of comprehending the population. At many moments such as relationship between a nation and its this one in royal “reporting,” fiction [58] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs BLAIN Culture & Society replaces reportage: “But in general you alongside a number of others. can see if you look around the streets here…[that] they are empty.”3 Monarchy vs. Royalty. Pre-mod- Many citizens do care about Britain’s ern, Modern, Postmodern? Since royal affairs, even if it is the case that enhanced consumption has diluted public engagement with royalty in the political engagement in certain countries United Kingdom may as likely be a media over the last thirty or more years, rarely phenomenon as much as a truly cultural does one encounter the older argument one. Questionnaires distributed in in the United Kingdom that monarchy Britain within two and a half days of can be justified through its guarantee of Diana’s funeral in 1997 elicited interest- political stability. This notion that ing evidence concerning the specific British monarchy guarantees, even in media attribution of widespread “grief,” small part, the distribution of power— leading the research—which noted that which in the United States is embedded “previous knowledge and experience of variously in state and federal institutions Diana had been “mediated”—to speculate and in Europan republics, across minis- the extent to which “people are perhaps terial, presidential, and devolved func- becoming more dependent on media tions—now appears anomalous. In the images, characters, and depictions to British constitutional manner, the idea provide the resources to help establish that the monarchy serves as a buttress for identities and trust.”4 The study did not political stability was a conventional find evidence of “an outpouring of argument, which has now become almost grief”—to use the phrase deployed uni- defunct as a counter-argument in any versally by the media after the car crash in debate about the antiquated system, Paris. despite the fact that the British monarch In this perspective, strong reactions to does actually retain some powers, even if the death of Princess Diana might be they express themselves only formally. related to the forms of distress evident This arrangement is typical of other con- when familiar television characters are stitutional monarchies as well, such as killed, not at all to be confused—except in those of Sweden and Denmark. The a very few pathological cases—with the effect of the British monarchy’s extreme grief that occurs in response to the death personalization is to render its constitu- of family, or close friends. What passes tional role generally irrelevant to the for engagement with royal events is often British, despite the existence of royal no more than a dimension of consumer prerogative powers which have in certain behavior in which participants are per- imaginable circumstances real force, petually exploring aesthetic possibilities such as, in principle, the right to choose for entertainment. a prime minister after an inconclusive Before returning to the relationship general election outcome. between monarchy and media in Britain, Since the United Kingdom lacks a it is important to widen the horizon for written constitution, discussion about the forthcoming discussion. First, there constitutional matters is an imprecise is a stark difference between “royal fami- exercise, and the constitutional imagina- lies” and “monarchies.” And secondly, it tion is limited. Though monarchy is both is instructive to place the British case technically a quite different matter from Winter/Spring 2008 [59] SUBSTANCE AND VANITY AT THE PALACE royalty—imaginable in strictly constitu- ical modernization. The British monar- tional terms and in the abstract—in prac- chy, on the other hand, appears to resist tice there has been significant interplay modernization, instead representing between the concept of monarchy and conservatism, social hierarchy, and tra- royalty. Likewise in Spain, it was the King dition. Its heir is a famous defender of who allegedly guaranteed the transition traditional forms of culture, which the to a modern state form after decades of Queen herself personifies. In Tom dictatorial rule by Franco and who was Nairn’s late 1980s account, British also consequently seen as the defender of monarchy has become a central symbol Spain’s fledgling democracy when under around which a pseudo-modern set of attack. Nevertheless,