The New York Times has some thoughts about "The Crown" [Media Notes 105]

Sarah Lyall, The Best and Worst (and Dumbest) From 6 Seasons of ‘The Crown’, NYTimes, 12/27/23.

There's a bunch of interesting stuff here. I'll just give you my two favoriate bits, which are at the end of the article.

Crappy Dialog

Who knows how the royal family really talks to each other behind closed doors. But it seems improbable that their real-life conversations include so much long expository commentary on royal protocol, precedent, duty and history — “parentheticals that seem cribbed from Wikipedia,” as Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic.

“What would he know of Alfred the Great, the Rod of Equity and Mercy, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror or Henry the Eighth?” Queen Mary barks at Elizabeth in the first season, speaking of Prince Philip, who comes from the exiled Greek royal family. “It’s the Church of England, dear, not the Church of Denmark or Greece.”

Characters on “The Crown” also had a habit of articulating their emotions and laying out their interpersonal conflicts in a way that would be embarrassing even in 21st-century American families, let alone among repressed, stiff-upper-lipped British aristocrats from the past.

Sisters

What a study in contrasts between Queen Elizabeth — so dutiful, so burdened by history — and her sister, Princess Margaret, who appears to have been put on the earth to have heady, ill-conceived love affairs, smoke and drink to excess, and party late into the night on Mustique. “I’d rather die than do exercise,” Margaret says in Season 6, when Elizabeth suggests ways she might cheer herself up after a series of strokes.

But the two are shown sharing a rare intimacy and a deep affection. “Hello, you,” they say by way of greeting, and Elizabeth is a tender, loving nurse to her ailing sister. Their last scene together comes at the end of an exuberant flashback to the night when they slipped out to celebrate with the crowds on V-E Day, in 1945.

At the end of the evening, the two princesses return to Buckingham Palace and Elizabeth asks Margaret — now the older version, played by Lesley Manville — if she is coming inside.

“I’m afraid not,” Margaret says. “But I will always be by your side, no matter what.” It’s the most heartfelt moment in the entire series.

YES.

The Crown, S6 E8, The Ritz: [Media Notes 101]

I’ve been blogging occasionally about The Crown since it began. The series is now coming to an end. I’ve just watched “The Ritz,” the eighth episode in the sixth and last season. The first four episodes of the season were given over to Princess Diana and her death. This episode focuses on the relationship between Elizabeth and her younger sister, Margaret. They were different in temperament, but quite close.

Margaret was a bit of a wild child. An earlier series of episodes dealt with Margaret’s romance with Peter Townsand. He proposed and she accepted. And then things dragged for this that and the other reason, all tied up in succession to the crown and nobility and status and who knows what. In the end, the marriage did not happen. Margaret was devastated. Her subsequent marriage to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones ended in divorce. She never remarried.

That’s all in the background for this episode, which covers the last weeks of Margaret’s life. Two motifs are woven together in this episode. In the present we have a series of strokes to Margaret and her subsequent recovery. Each stroke takes a bit more from her, each recovery is weaker. And then there is no recovery.

The other motif is a series of flashbacks to VE Day:

Did the Queen enjoy an illicit kiss with an American GI in the basement of the Ritz? That’s what The Crown (Netflix) wants you to believe, and they’ve based a whole episode around it.

She wasn’t the Queen then, of course, but Princess Elizabeth, sneaking out of Buckingham Palace on VE Day with her sister Margaret. That much is fact, but the rest has been dreamed up by writer Peter Morgan and is teased from the outset. “Our VE Day. It was quite a night. Do you remember?” asks Margaret (Lesley Manville) in the present day. “We almost lost you. And then we very much found you. The real you. The you that you gave up in order to be the other you.”

A black GI invites young Elizabeth to the Pink Sink, a nightclub in the basement where the music is hot jazz and all the crazy kids are dancing the jitterbug. Elizabeth joins in and has a ball.

