Culture Study Podcast - Royals Gossip and Colonial Hangovers

00:00:00.840 Hi everyone, it's Anne. I wanted to let you know about a couple of episodes that we're

00:00:04.860 working on that we need your questions for. One is continuing our romance series and we're

00:00:10.000 talking to the owners of an all romance bookstore. It's a very good one. So what do you want

00:00:15.860 to know about the business of selling romance novels? How has it changed? How do they think

00:00:21.220 about like which titles to stock? Like you can go anywhere with these questions. The

00:00:25.600 other recording we have coming up is about the really dark reality, not just the performance,

00:00:30.820 the reality of trad wives. And we're going to be talking with a guest host who used to be a trad

00:00:35.820 wife and got out. So what do you want to know about her experiences and how her thinking has

00:00:41.120 changed? And of course, we always want your ideas for episodes. If you're wondering about the

00:00:46.860 backstory to some weird piece of culture you're seeing, head over to culturestudypod.substack.com

00:00:52.340 and let us know okay on to the show oh I have such a distinct like core memory which was that

00:01:02.700 my mother's mother Joan was born in England she was a she was a war bride and we watched the

00:01:11.640 Queen's address on Christmas day every year it was like we went over to Nana's house for Christmas

00:01:20.540 dinner and the queen's address to the nation always went on and we had to sit quietly and

00:01:27.060 listen it was a really significant part of her celebration of christmas do you remember what

00:01:34.880 you felt about like what the queen looked like i mean i think that i associated her very strongly

00:01:41.700 with my nana yes similar age similar sort of comportment the only person i knew who had

00:01:50.220 the queen's haircut was my grandma and other grandmas.

00:01:54.800 Yeah, that's the grandma haircut.

00:01:56.500 It's sort of like a set?

00:01:59.200 It's a set with a little wave.

00:02:06.820 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:02:10.680 I'm Hannah McGregor.

00:02:11.980 I'm an associate professor of publishing at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver

00:02:16.400 and the co-host of Material Girls, the podcast.

00:02:21.540 I'm Marcelle Kosman.

00:02:22.620 I'm an instructor in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta,

00:02:26.700 and I'm the other co-host of the podcast Material Girls.

00:02:31.180 Marcelle, what's your first memory of the royals?

00:02:34.820 I couldn't tell you why this is the case,

00:02:36.880 but it had to do with Prince Charles and Princess Diana's divorce,

00:02:41.620 And it had to do with a made for TV, unauthorized biography, because those were really big at the time. So it was an unauthorized biography. And the clip, it was an ad. I don't even think I watched the actual unauthorized biography. I think this is just an ad that I saw. And it was a moment where the actor playing Diana said, did you ever love me? And then the actor playing Charles said, no.

00:03:07.880 And I just remember being really haunted by this, by this fact.

00:03:13.260 So this is one of the, one of my, my formative memories of the Royals is that Charles never loved Diana.

00:03:21.680 I have two.

00:03:23.040 One is, I used to love to ogle the cover of People magazine when I was waiting in line at the grocery store.

00:03:29.340 I still do that.

00:03:30.200 My mom never bought it.

00:03:31.340 I know, same.

00:03:31.920 Um, but there were pictures of Diana, obviously, but then also of the little, of the boys.

00:03:37.560 And I was like, wow, princes.

00:03:40.120 Um, but the more vivid one, I think kind of hazy on details here, but basically after

00:03:46.700 the revelations of Charles and Camilla's affair came out and all of like their love

00:03:54.880 letters to one another.

00:03:56.060 right and there's the now infamous like i would like to be your tampon comment right and that was

00:04:04.440 satirized on snl or an snl type show it was definitely snl and so i have a memory of some

00:04:13.700 actor basically pretending to be charles and saying like i would like to be at your tampon

00:04:20.340 and you know teen me was like what is happening like at so many levels right

00:04:28.400 i think and correct me if i'm wrong i don't know if this will if this rings any bells but i feel

00:04:35.580 like in that clip he has transformed himself into a tampon right so there's this like bad cgi this

00:04:43.400 like little actor head and then a tampon is like but i'm a now i'm a tampon i'm ready to be inside

00:04:49.300 you forever and she's like no like children's show kind of transformation yeah so marcel and i were

00:04:57.380 we're speaking with uh a couple of our english friends in preparation for this episode and uh

00:05:04.340 and we were talking about how one of the great challenges of taking charles seriously as the

00:05:10.540 king of canada which is a wild phrase is that we know about that one time he told his

00:05:18.560 mistress he wished he was her tampon we haven't forgotten charles yeah it just really takes the

00:05:26.340 romance out of the whole thing yeah so this episode is about the way that we talk about

00:05:32.500 the royals it's not just about the royals but like the discourse which i know you know we all love

00:05:37.700 that we all love analyzing the discourse so what do you think is going on do we talk about the

00:05:43.640 royals differently than we talk about other celebrities i think so wait let me qualify that

00:05:49.540 i think sometimes yes and sometimes no i think that depends on the royal i think yeah i think

00:05:57.380 that we are willing to talk a lot of trash about the royals up to a certain point um and then it

00:06:04.540 and then it becomes inappropriate i suspect that that's at least for canadians because we're still

00:06:10.600 in a colonial mindset oh that's so interesting you think that like there's like ah well this

00:06:16.740 wait we've taken this too far I do yeah Hannah I agree I think that there is a sense both that

00:06:24.200 they are more fully fair game than other kinds of celebrities because of their their function

00:06:33.400 which is as like heads of state and representations of the British Empire so there's this idea that's

00:06:40.580 like your whole purpose is to be a public figure and literally like taxpayer dollars like we pay

00:06:48.440 your salary so so there's this sense of ownership but then hand in hand with that sense of ownership

00:06:54.720 is also a sense of um like you represent something yeah you know for better or for worse you

00:07:02.480 represent they continue to represent the british empire and all of the incredibly messy historical

00:07:08.980 baggage that goes hand in hand with the british empire and our various ongoing relationships to it

00:07:14.420 but i also want to ask like who's the we there because i think americans talk about the worlds

00:07:21.500 really differently i think yeah those of us in commonwealth nations like canada and australia

00:07:27.060 talk about the worlds really differently and i think in the uk it is a whole different media

00:07:33.500 landscape. Totally. And we got so many questions that kind of span those different subjectivities.

00:07:41.680 Sorry, I've talked to academics. I just pull out words like subjectivities. But like some people

00:07:47.440 who are from different Commonwealth countries, some people who are like Brits living in the US,

00:07:52.260 like, and we tried to pick representative ones. I do think that more than any other time in the

00:07:58.340 past we are much more knowledgeable of the ways that those conversations are different right i

00:08:04.800 think that pre-exposure to the internet there was less awareness of how the conversation about even

00:08:11.660 someone like princess diana was different in the united states and in the uk right my my take from

00:08:16.640 the american perspective and i think i see this to some extent in commonwealth countries and in

00:08:21.400 the uk is this very interesting dichotomy between for a lot of people not all they should not exist

00:08:29.680 and yet i want to talk about them right like wanting both of those things to be true and then

00:08:35.360 i think that anyone who marries into the royal family is available for more salacious gossip

00:08:43.740 than people who are part of the quote-unquote bloodline right like i think that it's not even

00:08:50.180 as simple as whether they're male or female right it's because i don't think people gossiped about

00:08:56.760 margaret right like i don't think they gossiped about the queen like they didn't do it the same

00:09:00.780 way as they gossip about diana or fergie right like all of these different generations of women

00:09:08.940 who have married in so that's my top level takes we have okay we got to get into the questions

00:09:13.720 because they're going to lead us in so many different directions they're good questions

00:09:16.560 first one comes from Daniela and it's going to set up the whole episode. When I read how we talk

00:09:22.120 about the royals today, my brain immediately filled in the British royals. And then I wondered why?

00:09:28.360 Why is the British monarchy so dominant in that discourse? Historical reasons? The British tabloid

00:09:34.500 press? Princess Diana? The fact that they speak English? I'm from a country that does not have a

00:09:40.500 monarchy, but I'm living in a country that does. And I'm curious how we ended up in a place where

00:09:46.040 the world seems to be extremely invested in the british royals but not so much in say the spanish

00:09:51.720 ones or those of other countries outside maybe netflix rom-coms it's always like the prince of

00:10:00.880 what is it genovia is that yeah genovia monrovia which is also like a plant company uh so i have

00:10:08.560 a simple answer but i'm curious to hear your answers about this in terms of why the british

00:10:13.560 royal family rules the discourse i mean i i look at these possibilities that daniella has offered

00:10:19.400 and i'm like yes yes yes yes and yes and more you know again i'm gonna oh i'm gonna hammer this

00:10:26.500 point to an annoying degree but we really can't under underestimate the ongoing influence of the

00:10:32.420 british empire which was the biggest empire in the history in human history and wasn't dissolved

00:10:39.740 until the end of world war ii which i know seems very long ago but in the scale of human history

00:10:45.900 is extremely recent and so you know in canada what when did we repatriate our constitution

00:10:51.300 like in the 1980s it was the 80s yeah wow yeah like so this is like the empire's fingers

00:10:57.580 are still deeply embedded in like the global landscape so like that's part of it it's just

00:11:05.220 like they are still the monarchs of way more countries than most other royal families are

00:11:12.440 like they are on our currency we have that like when i was a kid i was like wait a second

00:11:18.920 you know we went to like i don't know victoria and i was like why is the queen of england

00:11:24.240 on the canadian doll like it just did not because she was also the queen of canada

00:11:30.420 Yeah. Thinking about this question from the perspective of, say, somebody who studies popular culture and literature, our, at least in the US and Canada, our literary traditions come out of and emerge from a British literary tradition.

00:11:49.080 And so I think it makes sense that if our literary ancestors always take for granted the existence of royalty, whether they like it or not, I think it makes sense then that the literature that these countries develop in some way or the popular culture or literary culture, whatever, in some way is also responding or taking for granted that same fact, I guess, fact with big scare quotes.

00:12:18.340 The British royals exist. And, you know, to some degree, you take over the world and impose your literature on them. It makes sense then that they continue to have opinions about you, maybe.

00:12:34.020 yeah that's i think from the american context i think part of it is a like a fetishism

00:12:41.260 of absence right like we defined ourselves as a country that did not have a monarch

00:12:47.740 like that's so crucial to the the individualism that runs through the american ethos

00:12:54.540 but then also wants like the glamour that's right and the subjugation of empire right like

00:13:02.280 America loves empire, but never got to have the sort of like the figurehead of empire in quite the same way that these countries with with kings and queens do.

00:13:12.300 And I think that the UK just happens to be at once like the doppelganger in some ways of the US.

00:13:19.900 Like, like we define ourselves against them, but we're also very similar and sprung from the loins of et cetera, et cetera, as an as a nation gross.

