In one day, Slate has provided retrospectives on two distinct personalities of the 1980s – Diana, Princess of Wales, and Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United Sates. This strikes me as less than coincidental. In both cases, the extent to which they helped create that time in history and the extent to which that time created them is blurred in a yin-yang of zeitgeist (how’s that for a esoteric concept).
Consider the following quotes –
beloved, mourned, and missed
the media presented the loss as a national tragedy – an event so weighty it merited nearly a week of constant coverage
flags hung at half-mast, moments of silence observed, a formal period of mourning declared, numerous television retrospectives, a lavish memorial service in a [historic] cathedral, thousands of people flocked [to the funeral] to pay their final respects
Now, quick, tell me – from which of the two articles did these quotes come?
There is a sort of eerie similarity between the Dutch and Diana, despite dying nearly a decade apart. Tragic aspects unite their deaths – she, a young mother struck down in her prime, and he, an old lion slowly disintegrating into senile dotage.
But what really links them are the halcyon days of their public primes. It is not simply that they shared the 1980s in this regard. Both of them revitalized the institutions that they represented; institutions that, in both cases, were in danger of disappearing in a tide of popular sentiment ranging from cynicism to ennui.
Why then is Reagan lauded as a “giant of American politics and history” by his biographers, Messrs. Buccellato, Helfer, and Staton, while Ms. Applebaum suggests Britons and the rest the world have and should dismiss Diana as the “patron saint of the completely self-obsessed.”
The paradox may be explained by another Reagan quote that applies equally well to Diana. “The image . . . was as important as the [individual]. In the end, the two became inseparable.”
As an individual, Diana does not compare well to Reagan. Agree or disagree with his policies, like him or love him, he was in a position of true power as President and was seldom hesitant to exercise the authority and prestige of his office to bring about change. Diana was married to the heir of a largely symbolic monarchy. She did some admirable things in her life, most notably her charity work, but she hardly affected history directly.
Except in one area – image.
Reagan assumed the Presidency following the disgrace of Nixon, the disappointment of Ford, and the ineffectualness (at least as regards the hostages held by Iran) of Carter. Americans were glum about the ability of our nation, as a world superpower, to make a difference in the world. Reagan, whether offering true inspiration or false hope, got us to be positive about ourselves again. We may have loved or hated his successors in Bill Clinton and George W. Bush but we have never doubted their ability to influence.
Likewise, the fresh young girl chosen by Prince Charles for his wife awakened interest in the British monarchy at a time when it was desperately needed. The Windsor Family, led by Queen Elizabeth II, had set decorum and service as their hallmarks. Diana brought the hidden scandals in their midst into the open, as well as setting the stage for her own downfall, by embracing the limelight too eagerly and brazenly.
Yet if she showed them, as Applebaum contends, that too much publicity is bad, she also illuminated that the reverse course, which the Monarchy had been so diligently following prior to her arrival, was equally deadly.
The Windsors, as we now know, were badly in danger of suffocating themselves in their own marble model; they had entombed themselves in a mausoleum of their own stuffiness. Diana didn’t lower them into commonality. Instead, Britain and the world had changed and the Royal Family had failed both to recognize and adapt to it.
Diana was unhappy in her married life and new life for many reasons but principal among these was her ostracization by the Queen and others for failing to adapt to the marble model. Diana intuitively understood that the monarchy would continue to live and breathe only if the Royals could connect with their subjects and the rest of the world on a level more basic than admiration for a stiff upper lip.
Again, what was written about Reagan proved so true for her as well. Both were “master[s] at eliciting empathy – and its cousin, love.” Reagan’s handlers perceived and exploited this talent from the start. Diana’s handlers resisted it at every turn, usually to their detriment.
The British Monarchy’s penultimate moment was, of course, their (initial) reaction to Diana’s death. The quasi-State Funeral scoffed at in retrospective as “absurd” was far from what Buckingham Palace had intended when news of the fatal car-crash first broke. In fact, their initial decision was to follow protocol to the letter and treat Diana’s death as they would that of any commoner – tragic but quite below their notice. The spectacle that ultimately followed was thrown together in less than a week entirely out of popular sentiment.
In returning to London from Scotland and addressing the nation, Elizabeth broke her own rigid status quo to take action. More Britons and outsiders may have hated her than before Diana appeared on the scene but she ultimately exerted herself as a contemporary force in society as opposed to a largely ignored anachronism.
No less than Tony Benn, a Labor Party MP who is recognized as a leading voice for abolishing the monarchy in Great Britain, recently admitted on NPR’s All Things Considered he felt a push toward republicanism that had been building for decades in Britain largely collapsed after Diana’s death and the Royal Family’s belated acknowledgement of it.
What is more, the Windsors seem to have finally learned from their past mistakes. Thus, the death of the Queen Mother – a figure far less significant than Diana, at least in contemporary circles – was not allowed to simply pass into polite oblivion. Instead, à la Reagan, “the mythmaking machinery went into overdrive” for her funeral, resulting in the PR plus for the Monarchy. It was the newfangled packaging, not the antique that lay trussed up within it, which had caused the difference.
No, Diana did not “change Britain forever” by her words or actions. Yet through her unwillingness or inability to adapt to the Royal model, she forced that model to re-invent itself at a time when it desperately needed rejuvenation.
Maybe Applebaum misses Diana’s legacy because she insists on reducing her life to language and ideas. As with Reagan, one need only add the familiar image to begin to remember and comprehend the appeal the individual once held. Diana’s story will never be correctly told in mere words, be they gushing tribute or scathing critique. Diana, like Dutch, contemporary icons that they are, require that most contemporary medium of literature, the graphic novel (a.k.a. the comic book) to tell their stories.
