Twerking, Titles, Media mash
Time to twerk a new way?
The betrayal when it came, was jaw droppingly trashy, cringeworthy and weirdly lumpy around the belly; like blancmanges fighting to escape a deflating beach ball.
For 5 years, the British media has reverently referred to Meghan Markle, a former suitcase holder on tv game show, Deal or No Deal, as ‘duchess.’
Even when the King is referred to as merely ‘Charles’ and the Prince of Wales is reduced to ‘Wills’, like he’s still a toddler, the jam maker from California is always ‘the duchess’.
The more distant and tenuous her short lived link to the British Royal Household becomes, the more forcefully the mainstream media tries to sell her as ‘royal’.
Last week, even she gave up the pretence, by posting a video of herself; legs akimbo, skirt hitched up around her crotch, twerking and grinding.
It was a gut punch for the media outlets that try so hard to elevate her to a status for which she has no aptitude. But water always finds its own level. And Meghan looks happy as Larry, gyrating for instagram. It’s a far cry from the gritted teeth grin she adopts when meeting the deputy head of paper clips on visits to African countries when she and Harry cosplay the kind of pitiful, dollar store ‘royal tour’ they are now reduced to, that is embarrassing to witness and must be mortifying to engage in.
Unfortunately for them, the Royal Ship has not only sailed, it’s now berthed in a port they haven’t been given a map to. It sailed off with just two deftly delicious phrases: Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Recollections may vary’ and King Charles wishing them well with their life ‘overseas.’
So, since global mockery follows anything H+M do, especially her, she might as well enjoy doing what brings it on.
It’s time for both Harry and Meghan (H+M) and the mainstream media (msm)to embrace the twerking era. The royal one is gone.
The narrative that H+M and the msm hate each other also needs to be put to rest. It has never been borne out by the evidence.
H+M live via the media. Their ‘private’ moments are all over Netflix, they’ve used every form of media to attack the Royal Family and their Pavlovian response to media criticism is to clap back…… via media interviews!
It’s an exhausting circle of symbiotic need.
For its part the msm plays a two pronged game with the reality show duo. Some columnists do call them out on their absurdities. But overall, the editorial stance of many outlets is sympathetic. The excessive use of royal titles for a pair who live in the USA, do not represent the monarchy and have no formal role in it, is just one example among many.
Titles
MM is not royal. She simply gained a title via Harry, who is. The public does not refer to her by that title (despite her practically having it tattooed on everything).
So, press articles have to start with her name to let readers know who they mean. But then immediately they jump to ‘the duchess’ in the very next line. Thereafter, the title is used so frequently, that if someone was playing a drinking game every time they read it, they’d soon be blotto.
When Meghan decided to ditch her surname and refer to herself as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (not the correct title, incidentally), the press immediately jumped to attention and complied.
In itself that’s fine – except that the same outlets consistently and persistently refer to the Princess of Wales as Kate Middleton, despite 14 years of marriage, 3 children (one of them an heir to the throne) a previous title of The Duchess of Cambridge and 23 years of impeccable public behaviour.
There’s something particularly mean spirited and petty about the media’s insistence on calling her Middleton.
The Princess also signs herself as Catherine. The Royal family and Prince William refer to her as Catherine. Yet the media rarely call her that, either.
“It’s the algorithm” argument simply doesn’t wash in the light of them using Meghan’s lesser known title or ditching the Markle surname the public knows her by, because that’s how she styles herself. Also, when Catherine trends on social media now, it’s mostly as the Princess of Wales. So the public has certainly moved on if the msm hasn’t.
Relevance
H+M left Royal life via an Instagram post. This set the tone for their future life as celebrities not royals. However, the press, in the early days, referred to an abdication, putting the move on a par with the actions of Edward viii. Edward, who left the monarchy for a scheming American divorcee, was the King. Harry is a second tier prince. Similar level royals have also left the European and Japanese monarchies. Their departure makes for good tabloid gossip but is not constitutionally important, like the abdication of a King.
Yet, the msm regularly suggests that the monarchy, which has survived civil wars, the beheadings of monarchs, the abdication and Nazism and more, may somehow crumble without two people eviscerated by American sitcom South Park as the ‘dumb prince and his stupid, instagram loving wife’, empty vessels making a lot of noise on an endless ‘worldwide privacy tour.’
The recurring reconciliation features can stop too. Journalists who probably don’t forgive friends for standing them up for dinner, regularly demand that the King and Prince of Wales ‘do the christian thing’ and embrace two people who make poisonous accusations against them without providing a shred of evidence.
The Royal Family has suffered momentous losses, recently, with the deaths of the Queen, Prince Philip, the shock of King Charles’ cancer diagnosis and Catherine’s surgery. They have gone through more trauma in a few short years than many people experience over decades. And they’ve done it in the full glare and under the often hostile scrutiny of the world’s media. Why would they add to that by bringing back their abusers?
Last year there were embarrassing articles from those who said they ‘yearned’ to see reconciliation, their hearts ‘pleaded’ for it.
Thankfully we didn’t get to moist bodies aching for it but it came perilously close!