00:13:29.200 uh and then but then and then we speak the same language right so it'd be it's a much more

00:13:35.840 accessible monarchy as it were yeah the the other thing i think when i'm thinking about

00:13:42.720 comparing the british royals to other royal families is that i do think the british royals

00:13:47.820 have a relationship to their national press that is distinct from the relationship that other royal

00:13:54.380 families have to their press which is that like the british tabloid media ecosystem and the british

00:14:03.160 royal family are in a deeply intertwined relationship in which the royal family is

00:14:11.120 constantly trying to deliberately manage their public image through their strategic drip of

00:14:18.280 information to the tabloids which then means that it generates this sort of landscape of media about

00:14:25.680 the royals that people are hungry for which in turn fuels the tabloids to get ever more aggressive

00:14:32.200 in seeking out that information whether or not it's what the royal family wants to get out even

00:14:37.820 though we do have access to a lot of that media now via the internet and its various global village

00:14:45.080 esque impacts I still think it's hard for those of us outside of the UK to like really wrap our

00:14:53.000 heads around the degree to which this this homogenous British tabloid culture drives the

00:15:00.840 news cycle right and even like having a tabloid press we used to have a tabloid press in the

00:15:07.420 United States and I'm guessing you had one in Canada I actually don't know yeah we had the

00:15:12.780 suns the various suns do we not still we still have some suns i think the tabloid suns are

00:15:19.660 mostly gone and the legitimate suns stuck around but are oh oh that's a fun that's a fun homonym

00:15:29.940 um yeah but i definitely have a very vivid memory of um a friend of mine died in high school in a

00:15:38.300 freak accident she was struck by lightning and most of us found out because the ottawa sun which

00:15:42.880 was a rag printed they were ambulance chasers and they printed her high school yearbook photo

00:15:49.340 with a big picture of a lightning bolt superimposed across it and that was how

00:15:53.780 almost everybody including many of her family members found out that it happened yeah you know

00:15:59.680 that stuff still absolutely exists like all over facebook it's just not in like print publications

00:16:04.740 anymore right yeah yeah no i think that's such a good point about that particular relationship

00:16:10.400 between the press like it's a very symbiotic relationship and it feeds itself and then

00:16:15.380 trickles down to the way that the world consumes the royals too and i don't think you have that

00:16:21.440 with the scandinavian royalty right for all kinds of reasons no for all kinds of reasons

00:16:27.900 it's funny i just it's just never occurred to me that other royal families don't have that

00:16:33.520 same kind of relationship, but it's true. Once you draw the threads, that's probably why we don't,

00:16:39.580 we just don't know nearly as much about this. I don't know what the names of any of the

00:16:43.580 Scandinavian royals, for example. All right. So our next question is about the level of detail

00:16:50.320 that goes into this kind of discourse. Let's hear from Shannon. When all the hubbub around

00:16:54.380 Kate's disappearance bubbled up on the internet, royal fashion reporter Elizabeth Holmes told

00:16:58.920 everyone to chill and not jump to conclusions i wanted to remind her that she is the one who taught

00:17:04.120 us to dissect every outfit and every accessory so of course we're going to read into every botched

00:17:09.000 move from the palace how can we balance the obsession with sourcing every little thing

00:17:13.580 with the need to give celebrities and i guess royals too some privacy i feel torn about this

00:17:18.580 with taylor swift as well i want to see what she's wearing in every pap shot but i also don't want her

00:17:23.440 to be papped all right so first we should establish do you guys know who elizabeth holmes is

00:17:29.320 vaguely i know vaguely i really thought you were going to ask if we knew who taylor swift was

00:17:34.180 wouldn't that be an interesting podcast just like me educating

00:17:39.960 elizabeth holmes is a reporter um she used to be a political reporter actually but she

00:17:47.460 um has found a real niche for herself she started doing instagram stories she was actually the

00:17:53.380 first person that got me to use stories on instagram before that i was like i'm not gonna

00:17:59.560 stories i'm like too old or whatever uh but she would do take a picture of um usually it was kate

00:18:06.500 and she would put an instagram story it'd say so many thoughts and then she would add all of these

00:18:11.780 little details in the story around the outfit around the photo right and so analyzing the

00:18:18.540 the aesthetics of the outfit about what it's communicating in all these different ways and

00:18:23.320 she has gained a huge following for it and and now is is somewhat imbricated within at least the u.s

00:18:30.760 press corps for the the royals like she has been invited to things um that sort of thing so

00:18:38.900 how do we think about this detail how do we even think about the idea of the right to privacy

00:18:44.340 when you are a royal how has that changed i mean i want to echo back to what hannah said initially

00:18:52.160 about the royals being public figures that is that's their that's their job to be public

00:18:58.660 representations of countries ideas things um and so because of that i think for i think for us

00:19:09.320 commoners, if you will, I think it's hard for us to tell the difference between when these public

00:19:15.820 figures are public in public and when they are private in public. And I think, I don't know that

00:19:21.660 we have been well educated in when we should or how we might tell the difference between those

00:19:28.580 two things. I think there's maybe some assumptions about common sense, you know, when they're wearing

00:19:32.480 sunglasses and sweats and walking with trying to cover their faces with their hands, that might

00:19:37.780 indicate that they would like to be private. But whether they want to be private, and whether they

00:19:42.820 get to be private, are two, those are two different questions. And I certainly don't

00:19:48.820 have an answer. I think it's a, I just really wanted the opportunity to say private and public

00:19:54.240 and public and public. That's what I wanted. Hannah, what do you think?

