Media, Monarchy and Power

Hugh O'Donnell, Neil Blain

Description

Is obsession with the Royal Family in Britain a fact of culture or an illusion of media culture? What interest do the European media display in their royal families? Does twenty-first century monarchy remain a political and ideological force - or is it just an economic commodity? Media, Monarchy and Power provides a radical insight into the cultural and political functioning of royalty in five countries. Blain and O'Donnell examine the bonds between monarchies and their 'subjects' or 'citizens', and the relationships between royal families, the media, and nation-states. Numerous case-studies from press and television in Europe and the UK support a theoretical account of the operation of monarchy and royalty in the media. Central to the concerns of Media, Monarchy and Power are the complex relationship between Britain and Europe and the limits of British political modernization.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• History of ideas
• Sociology
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• Media studies
• Anthropology
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508771
• Langue: English

Extrait

Media, Monarchy and Power
Neil Blain
Hugh O Donnell
intellect - European Studies Series
General Editor - Keith Cameron Humour and History Keith Cameron (ed) The Nation: Myth or Reality? Keith Cameron (ed) Regionalism in Europe Peter Wagstaff (ed) Women in European Theatre Elizabeth Woodrough (ed) Children and Propaganda Judith Proud The New Russia Michael Pursglove (ed) English Language in Europe Reinhard Hartmann (ed) Food in European Literature John Wilkins (ed) Theatre and Europe Christopher McCullough European Identity in Cinema Wendy Everett (ed) Television in Europe James A. Coleman & Brigitte Rollet (eds) Language, Community and the State Dennis Ager Women Voice Men Maya Slater (ed) National Identity Keith Cameron (ed) Policing in Europe Bill Tupman & Alison Tupman Regionalism in the European Union Peter Wagstaff (ed) Spaces in European Cinema Myrto Konstantarakos (ed)

First Published in Hardback in 2003 by
Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2003 by
Intellect Books , ISBS, 5804 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2003 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-877-2 / ISBN 1-84150-043-7
Series Editor: Keith Cameron Production Officer: Peter Singh Cover Photograph: Sheila Clark Copy Editor: Holly Spradling

Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: Monarchy and Power

PART ONE - MODERN AND POSTMODERN MONARCHY
1 Modern and Postmodern Monarchy
2 The Ideological Realm
3 The Gnawing Absence of Reality: Fables of The Royal Boudoir In The British Media

PART TWO - EUROPEAN MONARCHIES AND THE MEDIA
4 The UK, Spain and Beyond: Monarchy and Modernity
5 Spain - Two Weddings and A Friendship : From the Modern to the Postmodern
6 Belgium -A Country Reunited?
7 Norway -A Different Land?
8 The Netherlands: The Prince and The Politicians
PART THREE - CELEBRITY, ROYALTY AND POWER
9 Royalty and Celebrity
10 CONCLUSION: Royal Power and Media Power
AFTERWORD: Calibration and Compliance In The UK: Mourning, Celebration And Conformity In 2002

