What should progressives be thinking about this fall? Globalization multiplies the possibilities. We are faced with the prospect of even more international trade deals designed to strengthen the exploitative machinery of the multinational corporation. The economic dangers of the global system are serious indeed; but they are bound up with cultural changes that are equally significant, if rarely perceived. As I am sure I don't need to remind you, the cultural icon Diana Spencer died this fall. Most Americans regard this event as rather important, and I am inclined to agree. Pundits made much of the chance juxtaposition of the accident that killed Princess Di with the natural death of Mother Teresa. The culture scolded itself for preferring glamour to worthwhile endeavor, but the reproach rang hollow-the passing of the princess brought several times the news coverage of the sudden deaths of Elvis, Marilyn, or Lennon. Who was Princess Di? She was thrust onto a global stage when she married Prince Charles in 1981. The fairy-tale wedding seemed to embody the conservative values of the Thatcher-Reagan era, and journalists fawned over the twenty-year-old who had injected much-needed flair into a frumpy royal family. Sixteen years, forty-four People cover appearances, and one automobile crash later, it is still hard to say who she truly was. The week before her death, for the first time in history, a British public opinion poll registered a greater than 50% disapproval rating in the British monarchy. For centuries, Great Britain extended its power into the farthest corners of the globe, building networks of trade and tribute that concentrated tremendous prestige in the hands of the country's rulers. In recent years, social scientists have become engrossed in the project of documenting empire. We have learned a great deal about the systems of control and surveillance that long regulated the lives of colonized peoples. In an age when the British royalty no longer had any meaningful political power, systems of surveillance were turned on royalty itself. A good example is the incident in which a secretly planted camera photographed Diana working out at a public gym-what better modern analogue is there to Jeremy Bentham's vaunted Panopticon? At the time of her death, Di was the planet's best-recognized woman, and the spread of her image has reflected and promoted the Anglicization of world cultures. Today, the sun sets on the British empire, and it is customary to say we are in a " postcolonial" time; but the unprecedented global celebrity of the Princess of Wales contradicts the notion. In important ways, the structure of monarchy has been transformed since empire's glory days; but these shifts have served to conceal the patterns of inequality that undergird the concept. By studying the case of Diana, I think we can uncover the ways in which modern privilege is concentrated and the marks of its concentration erased. How did the Princess of Wales become a cultural icon? It certainly wasn't because of anything she did. Needless to say, her short life involved virtually no work, and in this sense, she was the ideal contrast to Mother Teresa. She was a public figure for who she was, not for being born into the nobility, an ancient system of status and privilege that removed her from the concerns of ordinary life. She was elevated at a young age to royalty, a profoundly undemocratic institution, and one that subject peoples around the world have chafed against. The privilege of the British royalty has waned in the last century, but Di managed to forge a new kind of privilege. She was made, or made herself, into the ultimate media toy. She was someone who could rub shoulders with the likes of Gianni Versace and Elton John without selling clothes or striking records. The privilege of unearned celebrity, of which Di is the consummate example, is on the rise in our culture, the newly global culture. Its implications are profoundly distressing. Because her celebrity was rooted solely in her social station, instead of an activity or talent, she was infinitely pliable in the hands of the media. She was innocent; she was sexy; she was high fashion; she was an unhappy wife; she was denigrated by her in-laws; she was a single mom. She was made into a kind of Everywoman, and American women were expected to identify with her in the checkout line. Because she had nothing, fundamentally, to do, she shared every problem that contemporary women face, except for the real ones. Her problems were magnified, as if in a cruel caricature of modern life. This charade, even after her death, distracts us. Noam Chomsky has said that professional sports are a mechanism by which the people are distracted from oppression. Di was most popular with the sector of the American public that buys lottery tickets and reads tabloids, a sector that perhaps should be thinking of class struggle. The elevation of Diana made social stratification appear natural and helped to sublimate genuine anxieties into a depoliticized public domain. Di's involvement in charities established an illusion of social justice, and of celebrity as a force for good, instead of the monumental drain on public resources and attention that is its true nature. Di served a status quo that she never challenged. As Katha Pollitt has noted, she never once asked why children's hospitals should require her fundraising assistance, instead of getting adequate tax support. Her facile adoption of causes was a travesty of the struggle for social justice. It was part of her image. It is well-known that, at the end of her life, she did not relish that image. She was the subject of press attention at all but the most private moments. Many people believe that news photographers brought about her untimely death, and the outpouring of sympathy that followed was accompanied, ironically, by widespread condemnation of the media. The popular story of Di's death is a misleading one. Sympathy for her supposed innocence emerged in the very same public arena where the media chased her. Her demise was made out to be a sudden disruption of an innocent, spirited young life, but in fact her life and death were part of a single hermetic system. Her death was sadly trivial: what Daniel Boorstin has called a "pseudo-event." Her strange life simply played itself out to its logical conclusion. The photographers were pursuing her for the same reason that up to two million people thronged her funeral. The tragic life of Diana Spencer symbolized extraordinary privilege, undeserved and ultimately unwanted. It shows that our public life is a distorted and confused arena in which trifles are amplified and urgent matters suppressed. Celebrity cults distract us from the social problems we need to face. We are left with a paradox: if we are going to change the world, we will need a better world in which to do the job. |
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