Ten years ago today, the Princess of Wales died. Where were you when you heard the news? I was at my mom and dad's house in Louisiana, visiting from Florida. We were talking about my upcoming trip to Canada to cover the Toronto Film Festival when a bulletin came on TV. And that's how we found out.
In Toronto the following week, I found myself wanting to watch a lot of TV instead of movies. I never really gave a fig about Diana and all that, but I am fascinated by cultural phenomena, and woke up before daylight as an adolescent to watch her wedding to Charles because ... well, it seemed like the thing to do. I was more taken with it as a meta-phenomenon, I think (e.g., "Wow, isn't it cool that I'm up early watching a wedding with a global television audience?"). I felt the same way about the Diana death obsequies. The Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto became a veritable flower dump. It's all anyone wanted to talk about. I woke up early once again to watch the funeral in my Toronto hotel room, and shocked myself for crying over it all. I hadn't followed Diana's melodrama, and to the extent that I had I tended to sympathize with the Windsors. Still, the idea that someone so young, rich, beautiful and vital could die so horribly and so young -- well, I didn't cry for Diana so much as I cried over the realization that nothing protects us from an untimely death. Well, that, and I wept for those poor orphaned boys, and the hand-lettered card reading "Mummy" embedded in a bouquet of flowers that they put on their mother's coffin. That was heartbreaking. Then I felt like an ass for getting emotional over the spectacle, put on my coat and went to the movies.
Alex Massie throws a big fat stinkbomb today, writing that dying was a great career move for Diana, good for the monarchy, and good for Britain. Excerpt:
She died at the optimum moment for her reputation. We have generally chosen to overlook the squalor of the her final months. As it was she died as the saintly Diana, friend to the weak, the sick, the maimed, the - yuck! - "People's Princess". That tiara that would have slipped eventually, however. Harsh though it is to say, one wonders how long it would have been before Diana's string of love affairs with men of questionable suitability tarnished her reputation. Not too long I suspect. How long before public sympathy for her plight curdled into condemnation of her actions? Had she continued to see coke-snorting Egyptian playboys such as Dodi al-Fayed and other dubious members of that social world, one wonders how long it would have been before the public began to see her as, not to put too fine a point on it, a tart.
I know, I know, the Massie piece is in incredibly poor taste. And yet, as cultural analysis, I find it impossible to disagree with. You really should read the whole thing.
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I have no idea where I was. I know where I was when I heard that JFK had been shot, and again when Reagan was shot. But for some reason, although I thought Di a beautiful young woman, it apparently hit me about like any other "Jet-Setting Celebrity ____ Killed!" That's a "dog bites man" story.
I'm just not tempted to celebrity worship - never have been. So as C.S. Lewis wrote about his avoidance of gambling, I don't suppose there's much virtue in my apparent indifference at the time and since.
I don't remember where I was, because I paid little notice. The close proximity in time to Mother Teresa's death assured that I paid no attention to Diana's.
The wallowing in kitsch and bathos that followed Diana's death, however, was remarkable. It gave the lie to the notion that Britain had ever been a great nation; they'd rather become a nation of overly sentimental sots.
Ten years on, and the Scots are suing for separation, with some success, and it can't be long before John Bull gives back those six counties in Northern Ireland.
The recent episode with the Iranians this past summer, in which the Royal Navy surrendered without firing a shot, was a coda to this theme.
Leaving aside the holy like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II and sticking strictly with pop culture:
Many of us have these moments, but it wasn't always for Princess Diana.
For me, it was the race-car driver Ayrton Senna. For a close friend, it was Kurt Cobain. For many others, it was John Lennon or Elvis.
Heroes are heroes because they make a connection with us, even though we never have and never will meet them. And the very reason you even made such a post on your blog is the knowledge that such connections can be so strong that they live on even (or sometimes especially) if the hero dies too soon.
Or as Elton John sang of his beloved Di, "Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did."
I had a line back then about the Diana nonsense and it still applies. "Excuse me while I puke!"
It was a last day at the country house before going to the city, i heard neighbours daughter shouting to her mama: Princess Diana died in car crash!
It seemed strange. I never cared about her, and openly showed it at first, but after some days of hysteria and endless programmes on TV perhaps even dropped some tears.
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