Charlie’s Angels and the rest of us
CHOREOGRAPHY IS a hell of an art. Its potential for reconstructing reality and repackaging the way we experience the world is almost limitless. It is a process that forces us to imagine things as real and suspend our disbelief.
Rather, we are expected to be in the moment, be in awe of the glitzy opulence on display and forget about who might be starving; who are dying as a result of Imperial-orchestrated wars; the generations of ancestors, black and white, whose blood, sweat and tears created those gilded carriages, robes and regalia; whose natural resources were stolen in order to create these bejewelled crowns and orbs and the rest; who cannot afford to keep a roof over their heads while they care for the elderly and infirm and work in our hospitals and in our schools.
Meanwhile, the taxes of those very people are handed over to that monarchy who want for nothing, except ‘ fundamental British values’ and respect for the rule of law, who show ample evidence of careful succession planning, and who continue to raid the public purse, supposedly in the name of national stability and ‘soft power’ across the globe.
No nation on earth has the capacity for pomp and ceremony, and the choreography that it requires, as the British. This was on display on Saturday, May 6, 2023, arguably like never before, and it involved a great deal of remastering and repackaging of the way we experience the world and those who are supposed to reign over us.
SACRED NATURE
So, what core themes drove the choreography of the coronation of Charles III?
First, the relation between the King and the ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords’.
On Friday, May 5, St Paul’s Cathedral issued its regular bulletin and, not surprisingly, the headline item was ‘Reflections on the sacred nature of the monarchy’. Ian Bradley, emeritus professor of cultural and spiritual history at the University of St Andrews and author of God Save the King: The Sacred Nature of the Monarchy, written in the run up to the coronation, told us:
“Tomorrow’s coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey will underline the sacred nature of the United Kingdom monarchy. Packed with religious symbolism, it will bind together Church and State through the person of the monarch, clearly proclaim the derivation of all power and authority from God and the Christian basis on which Government is exercised and justice administered. At their coronations kings and queens are not simply crowned and enthroned but consecrated, set apart and anointed, dedicated to God… Here, if anywhere, we find the divinity which, as Shakespeare observed more than 400 years ago, hedges the British throne…. All these elements (of the coronation) are present in the earliest surviving order for the coronation of an English monarch, prepared by St Dunstan as Archbishop of Canterbury for the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar in 973.”.
If Church and State could preserve and enact an order of ordination first prepared for the coronation of King Edgar in 973, why, anticipating the death of Charles’ mother, did Church and State not conduct a modernday impact assessment of the effectiveness of the consecration and anointing of monarchs over the centuries, and of the divinity that hedges the British throne?
I have no doubt that the result of that assessment would have been so disgusting, including the atrocities committed by the British state during the reign of the late monarch and her father, that the nation would have had to ask itself some serious questions as to why the monarchy should not also be buried with the late queen.
It is with those lenses that we see and understand that the débâcle which is the House of Windsor’s relationship with Harry and Meghan and their outcast children did not come from nowhere.
The second core theme was ‘diversity’. Charles wanted his coronation to reflect Britain as it is. And so, we saw a procession of eminent black dames and baronesses of the realm, all waiting to come into service in the antechamber, neither upstairs nor downstairs. All clearly saw it as an honour and a privilege to be called upon to represent the diversity of the coronation.
Baroness Floella Benjamin stated: “To be selected to carry the sovereign’s sceptre with dove, which represents spirituality, equity and mercy, is for me very symbolic as it’s everything I stand for and sends out a clear message that diversity and inclusion is being embraced.”
On Wednesday, May 3, Dame Elizabeth Onionwu tweeted:
‘A school friend commented: “Looking back on the old school photos – was Elizabeth Onionwu practising holding the Orb even then? Well done, Elizabeth. Will be looking out for you on Saturday’s Coronation’. (Image: a young Elizabeth in school holding a large ball.)
SORDID HISTORY
I imagine that none of the black individuals up front with the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury was in the least bit perturbed by the fact that while Floella Benjamin, for example, was centre stage, processing with the sceptre as if she herself were royalty, Harry, Charles’ own son, was bringing up the rear in the company of his cousins, all because he called out the palace on the racist treatment of his wife.
Meanwhile, his uncle, who had brought the Firm into disrepute and was sanctioned for that, was in the procession with full regalia. His was clearly a minor infraction, given the sordid history of the monarchy, as compared to Harry’s charge of racism.
Viewers would not be aware, for example, that it took heads of state from the black Commonwealth to intervene in the Windrush scandal issue to get Theresa May to heed the complaints of families and lawyers about the iniquitous practices which characterised her hostile environment and were causing the death of innocent black elders. Nor would they know that the monarch has exempted the royal household from having to comply with equality and humanrights legislation, and had once decreed that black folk should not be employed in the palace in clerical positions.
Meanwhile, just as his mother did, Charles will be passing into law all forms of repressive and racist legislation that continue to keep us in bondage. The most recent antiprotest legislation, rushed through parliament in order to prohibit protest by Republicans and antimonarchists, and prevent any disruption to the choreography, is a particular case in point.
We, the black and global majority in this nation, need to have some serious discussions about that growing trend of stateappointed or/and state-sanctioned black folk being complicit in the treatment of the majority of us by monarchy, Church and state. Our message must be clear: you are representative of yourself and yourself only. Whatever you are doing is not being done in our name, or to create the impression that we are respected and included in this society and that systemic racial oppression is a myth.