00:19:59.740 You know, I think that it is useful to distinguish between the way that public figures,

00:20:06.900 including celebrities including royals are deliberately performing their identities in

00:20:13.340 public through intentional dressing intentional uh visiting or not visiting of particular sites

00:20:22.120 or particular individuals like this is a a deliberately constructed text and to close

00:20:29.680 read that deliberately constructed text is actually just doing the thing they're asking

00:20:34.920 us to do anyway doing their homework we're just doing the thing like you want us to read Kate

00:20:40.700 Middleton you you're being very intentional about it where where I think you know we get into

00:20:47.720 gray zones I mean I think that there's just some very clear like probably you shouldn't chase people

00:20:55.080 down in a car and cause a deadly car crash like probably that's really crossing a line and

00:21:00.380 probably you shouldn't like spy on people's children like there's lots of things that are

00:21:05.460 i think are we can pretty clearly say like this is immoral behavior trying to get topless photos

00:21:11.160 for example yeah when people are obviously trying to be in a private space like the idea that as a

00:21:16.720 public figure you never get to stop being in public i think is um yeah immoral i think in

00:21:23.480 different countries have legislated this right like have made it a lot easier for celebrities

00:21:29.600 to create that sort of privacy and not by like saying like you cannot photograph a celebrity

00:21:35.980 when they're on the street it's more like you can't get within this many feet and use your

00:21:40.660 telephoto lens or your drone to take pictures of people in a bikini in their private space right

00:21:47.100 um i think that one thing to keep in mind with someone like taylor swift like i remember when

00:21:53.660 that um she released like a youtube short like a competition to tiktok around the release of

00:21:59.700 tortured poets that was all of this footage of her like having an amazing time essentially on

00:22:05.880 vacation all these different places and no one had seen her in these places right like she there is

00:22:13.220 at a certain level when you are the sort of person who is pursued to the extent that these people are

00:22:19.180 and who has the means that they have,

00:22:21.360 you can very easily avoid the paparazzi when you want to.

00:22:26.180 There are some instances in which that is not the case,

00:22:29.240 but most of the time you can do that.

00:22:32.720 And so I think the tricky territory comes when they're like,

00:22:36.500 I want to be public, but I also want to be private, right?

00:22:39.140 Like I want to go out to this club,

00:22:41.640 but I also want to be private in a public space.

00:22:44.840 Or I want to be public unless it turns out

00:22:47.480 that people are going to interpret my publicness in a way I don't enjoy at which point I'm going

00:22:53.020 to retroactively say actually I wanted to be private the whole time right where I think we

00:22:59.340 get into a really tricky situation which is what happened with Kate recently is that Kate clearly

00:23:07.460 wanted to be private about having cancer and the absence of a public performance of what was going

00:23:16.960 on her disappearance from the public sphere led to this sort of like escalation this vacuum that

00:23:24.480 then people filled in with conspiracy theories right that the tabloid press filled in with

00:23:28.860 conspiracy theories and i thus continue to find it deeply baffling whose idea it was to release

00:23:37.880 the terrible photoshopped mother's day picture okay can we talk about this picture for a minute

00:23:46.500 because i saw that photo and i was like okay and then i saw the internet blow up about it being

00:23:55.940 photoshopped i was like i can't i couldn't tell i wasn't examining it and then you know people do

00:24:03.480 the thing where they like they blow it up they circle all the things i'm like i just but people

00:24:09.340 were questioning it in part because she had created through the absence of communication

00:24:15.320 the she i don't want to say invited invited is the wrong word but like that vacuum made it so

00:24:24.320 people were ready to speculate they were ready to take out the microscope and be like yeah this is

00:24:30.300 photoshop the other thing too is that like their lifestyle is funded by taxpayer dollars right like

00:24:36.560 this is the hard thing to reconcile. And so it's different when, I don't know, like the president

00:24:42.720 of the United States kids, right? Or the prime minister's kids. Remember when Melania disappeared

00:24:49.580 for how long was that? Was that one month? Was it three months? I don't even remember. And people

00:24:54.540 were like, free Melania. All of a sudden people were like, oh, this woman isn't horrible. We are

00:24:59.180 concerned about her the degree to which the trump family didn't care about how people were reacting

00:25:08.100 versus the degree to which the british royals were in constant damage control i think i think says

00:25:15.760 i'm not i'm not sure what it says i feel like it says a lot about some kind of sense of

00:25:21.760 responsibility um i don't know but like an unspoken sense of responsibility like it's

00:25:27.840 improper it's like gauche that people should be curious yeah when you have created the the

00:25:33.700 circumstances for this curiosity to flourish yeah and yes maybe like in a different era people would

00:25:39.780 be like oh we just haven't heard from her in a bit we should be quiet right but like that is not

00:25:46.060 women away for months all the time that's true either them while they give birth it's totally

00:25:51.840 fine melody just said in the chat like well she did say something she said that like

00:25:57.800 she had a there was a medical condition she had surgery that she wasn't going to participate in

00:26:04.060 public duties for a while and that's true right but it was so i i say this word weird vague

00:26:10.060 it was so vague that vague i was so like a canadian i know it was so imprecise that it like

00:26:19.360 and also it happened so quickly that it's a sort of thing like um when people call in sick and

00:26:29.860 like if you told your boss that like um i'm having women's issues or something i don't know like like

00:26:35.200 just what kind of surgery would take you out for that long it gave just enough information to invite

00:26:41.860 speculation but not enough information to shut down speculation does that make sense

00:26:46.840 mm-hmm yeah and then the other thing too is like you cannot be a royal a family can choose not to

00:26:53.740 be royals we live in that out of this we live in that reality now and we have it very vividly

00:27:00.500 demonstrated in this specific royal family so i think that that is hard i'm skeptical of whether

00:27:08.040 or not they can choose not to be royal like harry harry can choose not harry and megan can choose

