It’s a rainy morning here in Pasadena, I’m behind on a great deal of paperwork (anyone who has been in my cramped, messy office can understand why), and I’m adjusting to posting here at the new blog.
I’m way behind on my emails. My wife and I were away with my family in Northern California for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I didn’t check my inbox until yesterday afternoon. It will be a while before I get back to everyone who’s written. Thanks for understanding.
I promise a more serious post later today — about race, class, affirmative action, and student essays for college admission — but for now, a note about the film The Queen. We saw it last night and loved it; Helen Mirren was marvelous, of course, but Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair nearly stole the picture. Sheen bears only a slight resemblance to the PM, but he nailed his mannerisms and the inflections in his voice, particularly when stirred up or excited. It’s a marvelous picture. It’s at movies like this that I remember that one of the gifts my late father gave his children was the right to a British passport. My brother, alone among the four of us, chooses to make his home in England, but the rest of us feel at least some attachment to the nation that gave my father’s family refuge in the darkest days of the 1930s. I am Her Majesty’s subject, and have the documents to prove it.
The film, of course, deals with the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death in the late summer of 1997. As luck would have it, I flew into Manchester Airport on the very day Diana died — Sunday, August 31. I was traveling to a medieval history conference at Durham University, and had to drive the several hundred miles from Manchester to Durham in the pouring rain. It was my first experience of driving on the “wrong side” of the road, and to do so in a downpour, jet-lagged, while listening to the BBC coverage of the terrible accident and its aftermath was positively surreal. It was an amazing thing that my life didn’t also end on the same day that Diana’s did!
I was 14 when Diana and Charles married; six years younger than the Princess, I had an almost obligatory crush on her from the time their engagement was announced in February 1981. I was exactly the right age to be mesmerized by her. I followed her story for years and years, and like many, was saddened by the divorce. (The separation from Charles came in the Queen’s annus horribilis of 1992, the same year my first wife and I split up.) And I can say without question that if the 9/11 terrorist attacks are the single most shocking event of my lifetime, Diana’s death in that Paris tunnel ranks a close second. No shuttle explosion, no assassination attempt, no earthquake — no other historic happening is as vivid in my memory as those stunning days in 1997.
I signed two condolence books: one in Durham, and one in Carlisle. In one day, after the conference let out, I drove all over the north of England, seeing everything from the Lake District to Hadrian’s Wall to Fountains Abbey to York. I gave a paper at the conference (it ended up being published here), but I barely remember what the damn thing was about. That week was about Diana and the extraordinary reaction to her death.
It’s funny, because when Diana died, I was just starting at university, and I heard all this punditry about how sad it was that the biggest event of Gen X/Y’s lives (I forget which, and I’m on the cusp, usually) would be Diana’s death, it couldn’t compare to Kennedy’s death, or whatever historical event they wanted to exalt. I found it stupid — what, nothing else bad would happen in our lifetimes?
I signed up for some sort of project then, and just over 4 years later got a pile of questions — where was I when I heard (I forget), what did I do after I heard (no idea), what had I done that day (got me), etc. Four years after 9/11, I can answer all those questions.
But mostly, I sympathised with the queen in that story. I didn’t see what the fuss was about, with Diana (I had nothing against her, and I saw she did lots of good, I just had nothing for her, exactly), I didn’t see why everything had to be changed for her, and I couldn’t believe that anyone would have ever considered that Diana would be the crowning disaster of the decades near 2000 — it’s not even in my top 10.
Diana’s death as the big event of a generation? Got to disagree. Yes, there will always be big events that everyone will remember exactly where they were when they heard (like 9/11)… but Diana’s death, tragic as it was, didn’t make that big of an impression on me. The first such event, for me (and I’m an X, FWIW) was the explosion of the Space Shuttle shortly after takeoff.
Somehow, I didn’t see the video footage of that until the 10th anniversary… and it broke my heart all over again.
Hey, I remember the space shuttle (I was a frosh at Cal in 1986); I remember the shootings of Reagan and the pope; I remember the Gulf War. The 2000 Florida election, the Northridge Earthquake — no other event was so singularly impacting as Diana’s death. Perhaps it was because I was in England, and perhaps it was because I had had that early adolescent crush on the princess. But with the exception of 9/11, it stands alone as an event.
I suspect it has to do with being in England — and your closer ties to England. My events are, unsurprisingly, heavily Canadian. Number 2 for me is the Quebec referendum, for instance — something which I doubt makes your top 100.
I think it makes sense for it to be in the top few for any individual person. I thought then — and think now — that it was silly and offensive to say that it would be the defining (or one of the very few) event for an entire generation. (I know you didn’t say it in this post.)
Diana’s death was huge for me too…surprising since I was only 17 at the time. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to watch her funeral. And I’m just a typical American. No British passport here.
i have been really looking forward to seeing that film and now my interest is renewed. i remember diana’s death vividly. my mother and i were on a road trip up the california coast the weekend before school started back up. we had been roughing it and camping out of our car and had no contact with the rest of the world till we stopped for gas and my mom came out of the mini-mart saying “princess di died”
at the time we talked about how monumental her death was and how we couldnt think of another woman at the time who was more beloved by the general populus and who’s death would be more widely mourned, “except mother teresa” my mom said. a few days later she died too and unfortunately was largely overshadowed and all but forgotten about in the wake of diana’s death.
It’s not just England that her death affected, but a number of the Commonwealth countries or those with British ties. Diana’s death was a huge deal here in New Zealand, too, and I feel the same as Hugo in that it was of a similar impact to September 11th. In some ways it was actually bigger.
I mus point out that actually a majority of Britons didn’t and don’t care very much about Diana’s death. We were interested in the reaction to it, as it was sociologically fascinating – from where did this sudden display of collective, ostentatious, supposedly compulsory mourning spring? But “kind posh girl dies in car crash; foul play suspected” isn’t really epoch-defining… Surely Americans caring about it is just misguided Anglophilia?
Jay, who the hell were the 2 million people in London for the funeral? All Yanks on vacation? Who wrapped a line around Carlisle Cathedral to sign the condolence book, and left millions of flowers? Who filled Durham cathedral full to the rafters the night after she died? Tourists from Texas? Not quite.
Dude, I’m a British citizen too, and I was there for it — what I saw was an extraordinary outpouring of genuine emotion. And it seemed to me, judging from friends and relatives in Britain, that those who were genuinely moved outnumbered those who watched with a certain academic fascination.
The one character not developed in the film was Diana herself. While she remains the icon of superficial popular culture, it was a very different Diana — behind the facades of glamour and pseudo-compassion — whom the Royal family knew personally.
Both Diana and her brother, Charles Spencer, suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder caused by their mother’s abandoning them as young children. A google search reveals that Diana is considered a case study in BPD by mental health professionals.
For Charles Spencer, BPD meant insatiable sexual promiscuity (his wife was divorcing him at the time of Diana’s death). For Diana, BPD meant intense insecurity and insatiable need for attention and affection which even the best husband could never fulfill.Â
From a BPD perspective, it’s clear that the Royal family did not cause her “problems”. Rather, she brought her multiple issues into the marriage, and the Royal family was hapless to deal with them.
Her illness, untreated, sowed the seeds of her fast and unstable lifestyle, and sadly, her tragic fate.
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding at Hugo Schwyzer, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong