The Many Deaths of Princess Di
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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Sun, 31 Aug 1997 08:36:52 -0600 (MDT)
There are many ways to record the death of
any person...in the
mini-lecture below, I first set out a bare report of the death as it
suffices for the public record of Great Britain.
There follows, other reports of more personal, less public
concern...this is the way media on the left would cover this death;
this is the way I will report it in the newsletter I edit.
Each to the reports of the troubling death of this young and
troubled woman below are valid...on their own terms. Together
they give us a some idea of the problems in selecting out of
the incredibly complexity of social life, just that view which
helps with the political and economic agenda of those who create
human understanding...not excluding this reporter.
A. The Public Record will be brief and
limited to who, where,
what, how and when:
Died, Princess Diana, former wife of Charles, Prince of Wales;
mother of two children, Prince William and Prince Harry,
of injuries suffered in automobile accident this day, 31 Aug,
1997 in Paris, France. She was 36 years old
B. The Children of Princess Di will be hurt,
puzzled, and used
by both press and parties to the various antagonisms which have
marked the past few years in the life of their mother and their
father. As years go on, this hurt will transform into anger,
and great sadness.
C. Prince Charles will be appalled at the death itself, irritated
with the details of the accident, and busy handling the political
personal fall-out occasioned by the early and unseemly circumstances
of the death of a woman who, once upon a time, gave him her love,
her trust and the great promise of life-long intimacy. If, as I believe, he
has the character, he will give to the tragedy a dignity he failed to show
these last years of her life.
D. The Paparazzi will be strangely delighted; the death will create
a huge world-wide market for old and new photographs of any and all
associated with the death at the moment as well as those who might
have had a connection with Princess Diana in past...especially some
personal attachment. They will also be defensive, a bit guilty,
and loud in their claims that the 'public' needs to know.
Actually these persons do not serve the public opinion policy process,
rather they serve the social opinion control process. Their reports
and photographs are designed to re-inforce and exploit existing social
values...British social values on family, royalty, sexuality and
religion. By conflating between public opinion and social opinion,
the use of this death will appear to be responsible journalism.
E. The Family of Princess Diana will be very angry at the 'press' for
their relentless pursuit of Diana. And they will have cause.
Some of the photos of Princess Di bring hundreds of thousands of pounds
to the photographer aggressive enough, persistent enough, ruthless enough
to intrude upon her privacy.
As the editor of National Enquirer said, this demand for photographs of
Princess Di is driven by economics....
F. A Marxist economist would understand the point. Such photos help generate
a mass audience with which to solve a basic problem in advanced industrialized
capitalism: the realization problem.
Simply put, capitalism produces far more than those which discretionary funds
can use. So the task becomes to manufacture markets. There are many ways to
do this but in the case of the death of Princess Diana, religious concerns with
the solidarity of the British Empire inform the understanding of millions if
not billions of people around the world from Brisbane to Bombay.
A long time ago, Michael Young, a British Sociologist, explained that the
coronation of Queen Elizabeth was, essentially, a religious affair...a solution to the
problem of solidarity in a society marked by terrible stresses in race, class,
and gender as well as ethnic oppression of Wales, Scotland and Ireland by the
English.
Then too, there is the alienate sexuality of still more millions in the English-
speaking world who have been socialized to confine erotic desire to the marriage
form...with a bit of ingenuity, owners and managers of the media can transfer
concern about sexual desire into a mass audience.
The life of Princess Diana offered raw material with which to generate mass
audiences and with a bit of strategic advertizing in the media which buy these
photos, generate a bit more market.
Given that one or two percentage increase in sales can mean a large difference
in profits for a capitalist firm, such advertisement makes good economic sense
even if the morality of such use is somewhat below that of a sneak thief.
G. Those will a more authentic
religious sensibility will immediately focus
upon the loss of Princess Diana and her use of celebrity on behalf of children
of the poor; on behalf of those stricken by AIDs; on behalf of those who might
become victim of land mines...themselves legacy of racist, ethnic and
class wars.
F. In all this, the family of Dodi Al Faid, companion of Princess Di will be
ignored. It would be difficult to use his death to generate market in Islamic
worlds oriented as they are to quite different uses of the media. Yet they
too have a death to mourn.
But, with a bit of imagination, we can understand the great grief and
wide-spread outrage that his death will occasion were the news spread as widely as in
the West. In his relationship with Princess Diana, a betrayal of the awesome
responsibility levied upon the rich in the Islamic world. Rather than attend to these
obligations, and to follow the word of Allah, Dodi used his great wealth for more personal
purpose.
H. Finally, for those such as I who paid little attention to Princess Diana
when she was alive, we will follow the death to a point; we will mourn the death to a
point; we will extend sympathy to the children to a point...and even feel a bit
of concern for Prince Charles...but soon, very soon, we will tire of the endless
reportage on Princess Di in our highly commodified media. We will be more
concerned that our favorite program or our favorite cause is pushed aside to cover the
life and death of this young woman.
Rest in Peace,
Princess Di,