00:27:14.740 not to be royal because he's the spare he wrote a book about it but i think the machine of the

00:27:20.220 windsors the british royal family churns very fiercely i think it would be very different

00:27:26.320 for them to make that choice i think while kate might want to choose that i'm yeah i'm not

00:27:35.700 convinced that william wants to choose that just i'm not convinced that kate wants to choose that

00:27:41.260 oh i definitely don't think she i think she wants to be the queen yeah for sure for sure

00:27:46.720 she's got that energy she really does i i also imperial energy just big big imperial energy

00:27:55.320 i also think that our our media landscape is a hyper visual landscape and so people are not

00:28:02.640 satisfied with a statement yes yeah and we see this in the way that celebrity is communicated

00:28:08.020 across all kinds of different forms of celebrity but like it is a hyper visual media cycle and so

00:28:16.380 even saying like i will be stepping out of the public eye for a while it's like that doesn't

00:28:22.640 mean anything to us until we stop seeing you all of a sudden and then we're like why can't i see you

00:28:28.720 i am used to seeing you yeah yeah yeah where are your outfits for me to analyze yeah okay so we're

00:28:36.660 going to talk now a little bit about the way that Americans talk about the British royal family,

00:28:40.920 which will give us some opportunity to talk about how Canadians talk about the British royal family.

00:28:45.180 This question comes from Susanna. I live in London, and I hear far more about the royal family from

00:28:50.340 friends back in the States than I do from people here. When the Queen died, of course, people queued

00:28:55.280 to see her here, seemed like mostly older conservatives from other parts of the UK.

00:29:00.300 But no one my age, I'm 30, really talked about it that much past the initial headlines.

00:29:06.120 Meanwhile, tons of people from the U.S. asked me all about it and were so invested in what was

00:29:11.300 happening. What is this American fascination with the royal family? Also, from an American

00:29:16.640 perspective, I've always assumed liberal people generally like Meghan. Of course there's

00:29:21.540 controversy over her, but if you're not a monarchist or conservative, I thought people

00:29:26.200 mostly sided with her on the mistreatment she's talked about. I was surprised to find that my young

00:29:30.880 liberal british friends here still really really dislike her even if they see her points they hate

00:29:37.080 the way she's broadcasting it all over and seem to just dislike her as a person what do you think

00:29:42.000 this is about is it some form of protection over the crown trickling down from more traditional

00:29:46.920 british parents all right so as canadians what was the conversation like in your worlds when

00:29:53.660 the queen died my corner of the world the queen's death led to significant increase in conversations

00:30:04.020 about getting rid of the monarchy right that queen elizabeth ii was a institution like she was

00:30:13.200 queen she had been queen for the entirety of my life but also the entirety of my parents life

00:30:20.220 and also a significant chunk of my grandparents life like yeah it was like get rid of the monarchy

00:30:25.780 she's just a nana like it's fine what's the it's fine and then all of a sudden it was like

00:30:31.460 you have a king now and we were like no we don't that's weird that's very sad and it's the tampon

00:30:38.380 boy no no no no no he's not going on our money on our money yeah no no no so so what i saw was

00:30:46.020 the rise of significant conversations about like wait okay how would we actually do this

00:30:53.400 like we can do it right how would we do it can we do it we should do it we don't want this king

00:30:58.820 I wonder Hannah if it's because we all of a sudden we're face to face with needing to make change

00:31:05.100 in relation to the monarchy anyway right so it's like well we got to change the money

00:31:10.520 we got to change the documents we got to change we got to get out of the habit of saying her

00:31:15.500 majesty and start saying his majesty and I think the way that I described it to a friend was I felt

00:31:21.640 like Queen Elizabeth II QE2 was like wallpaper that I had gotten so used to seeing I forgot that

00:31:30.840 there was a wall there it like all of us and like wait you're changing the wallpaper couldn't can we

00:31:36.420 move the wall this room is quite small yeah is it load-bearing oh I'm not convinced that it is

00:31:43.700 that wall's full of black mold it turns out wow we should we should really get rid of this wall

00:31:50.440 rotten at the core rotten at its core it's making us very sick i kind of liked the dem ask but now

00:31:57.700 i'm not so sure it's not really worth it is it in the u.s i think that the curiosity that this

00:32:05.780 question asker was receiving is like classic u.s stereotype of what british people are which is

00:32:12.660 like oh they're all in like red phone booths like listening to elton john sing candle in the wind

00:32:18.580 you know like just like that everyone is a monarchist right that like they care

00:32:26.420 in some way and that's so obviously not the case um but relies on a stereotype of how people

00:32:34.220 in other places relate to the monarchy and the queen there's this whole second question about

00:32:41.740 Megan which

00:32:43.180 whoo

00:32:44.520 just

00:32:46.360 just like

00:32:50.660 the whole like there's but it's real

00:32:52.700 like for people who don't know there is a

00:32:54.700 real difference in the way

00:32:56.500 that people in the UK talk about

00:32:58.560 Megan in particular and then

00:33:00.460 people outside of the UK and I think

00:33:02.480 a lot of it has to do

00:33:04.380 with the way

00:33:06.700 that she talks right the way that she gossips

00:33:08.740 and the way that she has

00:33:10.500 criticized the monarchy specifically. So to get into this question, I think that we can add in

00:33:16.120 this question from Jennifer first, and then talk about it all. I'm really fascinated by how the

00:33:20.620 Kate versus Meghan discourse, at least in the US has become a proxy for political affiliations,

00:33:26.340 especially because they are both representatives of wealth, power and imperialism. Do you all have

00:33:31.500 any insight on this and why this is the case? I think racism is the obvious answer. But is there

00:33:36.200 more going on here? There is more going on here, but also there's racism. I feel like I might have

00:33:42.440 the least to say because it genuinely surprises me to learn that Megan is a gossip. I did not know.

