Note: This article will be written in a slightly different approach than many of my previous articles. Imagine John Oliver or James Corden saying these words, and I think you’ll understand my way.
Well, it’s time to
deal with the most pressing obstacles facing the U.K right now: the next season
of The Crown. Yes, while Great Britain is dealing with the fallout of
Brexit, Prime Ministers resigning at a pace as if they were on the Parliament Edition
of Big Brother, and basically everything J.K. Rowling says these days,
some very prominent British figures are pissed – and not in the way they use
the term – about what the next season of Netflix’s The Crown will end up
looking like. And their criticisms would be downright hysterical – as they are
anyway – even after you consider whose making these remarks.
Dame Judi Dench, who apparently
didn’t care what critics when she played Victoria twice, has called the most
recent season of The Crown ‘pretending
to be realistic’ and demanding that a disclaimer be put before it so that
people know that it is fiction and not a documentary. (Someone’s still ticked
that Peter Morgan cast Helen Mirren over her in The Queen.) To be fair, this is not a truly unreasonable
request as there are no doubt some people still questioning how real everything
they see on docudramas series are. Some Netflix limited series such as Unbelievable
have made sure to have such a disclaimer, and those stories are on a
smaller scale. That being said, I do question how much Dench really believes
the intellect of the typical Netflix viewer. Does she assume that all of the
dialogue and performances that we have seen the previous four season are the
result of fly-on-the-wall cameras that have been placed in all the palaces for
the past forty years? Does she assume that everything that happens in this
series is a reenactment of actual events that happened behind palace walls?
More to the point, does she believe the typical Netflix viewer thinks the same?
And if such Netflix viewers do exist, I’m actually more frightened as to
how far their delusions extend? Do they share these believes for every Netflix
series? Are they convinced that there is such a thing as a Squid Game and that
there is such a place as the Upside Down? (Of course, Netflix is creating a
real-life Squid Game, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole.)
John Major, who is
about to make his fictional debut on Netflix this season, has gone out of his
way to deny that certain scenes in the series – such as the now King discussing
whether his mother should abdicate with him – is denying these conversations
are completely fictional. Well, that’s just plain ingratitude. Seriously, John.
You’re being played by Johnny Lee Miller. Do you know how much easier it’s
going to be for you to get laid from this point on?
“Oh, I’m John Major.
I was the Prime Minister once.”
“I hear that every
day. Two of them come in every night and try to buy me drinks.”
(Pause) I’m going to
be in the next season of The Crown.
(Longer pause) “How
close is your place?”
And of course, as
everything involving the Royals these days, Prince William felt compelled to weigh
in, saying that the scenes of his parents fighting were completely fiction
because ‘I never saw them fight.’ As if William’s credibility couldn’t get any
lower.
First of all, if you
really believed your parents had a happy marriage, congratulations, you’ve just
proved to the entire world yet again how utterly sheltered your family is from
the world. Second of all, even assuming that your parents never fought directly
in front of you, everybody in the world knows just how big your homes are.
Your parents could have been fighting in a separate wing of one of your
palaces and you’d never have heard. And lastly, the breakup of your parent’s
marriage was one of the most famous events of the 1990s: the entire world saw
it break down, your parents were openly not shy about in the media and your
father is currently married to a woman who he had an affair while the marriage
was going on. It was the worst kept secret in Britain. All of this
fundamentally proves that not only are you so isolated from your family, you
seem to be in denial about how things are now. Camilla’s about to be crowned
Queen Consort. She didn’t get that title because your mother was fine with it.
In all seriousness
(sort of) I’m slightly surprised the British media and Parliament have been so
quiet about how the Royal Family has been portrayed on the series until now. Apparently
its fine with the Brits to talk about the tragedies of Princess Margaret (who even
if this is a fictionalized version has clearly had it far worse than Diana ever
did) but it’s not okay to dare infringe upon the memory of The Queen now that she is no longer alive to
say nothing about this as she had the first four seasons of The Crown. Why
such outrage now? Part of it may have to do with Elizabeth’s passing (Britain like
Hollywood is known for having respect for the dead, but none for the living)
but I think there’s a larger issue at play. One that was always in the background
throughout the series but that present circumstances are now making much
clearer.
