Diana and the Culture of Death

Filed under: Culture, Monarchy, Queen Elizabeth — Pieter Dorsman on August 29, 2007 @ 1:45 pm CEST

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This week it will be ten years ago that Diana, Princess of Wales died and the remembrance train is in full swing. No doubt it will all culminate in wall-to-wall coverage this coming Friday, the actual date on which she died in a car accident in Paris. So if you’re allergic to it all, make sure you tune out on that day.

The case however has fascinated me immensely and it is worthwhile contemplating the two key aspects of her death. On the political side it was the near constitutional crisis following her passing, captured imaginatively in the excellent movie The Queen - which I reviewed here. For Americans it may be hard to understand, but royal power in some European monarchies is not limited to the symbolic or cultural realm, political power is a prerogative still enjoyed by quite a few sovereigns. On the social and cultural side Diana’s impact continues to be far reaching, and Time’s Catherine Mayer had a very worthwhile piece last week which yielded this excellent excerpt:

The comedian David Baddiel, whose novel Whatever Love Means begins on the day of Diana’s funeral, sees her as an exponent of “a degraded version of therapy culture,” a self-help addict who couldn’t stop spilling her guts. She “didn’t know who she was but gained an identity through her messiness, through her lack of identity, by splattering her lack of identity on the walls of our culture,” he says. “People chimed with that.”

And so it is indeed. Diana’s death accelerated the emergence of a new and very public culture of death, now an integral part of the lives of the ‘commoners’. Personally I subscribe to the more private approach to mourning – whether it is a loved one or a public figure – but in our highly individualistic society where tradition and restraint have given way to the unfettered celebration of the self that is apparently no longer the norm. Diana somehow left the commoner with this message: ‘you too can be special in death’.

And as science and technology are allowing us to postpone death’s eventual call, it seems that we are increasingly unable to deal with its eventual arrival. Our forefathers must no doubt frown on the hysteria that now accompanies something that used to be a regular and private affair. That too is a part of Diana’s legacy.

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1 Michael van der Galiën

August 29, 2007 @ 10:47 am CEST

Fascinating indeed. Culture of death - I see what you are getting at and I mostly agree. However, it seems to me that it is the result of the Americanization of society: now, when someone famous dies thousands, ten thousands even hundreds of thousands (and in some countries millions) take the streets and ‘mourn’ publicly, etc. As far as I know, we did not have those type of funerals until a few years ago.

I wonder, though, what the exact cause of it is according to you. Why do people feel the need to make even a funeral - and thus death - a spectacle? Not just with Diana but in general I mean. Do you agree with the article at TIME? Could it be the result of the rule of the middle class? Of the lower middle class at that? Culture and traditions were first determined by aristocrats, but not any longer. Aristocrats may have believed in the “could be worse” approach, but what about Tommy Doe?

2 C Stanley

August 29, 2007 @ 3:12 pm CEST

I think Diana’s funeral was a perfect storm of several societal factors; public adulation of a young, beautiful woman who had been swept up in larger than life scenario, said young woman’s angst played out in public (thus feeding our culture’s need for self-analysis and for celebrities who are simultaneously beyond our reach but also willing to bare their human imperfections), and then the sudden, tragic accident that took her life while she was still very young.

So I think that’s somewhat different, or more than just the issue of how we look at death and the idea of public vs. private mourning.

On the other hand though, I see some parallels of Diana’s life and death with our societal trend away from genuine religious observance. The celebrity culture has given icons and ‘idols’ to worship (and our self absorption has led us to want those idols to be more and more imperfect like ourselves), and mourning a death has come to require us to ‘keep a person’s memory alive’ in various public ways. Without genuine belief in afterlife (though many still profess to believe in it, of course- but I think there are far fewer who have a sincere belief that doesn’t allow for fear of ‘what if there is nothing else’), the goal seems to be to make sure that the departed ones’ life really ‘meant something’ and that he/she lives on in the memories of others.

The specific way that Diana’s death affected the Brits is a whole ‘nother story too; that’s where the class distinctions come in, as she disrupted the fault line between the aristocracy and the commoners. I think this part is much more specific to GB than to the rest of the world (though maybe other parts of Europe were similarly affected by her in that way). Here in the US, that’s just an interesting side story IMO.

3 Michael van der Galiën

August 29, 2007 @ 3:22 pm CEST

Yes very good points Christine - I was coming back to leave a comment like that myself as well (loss of religious conviction). Very true, or so it seems to me. Instead of worshipping God, many people almost worship celebrities and, if one is not sure about whether there is an afterlife or not, we suddenly focus on, as you put it so well, living “on in the memories of others.”

Good points.

Also - there is a difference, but I think it’s fascinating to see that it continues and gets worse. A few years ago a Dutch singer died - alcohol abuse. To say it was a complete surprise would be, well, ludicrous. 50+ Many people out on the street, pubilc funeral in a soccer stadium.

Pim Fortuyn: died, same thing basically.

Even a mafia boss…

4 Pieter Dorsman

August 29, 2007 @ 4:57 pm CEST

To respond to Michael, I think it is both the middle/lower class driving some of the vulgarization of our culture. Note the Dutch singer: his wife arranged for part of his ashes to be blasted off using fireworks in a separate ceremony, the other part of the ashes was mixed with dye and used by the widow for a tattoo . Can’t think of a better example.
Of course, very different from Diana but it was the middle/lower class perception that she was ‘one of us’. The rounds of applause from the streets that penetrated Westminster Abbey to the horror of the royal family was evidence of how popular culture and middle/lower class values had appropriated the princess and her legacy.