00:33:48.980 However, that being said, that doesn't change what I think is maybe an important thing to keep

00:33:54.740 in mind. I think that the news media, not just news media, I think that media in general tells

00:34:01.300 us how to feel about the stories that it's giving us right the framing that it uses tells us whether

00:34:08.300 we should be sympathetic to someone or sympathetic to a group of people we see this with all kinds

00:34:14.480 of things i think that my immediate go-to is always that the concept of a terrorist wasn't

00:34:21.060 a racialized concept until 9 11 right before that you had white people who were terrorists all the

00:34:26.080 time. And then afterwards, it was really hard to label someone who caused widespread acts of terror

00:34:35.560 a terrorist unless, of course, they were a racialized person. So my guess is that even for

00:34:43.820 liberal-minded people who might otherwise be inclined to sympathize with a Black woman who

00:34:49.540 experiences a tremendous amount of class and race-based hatred from her in-laws I think the

00:34:56.540 way that the media represents her and represents her experiences is largely to blame for informing

00:35:04.700 us how we should be thinking about her like because none of us none of us know her we don't

00:35:10.880 know anything about her I will say when I say she's a gossip I mean it in like a positive way

00:35:16.240 as in she spoke truth to the machinations of what goes on within the royal family and they see that

00:35:24.500 as like being a gossip gotcha right that you like told our secrets right instead of staying silent

00:35:31.640 and burying it she yeah she was silent you let the windsors decide what story will be told and

00:35:38.540 she went by herself classic american was like obviously i'm gonna tell my story and yeah and

00:35:46.740 that you know that was was seen as an outrage because that's not what you do when you marry

00:35:51.140 into this family gotcha yeah i mean i really think obviously we cannot underestimate misogynoir here

00:35:58.840 of course you know the very particular valences of anti-black racism as they're applied to black

00:36:04.640 women um i also think we can't underestimate how much a lot of british people hate americans

00:36:11.180 yeah um like kind of i don't i don't know if you guys know this but kind of almost everybody in

00:36:17.100 the world hates you um well like i'm really sorry you know whoa like not as individuals

00:36:23.000 but as a nation right like like yeah you know canadians so canadian flags on our backpacks

00:36:29.580 when we travel so that people won't mistake us for americans because we're treated better

00:36:34.180 when they know that they're not American like so that is that's undeniably part of the like

00:36:40.580 I'm surprised when liberal British people still don't like her how much of it do you think that

00:36:45.760 she is also a like a celebrity right like and there's something gauche about being a celebrity

00:36:51.680 like she was on a tv show she was a supporting character on a tv show yeah new money on Marcel's

00:37:00.120 point about like the media teaches us how to interpret the stories that we're being given

00:37:06.260 and like most people are not close reading the media that they are consuming there's this this

00:37:13.780 great piece by ellie hall in buzzfeed news do you know this piece ann yeah it's one of the biggest

00:37:20.240 traffic yeah yeah of all time from buzzfeed uh like side by side headlines comparing

00:37:26.300 how Meghan Markle is talked about and how Kate Middleton is talked about. And it is like, I

00:37:32.580 really, if you if you aren't one of the people who has already gotten clicked on this, really do

00:37:38.480 because it is breathtaking. And it's a level of propaganda that I think unless you are deliberately

00:37:45.840 critically engaging with it, it's like propaganda is effective. It shapes public opinion.

00:37:51.980 Well, and we should say clearly, like, there's a reason why they would want to make people dislike Meghan, right? It's because it discredits what she says about the royal family.

00:38:01.300 That's right. Totally.

00:38:02.620 Like, it's so transparent.

00:38:06.360 Yeah, yeah. And yet.

00:38:07.920 Marcel, were you going to add something there?

00:38:09.180 I was going to ask if the two of you think, I don't know, I was thinking about whether or not, you know, the Madonna-whore dichotomy that women in public are allowed to have, right?

00:38:19.020 you're either allowed to be this like virginal, caring, loving mother, or you are a whore. I

00:38:24.720 don't know how else to describe whores. A sexualized. Yeah, yeah. You're Elizabeth Taylor.

00:38:31.520 Sure. Yeah, exactly. And so part of me also wonders if, if we already have a Kate Middleton,

00:38:38.260 if Megan never had a shot, right? Like, because Kate Middleton has to be untouchable, because

00:38:43.500 she's going to be the future queen the future mother of the nation if unless megan is a is a

00:38:51.660 i i just feel like even if she were a perfect match i remember when people talked about like

00:38:56.740 people were shipping pippa middleton and prince harry and like poor pippa like that would have

00:39:01.740 been a nightmare for her no and pippa would have been framed as like in some way you know you have

00:39:09.520 to have that differentiation in order to construct the center that's right which is which is kate as

00:39:16.740 like the unimpeachable yes feminine ideal that's right yeah the one other thing that i want to name

00:39:23.860 is class um which which i think you know is entangled with anti-american sentiment in the

00:39:29.280 uk um but also anti-canadian sentiment you know i lived in the uk for a year during my undergraduate

00:39:34.800 it and people really tried to get me to feel bad about my class standing um and it didn't work very

00:39:41.860 effectively because class politics manifests so differently outside of the uk that people were

00:39:47.680 like you're from the commonwealth i was like this isn't this isn't gonna do it you're not

00:39:53.420 you're missing the mark here but but i do think like megan is not does not come from

00:40:02.380 landed aristocracy she does not come from wealth she was not educated in elite institutions like

00:40:09.260 she is the wrong class for the royal family and and kate's not either she's very like her her

00:40:17.240 background is very like wealthy middle class um but she can play the part and she's aspirationally

00:40:26.500 moving upwards toward a british understanding of aristocracy which i think yeah again like

00:40:33.280 similar to people calling me a colonial and me being like like i can't picture megan being

00:40:40.360 particularly invested in class ascendance on the terms of very whiteness and of whiteness and of

00:40:48.860 like a wildly antiquated class system that i think is quite hard to read from the outside

00:40:54.980 Yeah. Yeah. OK, next question. This comes from Simran.