APPENDIX: A Note On Britain And Europe
REFERENCES
INDEX
Acknowledgements
Some of the material in Chapter 3 and in the Conclusion appeared in an earlier form in Constructing the People s Princess: The State of Britain and the Death of Diana , in C. Cornut Gentille D Arcy (ed.), Cultural Confrontations , University of Zaragoza, 1999. Aspects of the discussion in Chapters 2 and 5 were published earlier in Constructing the Citizen-King: monarchy, myth and modernity in the contemporary Spanish media , in the International Journal of Iberian Studies , Volume 9 Number 1, 1997. Part of the argument in Chapter 4 appeared in Royalty, modernity and postmodernity: monarchy in the Spanish and British presses , in Acis: Journal of the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies , Volume 7 Number 1, 1994.
Many people helped us in the preparation of this book. We would like to thank in particular Salvador Card s (Universitat Aut noma de Barcelona), Peter Dahl n (Bergen University), Tom Hutchison (Middle Tennessee State University), Fernando Le n Sol s (University of Paisley), Roel Puijk (Lillehammer University College), Isabel Sim es Ferreira (Instituto Polit cnico de Lisboa), and Bob Spires (Middle Tennessee State University).
We are also indebted to Sverre Amundsen of Aftenposten , Filip Marsboom of Gazet van Antwerpen , Martijn Roessingh of Trouw , and St phane Renard of Le Vif-L Express for their help.
Our thanks also go to Santiago Boland, Anna Bondesson, Lisa Douglas, Barbera Fransz, Maria Lamuedra, Svend Larssen, Caroline McElhone, Trude Nyhus, Joanne O Donnell, Jim Rafferty, Eva van Walle, and David and Julie Becker of the Byrne Roberts B&B in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We are likewise grateful to colleagues with whom we had the chance to discuss some of the ideas that appear here, at seminar presentations we made on various aspects of royalty and monarchy at Antwerp, Manchester Metropolitan, Stirling, Sunderland, and Glasgow Caledonian Universities.
We are also very grateful to the following for granting us permission to reproduce their cartoons in this book:
- Gallego y Rey for the cartoon from Diario 16 on page 83
- Idigoras y Pachi for the cartoon from El Mundo on page 100
- Nicolas Vadot for the cartoon from Le Vif-L Express on page 123
- Sus Damiaens (Canary Pete) for the cartoon from the Gazet van Antwerpen on page 131
- Inge Gr dum, for the cartoon from Aftenposten on page 140, and
- Juan Ballesta for the cartoon from Cambio 16 on page 200.
We are indebted to Sheila Clark for permission to use one of her very special royal photographs.
We would also like to express our gratitude to Keith Cameron for his constructive, concise, and very helpful comments on the draft work; and to Bill Scott, formerly our colleague at Glasgow Caledonian University, whose support was (as always) unstinting.
INTRODUCTION
Monarchy and Power
Britain is a state with a rather small-scale, fairly anonymous monarchy. No-one is much interested in the royal family. Occasionally they are on television, when the monarch has a birthday, or during special events like marriages or funerals. Sometimes they appear in lifestyle magazines but since they lead such ordinary lives they are less likely to figure than stars from the worlds of television, sport and pop. It is not unusual to encounter the complaint that they are a bit boring as a family, if worthy in their own way, though eyebrows have been raised by the engagement of the heir to the throne to the divorced daughter of a Russian businessman reputed to have Mafia connections. In general the media have more important matters to cover, though, and given their interest in serious questions the royal family are often absent from both screens and pages. Extended members of the royal family - the core group is very limited in size - are commoners and do ordinary jobs; there is little interest in their royal connections.
There was a time when the monarchy would have been treasured for its symbolic role in maintaining traditional national values. These days, however, the country is so wedded to an idea of itself as a modern political democracy that many politicians and media editors are frankly a bit embarrassed at not living in a republic like the French. It is almost as compromising as having once had an upper chamber at Westminster which wasn t elected. Nonetheless, they reckon that the royal family - living as it does in a fairly ordinary way, and considering the work it does for trade and public relations - is a minor but useful enterprise organization whose balance sheet tends toward credit rather than debit. Debate rumbles on, but for the time being the UK will probably keep its monarchy, though in fact few would greatly regret its demise and many would hardly notice it.
Evidently this must be a description of a parallel universe, unless it is an imaginative projection a century or so into the future. It is very hard to imagine a British monarchy like this, or a Britain in which to situate it. That difficulty is mainly what motivates this book.
No such difficulty exists close by in Europe. If you re Scandinavian or you live in the Low Countries, imagining a monarchy like this is very easy. There, you ve already got a monarchy pretty much as described, even if some are more ordinary than others. At times they will figure more rather than less in the national consciousness - an unsuitable marriage, a drink problem - but generally they don t, much, figure at all. In Spain, where things are different again, there is a role for the monarchy as large, in its own way, as the role of the British monarchy in the UK, but it produces a set of cultural and political meanings which are quite unlike those generated by the British monarchy. In particular it is most important to the Spanish to understand their monarchy as modern , so some aspects of our parallel universe are already in place in Spain too.
Elsewhere in Europe monarchs are long gone. If you re French you can take as much interest (not necessarily all that much) as you like in the lives of the British or Monegasque royals, safe in the propriety of the republican consciousness. Across the Rhine, you could still, in a couple of regions of Germany, bump into one of your former royals: perhaps a Hohenzollern at your grocer s in Sigmaringen; the shop assistant may become a bit self-conscious, but you won t think much about it and your children won t even recognize them.
By contrast in Britain, when, sadly, Princess Margaret died, the BBC that Saturday morning devoted for a time both of its terrestrial television channels to continuous coverage of the event, giving that sense which might be conveyed in other countries after a political coup or during a civil war, of the displacement of alternative realities by one momentous single fact of national seriousness. (At the time of Diana s death this media process extended to the complete obliteration, for very long periods, of any world beyond hers.)
This sense of focus is not an easy achievement in the globalized, web-connected world, but obsession with royal events is a routine British media habit, even over minor misdemeanours by the Princes Edward or Harry. It is not that Margaret was a negligible figure in British culture, particularly for her own generation. During some phases of her life she fulfilled many public duties and was well-regarded, and in her youth she was the most glamorous ever of British royals. She was also a person often understood with sympathy as a victim, if in a st