Language
MSM articles often describe Harry as ‘sad, forlorn, lost, anxious for reconciliation.’
Harry, we are told, ‘wears his heart on his sleeve.’
Yet, the only emotion he publicly displays is seething anger at his loss of status. Even in the days of his carefully managed palace PR image as the fun guy, his ‘jokes’ about his brother revealed envy and jealousy.
His account, in his memoir, of learning of the Queen’s death is telling. There’s no reflection on her extraordinary legacy as monarch, no expression of love for her as a grandmother, no word of compassion for his father’s loss.
Instead, it’s all about what level of importance would be given to MM on an historic occasion – an importance she had not earned through loyalty or deserved by way of a close link to the Queen.
The lengthy book can be summed up in two lines : William had the temerity to be born before me and that’s not fair. William got more sausages than me as a child and I can’t get over it.
The aged King’s cancer has also not stopped the attacks. So, it’s puzzling what heart the media sees on his sleeve or anywhere.
Many articles also refer to the boy who walked behind his mother’s coffin, as if he was an only child and still that boy, not now a middle aged man. Prince William was also a young boy walking behind the coffin of the mother who called him her soulmate and confidante. Little such sentimental kindness is afforded to him, though.
Little was offered too, to William’s young children, last year when their mother was undergoing chemotherapy.
There are also constant references to the ‘feud’. A feud requires two participants. The constant noise here only comes from one side.
And there is no ‘royal racism row’ because there is no actual accusation or evidence of racism – only sly, contradictory, vague, inconsistent stories from H+M that ‘something’ was said, in some unknown context, at some unknown time, between unknown persons, on one or possibly more occasions and this comment(s), at some point, was perceived by either Meghan or Harry or both, as being either racist or unconscious bias.
In fact, the only Royal on record in this regard is Harry. He’s on video using racial slurs ‘paki’ and ‘rag head’. He reportedly said that although his then girlfriend Chelsey Davy was from South Africa “she wasn’t black or anything”. He’s the one who wore a Nazi uniform.
When H+M first left the UK, their PR trumpeted that they would become billionaires and A list powerhouses in the USA. That hasn’t happened. It was never going to.
And the world has since moved on. Their celebrity now lies in hate clicks and comic parodies of them. Despite the efforts of media outlets in the UK and US, in any real business or cultural sense, they are yesterday’s news.
New Media
The make up of the media pen on the red carpet at film premieres has changed considerably in the past two years. Once packed with broadcasting corporations and the national press, it’s now more likely to be filled with content creators- YouTubers, TikTokers et al, who can get a funky video out to millions while print journalists chew over their reports to a dwindling readership.
There’s no doubt too that new media was way more influential in the 2024 US Presidential election than the plodding newspapers peddling narratives people could see for themselves were untrue.
So could new media replace traditional royal reporting in the future?
It’s already started. Increasingly, at public royal events you see amateur photographers hoping to get that one picture that goes viral or gets them a royal commission. Royal commentators on social media, already provide a wealth of information on everything from history and traditions to fashion and tiaras. The most interesting takes on current royal stories often come from these content creators. Some can be controversial but they’re always bold, in the style of what msm investigative journalism used to be. And if the political news media has taught us anything it is that today’s ‘conspiracy theory’ is tomorrow’s red faced admission.
The msm has not ‘broken’ a significant Royal story for years. From the Queen’s death to the illnesses of the King and Princess of Wales, the Palace has controlled the narrative with the msm responding only with speculation and opinion pieces
After unpleasant experiences with the msm in recent years, Kensington Palace has taken much of their media output into their own hands. A photo/video on their social media account can get 100s of millions of views and be shared worldwide. They can promote their charities and patronages as they choose.
Of course, big state events will still need big broadcasters to cover them but day to day royal reporting is now being done by a wide range of royal followers. Some make decent money from it. Some do it as a labour of love. But they can all reach huge audiences with the right story.
What these content creators have shown is that, in a bleak world of decrepit, corrupt politicians and uninspiring celebrities, there is a huge appetite for the mystique, grandeur and dignity of the monarchy. Despite the cries of ‘the monarchy died with the Queen’, in fact the British monarchy retains its fascination for the public. King Charles and queen Camilla consistently draw huge crowds on their visits around the UK and the world. The indomitable Princess Royal , Princess Anne, has that rare ability to win over even hardened republicans, just as her late mother Queen Elizabeth did. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh are a force to be reckoned with as the steadfast backbone of the Royal family. And the Prince and Princess of Wales are simply the rockstars. The smartest thing King Charles did upon ascending the throne was to immediately make Prince William, the Prince of Wales. The Prince is, increasingly now, the UK representative at major international events and a natural among the world’s statesmen. His solo trips abroad have been a tremendous success, drawing large, excited crowds wherever he goes. On a trip to New York when the political leadership was made up of people in their 80s, he cut a virile, youthful figure wading into the Hudson River and pulling in large crowds. His wife is, quite simply, the most sellable name in the world, able to make huge money for businesses whose products she wears or uses.
New media understands the fascination with the monarchy and is making the most of it.