Even as she is dying, Margaret is reminding Elizabeth how much of herself she has had to give up in order to properly enact the role of Queen. And THAT has been a motif throughout the series. At one point, when Elisabeth is on a trip to America visiting horse stables, she remarks that, if it had been up to her, she’d have devoted her life to horses, breeding them, racing them, and of course riding them herself. Instead, she’s had to live a life whose possibilities and obligations were strongly constrained by law and custom.

In contrast, down in the basement, one of the GIs proclaims: “Down here is the place to be.” “Why,” she asks. “Because down here there’s no rank or background. Just music.” “Well, in that case...” She joins him on the dance floor. He, or course, has no idea who she is. To him she’s just an attractive English girl he met on an evening when everyone is celebrating the end of the war.

And THAT reminded me of a scene near the end of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, which I’ve written about here and there. As you may recall, it’s set in the future and is a long-complicated book about a financial crisis obviously modeled on the crisis of 2008. But things work out differently this time; the banks get nationalized. We’re at the end of the story, the future’s wide open (perhaps), and some of the good guys are at the Mezzrow club that’s several floors below water level – in a world where the seas have risen 50 feet (pp. 611-612):

Everyone in the room is now grooving to the tightest West African pop any of them have ever heard. The guitar players’ licks are like metal shavings coming off a lathe. The vocalists are wailing, the horns are a freight train. [...] The other horn players instantly get better, the guitar players even more precise and intricate. The vocalists are grinning and shouting duets in harmony. It’s like they’ve all just plugged into an electrical jack through their shoes...Crowd goes crazy, dancing swells the room.

That’s all there is, just this one scene in the whole novel.

Given the way the world works, however, people have been down in Mezz’s the whole time, and other clubs as well. At least that how things are now, and Robinson has given no indication that things have changed in the future he’s imagining. There’s nothing in there about Islamic clerics and dictators and Nazi killjoys taking over and banning black music and dance. No doubt some of our gang of heroes have been down there as well, but the story hadn’t followed them there because it wasn’t relevant to the main line.

Here we have it, two very different narratives: 1) a historical narrative based on the life of Queen Elizabeth II, and 2) a science fiction story set in the future. Both narratives have a scene near the end where African-derived song and dance is placed in counterpoint to the world of hierarchy and repression that has dominated the main narrative.

When is someone going to write a narrative where egalitarian dance and music structure the whole story?

The Crown and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel [Media Notes 25]

I finished watching season three of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel over the weekend and season three of The Crown yesterday. I love both shows, and I want to compare them. But they’re so different in subject matter and tone that a comparison could easily become an intellectual stunt rather than a useful exercise.

We’ll see.

Both shows, of course, center on woman. Queen Elizabeth is at the center and peak of her society while Miriam “Midge” Maisel, as a Jew, is somewhat marginal to hers. Elizabeth didn’t choose to be Queen; rather, she had the role thrust upon her when her father abdicated, for love no less. Midge choose to become a comedian, against the wishes of her family and her society – as I recall from season one, her husband thought HE had talent, but didn’t. In becoming a comedian she was seeking personal fulfillment. Elizabeth had to deny herself personal fulfillment in order to carry out her duty as Queen.

And so forth. The two series are opposites, complements, supplements, whatever. Moreover you can see it in the design and lighting. The Crown is somber and has many scenes with low lighting. Mrs. Maisel is brightly lit and full of saturated colors.

The final episode of the third season of The Crown centers on Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret. They are quite different in temperament and there had been tension between them since childhood. Margaret was more artistic while Elizabeth was more conventional, a contrast which has come to the fore at various times in the show. In this episode Margaret’s marriage, to a famous photographer, is on the rocks. He’s having an affair. She retaliates and is caught on camera with her lover at her Caribbean estate. The Queen Mother summons her home in disgrace. She attempts suicide. Elizabeth visits her in bed and is moved to tell her that she is the most important person in the world to her.

Mrs. Maisel’s third season ends with her anxious to go out on the road again with Shy Baldwin, a headlining African American singer who strikes me as being modeled on Johnny Mathis (though Harry Belafonte seems to be the fan favorite). She plays Las Vegas, a Florida resort (where her parents visit her), and has a grand time. In Florida she learns that Shy is gay, something no one knows, but no one (except a very close few) – she swears she’ll tell no one, no one. When she opens for him at the Apollo – yes, Midge Maisel, Jewish matron from the Upper West Side at the freakin’ Apollo – she hints about his sexual identity. When she arrives at the airport to get on the plane to continue the tour she finds that she’s been dumped. “I thought we were friends”, she tells Shy’s manager – or words to that effect. “No”, he replies, “you were musicians on tour.”

What I’m wondering is this: What framework would be able to accommodate both of these stories, or, if not exactly those stories, stories like them? And by accommodate I mean down to how the characters are costumed, sets are designed and dressed, and how shots are filmed and lit?

* * * * *

Incidentally, Shy’s bassist is a woman named Carole Keen. She’s obviously modeled after legendary studio bassist Carole Kay.

They went (only) so far : The Crown, S3 E7 Moondust [Media Notes 24]

The episode is framed by Apollo 11’s lunar landing. Was it profound?

Not in any message one might distill from it, such messages would be as empty as those that Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins offered Prince Philip in a private audience in Buckingham Palace. But perhaps in the flow of it.

Philip is feeling dissatisfied in his middle age. He’d wanted a life of adventure. Instead, he got a life of protocol. The new Rector uses an unoccupied house on one of the royal estates to establish a retreat house for priests seeking to revivify their faith. Philip is asked to speak with the first cohort and, as they tell him why they’ve come to this retreat, he gets restless and ridicules them. “Action, that’s what you need, action” – not an exact quote, but the spirit of the thing is there.

And then he watches the moon landing in the palace surrounded by family – and (liveried) servants, of course. When Philip learns that the astronauts are being toured about the world and that they’ve been offered to the British royals he’s eager to see them, even requests a private audience. Just him and the astronauts, pilot to pilot(s).

The meeting doesn’t meet his expectations. At all. As they tell banal anecdotes and give pedestrian answers to his questions, and Philip realizes that they are not going to give him whatever it is he doesn’t even know how to ask of them, we’re thinking of those disaffected priests Philip had ridiculed. One wonders whether or not their spiritual seeking is what Philip wanted from these engineer/pilots, but not so much the seeking as the having found it and now overflowing with it. But it’s not there.

He shares his disappointment with his wife, the Queen. She understands. Those astronauts didn’t ask for this. Now they’ll be on public display the rest of their lives. She knows what THAT’s about. In an earlier episode she’d revealed that she’d have been much happier breeding and riding horses.

And so the episode closes on Philip once again talking with the priests, this time apologizing for having ridiculed them. And asking for their help.

Very nicely turned.

* * * * *

This episode bares comparing with a post from last year, First Man and our capacity for experience.

Preserving Democracy: The Crown, S3 E5 Coup [Media Notes 23]

I’ve been watching The Crown, which I think is excellent. In episode five of season three Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, decided to devalue the pound. And bunch of aristocrats and plutocrats decided the sky’s falling and think it’s time for a coup. To this end they contact Lord Mountbatten, who has just been fired from his post as head of the British armed services, and ask him to lead (serve as a figurehead for) the coup. He decides it can succeed only if the Queen agrees to go along with it. Wilson gets wind of the plot and alerts the Queen. She summons Mountbatten.

This is their conversation, starting at roughly 43:05 into the episode:

LORD MOUNTBATTEN: Your Majesty.
You asked to see me.
QUEEN ELIZABETH: I did.
MOUNTBATTEN: Well, great minds think alike.
As it happens, I was planning to drop by myself,
on a matter of great importance.
I'm getting a feeling that I've not had since Dieppe,
that I'm walking into a trap.
ELIZABETH: I'd like to think you had that sinking feeling on another occasion recently,
when going to see your friends at the Bank of England.
Is it even true?
MOUNTBATTEN: Yes, I did go to lunch at the Bank of England to meet and listen to people who are horrified by what's happening to the country.
A horror I hope you share.
ELIZABETH: Perhaps.
But conspiring with them is not the solution.
MOUNTBATTEN: It is the beginning of a solution.
Why are you doing this?
Why would you protect a man like Wilson?
ELIZABETH: I am protecting the Prime Minister.
I am protecting the constitution.
I am protecting democracy.
MOUNTBATTEN: But if the man at the heart of that democracy threatens to destroy it, are we supposed to just stand by and do nothing?
ELIZABETH: Yes.
Doing nothing is exactly what we do,
and bide our time,
and wait for the people that voted him in to vote him out again, if indeed that is what they decide to do.
MOUNTBATTEN: Mm-hmm. [CLEARS THROAT.]
ELIZABETH: I'm sure you find it near impossible to do nothing and to not have the role and responsibilities you've always had.
You were born to be busy and to lead.
But you still have a huge role to play in this family.
A father figure to my husband.
An uncle and a guide to me.
A king to make in Charles,
not to mention a brother to your sister.
When was the last time you even visited her?
Cheered her up?
That would be a greater service to the Crown than leading unconstitutional coups.

Notice this bit:

ELIZABETH: Perhaps.
But conspiring with them is not the solution.
MOUNTBATTEN: It is the beginning of a solution.
Why are you doing this?
Why would you protect a man like Wilson?
ELIZABETH: I am protecting the Prime Minister.
I am protecting the constitution.
I am protecting democracy.

Mountbatten refers to Wilson specifically, but Elizabeth replies in terms, not of the man, but of his position in the government; and she refers to the constitution and to democracy.

That’s a small matter, but it quite explicitly makes the distinction between an individual human and the post that individual happens to occupy within the state. That’s a distinction that, in America, Donald Trump has trampled to the ground.

* * * * *

See my earlier post, Trump, Gibbs & NCIS, and the Queen @3QD.

I obtained a transcription of this episode from Springfield! Springfield!, https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-crown-2016&episode=s03e05.

The Crown, Episode 7: Elizabeth Sticks up for herself [Media Notes]

I urge you, if you’ve got Netflix, to watch The Crown, which I’ve already written about in an earlier post. I’ve just watched episode 7, “Scientia Potentia Est”, and it’s stunning. Basically, the young queen goes into battle against the sexist jerks who hem her in with tradition.

1.) She procures a tutor. She realizes that her education has been pitiful, all protocol and the constitution. Necessary, but hardly sufficient. She cannot imagine fulfilling her duty, which she construes as seeing that governance is properly executed by those with direct authority, without knowing more about the world.

2.) The prime minister, Winston Churchill, is taken ill, and it is relatively serious. He misses two of his weekly meetings with her, and she becomes suspicious. She discovers the truth and gives him a proper dressing down. She obviously does not like being treated as an ignorant twit.

3.) She must choose a private secretary. One man is “in line” for the job, as he’s senior. But she prefers a younger man, more in tune with her view of the world. She chooses the younger man, but is over-ridden by an official concerned with propriety. He’s also a condescending sexist jerk. She finds out about this and insists on having her way.

This all may seem obvious and right, abstractly considered from a certain (American? – though obviously not necessarily so) point of view. But abstract thought is one thing. The point of the drama is to see and feel it acted out with some fullness of being. That’s different. And important. It’s why we have stories.

The Crown and the Presidency, 2016

I’ve been watching The Crown on Netflix. It’s about the accession of Elizabeth II to the British crown. It started streaming quite recently, perhaps no earlier than the beginning of November, and I began watching it a couple days before the election. It struck me that this timing was likely no coincidence, a TV show about a woman becoming the British monarch even as a woman was about to become President of the United States. But, Hilary lost.

And that leaves me free to point out another coincidence, a matter of thematic counterpoint. One of the major themes of The Crown, perhaps THE major theme, though I’m only five episodes in (out of 10 so far, it’s slated to run for 60), is the conflict between personal life and public duty. By contrast, the Presidential election seems to have been dominated by confusion between private life and public life.

