Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were married Saturday at Windsor Castle in a ceremony that many heralded for celebrating black culture and history. Markle is biracial, divorced and a self-proclaimed feminist. The wedding featured a sermon about slavery, poverty and the enduring power of love by Bishop Michael Curry, the first African American to preside over the Episcopal Church. The British royal family is a “celebration of wealth, of elitism, of privilege in the hands of the few, of all the resources concentrated in the hands of a very small percentage of the country.
Priya Gopal talking:
Tradition-busting is probably a bit of a stretch. I think that there were important symbolic, iconographic changes. The royal family is a deeply white institution, rooted in Britain’s history of imperialism and empire. It’s a deeply patriarchal institution. And given that history, to have a strong black presence in the church, to hear a gospel choir, to hear a black bishop give an address, these were all changes that are, I think, symbolic, and they make some difference.
I think it’s a stretch to call them tradition-busting. It was still an extremely—it is still an extremely white institution. The ceremony remains patriarchal. Ms. Markle walked down the aisle by herself, because her father was unable to make it, and then she was taken to the alter by Prince Charles. So I think we need to acknowledge that there were certain important changes, but to call them tradition-busting, I think, is a stretch. The monarchy remains a deeply reactionary, patriarchal and, frankly, white institution.
I think there are two things to say there. One is that the royal family is deeply entrenched in Britain’s mythology about itself. There is a huge investment in pomp and circumstance. Throughout the wedding, the commentary on the media spoke about how no other country does tradition, does pomp, does circumstance as well as Britain does. And, of course, the monarchy is the epitome of pomp and circumstance. And I think that that’s very deeply rooted in the mainstream Britain sense of itself as more traditional and more elegant than everybody else.
But I also think it’s slightly a mistake to call the monarchy an anachronism. I think that it seems like an anachronism, but in fact its name for itself is “the firm,” which really tells us how much the monarchy is actually very rooted in corporate capitalist culture, how well it has kept up with that. And the monarchy in Britain is a celebration of wealth, of elitism, of privilege in the hands of a few, of all the resources concentrated in the hands of a very small percentage of the country. And in that sense, it very much represents the current economic order in which we all live. And there’s nothing anachronistic about the fact that the 1 percent have much more than the rest of us do.
The wedding itself cost something like $45 million. in British terms, the wedding cost an overall £32 million. That’s about the sum that you just mentioned in dollars. Only £2 million of that £32 million was actually spent by the royal family’s so-called private finances. I mean, this is money that they have accrued over decades, over centuries, and that has gone into private hands. But actually £30 million of that £32 million was borne by the taxpayer. And that is a shocking figure at a time when there have been swingeing cuts to public services, when the number of homeless on Britain streets has been increasing. These were homeless people who were cleared off the streets of Windsor for the royal wedding.
And I think, again, this is a shocking example of how much money, how much public money, how much rare public money, goes into funding this family. And it’s done in the name of—it’s done on the basis that this family brings in a lot of money to the country because of tourist dollars and so on and so forth. But I think that really what it is an example of is how much the public purse subsidizes private privilege. £30 million went into policing and into security—at least that’s what we’re told—and it seems to me an unconscionable figure at a time when so many people are suffering from cuts to public services.
– his merger of celebrity with the class elite? Obviously, the promotional value that having an Oprah or a George Clooney or a David Beckham at this private wedding has in terms of marketing this whole affair.
it’s very much part of a constant rebranding that the royal family does. And it goes back to what I was saying about not merely looking at the institution as an anachronism. It is a firm. It is a corporate firm. It relies on corporate strategies. PR is very central to its survival and to its flourishing.
In fact, someone connected to the court said at some point that Meghan Markle is a PR department’s dream. And she absolutely is. Like any company, it has to be seen to be keeping up with society. It has to be seen to be being more multicultural than it has been, to be bringing women in, to be giving women more of a role. So, in that sense, we need to look at the kind of merger between the royal family and Hollywood, between the feudal institution of monarchy and the corporate institutions of public relations, as precisely what you would expect any functioning corporate firm to do: to be keeping an eye on PR, to be making sure that it satisfies its customer base and that it is seen to be, quote-unquote, “modern.”
And in that sense, Meghan Markle and the kind of racial dimension that she brings, the multicultural dimension that she brings to the royal family, is very much part of a PR exercise. And I would say that, in a sense, Meghan Markle brings more to the royal family than the royal family brings to British people of color.
– The queen and Prince Charles have had the power of veto, vetoing legislation? The queen delivering a pro-austerity speech with her £1,000,000 hat? I think one comic headline from U.K. HuffPost said, “Woman in £1,000,000 Hat Tells Britain to ‘Live Within Its Means,’” referring to her crown.
constitutionally, the queen does have that power, but it is not ever really exercised. And so, what we have here is a constitutional figurehead who does what the government of the day tells her to. Now, the mythology around the royal family also holds that they’re not allowed to be political, and by which is meant that they’re not actually allowed to intervene in political decisions made by the government of the day.
I also understand that the queen does have the power to veto legislation. I’ve never known of its being used. Perhaps it has been; I’m not enough of a constitutional scholar to know. But again, here is a bit of a mythology. We have a monarchy, which actually shores up the political and economic order of the day. It is a deeply political institution. But the nation and the world is invited to buy into the mythology that there is nothing political about people who wear, as you just said, £1,000,000 hats and represent the bidding of the government of the day. They do—they are a very political institution, but everything here relies on the mythology that they’re not political.
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Priya Gopal
university lecturer in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge.
— source democracynow.org