vilakins | 'The Queen'

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'The Queen'

Summer's back for a while, to my relief, and I found a ceramic painting place for a wet day, that also has a jewellery making class one evening this week which I might go to. We also went to see The Queen at last; Helen Mirren was superb, and the others, all of whom looked very like the people they were playing, were also very good. Is it just me, or was the guy who played Tony Blair rather Tarranty?

The footage of people, including large and tough-looking men, sobbing in the streets reminded me of how I felt at the time of Diana's death. For us it happened during the day, and I was reading in another room while friends watched TV. When they said Diana had been hurt in an accident, I was mildly interested but went back to my book. Then when they said she was dead, I just said, "What will all the women's magazines write about now?" A few days later, faced with the huge outpouring of public grief, I wondered if there was something wrong with me that I couldn't understand it or feel it. I egret anyone's death, but I didn't mourn her. After all, I didn't know her.

I also bought some cheap books, all SF and including a collection of Ursula Le Guin short stories. I'm still reading Ransome though. :-)

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My main response to Diana'a death was irritation, because it was an on-call weekend for me and all the TV channels were down or showing nothing that wasn't all about her. I never met her, I never followed her career, so why the upset (on the other hand I've been known to get slightly teary when my favourite showjumpers get put to sleep: Ryan's Son and Milton being the stand-out horses -- both John Whittaker's interestingly enough).

I don't think I've ever cried about someone I didn't know, except last year. I can see funerals (and weddings) at a church from my office window, and once it was when the Maori guard of honour performed a haka, and the other time was when the deceased was obviously a young woman (the chief mourners were a man and two small children) and the father broke down when he was given a flower to put on the coffin before it left in the hearse. That got me.

I have been known to cry about animals in the newspaper and the SPCA magazine.

But rich and famous whom I suspect don't even have the same feelings as normal people? Nope.

I've cried over at least one rock star: Steve Clark from Def Leppard, mainly because he was from Sheffield and it was such a waste that he got away from the dead end jobs a lot of his contemporaries ended up in, yet couldn't cope with all the trappings of stardom. And he died over the Christmas holidays, which is always depressing.

I'd argu over the idea that the rich are different, too. All the well-off and/or titled people I've worked with or for have been very down to earth.

I've met a lot of rich people (and one earl who doesn't use his title) in my current job and they've all been very nice. Fame however corrupts in my experience: pleasant people who do well in sport or show business end up shallow and self-obsessed, even those who are only famous here. :-( I think it's the combination that's bad.

Still not convinced: I can think of more people that aren't corrupted by fame and/or fortune than that have been, based on those I or my friends have actually met than those that are insufferable gits. Or maybe it's the nice ones that stick in my mind and the gits that stick in yours. Plus there's at least one person in that category that I personally can't stand, but a people I respect, who know him better, have a slightly different opinion.

For what it's worth, I'm not big on mourning people I don't know, especially celebrities. There is not enough time in my life to grieve everyone who's ever died, and I don't see why celebrities should get more grief than the average person. I also feel that it cheapens and usurps the place of the legitimate mourners--family and friends. The people I was sad for when Diana died were her sons, having such a spectacle made out of their personal tragedy.

Mind you, sometimes there is a celebrity death of someone I feel made a difference in my life or that I particularly admire, and I commemorate them in some way (when Anwar Sadat died I started collecting Egyptian stamps for several years), but I'm not going to put on a show of grief as if it's my personal loss.

Anyway. Glad to hear your vacation is going well. Have some extra fun for me. :)

I never got the whole celebrity cult thing. I might be sorry I'll never see new work from them, but that's it. I was regretful when our ex-PM David Lange died, because he was brilliant, left-wing, anti-nuclear, and so witty with it, but I didn't cry.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this.

it's a great film, isn't it? I found it all very interesting, because like you I didn't understand or feel the torrent of grief, I just regretted her death and felt sorry for her sons

I felt sorry for the boys too. I remember seeing them on the news walking after the coffin, so reserved and brave with billions watching. Mind you, their whole upbringing is completely different from anything I can imagine.

The film was wonderful; it reminded me a little of one about Queen Victoria which showed her human side. I've forgotten the title but I think Billy Connolly was in it. Oh yes, Mrs Brown.

Di's death was one of the two times I've seen my dad cry. The other was when his mother died--he couldn't hold back tears when he saw the princes at the funeral procession, it probably reminded him of having lost his mother a few years earlier.

I want to know who played Blair now, since I had rather weird double-takes on seeing Blair on telly after Steven Pacey did a frighteningly perfect impression of him in Jeffrey Archer: The Truth.

I want to know who played Blair now

It was Michael Sheen (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0790688/) who also played Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa!

DUDE! I was *just* thinking of Fantabulosa five minutes ago!

He's a good actor, he is, oh yes.

I watched the credits to see who played Blair; he was very good and did remind me of Steven Pacey. I wish I'd seen him play Blair in that play about Archer.

kalypso_v copied that for me at some point, but I have no idea where the tape is now. The Tarrant Nostra website had clips of Tufty-as-Blair when it aired, they still might do. It's quite hilarious--Blair's made out to be completely smitten with Archer and Tufty swoons like a little fangirl. He got the mannerisms just right, too.