00:41:01.360 As someone who grew up in India, a former British colony, the fact that the royal family is given so much importance bothers me.

00:41:09.040 In my mind, they serve no purpose and are nothing but a reminder of the crimes perpetuated by their bloodline.

00:41:16.100 Why do so many people from former colonies have such a colonial hangover and love everything British, especially the royals?

00:41:23.840 I love the phrase colonial hangover. What do you think here?

00:41:28.060 Oh, man. Stockholm syndrome? It's a really, really good question. And like Hannah was describing earlier, like I think about my grandma's fondness for the royals and how she like really enjoys, you know, she'll buy those Hello Canada magazines that will, you know, imagine what the new royal baby's nursery will look like.

00:41:53.180 And and I don't know why.

00:41:56.320 Do you think it's nostalgia for like a time where order seemed more firm in some capacity?

00:42:01.760 Is that the colonial hangover for people who had some some component of power?

00:42:08.540 Definitely an element of nostalgia.

00:42:10.180 I remember he was a here's a classic Hannah story.

00:42:15.120 I remember getting in a fight with my yoga instructor because I was at yoga class and

00:42:21.380 it was the day after Kate and William's wedding. And everybody was talking about like, did you,

00:42:30.060 you know, wake up at 3am to watch the wedding and so many people had and they were all so excited

00:42:36.960 and we're talking about it. And she asked if I had and I was like, No, absolutely not. I have

00:42:43.020 absolutely no interest in watching the monarchy get married. And I asked, I was like, why are you

00:42:52.140 interested? Like, why do you think so many people are interested? And she said, well, I think it

00:42:56.820 reminds us of a simpler time. And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? Like, what? And this was

00:43:05.860 a white person that i was talking to um a white yoga instructor a white yoga instructor so

00:43:12.440 a lot happened a rich text um but like that fetishization of monarchy as a signifier for

00:43:23.580 a time particularly for white people for a time when whiteness could be unthinkingly

00:43:32.940 held in a place of dominance and gender roles were so heavy-handedly ascribed when right like it's

00:43:43.520 it's this sort of like yeah there's nostalgia I think it's a deeply conservative nostalgia as

00:43:49.940 many nostalgias are um and you know I think that I'm always suspicious when people are like oh

00:43:58.060 oh it just makes me feel nice i'm like why investigate your pleasure truly marissa what

00:44:05.260 do you think well and i think too i i don't know tell me if you agree hannah that time never

00:44:12.280 actually existed right right like it's a fairy tale so when people say it reminds me of a simpler

00:44:17.660 time they really mean it reminds them of the shire before frodo is handed the ring like it

00:44:23.640 it reminds them of a time that isn't real. It's fictional. And it sounds nice because

00:44:30.260 all of the complications of class and imperialism and racism and sexism are conveniently left out

00:44:38.420 of the narrative. Yeah. Now, I think when we're talking about India, the conversation is more

00:44:45.580 complex. And I do think that there is something that happens to historically colonized nations,

00:44:53.000 particularly ones that were colonized for very long stretches of their history, where part of the violence of imperialism is the deliberate stripping away of your own cultures and histories.

00:45:04.740 It's done intentionally. It's sort of, you know, these patterns of education in British history, education in British literature, the ownership of cultural institutions.

00:45:16.540 like and this leaves such a a lasting effect on countries even countries that that are at this

00:45:23.160 point decolonized and we we can all see this right the sort of global hangover of colonization

00:45:30.540 um and i think the royals are like something to put in that void it's like well my history

00:45:40.980 was in many ways destroyed and so if i'm gonna claim a history or feel a kind of nostalgic

00:45:48.820 fondness for something that came in the past like well that's what i've got and you know it it isn't

00:45:55.020 there's obviously many other more complex histories but i do think that this colonial hangover is is

00:46:02.240 just that that like colonization is a kind of cultural poisoning and that it has these really

00:46:10.200 like it takes a really long time to get it out of your system if you ever can i don't think we

00:46:16.900 we yet know if it's a damage that can be repaired so i'm going to summarize our next question because

00:46:24.660 i think you teed it up in a really interesting way so this comes from someone who's from cyprus

00:46:29.380 and now lives in australia and really just wants to know like what's going to be the thing that

00:46:34.500 breaks the commonwealth like it seemed like this was a great opportunity right like something

00:46:38.700 sometimes people call it like a plastic hour right a moment when change is really possible

00:46:43.400 is it actually going to happen like do we have to wait for charles to die like

00:46:48.720 what's gonna break up this imaginary empire hangover and i feel like people are asking

00:46:57.580 that same question about the american empire right now i feel like people all over the world

00:47:04.480 in marginalized social positions are asking that question about living under late capitalism.

