Princess Diana's death in the Fall of 1997 induced two types of trauma. There were those who were shocked by the death itself -- the five million who attended the funeral, the tens of thousands who turned out in San Francisco and New York to make public their distress. And then there were those shocked by the behavior and size of the first group -- how could so many feel such deep grief for someone they knew only through newspapers and television? Both groups are represented in this piece from After Diana by Daniel Harris describing reactions to the death on the Internet.
The jaws of life had barely opened and Diana's mangled body been pulled from the twisted wreckage of the Mercedes Benz than the solemn process of her kitschification on the Internet began in earnest. According to thousands of eulogies placed on the numerous bulletin boards set up specifically to mourn her death, she was not only the Queen of Hearts but the "Princess of Peas" who "perished" while trying to help us "visualize whirled peas," the life-long endeavor of "a Mary Poppins" or "a true modern day Cinderella Princess" who "left this unkind world for a place incomparable and definitely a lot better," the "abode of God Most Hi." "She was an angel," one mourner sighed, while another stated that "she was my idol" and still another that her death was "the one and only greatest tragedy that ever happened in this century." The Internet produced a vast oil painting on velvet composed of mortuary doggerel in which would-be- laureates scrambled up the steep slopes of Parnassus, regaling us with immortal lines about "her soft blue bambie eyes" that "will always be Bright like stars." Disconsolate fans churned out entire libraries of poems about Diana's triumphal entrance into heaven accompanied by an honor guard of seraphim as well as by Mother Theresa, who died expressly to escort the princess past the pearly gates:
Caged and silenced as if in shame, Yet no one could douse her inner flame. She was stalked as if an animal, then displayed as if a freak. Yet she held herself with outward grace, all the while inside so meek. Now set free our little dove, no longer shy, now bold, To soar through the open heavens and walk on streets of gold No longer pursued by curious crowds no disease, no hate. And at the entrance God has posted a sign "NO CAMERAS BEYOND THIS GATE."
Diana's death brought out in droves cemetery habitues who gave free rein to our society's repressed poetic impulses, dark sisters who wandered in and out of the tombstones relishing the saccharine epitaphs and the mixed metaphors: "Diana was a rose whose sun has set"; "you left your footprints stamped on all of our hearts"; and "the Brightest Jewel in the British Crown was snuffed out like a candle in the tonight."
The endless queue of well-wishers who scrawl their signature on Diana's on- line condolence books are not allowed to stroll peacefully through this mausoleum of poetic clichÈs and maudlin sentiments. They are terrorized by a gang of sans culottists who rampage through the Internet's bulletin boards commenting satirically on the mourners' obsequious antics. These gate-crashing insurgents operate like the democratic conscience of a society in danger of slipping into archaic elitism. One firebrand brings the festivities to a halt by accusing these sniveling around him of being "totally infatuated with a system of exploitation called feudalism." You obviously have the need for a group of people to lord themselves over you and to look down upon you and call you a commoner." Isn't that a form of masochism or low self-esteem?" Members of the aristocracy "are people who would just as soon crap on your head than give you the time of day," another mourner declares, reminding Diana's grief-stricken fans that, in reference to the dead driver, "the days of executing slaves with their masters ended with the Pharaohs." A South African physician from Doctors Without Frontiers sounds a recurrent vanitas theme and complains that Diana's diamonds came at the cost of the lives of hundreds of miners who were maimed and crippled in gas explosions in the pits and that "when I see her nails, I wonder how many liters of blood have been shed to pay her $10,000 annual manicure bills." While one would expect to find complete consensus in a forum dominated by such fanatical royal worshippers, the bulletin boards are in fact plagued by mutineers who stage an anti-royalist putsch from which Diana emerges, not as Snow White, but as a "high society slut" and "her Royal Pain in the Ass" who paraded around the charity circuit posing for photo-ops that served as "fill time between her dates" with "neo-feudalist billionaires." The seditious activities of these Internet Bolsheviks suggests that the worship of celebrities is becoming less and less tenable in a society that prides itself on having overthrown tyranny but that still clings fetishistically to the opulent trappings of grotesque social inequalities.
Contributors include: Sarah Benton, Robin Blackburn, Beverley Brown, Richard Coles, Ford Higson, Christopher Hitchens, Sara Maitland, Mandy Merck, Adam Philips, Naomi Segal, Elizabeth Wilson. -- Michael Pugliese