Let’s start with The Crown. Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, became king when his brother, Edward VIII, was forced to abdicate. Why? Because he decided to marry Wallis Simpson, an twice-divorced American socialite and, of course, a commoner. That is, it is because he uncle chose to put his private happiness above his public duty, that Elizabeth was in a position to become monarch. This much of the story is told in flashback, but Edward, now merely the Duke of Windsor, figures prominently in these early episodes.

In the second episode we see two examples. Elizabeth’s husband, Philip, has two demands: 1) the family keep his name, Mountbatten, and 2) that they remain in Clarence House, one of the royal residences, which they’ve just renovated, rather than moving to Buckingham Palace, which is not particularly homey. Elizabeth is fine with this but the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, is against, as is her uncle Edward (the one who abdicated). Duty wins out in both cases. In the fifth episode Elizabeth gets crowned. Philip requests that he not have to kneel before the new sovereign during the ceremony. Elizabeth refuses.

And so on. There are other incidents throughout the five episodes and each is surrounded by conversation.

In the current presidential election the most obvious collision between public and private is, of course, the tape where Trump brags about his sexual harassment, which was just the last in a number accusations. There is nothing new in the wayward sexual behavior of powerful men, but the press didn’t report it, not for Roosevelt, or Eisenhower, nor John Kennedy. That changed with Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal in his second term. Just why the change, I don’t really know. But it’s happened. And Trump used the Bill Clinton story to defend himself against the his own sexual accusers.

Other issues were about public-private confusion as well. Continuing with Trump, there’s his apparent tax avoidance, which may well have been legal, but was presented as a failure of civic duty, his use of his foundation, and other issues. On the Clinton side, there’s the use of a private email server for conducting public business and there’s the Clinton Foundation: did they trade political favors for donations to the foundation?

What, if anything, do I make of this? I don’t quite know. What I’m wondering, of course, is whether or not this series at this time is somehow a response to or in conversation with the kinds of dynamics which ended up driving the 2016 Presidential Election. Of course the lead-time involved in producing a TV series like this is measured in years. I’d think the scripts were written and production started before Trump and Clinton became the nominees. On the other hand, while the Obama administration has been scandal-free (as far as I can recall), blurred lines between public-and-private is a standard issue in politics.

So, it’s possible there is some kind of ‘resonance’ between the appearance of The Crown at this time and the current atmosphere surrounding presidential politics in the United States.

* * * * *

And then there’s Shakespeare’s treatment of this theme, public and private. Prince Hal pals around with Falstaff and then, when he ascends to the throne, what does he do? He rejects Falstaff. Why? What was appropriate for him as a private individual is not appropriate for him as monarch.

Well, Falstaff just got elected President of the United States.

* * * * *

From the NYTimes, about potential conflict between Trump's business assets and his role as President:

The layers of potential conflicts he faces are in many ways as complex as his far-flung business empire, adding a heightened degree of difficulty for Mr. Trump — one of the wealthiest men to ever occupy the White House — in separating his official duties from his private business affairs.

Further complicating matters are Mr. Trump’s decision to name his children to his transition team, and what is likely to be their informal advisory role in his administration. His daughter Ivanka Trump joined an official transition meeting on Thursday, the day before Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was removed from his post leading the effort.

Mr. Trump has said he will eliminate ethical concerns by turning the management of his company over to his children, an arrangement he has referred to as a blind trust.

But ethics lawyers — both Republicans and Democrats — say it is far from blind because he would have knowledge of the assets in the trust and be in contact with the people running it, making it unlike a conventional blind trust controlled entirely by an independent party.

* * * * *

From a recent op-ed by Paul Krugman (25 Nov. 2016):

Remember, over the course of the 2016 campaign, the three network news shows devoted a total of 35 minutes combined to policy issues — all policy issues. Meanwhile, they devoted 125 minutes to Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

What is it that makes those emails so salient? Could it be that they blur the line between public and private? She used a private email server to handle public business.