Studio Jubilee

[steepholm]

It's still some days off, but I'm already finding it hard to avoid the royalist wankfest that is the Platinum Jubilee. (Side note: as a material, platinum simply lacks the cultural resonance of silver, gold and diamond, and is difficult to get excited about for that reason, regardless of politics. What's next? Bismuth?)

Probably the cringiest thing to float to the top of the scum pot so far is this video, made by a Captain Tom tribute act and repurposing a famous gay anthem. I wondered whether it might possibly creep into the 'so bad it's good' category, but quickly dismissed the idea:

Watch on YouTube

But projecting the queen onto Stonehenge? That's borderline offensive in a Mount Rushmore way, as well as being tackier than a vat of natto.



Is the implication that she was there to supervise its construction? That's just rude. Or is it yet another demonstration of how people who demand you respect their culture feel no compunction in co-opting other people's? Either way, it makes Spinal Tap look like Jacob Bronowski.

Comments

[lilliburlero]

I didn't actually witness this for myself, but a friend told me that the Oliver Cromwell statue in St Ives (Hunts) - which is surely a prime candidate for the Colston treatment in terms of being within dragging distance of a suitable watercourse, of a Known Genocidaire and of surpassingly ugly late 19thc manufacture, but that's by the by - has been festooned in Jubilee bunting. I'm not sure what level of irony is involved.

As for myself, as I discovered last week on a visit to my mum in darkest Brexitshire I have become sufficiently Hibernicised that Union Jack bunting immediately signals "Loyalist estate ahead - find alternative route".

[tadorna]

I'm finding it very difficult to stomach this time around. I'm working three days out of the four-day weekend, so I don't even get nice days off - which would be fine except that I work in local news, so all of that time will be spent desperately trying to fill dozens of pages with pictures of street parties and headlines employing the phrase 'right royal knees-up'.

[steepholm]

A 'right' is the imperial unit of royalness.

[steepholm]

Perhaps the idea is that even Cromwell would be unable to resist the talent and charm of the present royal family?

[shewhomust]

I had thought that I was braced to sit it out and wait for it to blow over, so I was quite surprised at how angry that Stonehenge image made me when I saw it on last night's news. I still can't quite rationalise this.

[cmcmck]

Think I'll stick to being republican.

Years of studying our civil wars can do that to a girl.

[heleninwales]

I also found it deeply offensive on a very visceral level, but I'm finding it difficult to explain coherently why I feel that way. It's a combination of it feeling like graffiti (though of course it's just projected light and it's not harming the stones) and a dog marking it's territory by peeing on things. Stonehenge was once a site of profound significance to the people who built it and this just trivialises it.

[jadelennox]

Do you happen to know if anyone's ever actually run the numbers on the frequent riposte to republicanism about tourist dollars? Like, is there any evidence at all that tourism to the UK would drop if the monarchy were ended, some number of the most-visited estates were managed by the National Trust, and the land were returned to public use or were at any rate taxed? Because it's never seemed to be a rational argument to me. "Oh we rely on the income of people visiting the island because some extremely inbred people technically-but-not-in-practice rule this island by divine right."

[asakiyume]

"Tackier than a vat of natto" is a dis I'll have to employ--I love it!

[steepholm]

Happy to oblige! I think I already mentally have one foot in Japan, where I should be arriving in just over a week's time...

[steepholm]

It would be hard to know what numbers to run, since we don't have a non-monarchical Britain to use as a control, although of course many of the most visited estates are managed by the National Trust, and don't seem noticeably less popular for the absence of resident aristos. I frankly doubt that the country's tourist income would be hurt at all, but even if it were, people making that kind of argument have to my mind already sold the pass. If the best reason you can give for keeping the head of state as a hereditary position is that it might entice foreign tourists to buy souvenirs, then you obviously don't have any serious arguments.

[tadorna]

Of course!

[ethelmay]

If what people are interested in is a sentimentalized form of history, surely that's something that would be there anyway, as it were? You can't leave off having been a monarchy.

[shewhomust]

Oh, well put! I may use that analogy about territiorial marking ...

[heleninwales]

The counter argument is usually that the palace of Versailles gets far more visitors, despite the French executing their royals some time ago. Imagine if all those royal palaces could actually be visited instead of just having to look at them from outside.