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White Femininity in the Nation, the Nation in White Femininity

Raka Shome

in Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture

This book examines how the narrative of white femininity transformed Princess Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular. Situating the discussion of white femininity and ... More

This book examines how the narrative of white femininity transformed Princess Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular. Situating the discussion of white femininity and national modernity in the New Labor cultural scape of 1997 that promoted the rhetoric of a New Britain, the book analyzes the different facets of white femininity that the Diana phenomenon mobilized and stabilized in the production of a (new) national narrative of Britishness in the 1990s and beyond. It also considers a constellation of images of privileged white women in order to illustrate a larger formation of white femininity through which many neoliberal logics of national identity and citizenly belonging were being rewritten in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; how national identity intersects with celebrity culture, cultural politics, and global struggles over (what constitutes) modern subjectivity; and how representations, articulations, and actions of privileged white women of the Global North impact, inform, and intersect with larger geopolitics.Less

Saints’ Cults and Celebrity: The Medieval Legacy

James Robinson

in The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-first century perspectives

This chapter is based on Robinson’s experience as a curator of medieval material culture. It relates especially to his interest in relic veneration that culminated in the 2011 Treasures of Heaven ... More

This chapter is based on Robinson’s experience as a curator of medieval material culture. It relates especially to his interest in relic veneration that culminated in the 2011 Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum. In order to make saints' cults accessible to modern audiences, he draws on the parallels between medieval devotion to saints and modern devotion to celebrities, chiefly through: crucifixion iconography (James Dean, Jim Morrison), pilgrimage to a shrine and annual commemoration (Elvis Presley/Graceland), perverse satisfaction at the death of a saint/celebrity, importance of clothes as reliquaries that enshrined a living form and are therefore imbued with the quality of the previous owner (Marilyn Monroe's gowns, Michael Jackson’s diamante glove), and fame for charitable works (Princess Diana, Audrey Hepburn). Princess Diana emerges as particularly close to a medieval saint with her healing touch, her glowing presence as a groomed but emotionally damaged figure, a virgin princess both detrimental and beneficial to the monarchy. The chapter highlights the importance of significant objects to medievalist practice, and Robinson draws on his experiences in sourcing modern as well as medieval devotional objects for exhibition, including issues of ownership, accessibility and value of such objects at auctions.Less

Celebrity: Diana and Death: Approach: Trauma Theory

Peter Childs

in Texts: Contemporary Cultural Texts and Critical Approaches

Diana’s funeral was watched on television by an estimated one in three of the world population, and thirty countries issued Diana commemorative stamps within a month of her death. The perceived ... More

Diana’s funeral was watched on television by an estimated one in three of the world population, and thirty countries issued Diana commemorative stamps within a month of her death. The perceived importance of her death is evident in films across the world made in the following years, such as the French Amelie (dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1999), where news of Diana’s death is a life-changing event, and the Australian Diana and Me (dir: David Parker, 1997), which begins and ends with floral tributes to Diana outside of Kensington Palace. In its most extreme form, this hagiography results in Jeremy Paxman declaring the response to Diana’s funeral as a sign that the English are acquiring a new sense of self: one in which restraint and the traditional stiff upper-lip are replaced by open displays of public grief. This was also an occasion on which collective displays of emotion, produced by perceived pain and loss rather than ostensible strength and authority, resulted in small but perceptible changes at the highest social level of British society. For Small and Hockey, Diana’s death created an ‘affective enclave’ or ‘community of pain and healing’ empowered by collective grief at the margins of the social structure.Less

Epilogue: Sympathy Now

Sophie Ratcliffe

in On Sympathy

The epilogue examines some of the current ideas about sympathy and reading, and its relation to empathy and altruism, in contemporary discourse, looking at arguments by Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, ... More

The epilogue examines some of the current ideas about sympathy and reading, and its relation to empathy and altruism, in contemporary discourse, looking at arguments by Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Ruth Padel, Jane Smiley, and Geoffrey Hill. The epilogue concludes by arguing against the implied association between empathy, sympathy, reading and moral virtue.Less

“Global Motherhood”: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity

Raka Shome

in Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture

This chapter examines how contemporary transnational intimacies—the transnational connections through which the figure of the global mother is staged in dominant cultural narratives in the West—are ... More

This chapter examines how contemporary transnational intimacies—the transnational connections through which the figure of the global mother is staged in dominant cultural narratives in the West—are imagined through white femininity, and more specifically through the nationalized white female body. Drawing on the Diana phenomenon, it considers the construction of global motherhood and its role in the New Labor culture of 1990s in recasting the image of Britain through logics of humanitarianism, community, and the international. More specifically, it considers how the discourse of global motherhood, embodied in the figure of the white celebrity woman such as Princess Diana and others, functions as a tool for a cosmopolitan renationalization of the national self. It shows that such renationalization obscures the geopolitical violences and neoliberal policies that result in children being abandoned or deprived in the Global South. The chapter also discusses the discourse of international adoption, transnational struggles over maternities and modernities and how they are imbricated in a politics of “compulsory heterosexuality,” and how infantilized cosmopolitanism is enacted through transnational white femininity.Less

Diana’s Halo: Newslore as Folk Media Criticism

Russell Frank

in Newslore: Contemporary Folklore on the Internet

This chapter examines the newslore and folk response to media reporting on celebrity deaths. It provides some examples of the jokes about the death of Princess Diana and the murder of fashion ... More

This chapter examines the newslore and folk response to media reporting on celebrity deaths. It provides some examples of the jokes about the death of Princess Diana and the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace and analyzes those jokes. It suggests that the abundance of celebrity jokes on the Internet indicates that anything goes in the online world despite the compunctions of newspaper people about offending the delicate sensibilities of their readers. This chapter also considers the role of newslore as folk media criticism.Less