I shall look at their site when I get back and can watch vids; thanks.

A few days later, faced with the huge outpouring of public grief, I wondered if there was something wrong with me that I couldn't understand it or feel it.

I suspect that we may have been in the minority, but people not mourning didn't constiture a news story.

Which Le Guin collection did you get?

I suspect that we may have been in the minority

Damn! I meant to write "majority".

True; the news is always skewed to get viewers.

'The Birthday of the World'. I've probably read it but it cost little more than a cup of coffee. :-)

I read that collection about a year ago. It's really excellent.

I reacted against all that; it felt like being bullied to mourn. For the matter of that, I also object to being strong-armed into two-minute silences for this, that and the other. (I don't object to it in the case of WW1 but I want to decide for myself.)

:-D I get stroppy about that sort of thing too. I wear the brightest colours I can find on all black days here, but I'm not sure we ever have two-minute silences. Maybe they pass me by. :-P

I'm going to be weirdly different here. I don't follow celebrities, don't even have a TV. I felt a bit contemptuous of the dog and pony show that is the British monarchy - it seemed (well, it still does) a sort of national soap opera.

But when Diana died, it was weird. I was devastated. So was everyone I knew. And nobody liked her, nobody cared a fig about her! But it was like our childhood died. We didn't send flowers or anything silly like that, but it was ridiculous how upset we were. I felt the way I feel when I get choked up at a cheesy sentimental movie - emotionally manipulated. But I'm not sure how, since I didn't watch any of the media coverage. A psychologist friend speculated that on some unconscious level, everyone had bought into her as the embodiment of an archetype, and we weren't mourning the loss of Diana the woman, but of Diana the symbol.

That's interesting. I've also read that people feel they do know celebrities because they know the sort of things they know about their own friends. I don't read much about celebrities because I dislike the whole cult of fame, plus I'm just not that interested in most of them as people, but perhaps those who read about them have this sort of spurious connection and do indeed feel they've lost a friend.

As for sentimental films, I think it's the music that moves me. Watch 'em with the sound off and it just doesn't work.

You're 100% right about the soundtracks. I felt that way about "The Color Purple." I got all choked up before I realized that I didn't really care about what was happening, it was just the schmaltzy music. And then I got really angry - felt emotionally manipulated.

I can still remember my daughter being most put out because children's television got taken off and there was something in particular she wanted to watch!

Its was weird the way people did react. I mean there is even a movement to canonise her and people are attributing miracles to her.

Haven't seen "The Queen" but now I have a very mental image of Tony Blair doing a Kenneth Williams impression! Now Matron!

Ooh, you are naughty!

She was obviously an empathetic person who loved children. Not a saint however.

The film is worth seeing. It's extremely well done and offers a glimpse into an alien world.

My first thought was for her sons, my mother's great nieces lost their mother at roughly the same age the princes were when Diana died and I knew how that affected them. But the most I felt for Diana herself is the mild sorrow I always feel when someone so young dies. I'm Prince Charles age, and she was young in comparison far too young to marry him IMO. The out pouring of grief I saw on the TV day after day absolutely baffled me, I just did not understand why the normally phlegmatic British should behave that way.

I'm the same age as you, and I think that we may be the last traditionally phlegmatic British generation. Most younger people seem far more openly emotional. Also the TV cameras would have concentrated on those whose grief was most intense, because the people who were getting on with their normal lives didn't constitute a news story. So the coverage probably painted a false picture of the extent and intensity of the mourning.

I'm the same age as you, and I think that we may be the last traditionally phlegmatic British generation
It does seem that way, the stiff upper lip has turned into the cry at the drop of a hat

people who were getting on with their normal lives didn't constitute a news story.
That's true, the media wants a 'man bites dog story' not 'dog bites man'

It was strange, seeing huge men blubbing in the street. I think we're more reserved and stiff upper lip; people often say we are.

When Princess Di died, I was angry: furious at how she died, angry at the way she'd been hounded in life, and annoyed at the excesses of the hypocritical Media in their reaction to it all.

I was angry with the clinical way she was chosen while Charles continued on with Camilla (and for that matter at how he hadn't been permitted to marry the woman he wanted, but that doesn't excuse his later behaviour), and of course the press do pursue the famous. I suppose it's one price they pay for all they have, but yes, her death was stupid and so avoidable. I have little respect for journalists after knowing one and being told how they distort with carefully chosen language to make things look much worse than they are.

I wonder how it would have been had she marred a Muslim and died as an older woman, no longer young and glamorous.

wondered if there was something wrong with me that I couldn't understand it or feel it.

Ah, I do wish that, in situations like that one, people would recognise that people don't always share the same priorities.

I think one or two people looked at me strangely when I said I wasn't doing any mourning for the late Princess of Wales, but the people I worked with at the time knew I'd lost a much loved pet earlier in the same month, and was probably still a bit upset from the death of a colleague not long before the end of it.

So I was a bit numb by the end of August '97, and felt pretty much like you did - something to regret, certainly for the sake of those closest to her, but not to grieve with the same intensity that others seemed to display.

I can understand that; a pet is a member of one's family and a celebrity is just someone distant that one hears about now and then.

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'The Queen'

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