Well, the Queen has died, Long Live the King. I suppose that it is assumed that, as an Irish person, I would be happy about this. It is fairer to say I feel nothing, really. There is much being said about a nation’s Granny — the Keanu Reeves of Royal life (a blank slate for projection of self onto). There are also Republicans and others pointing out the way the monarchy enables current power structures and whitewashes past crimes. No comment here around the control of thought (pictures EVERYWHERE — even on supermarket scanners and house sellers windows) and action (funerals cancelled, Operations postponed, STRICTLY DANCING cancelled!!!) and “off the scale” (to quote twitter @NigelBagshaw) Soviet Union type reporting from the BBC!
What I am intrigued by is the myth making around royalty and the one the nation of England holds onto rabidly. I suppose there is a dreaming we have, born of childhood, that lives outside of the mundanity of the day to day, year-to-year life. One where the stories are all true, magic is real and princes roam the land searching for your true beauty inside that no one else can see. As we grow up and “put away childish things” we usually settle for the nearest we can find and yet there is a longing buried deep within that wants to prove our grown up self wrong.
“See — princesses do exist and even if I can’t be one, I can be a part of some kind of fairy tale!” the inner child might exclaim and bubble into the semi-conscious. The British can live being a servant of the wealthy in reality, I guess? An unquestionable story giving one a place in “the order of things”. It seems notions like unquestioning obedience and following your “superiors” are hard baked into the psyche of the English. A very famous “Frost Report” sketch about class is still as relevant today. Indeed, an Irish friend of mine over here was asked, as part of a training for her profession, “What class are you?” and she had no idea. It is a very alien concept to us. Subtly, and sometimes more overtly, the message is not to rock the boat, to ‘doff your cap’ and let the ruling classes rule. There are threads that connect religion too, but that subject needs another space.
More than the self myth, however, there is the national myth, which has been very prevalent in this country of England; continually boosted by some powerful forces. I have stood back the last little while (really since Brexit happened) and tried to be as neutral an observer as possible. In it, but not of it. I am bemused by some aspects of British life and flabbergasted by many others. Though, it has to be said, many people I am friends with are equally appalled, so what follows is an oversimplification.
Here above all is a nation, a people, who rarely say sorry for anything. You only have to listen to them talk about their sports to realise the depth of their self grandiosity and who have a great difficulty (certainly in the media) to concede that there may be problems with the system. Again, not to say there isn’t a groundswell of folk who are waking up; but they are pilloried by the vocal minority. No one represented ‘Britishness’ as much as the Queen did in public — a “don’t make a fuss”, “Just get on with it” and keep working until you drop attitude. These things should be challenged, shouldn’t they? Is now a good time? Feels like it would land on deaf ears. Simultaneously, words like ‘respect’ and ‘duty’ keep being thwacked on people’s heads as batons to silence the masses. Again, I don’t know, but am fascinated by this enormous story that these people believe.
Other nations have myths about themselves, it is true, but I am not aware of any others so fixed in a person, and a family, as this one. It is beyond a belief, though definitely quasi-religious in nature, more than a reflecting of a past landscape of superiority cutting into a definition of a national ego. The majority of living persons on this island have not known a life without this one human representing who they are on the world stage. Buffoons of leaders can come and go, but here was a mainstay of what the world gets to see as English.
If we take myth to mean the greater story behind the story, the shadow, edge of consciousness tale, then this story of reality is one for sure. There is a strange energy here now — a hum that is unspoken, unchallengeable. Perhaps a nation that is realising it is not the great I am nor immortal. Maybe it is a battening down of hatches in a refusal to deal with its frailties and certainly its failures. On the ground it feels like both — though that’s not what is circulated in the popular media as the victims of abuse of power and the addicts to the same power and systems shout loud to not challenge the status quo. There is definitely a greater story to be worked out, but as all healing, there must be great suffering, loss and repentance (to use a charged word) before the realisation and the budding of the new shoot of life.
Here’s hoping the passing of one legend can, with pain, begin a new national awakening. I am not optimistic, though.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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Escape the Act Like a Man Box | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men | Why I Don’t Want to Talk About Race | The First Myth of the Patriarchy: The Acorn on the Pillow |
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