The great irony of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, was simple: She was as much a creator of media as she was its creation. The British press might have forced the blushing teenaged "English Rose" to blossom, but Diana's own tactics are why, 24 years after her tragic death, multiple award-nominated celebrities are playing her. In the decades since the young Diana Spencer crept down the aisle in an overflowing taffeta wedding gown, more than a dozen actresses have attempted to match her magnanimity. Madonna tried it. Naomi Watts tried it. Most recently, Kristen Stewart has tried it. And as one of the first and only films about the late princess to achieve critical acclaim, Stewart's Spencer begs the question: What happened differently this time? And have we finally reached the pinnacle of Diana's clutch on pop culture?
Perhaps it is not, in fact, an irony but a triumph that Diana is still under the microscope today. As journalist Tina Brown wrote in her 2007 biography,
The Diana Chronicles, the princess's "life's obsession" was controlling her publicity: "The camera was Diana's fatal attraction...It had created the image that had given her so much power, and she was addicted to its magic, even when it hurt." Diana's former bodyguard, Ken Wharfe, agreed within his own memoir,
Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, saying she "craved public recognition almost as much as she cherished her privacy." There's little question, then, whether the princess would relish the attention still lavished upon her, from the prestige performances of Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki in
The Crown to the jovial spectacle of Jeanna de Waal's dancing in the maligned
Diana: The Musical. Diana isn't here to mold her mythology anymore, but it has nevertheless earned a life of its own. And not all who have steered it in the years since her death are proud of it.
READ ON 
No comments:
Post a Comment