Whatever ‘In Love’ Means Diana’s Magic, and the Limits of Propaganda
I have a confession: When Princess Diana died, I cried my heart out for weeks. I sobbed, I wrote in my journal, I brought a rose and stood in line to sign the condolences book in New York City, I attended an open-air memorial service in Central Park. I was heartbroken.
To understand how weird this is, you need to understand that I was never a fan of hers while she was alive. (And I know, she wasn’t technically “Princess” when she died. But she was more of a princess in the magical sense of the word than anyone else with that title, so I will continue to use it.) I was dimly aware of her, because of all of the non-stop media coverage of her life, and I remember her visiting Hong Kong while I lived there, but I didn’t care about it at the time. If anything, I looked down on the people who thronged to see her when she visited, and who followed news about her as if it were important. The truth is, I didn’t think much about them, or about her, at all.
And then she died.
And it was as if a light had gone out in the world. As if something that should never be struck down had been struck down. I couldn’t believe it. And then, I became tremendously, tremendously, sad. I didn’t understand why, at the time, but I allowed myself to grieve this person I had never known nor cared about. From the outside, it might seem that I was simply swept away by the collective grief of everyone else. But my own sadness began before I had seen any of that. I didn’t watch much TV, and the only coverage I remember watching was the funeral procession and funeral itself. To this day, I still don’t fully understand why her death affected me so much.
Later this month will be the 27th anniversary of her passing, and I am transported back to that time more so this year, thanks to Netflix’s production of “The Crown.” The show has been a tour de force in many ways, with impressive production values and an exceptionally talented cast. But more than that, it provides an important lesson in the ways – and the limits – of narrative spinning.
One of the overarching themes of the series is the elevation of “duty” over human desires, needs and wants. In one dramatic storyline early on, a young, “sensitive” and “delicate” Prince Charles is sent away to a harsh, distant, boarding school despite his mother’s desire for him to attend the nearby, and presumably gentler, Eton. It occurred to me back then, as I watched this storyline unfold, that there was an explicit attempt here to humanize the not-very-likeable-in-reality then-Prince Charles. As the series progressed, this effort became more pronounced.
Later, while at Cambridge, Charles, enamored of the theater, is cast in a “wonderful role” in a production at the university. But he is pulled out by his family, so that he can spend a semester in Wales. The young Charles is clearly not happy about this, but – and not for the last time – is told to “put personal feelings aside.” Did any of this actually happen? Who knows. The show has been criticized for frequently conjuring up historical events out of whole cloth. But whether it happened or not, the inclusion of this episode forms one more important piece in the narrative that is being crafted.
We watch, a few years la
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