September 29,1997

The Nation.

Thoroughly Modern ,Di

hatever else it may or may not be, the death of

Princess Diana was a godsend for pundits.
AEter a summer widely bemoaned as newsless,
in which Op-Editorializers were forced to treat
the bite Mike Tyson took out of Evander Holyfields ear with a level of indignation last displayed
when Saddam Hussein made similar inroads on
Kuwait, and in which they mourned the murder of
Gianui Versace as if it were the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr. redux, all of a sudden its
ready, set, write. Diana was the creature and, ultimately, victim of a celebrity-mad age (Jonathan Alter); Diana
was the victim of her boyfinend Dodi Fayeds obsessiveurge to
race away from prying eyes (William Safire); Diana was killed
trying to escape a photographic sexual assault (Salman Rushdie
aiid A.M. Rosenthal); Diana was a vacuous ninny (Maureen
Dowd); Diana was a feminist saint who espoused radical causes
(The Scotsmans Beatrix Campbell); Diana symbolized all that
was magical and rarefied, adored because she was beautiful,
mysterious, special (passim);Diana was an ordinary woman,
whom women identified with because of shared exploitation by
men (Francine du Plessix Gray). Theres something in all these
perspectives, even the description of the princess as a devotee
of radical causes: Her position on land mines, for example, was
much more uncompromisingthan that of the ClintonAdministration. Similarly, theres some truth in each of the possible positions
staked out vis-&vis the paparazzi who pursued her: Theyre
creepy BUT celebrities use them back AND people want those
photos, INCLUDING the high-end media that scornthem, ALTHOUGH
privacy should courit for something EVEN for celebrities ind
DESPITEthe First Amendment (or not).
But of course, the major radical cause that Diana represented
is modernity itself. She may have begun as a nineteenth-century
throwback, a barely educated, docile, medically certified virgin
waving from a Cinderella glass coach on her way to a fairy tale
wedding that was actually a marital transaction as cynical and
cold-blooded as any in Henry James. But she ended by symbolizing a new set of values: self-invention,psychotherapy,emotional
expressivity,egalitarianmarriage and womens right to seek love
in and out of wedlock, flamboyantconsumerism,public relations,
superstardom, the Oprahfication of everything. You can see
why women would love her story, which puts a triumphant and
glamorous spin on so many themes of contemporary womens
lives-eating disorders, depression, chilly husbands, bad marriages, divorce--Culminating in near-totalvictory over the mother
of all mothers-in-law from hell, And because these are indeed
real issues that in some ways transcend class, those who criticize
the princess tend to sound callous, reactionary and misogynous.
Imagine sneeredthe novelist Fay Weldon last year in an astonishingly venomous and almost incoherent Times Op-Ed on the royal
divorce, Diana actually believed herself entitled to a faithful
husband! She wanted to be happy! Stupid girl.
That said, for me, the amazing thing about the Diana story is

simply that there is a Diana story. Its not just that

Britain still has a monarchy, which consumes an
enormous amount of money (millions of pounds per
ann&) and buttresses a still-powerful hereditary
aristocracy, and that remarking on this makes one
sound like a C.F!A. at the opera.Nor is it that the criticism of the royals provoked by Dianas death seems
to come down to complaintsthat theyre too cold, too
old-fashioned and too out of it, when whats wanted
is a Clintonesque, talk-show-fiiendly monarchy of
high-fashion do-gooders. Its not even just that Tony
Blair is trying to save the Windsors bacon-although what does it
mean to be for labor if youre also for kings and queens?
What depresses me about the outpouring of emotion on the
death of Diana is what it says about how little so many millions
of people expect out of life. Its pathetic, really, all those grown
men and women telling reporters how much it meant to them
that Diana visited some relatives hospital room, or shook their,
hand at the opening of a supermarket, or just meant somethingyy
or made a difference of some never-exactly-specified nature.
Its as if people have abandoned any hope of achieving justice,
equality, self-determination, true democracy, and want nothing
more than a ruling class with a human face.
Because their deaths so nearly coincided,it was natural to contrast Pr&ess Diana with Mother Teresa. But in some important
ways the women were not so different,Both were the flowers ofhierarchical, feudal, essentiallymasculine institutions in which they
had no structural power but whose authoritarian natures they obscured and prettified. Both, despite protestations to the contrary,
were in the modern mass-market image business. Neither challenged the status quo that produced the social evils they supposedly helped alleviate-in fact, by promoting the illusion that nuns
with no medical training, or checks fkom wealthy donors, or selling your dresses for charity could make a difference on a significant scale, they masked those evils (or even, in the case of
Mother Teresas opposition to abortion and birth control, made
them worse). Why, after all, should childrens hospitals require the .
fundraising services of Princess Diana instead of receiving adequate support from taxpayers? Why is it thought to be marvelous
that the princess took her sons to meet and love the homeless,
when the whole royal family lives off the system of inequality that
produceshomelessness?We havent come very far, it seems; from
the medieval view of the poor as a moral opportunity for the rich.
But then, isnt it strange that the b o most famous and adored
women of the moment are those archetypal medieval figures, a
princess and a nun?

***

Gold Seal ofApprovak As for that whiny troll, Katha Pollitt,

an unscrupulous and unreliable critic and a cultural philistine,
shes a good example of the phony prep-schooVtrust-fundleftism
suf3ksingthe incestuously intertwined Ivy League cliques who
run the corrupt East Coast literary and magazine establishment.
--Camille Paglia, in Salon