Tabloid Bodies: Princess Diana and Michael Jackson

Margaret Schwartz

in Dead Matter: The Meaning of Iconic Corpses

Chapter 3 takes as its starting point the social identity of the deceased and argues that tabloid bodies (in this case Princess Diana and Michael Jackson) must be invisible in order to maintain the ... More

Chapter 3 takes as its starting point the social identity of the deceased and argues that tabloid bodies (in this case Princess Diana and Michael Jackson) must be invisible in order to maintain the deceased as a source of textual and revenue production.Less

Racialized Maternalisms: White Motherhood and National Modernity

Raka Shome

in Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture

This chapter explores how ideologies of white motherhood function as sites through which shifts in a nation's sense of the modern is enabled by locating the Diana phenomenon in the social context of ... More

This chapter explores how ideologies of white motherhood function as sites through which shifts in a nation's sense of the modern is enabled by locating the Diana phenomenon in the social context of 1990s Britain. It also considers how visions of “bad motherhood” became articulated to Blairite policies of cutting welfare for poor families and lone mothers on benefits, and how representations of Princess Diana's motherhood (as well as many other [white] mothers in popular culture in 1990s and early 2000s) signal a neoliberal logic of motherhood, along with the racial implications of such logics. More specifically, the chapter contrasts such white maternal (neoliberal) logics with the conditions of black mothers in Britain during the period by focusing on Doreen Lawrence's 2006 book, And Still I Rise. It argues that models of white motherhood constantly contradict nonwhite motherhood, rendering it deviant and dysfunctional, and that images of a new kind of (white) mother are often needed by the nation to produce a vision of a modern family.Less

Celebrity Culture

Peter Marks

in Literature of the 1990s: Endings and Beginnings

The nineties was a decade in thrall to the tremendous cultural and commercial attractions of celebrity. If, in hindsight, the seventies seem forever marked by memories of the Winter of Discontent, ... More

The nineties was a decade in thrall to the tremendous cultural and commercial attractions of celebrity. If, in hindsight, the seventies seem forever marked by memories of the Winter of Discontent, and the eighties by the dominating presence of Margaret Thatcher, perhaps the signature cultural moment of the nineties was the extravagant national response to the unexpected death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana embodied the glamour, beauty and charisma associated with celebrity, and enjoyed the capacity to furnish people with dreams that took them outside their workaday existence. Diana’s alluring public persona was founded on the fabricated fairy tale princess narrative constructed for her by the Royal Family, a compliant and sometimes complicit media, and by herself. The truth was murkier and far more complex.Less

Cosmopolitan Healing: The Spiritual Fix of White Femininity

Raka Shome

in Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture

This chapter examines what it calls the “spiritual fix” of white femininity. More specifically, it looks at a particular kind of borderlessness of white femininity—one that is organized around a ... More

This chapter examines what it calls the “spiritual fix” of white femininity. More specifically, it looks at a particular kind of borderlessness of white femininity—one that is organized around a discourse of spirituality, well-being, and healing—by focusing on Princess Diana's representations. The chapter first considers some examples of celebrity white women embodying the logics of interiority to highlight a larger millennial trend within which to situate Diana's turn to interiority. It then explores how a particular relation among white femininity, inner wellness, transcendence, and citizenly belonging is being forged in contemporary culture since the mid-to-late 1990s. The discussion proceeds by turning to Diana, New Britain, and the emergence of a “reflexive self” in British culture. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the implications of transnational/multicultural reworking of white female interiorities. It suggests that spirituality is increasingly functioning as cultural capital and a site of consumption through which a new kind of gendered white national transcendence is being imagined today in popular and consumer culture.Less

Fashioning the Nation: The Citizenly Body, Multiculturalism, and Transnational Designs

Raka Shome

in Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture

This chapter explores the relationships among fashion, white femininity, multiculturalism, and the nation. More specifically, it asks how a “fashionable” white female body comes to signify a nation's ... More

This chapter explores the relationships among fashion, white femininity, multiculturalism, and the nation. More specifically, it asks how a “fashionable” white female body comes to signify a nation's modernity given the link between fashion and newness, and how shifts in dominant fashion styles signify shifts in a nation's temporality. Focusing on Princess Diana's changing fashion style, the chapter considers the relationship between fashion and cultural politics as well as fashion as a citizenly discourse in New Britain. It also situates the engagement of Diana's body (as well as the body of other white national women such as Cherie Blair) with Asian and particularly Indian fashion, paying attention to the emerging phenomenon of celebrity black (Western) women and Indo-fascination. By analyzing the link between contemporary multiculturalism and fashion, the chapter shows how (white) female fashion functions as a site through which shifting spatiotemporalities of the nation are narrated while raising several interrelated issues regarding national modernity and gendered appearance.Less

Conclusion: Cool Britannia and the Emotional Consumer

Steven McKevitt

in The Persuasion Industries: The Making of Modern Britain

The Conclusion draws together the main findings of the study. Britain in 1997 was a far more emotional and expressive society. This is highlighted by two events: the public response to the death of ... More

The Conclusion draws together the main findings of the study. Britain in 1997 was a far more emotional and expressive society. This is highlighted by two events: the public response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the success of New Labour in the general election. The extent to which persuasion industries were responsible for bringing these changes about is discussed. There is a discussion of some areas for further study: the subsequent impact of the World Wide Web and social media platforms; persuasion aimed at children/juvenile consumption, and the development of single British brand throughout the period—for example, Virgin.Less

The Return of the Maternal Uncle

Claude Lévi-Strauss

in We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays

the social function of the maternal uncle