Alternative Editorial: A Loud Cry
It’s Week 48 of The Shift and we find ourselves looking at change on a number of fronts. In this editorial we are responding specifically to the mainstream press and how it carries the ‘story of Us’ – so forgive if these are not the familiar subjects of our conversation. The aim in this editorial, is for us to consider the dominant stories in the public space and the impact they might have on us. At the same time, we hope to make connections between what is being pedaled by the press and what we ourselves are hoping to develop as a better story of people power.
Large cracks are appearing in the firmament. Within the heralded special relationship between the US and the UK, high profile American women are holding the highest profile British woman to task. Both speak of service to the people, using the same language, but they mean very different things.
In the UK corner, HM The Queen has spent her life ‘in service’. None of us know what that means in reality, although the Netflix series The Crown, did a good job of fictionalising what it might mean. If they were close to the truth, service would imply full instrumentalisation of your life to your function. There is no separation between role and person: the person never escapes the role. To become a personality, with preferences and predilections beyond a favourite breed of dog or tea, is to destroy the monarchy, which only exists to serve – not lead.
In the US corner, two women of colour – Meghan Merkel and Oprah Winfrey – who, at first, saw in this Palace an extraordinary ideal. What could be more American Dream than a mixed-race actress marrying a Prince and living a life of graciously serving the people? Both had lived through the story of Harry’s mother – the People’s Princess, Diana – and no doubt imagined Meghan picking up the baton and running with it.
But that’s not how it goes. Stepping into an institution built on hundreds of years of unaccountable power is not the same as taking a new job in a hit show. There is no one taking notes on your performance, ready to discuss how they might get the best out of you. You don’t have a creative role in developing your character – it has already been done for you. To join the Firm means to give up your freedom and become a function.
Now for those of us thinking that is inhuman, we should also remember that we, ourselves, demand no less of the Royal Family than that they be without privilege. The media play around this fault line tirelessly – one minute driving our resentment around the trappings of their function, the next demanding respect for their office and lifetime of service. We are goaded to love them or hate them as if they are celebrities for our amusement, but when push comes to shove, they have to behave as agreed: like functionaries, knowing their place.
How much of this story is true we cannot know. Even as inescapable ‘subjects’ our relationship to the Royal Family is entirely mediated by our choice of newspaper. As ever, its future is in their hands.
Meghan and Harry walking out of the Royal Family was to break what theatricals would call the fourth wall. From inside the Palace they were obliged to fulfill the function of the age old institution, and smile out from within at a public hoping to see a good performance. Walking out was to show us they are not functionaries – no-one is. The Palace is not viable in the 21C on these terms and the media is manipulating us all – partly to sell newspapers and otherwise to preserve the power status quo.
Perhaps Harry and Meghan’s revenge on the Press is to keep faith with the Queen as a grand-mother and point more clearly at the meta-crisis of power relationships between institutions.
In many ways, Meghan and Harry’s work is only a continuation of Diana’s. Like her, they have used the platform of the Royal Family to draw attention to what they would see as much bigger issues than whether or not they are popular or privileged. Caveat: an alternative account could be they are draping their immense wealth and unearned privilege, with all its deep subjectification of the populace, in the disguise of modern ethical concerns. These two accounts sit side by side. Either way, through Meghan we are heavily debating racism, mental health and the role of the media. These are not personality issues – although the media is trying to hunt down the guilty party, as if that would absolve the Palace: they are institutional. If the Royal Family only exists to serve us, to reflect our needs, it’s not only the Royals who are on trial here, we all are. We continue to buy whatever the Press serves us.
The wave of challenge the Sussex’s are sending out is being mirrored outside of the Palace. Meghan’s vulnerability as a mixed race woman meets the high emotion being felt throughout society around white but also male privilege. Through the choice of Oprah as their interlocutor we make the link with Black Lives Matter but also feminism. Harry plays an important role in supporting her ‘first and foremost’, never doubting what she describes as her experience of bullying and depression. Piers Morgan is the perfect foil, accusing her of lying about her feelings of racist abuse and suicidal thoughts – what a baddie!
In the midst of this, another tragic episode of female vulnerability plays out through the murder of Sarah Everard. A day later Jess Phillips MP reads out an annual list of names of women who have been murdered by men in an attempt to shake up those listening into a new response – she gets none. But in the wider public a new wave of anger and protest has been unleashed. How can we still be living in a world in which women are continuously objectified and put on constant alert about the possibility of attack?
The public service response is shocking: instead of acknowledging the public mood and negotiating a space for the vigil to take place, they crack down on it. Images of young women wrestled to the floor and handcuffed make the front pages of most newspapers. At the same time news appears of a new bill - already on its second reading - of new police powers to quell protests. Is it any surprise that some activists have directly linked the broad awakening of people to the crises we are in with the movement to defund the police?
We all know there is no simple truth about the plight of women, nor any simple solution on offer. In every aspect of the problem, both men and women sit on a broad spectrum of awareness and responsibility. Even so it continues to be the case that everyday violence against women is still tolerated too well within our society. Is every man guilty? Certainly not directly, and even only a small proportion indirectly. At the same time, we are all responsible if we are not actively doing something meaningful to change it.
At schools that have the capacity young boys and girls are learning about the importance of ‘consent’ in relationship. This has not been without its difficulties and controversies as the parents of young men question the portrayal of the sons as natural predators from whom the daughters need protection. That ambivalence is exacerbated by the young people themselves wanting to believe in each other’s innocence in the light of the extreme headlines they read too often. They actively debate gender roles as increasingly irrelevant. However, these lessons do introduce new patterns and codes into these close-knit school communities that are likely to change society in the long term.
However there is little or no education on offer for the generations of men and women who are now in the spotlight, either as protagonists or victims of unregulated male coercion of all kinds. On the contrary, our media easily mocks vulnerability – whether labelling those protesting their oppression as ‘snowflakes’ or boxing them into categories which turn them into victims without specific oppressors. For example women being excluded from boards or panels of influence are victims of ‘the patriarchy’ – not the men they actually meet and socialise with every day. Including those fathers and brothers who do nothing specifically to change this outlook.
At the same time, how many of us really understand the impact of this under-regulated patriarchal society on men themselves? How this has led to 95% of the prison population being men? How the suicide rate for men is so much higher than for women? How many men coming out of mostly male institutions such as the army and navy suffer from depression or PTSD? Or more recently, how many men, misled cruelly by a porn industry that normalises unchecked coercion of women, have ended up unable to make a good relationship with a woman? In so many ways, men are also clear victims of imbalanced, patriarchal societies – that should be common knowledge. Instead, how many men do you know who continue to glorify male bro culture that enjoys disregarding the vulnerability of others?
In that sense, Harry is playing an important role for the broader society. Since his teenage and student days of excruciating privilege, he has committed himself to a new idea of male responsibility towards women. He amplifies his own mental health problems and puts the casualties of military life on the stage so we cannot ignore them. Even if you have no time whatsoever for the Royals, it’s hard to ignore the narrative Harry and Meghan are consciously weaving – whoever’s interest that might be in.