Abstract
The aim of this book is to trace a critical history of the representation of Diana, Princess of Wales in the mass media. Its concern is with ‘Diana’ the emblem, symbol, icon and sign: cultural productions which not only signify different modes of being in the world, but are also sites of contest and debate. Representations of Diana as media saint and arch manipulator, celebrity victim and successful campaigner against land-mines, feminist icon and romantic heroine, princess and everywoman, testify to the continuing historical contentiousness of gender, nation, race and self. This book investigates the processes through which the figure of a young Englishwoman of aristocratic stock came to crystallize such conflicts over identity, and evaluates the significance of Diana’s ambivalent status.
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Notes
A. Holden, ‘Diana: Monster or Martyr?’, Tatler 288:12 (December 1993), pp. 150–1; p. 151.
A. Holden, Diana: A Life and a Legacy (London: Ebury Press, 1997), p. 169.
‘Fantasy of our own potential’, attributed to Pamela Stephenson, in Sir Roy Strong, ‘An Icon for the Meritocratic Age’ [Independent], rpt. in B. MacArthur (ed.), Requiem: Memories and Tributes (London: Pavilion, 1997), pp. 131–5; p. 134,
and adopted by MacArthur as a chapter title. ‘Simpering Bambi Narcissist’, in C. Hitchens, ‘Princess Di, Mother T., and me’, in M. Merck (ed.), After Diana: Irreverent Elegies (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 49–61; p. 59.
J. Burchill, ‘Di Hard: The Pop Princess’, in Sex and Sensibility (London: Grafton, 1992), pp. 233–44; p. 244.
J. Williamson, ‘Royalty and Representation’, in Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture ([1985], London: Marion Boyars, 1986), pp. 75–89;
M. Homans, Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837–1876 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 3, 5, 7, 45, 55 and passim.
J.M. Golby and A.W. Purdue, The Monarchy and the British People 1760 to the Present (London: Batsford, 1988), pp. 68, 70, 72.
G. Dangerfield, Victoria’s Heir: The Education of a Prince ([New York, 1941] London: Constable, 1942), p. 3.
See R. Coward, ‘The Royals’, in Female Desire: Women’s Sexuality Today (London: Paladin, 1984), pp. 161–71.
M. Billig, Talking Of the Royal Family (London: Routledge, 1992).
See, for example, R. Braidotti, ‘In the Sign of the Feminine: Reading Diana’, Theory and Event 1:4, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/ v001/1.4.html.; Z. Sofoulis, ‘Icon, Referent, Trajectory, World’, in Re:Public (ed.), Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning (Kingswood: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997), pp. 13–18; p. 16;
W. Wheeler, ‘Together Again After All These Years: Science, Politics and Theology in the New Modernity’, in A. Coddington and M. Perryman (eds), The Moderniser’s Dilemma: Radical Politics in the Age of Blair (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998), pp. 175–91; p. 187; M. Engel, ‘After the Grief, the Moment of Truth for a Nation’, Guardian, Special section, Saturday, 6 September 1997, pp. 1–3; p. 1; and Holden, Diana, p. 13.
See Holden, ‘Monster’, p. 151, further discussed in Chapter 3 below; and Diana, pp. 188–9. Variations on this trope proliferated after Diana’s death, as, for example, in Earl Spencer’s address at the memorial service and in The Daily Telegraph: Diana Remembered 1961–97, p. 6, but can be traced back at least as far as Morton’s 1992 Diana: Her True Story. In her extended review of Morton’s book Camille Paglia anticipated Spencer’s reversal of the Diana/hunting myth, as a means of crystallizing what she called Diana’s cannibalistic consumption by the multiple personae ascribed to her by popular desire and mass media. Camille Paglia, ‘Diana Regina’, in Vamps and Tramps ([1994], London: Viking, 1995) pp. 163–71; first published in New Republic, 3 August 1992.
J. Kitzinger, ‘Image’, Screen, 39:1 (1998), 73–9, p. 78.
See, for example, S. Moore, ‘Diana — her true colours’ in Head over Heels ([1996] London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 85–91 and ‘Diana the Do-gooder versus the Bad Guys’, The Independent, Friday, 17 January 1997, p. 17;
B. Campbell, Diana, Princess of Wales: How Sexual Politics Shook the Monarchy (London: The Women’s Press, 1998); Wheeler, ‘Together Again’;
and N. Segal, ‘The Common Touch’, in M. Merck (ed.), After Diana: Irreverent Elegies (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 131–45.
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© 2001 Jude Davies
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Davies, J. (2001). Introduction: Why a Cultural History?. In: Diana, A Cultural History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598256_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598256_1
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