To the trollers and spinners of lies, to leftwing conspiracy theorists and rightwing vaccine deniers, it is retaliation against power. To the legions of global cyber-warriors, fakery is legitimate hacking. This is artistic licence at its most cowardly as well as casual.įake history is fake news entrenched. The Crown has taken its liberties by relying on royalty’s well-known – and sensible – reluctance to resort to the courts. Most people support them, and increasing numbers use them. Laws of privacy, defamation and slander have been built up over years to protect individuals against ever more surveillance and intrusion into personal lives. Morgan could have made his point truthfully. Yet it was curiously unnecessary, since there were plenty of occasions, as in Mirren’s interpretation, when royalty can be shown behaving badly. The correction will pass millions of viewers by. When millions of viewers are told that both Diana and Thatcher were humiliated by the royal family at Balmoral, we should not have to rely on someone like Vickers to reply that this was utterly untrue. There cannot be one truth for historians, and journalists, their apprentice draftsmen, and another truth called artistic licence. It is too close to what should be sacred ground – bearing witness to passing events. That is why modern history must be different. We accept that distant history has time to set its house in order. Most historical novelists go to great lengths to verify their version of events, as Hilary Mantel does. There are still writers who struggle to correct his spin, as Richard III knows to his cost. We all know Shakespeare took liberties with history. Will we next be told they really killed her? Will we have another Oliver Stone falsifying the circumstances around the killing of President Kennedy in JFK? As Morgan implies, his film may not be accurate, but his purpose is to share a deeper truth with his audience: that the royal family were beastly to Diana, and out to get her. We have to believe they are true, or why are we wasting our time?įalse history is reality hijacked as propaganda. The validity of “true story” docu-dramas can only lie in their veracity. I am less sure of history, and especially contemporary history. The royal family can look after themselves, and usually do. The intention was clearly to give a shudder of shock to viewers lulled into assuming it was all true. These are on a par with the “revelations” in an earlier series, one implicating Prince Philip in the Profumo affair and another hinting at infidelity. The Queen was repeatedly shown wrongly dressed for Trooping the Colour. The Queen was responsible for leaking her view of Thatcher as “uncaring”.Ĩ. Princess Margaret visited two of the Queen’s cousins, who had been placed in a “state lunatic asylum” to avoid embarrassing the monarchy.ħ. Princess Diana threw a tantrum on a visit to Australia and forced the plans to be changed.Ħ. Prince Charles called Camilla Parker Bowles every day in the early years of his marriage.ĥ. Princess Margaret ridiculed Princess Diana for not being able to curtsey.Ĥ. The royal family laid protocol traps to humiliate Margaret Thatcher on a visit to Balmoral.ģ. Lord Mountbatten wrote a letter to Prince Charles the day before his death.Ģ. The historian Hugo Vickers has already detailed eight complete fabrications in the new series, all caricaturing the royal family in the worst possible light. The words and actions of living individuals were made up to suit a plot that could have been scripted by Diana’s biggest supporters. Olivia Colman’s sour-faced parody of the monarch on Netflix left us guessing which parts were true and which false. Helen Mirren’s portrayal of Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006) was uncomplimentary but a plausible recreation of events around the death of Diana. This sounds like a dangerous distinction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |