Search results
Moving images of the British monarchy, in fact and fiction, are almost as old as the moving image itself, dating back to an 1895 dramatic vignette, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Led by Queen Victoria, British monarchs themselves appeared in the new 'animated photography' from 1896. Half a century later, the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II was a milestone in the adoption of television, watched by 20 million Britons and 100 million North Americans. At the century's end, Princess Diana's funeral was viewed by 2.5 billion worldwide. Seventeen essays by international commentators examine the portrayal of royalty in the 'actuality' picture, the early extended feature, amateur cinema, the movie melodrama, the Commonwealth documentary, New Queer Cinema, TV current affairs, the big screen ceremonial and the post-historical boxed set. These contributors include Ian Christie, Elisabeth Bronfen, Andrew Higson, Steven Fielding, Karen Lury, Glyn Davis, Ann Gray, Jane Landman, Victoria Duckett, Jude Cowan Montague, James Downs, Barbara Straumann, Deirdre Gilfedder, Jo Stephenson, Ruth Adams, Erin Bell, Basil Glynn and Nicola Rehling.
critical news media. Representations of the Cambridges do not entirely erase historical ‘sexual transgressions’. Rather, past royal representations are incorporated, developed and resolved. The pantomime of ‘scandal’, criticism and resolution is a recurring trope of royal representations, as I demonstrate for the redemption of Prince Harry in Chapter 5 . As for Harry, for William and Kate this pantomime often evokes the spectre of Diana. Kate wears Diana's engagement ring, an object that the media scholar Margaret Schwartz identifies as a ‘fetish
philanthropic recovery. Writing about the mental health charity Heads Together, a multi-charity initiative fronted by William and Kate (this included Harry before he left the Firm), Imogen Tyler and Tom Slater note it is ‘bankrolled by some of the very corporate and financial organisations who are the beneficiaries of neoliberal economic policies … [which] are exacerbating mental distress among the … most vulnerable’. 84 Likewise, as a luxury, elite brand Jaguar Land Rover has benefited from a culture predicated on neoliberal
Nationalism has reasserted itself today as the political force of our times, remaking European politics wherever one looks. Britain is no exception, and in the midst of Brexit, it has even become a vanguard of nationalism's confident return to the mainstream. Brexit, in the course of generating a historically unique standard of sociopolitical uncertainty and constitutional intrigue, tore apart the two-party compact that had defined the parameters of political contestation for much of twentieth-century Britain. This book offers a wide-ranging picture of the different theoretical accounts relevant to addressing nationalism. It briefly repudiates the increasingly common attempts to read contemporary politics through the lens of populism. The book explores the assertion of 'muscular liberalism' and civic nationalism. It examines more traditional, conservative appeals to racialised notions of blood, territory, purity and tradition as a means of reclaiming the nation. The book also examines how neoliberalism, through its recourse to discourses of meritocracy, entrepreneurial self and individual will, alongside its exaltation of a 'points-system' approach to the ills of immigration, engineers its own unique rendition of the nationalist crisis. There are a number of important themes through which the process of liberal nationalism can be documented - what Arun Kundnani captured, simply and concisely, as the entrenchment of 'values racism'. These include the 'faux-feminist' demonisation of Muslims.
The 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was a key moment for the contemporary British monarchy. It attracted two billion television viewers in 180 countries, and one million visitors to London. 1 As has become tradition for royal events since Queen Victoria's reign as a way for royals to manufacture intimacy with audiences, 2 the royal family appeared for now-famous photographs on Buckingham Palace balcony ( Figure 1
establishment of what has long been termed in Australia, a ‘bunyip aristocracy’. 2 It also revealed the complexity of an entirely independent Australia’s relationship to the British monarchy. This return to royal honours comes in the wake of a series of mediated public relations ‘successes’ for the British royal family in the twenty-first century. In Britain the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the
refreshes. In the 2011 coverage of the royal wedding there is much talk of a new generation of royalty, embodied by the modern relationship of William and Kate. They met at university and lived together before marriage. Minibuses conveyed their lesser relations from the Palace to the Abbey. Their wedding was viewed world-wide on contemporary social media sites, smartphones and tablets. It is as though the
, namely the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and the celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This research is far from comprehensive or conclusive, but it does, I believe, flag up some key themes and issues, and gestures towards possibilities for future research. Ten respondents completed long-form open-ended questionnaires, and in four cases this was followed up by
media culture. 164 The shift from analogue to digital media poses new challenges, but also new affordances, for the Firm. This section describes, briefly, some of these changes. Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2011 wedding was the first large-scale royal event staged in the digital age. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (keen to present William as the future Head of the Commonwealth) devised a communication plan for the wedding, specifically requesting ‘please use social media’ but including
. 2. 2 John Hirst, ‘The Conservative Case for an Australian Republic’, Quadrant (September 1991), pp. 9–11. 3 Adam Dudding, ‘William and Kate Beguile New Zealand’s Republicans into Amnesia’, The Guardian , 12