10 Years On

Today in my advanced English class, we are discussing heroes and pariahs. I teach the difference between “commemorate” and “memorialize”, two commonly confused words in the English Language. One said Fernando of Bogotá explains that commemorate is typically a celebration of memory, leaning towards a positive interpretation.

For the British, commemorating the death of their beloved Princess Diana on the 10th anniversary of her death, the spirit of the situation renders itself, hopeless. In as much as British society tries to uphold her as a national symbol of what is for all purposes beautiful and humane, the memorialized result looks wholly different from its intentions. The national symbol of Diana has instead resulted in commercialism, obsessive voyeurism, piety, further class division and elite snarkiness.

And the circumstance that inadvertently elevated her to become 'the People’s Princess' is none other than the stodgy monarchy itself, who apart from the eager Princes’ efforts, remain mum.

Her good looks is one mainstay appeal to her eternity. Inheritance of this kind is a mixed blessing for those in the public eye, and if you're a female, it can be the end of your independence as you know it. Diana's beauty was so classic by design, her couture so prized for eloquence in its tapered and feminine ways that the familiarity of her look becomes an extension of purity and thus, public judgement. "It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." said Tolstoy. Be it a homage to shoulder pads, as of late in The Independent Editorial, or the indulgence of Mario Testino never-ending photo exhibition, voyeurs just can’t get close enough.

But apart from aesthetics, there are two loyal populations that hold on to her memory dearly. Firstly, the pensioners who have survived a lifetime of the final dredges of English class-based society. On a BBC political affairs radio show, Diana’s anniversary is one of the panel topics. One elderly Beverly tells me in conspiratorial overtones that this is the biggest crime against motherhood and women itself—“They used her to reproduce and once she gave them two sons, they have abandoned her from that day forward.”

The second most common population that holds Diana dear, is the working classes of England who, if reside within post codes close enough to the Kensington Palace where Diana stayed, will attach their sentiments to the gates outside. Carnations wrapped in plastic and hand-made posters line the gates that can, to a distant eye, look like protest placards, (and in some cases are—'Camilla can never replace you. We are watching you Prince Charles.')

Both of these Di-populations firmly cloy to Diana as a protest against the monarchical structure that they are deeply institutionalised by on some psychological level. Polls in the Guardian show that the university population think her commemoration is overdone. And it is left to the intellectuals and Op-Eds of the back pages to duke out Diana’s meaning bringing triteness to her proclivity for holding HIV newborns and stamping out landmines as merely symbolic gesturing in the span of her glamorous and scandalous life rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dodi, Sir Elton and Coco Chanel.

Naturally therein lies a romantic notion when given a class struggle and an overwrought monarchy, and this has served for many artists and filmmakers. Some figment of English culture that expatriates and filmmakers enchant into motion pictures. No less Woody Allen’s, with his last two pictures shot in London bristling in high-class English mannerism that sport in horse-racing and tea time.

Not surprisingly, English people don’t take to this foreign interpretation, especially.

This romanticism is based on the notion that there still lies a class issue of England. In London’s reality however, the class-based society has morphed into a decade-long liberal dousing of 'multiculturalism.' As a result, it has morped race, ethnicity and cultures into a significant sense of distancing such 'otherness' into complex divisions. The working classes of England, well, they just carry on not knowing who hit them.

Therefore, it is the Queen that is essentially dead, (not Lady Di.)