Diana’s story continues to expose sins of royalty
WITH The Crown’s portrayal of the tumultuous Diana era only recently aired, one might be forgiven for thinking that the world has as much use for another People’s Princess biopic as another year of lockdown. But with a new movie titled Spencer starring Kristen Stewart in the pipeline, expanding the bulging library of documentaries, mini-series, dramas and that execrable Hollywood Diana, described by its leading lady Naomi Watts as ‘a sinking ship’, it appears the appetite for Shy Di material can never be exhausted.
Like Hitler, Diana is ubiquitous on TV channels, in print and online. It’s impossible to get through 24 hours without glimpsing either her blonde bob or his sinister moustache.
But while the morbid fascination in Hitler is understandable, given the depth of his crimes and the unspeakable ideology that triggered the holocaust, what is the rationale for the Diana obsession?
She has no legacy to cause her memory to burn so vividly, let alone explain her cult following or the burgeoning Diana industry.
Her two sons are her proudest achievement and while she did good works, helped remove the stigma around Aids and raised awareness about landmines, her rise to sainthood is questionable given the number of married men she cavorted with.
Pundits say that her star power comes from her combination of sex appeal and innocence which is rare, only seen before really in Marilyn Monroe and Britney Spears. But both Britney and Marilyn worked hard and had enormous talent – it’s absurd to compare them to Diana who was from the aristocracy and didn’t have to lift a finger .
THE crime perpetrated against Diana was medieval insofar as she was served up on a plate to a much older man when she was still a teenager, and no-one shouted stop. Royal wives are frequently unhappy in their gilded cages but from Meghan Markle to Fergie, they all knew exactly what they were signing up for. Diana was too young, too girlish to know that her romantic urges would hardly
be reciprocated by a suitor who prized her purity so much.
This posthumous ability of hers to shine an unfavourable light on the royals and Prince Charles, to remind the public of the side of that institution that is cruel, entitled and more in line with Henry Tudor’s mores than modernity’s may explain the pop cultural obsession with her.
Or why a movie about her that is not even finished is creating controversy on grounds of historical accuracy.
Coming after the recent series
of The Crown which portrayed the royal family as inept idiots and which the palace attempted to discredit on a similar basis, undermining the new film is perhaps to be expected.
Feelings may still be raw and fears heightened about how mass entertainment left unchecked may incite the mob into a dangerous lather of anti-royal sentiment. Or worse.
There may be royal orders and medals aplenty for those who carp and cavil about whether Diana was really in Sandringham on the pivotal weekend this movie dramatises as the time she came to terms with the hopelessness of her marriage and renounced her dream to become queen. But royal toadies aside, noone else will care and Diana’s fans will lap up this version of her heroic life as reverentially as if it was produced by royal warrant. Diana’s potential to command an audience from beyond the grave, to upturn the House of Windsor and metaphorically impale its heir on a spike is still feared by her in-laws.
The week of her death almost a quarter of a century ago, when a tsunami of grief swept through England and her brother delivered a eulogy that seemed tantamount to a coup d’état may be etched into the public memory.
But it also haunts the royal family and ensures that, for as long as they live and breathe, so does she.