For most of the
twentieth century, many have questioned the purpose of the monarchy. There have
been many factors – the abdication of Edward VIII, the gradual decay of the
British Empire, the modernization of the world as a whole – but despite this,
many mostly old white men – hold to an institution. In his writing for The Crown Morgan agrees completely with this idea – but he has a definition of
what kind of institution.
Morgan says it is the kind of outmoded institution that has held around
for centuries not so much because it works but out of habit more than any
reason. Institutions can hang around much longer than they should not because
they work but because people are afraid what happens if they aren’t any there.
Empires were institutions once.
And Morgan makes it clear that for the members of the royal family, it’s
an institution as well – such as a prison or an asylum. One that has rules that
have been around for so long that they must abide by for fear out of what
happens if the rules are violated. One that the wardens follow even if they
believe that they are outmoded. And that will destroy the people who are apart
of it, even without them knowing it. Like Morgan Freeman famous said in Shawshank Redemption: ‘I’m an institutional man.” The
Crown has made it very clear
that this passes on from generation to generation, often without them realizing
it.
In Season 1 soon after becoming Queen, Elizabeth (Claire Foy) spends
much of the season trying to make changes in the institution to help Philip and
Margaret. Men like Churchill in particular find ways to push back against,
mostly by finding ways to use The Duke of Windsor against them. As a result,
Philip finds himself increasingly restrained and Margaret is unable to marry
the man she loves. Margaret is irrevocably damaged by this. For much of the
first two seasons, Elizabeth and Philip try their best to push back but
increasingly find themselves becoming part of the system.
In Season 3, as the young Charles, who has been raised in this system tries
to push back primarily to try and please his family. But at the season goes
further, it becomes clear that Charles can do nothing to please his mother or
the Queen, whether is ceremonial or trying to marry. By the time the fourth
season has begun, it has become increasingly clear that Elizabeth and Philip,
who spent their youth pushing back against the boundaries of the institution
are fundamentally a part of it and utterly resistant to changing it. I
mentioned in a review last year about Thatcher’s tendency to take the royals
seriously, but whether it was based in truth or not, I believe she had a point.
I think Great Britain could survive the lost of the monarchy; it could not
survive the collapse of democracy. In the first seasons they press against
their duties as ceremonial; by the fourth season they are pressing them upon
Charles and Diana to do them not out of obligation.
I think part of this new agitation against The
Crown is about the threat to
the institution. As the series has made clear Diana never fit in. I don’t hold
to the fringe theories some do that Diana ended up dying because someone in the
monarchy had her killed; I am inclined to believe that it was the monarchy that
ended up destroying her. As we have seen over and over on the series, that it
was the monarchy does. It did it with Margaret, it did major damage to Charles,
and it certainly did it to Diana. It chewed her up, forced her to stay and
place and was furious that she wouldn’t stand and smile like all the royals. The Crown, like almost all of Morgan’s work, shows us the face
of power, warts, and all, and while the British may not care that they have
them, they don’t want them pointed out in public.
People argue that the British are famous for being apologetic. If they
are, it’s never for the things they should
be apologizing for: the British Empire,
colonialism, genocide, looting foreign countries, white supremacy writ large
for more than half a millennia. The monarchy is the public face of Britain more
than anything else, and as long as the Empire existed the monarchy was the face
of all of that. As we saw on The
Crown, none of the royal
family saw any need to apologize for that. Why should they?
Some people – older people – saw Elizabeth as the symbol of Britain’s
glorious past. The fact that even when she was crowned the Empire was already
decaying and had been completely destroyed
by the middle of her reign was irrelevant. She was a symbol of the glorious
past, and America is in no position to judge anyone on glamorizing the past and
glossing over the parts we don’t want to tell. And now that monarchy and Britain
in itself are facing a future that is already horrible and likely to get worse
before it gets better, certain people want to hold fast to the last, real
symbol of it. Like I said, respect for the dead, but none for the living.
No comments:
Post a Comment