00:47:12.500 It feels very much like change is imminent. And has it already started? And we just haven't,

00:47:20.960 we just haven't seen, I don't even know what the metaphor is that I'm looking for here. We haven't

00:47:25.740 seen the lion's share of it to use a very British metaphor. I think folks all over the world are

00:47:33.280 are asking when that change is going to happen whether it's about late capitalism or the monarchy

00:47:39.840 or um climate change climate i think they're all like all of these things are are really

00:47:46.380 interwoven and it feels like okay when when when is the tide gonna turn like when

00:47:52.640 are are we like i keep thinking that we're like we've reached the the nadir and somehow like we

00:48:01.020 can only go up but i don't think we have yet we have not hit it yet we are still falling

00:48:06.120 my god i so i love i love marcel's answer because it's so beautiful and capacious and

00:48:15.500 speaks to the way that the monarchy lies within a sort of larger global oppressive system

00:48:19.680 whereas last night i read several articles about constitutional law

00:48:24.060 i was like you know what i actually don't know yeah i actually don't know and so i went and i

00:48:33.120 looked the monarchy the the head of state in britain being the head of state in canada is

00:48:39.860 enshrined in our constitution and in canada constitutional amendments have to be made via

00:48:47.040 unanimous vote so all 10 provinces and the upper and lower houses have to all agree and it and it

00:48:56.380 is very very difficult to get unanimous consent for constitutional amendments particularly because

00:49:03.920 as soon as the constitution is being opened up to amend everybody then wants to like get in there

00:49:09.440 and add more amendments the other route that can be taken is to do a popular referendum

00:49:14.900 And so if a majority voted, if there was a national referendum and a majority voted, we could vote out the monarchy.

00:49:24.340 What that would require is a federal government that was invested enough in getting rid of the monarchy that they would put the time and energy and communication energy into developing a coherent public opinion behind getting rid of the monarchy.

00:49:47.420 and that is really i mean it's going to be tricky in every commonwealth nation um the trickiness

00:49:54.800 in canada mostly has to do with the fact that all of the indigenous treaties are technically

00:50:01.900 treaties between the indigenous nation and the crown they're not treaties with the federal

00:50:07.800 government because the federal government and then i can just see the government just being

00:50:11.360 like various actors trying to renegotiate poorer terms exactly yeah right and then the other real

00:50:20.040 complication is the fact that so in most provinces the opinion level is like around 50 50 like you

00:50:29.100 know most of them sort of tip towards um a majority wanting to get rid of it in the prairies it tips

00:50:37.500 towards the majority not wanting to get rid of the monarchy but by very close margins there's

00:50:42.440 one province where there is a massive like 80 percent want to get rid of the monarchy and

00:50:48.460 marcel what province is that is it quebec it's quebec and there is a huge in the rest of the

00:50:56.660 country there is significant ongoing anti-francophone sentiment yeah and so the fact that

00:51:05.240 quebec is like absolutely get those british royals out of here is also going to massively

00:51:11.880 complicate it as a conversation yeah you know you know what would be just as easy is if we have a

00:51:18.540 national referendum in the united states on late stage capitalism how do you think that would go

00:51:24.300 i just you know and part of me is like i think maybe it's not the fight that the left is most

00:51:31.560 invested in fighting right now i think it doesn't feel as urgent as a lot of other things like are

00:51:38.280 we gonna get rid of the monarchy what if we actually just decolonized instead right like

00:51:43.720 what if we gave all the land back like then then we're not even having a conversation but what if

00:51:48.360 we just stop like denying residential school survivors right like great you know that makes

00:51:55.620 sense to me and it's a hard answer right because it's like oh well we should we should just do this

00:52:00.900 But if it's that arduous of a process and there are other things that we could be doing that would also change the way that we live in the world, like symbols are so important in that capacity, but also you have to prioritize.

00:52:16.020 To your point, Anne, about climate change, if we think about the fact that climate change is extremely pressing and urgent, and then we remember that Charles is pro-environmentalism, then all of a sudden, instead of being a huge pain in the ass, he's a potential symbol for change towards a greener future.

00:52:38.620 And it's annoying.

00:52:40.760 Plus, he's de-stigmatizing tampon use.

00:52:46.020 that's a that's a great place for us to end

00:52:51.380 thank you both so much for joining me for this wide-ranging conversation if people want to find

00:53:00.560 more of you on the internet where can they find you oh well all of our various podcasts and shows

00:53:06.020 are available at oh which please dot ca and on instagram at oh which please yeah and if you're

00:53:14.440 if you're thrilled with this conversation and you want to hear a slightly more unhinged variation

00:53:19.900 of this kind of conversation you can also check us out at patreon.com slash oh which please where

00:53:27.000 we have a whole bunch of wild and goofy content thanks for listening to the culture study podcast

00:53:34.260 subscribers got a whole extra segment in this episode about hobbies how guilty you should feel

00:53:40.000 when you have more art supplies than you know what to do with and how can you keep a huge garden

00:53:44.140 looking nice when you have little kids and a full-time job and you kind of don't know what

00:53:47.540 you're doing. I know you all have a ton to say about this, so head over to culturestudypod.substack.com

00:53:54.060 to become a paid subscriber, hear the AAA segment, and then chime in in the comments.

00:53:59.520 And please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We have so many great episodes in

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00:54:07.880 ask a question about the culture that surrounds you, or submit a question for our subscriber-only

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00:54:20.020 show notes for a link the culture study podcast is produced by me ann helen peterson and melody

00:54:25.480 rowell our music is by pottington bear you can find me on instagram at ann helen peterson

00:54:30.480 melody at melodious 47 and the show at culture study pod

Culture Study Podcast - June 19, 2024

Royals Gossip and Colonial Hangovers

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