Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 08:31:02 +0200
Subject: M-G: A time to Di -- the Di-ification


Chris B finally unchoked enough to chip in.

>Yesterday telephone calls obliged Windsor Castle to lower its flag to half
>mast in honour for someone who had left the Royal Family. On Saturday
>Charles will have to go through the most humiliating experience of his
>life, because of public opinion, because Blair insisted on a state funeral
>for "the people's princess".

This will be one for the record books, a must viewing experience. While I
missed the wedding and for years had a "Stuff the Wedding" badge on my
wall, this is gonna be fun.

>Diana was both Diana and Actaeon, the Goddess of Hunting and the hunted.
>Her seductiveness was in her vulnerability. And here she was subtly
>difference from Lady Bountiful: rich, privileged and self indulgent, the
>message nevertheless was not that the people should graciously accept
>charity, but that we are all vulnerable. She had suffered from a disgusting
>and humiliating mental disorder; she had tried to kill herself; she needed
>to be touched, like she argued that HIV victims needed to be touched.

Poor little rich girl. Not all bourgeois (or aristocrat) women are like
Thatcher. Most are capable of hiding the predatory reptile inside them.
After all, it's what they spend their childhood and youth training for.

>We can smirk. We can use our marxism to sneer. Or we can use our marxism to
>understand and to describe what is happening underneath so that we can
>unite with the democratic impulse of the people.

Merge with the surge ...

>Whom the gods love, die young, and she has all the makings of an icon.

>Diana is becoming an icon in a pluralist theology. It transcends formal
>religions. It has been created by the conditions of late 20th century
>capitalism. She made links across five continents. Her role in global civil
>society is good in campaigning against landmines, and may still have a good
>role to play in challenging the capitalist ownership and control of
>communications. Most subversively she died at the moment she was
>contemplating marrying a muslim, despite being the mother of the future
>king of England.
>
>She is a sort of divinity in a new secular religion. That divinity to the
>extent that it has validity is a reflection of the divinity of the people
>who saw something of themselves in her. As marxists we do not have to
>respect for idealist reasons a flawed, confused and spoiled 36 year old,
>whose life could hardly have gone out at a higher moment. We should respect
>the responses of ordinary people. They are our god.

Now this is *interesting*. Just last night my mate was drawing parallels to
Elvis, saying that people will refuse to believe she's really dead. And
here we have it. Di will be the Holy Mother to Elvis's Jesus. And people
will have their illusions, if they've got nothing else to hang on to. Chris
has an illusion that religion is a reflection of the divinity of the
people. I consider, along with Marx, that religion is a pain-killer
reflecting frustration at being utterly removed from all real "divinity" in
present human society. Along with Elvis, who actually gave the world
something real, we now have Di as our fix for the pain of exploitation and
degradation so long as we don't think we can get rid of these ourselves.

What fascinated me in the religious aspect illuminated by the Elvis
parallel was the Rose in Spanish Harlem thing -- it's growing in the street
right up through the concrete, but soft and sweet and dreamy. Di's cult to
a T. This "martyrdom" is unstoppable. Blair, who's showing a nasty penchant
for coining memorable phrases just like Wilson ("the pound in your pocket",
"the white-hot technological revolution", etc) and Churchill ("waiter,
waiter, two more brandies and sodas, puhleeze"), has really struck oil with
"the people's princess", and the Windsors, poor slaves to reality, have to
eat shit and serve at the altar of the new goddess, the cuckoo child-bride
who usurped both their royalty and their religious primacy. They let the
genie out of the bottle, and now there's no way they can get it back in
again.

A "protocol expert" put it well on TV, saying she was both a member of the
Royal family and not, at the same time.

Everything's coming into place. The TV yesterday made the comparisons to
Mountbatten. The view was reported that the Windsors were getting flak for
trying to appropriate Di in death and bask in her reflected glory.

This will just grow and grow of its own momentum. It'll be fun to see what
forms it takes. It's like Burnham wood coming to Dunsinane, or Ceausescu's
pears growing on poplar trees. The princess got her flowers at Buckingham
Palace, right up the Queen's nose. Windsor Castle had to fly the flag at
half-mast.

Now there's no reality around to check the myth-making. So fasten your
seat-belts, Popes and Archbishops, Princes and Queens, it's going to be a
bumpy night for all that's legitimate and established!

Cheers,

Hugh

PS Chris gives us a spiel worthy of Richard Dimbleby:

>A feature of the mourners is their quietness and
>dignity, as well as their determination. It is an eidectic display.
>
>The sigh of the oppressed is being heard. It is a warning.

If only revolutionary socialists could get stuck in with the bare-faced
brazen cheek and self-confidence of the religious fanatics!

(That wasn't meant as a description of Chris by the way.)

PPS As for Di's dreamy looks, what with her broken nose and the way she
towered over Charles I always thought she had the makings of a useful
number eight.

PPPS Can anyone give us an idea of how Private Eye is covering events?




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