Maeve Higgins: Americans just can't get enough of monarchy malarkey
Olivia Colman portrays Queen Elizabeth II in a scene from the third season of 'The Crown'. US viewership of 'The Crown' more than quadrupled from the Friday to Sunday after the Queen's death compared with the previous week.
Grief counsellors will tell you there is no one right way to mourn. I will tell you there are a million wrong ways to mourn.
Since Britain's Queen Elizabeth died on September 8, I've seen them all. It's none of my business how people in the UK express their grief over the death of their queen. So reluctantly, but with extraordinary grace, I will keep my thoughts to myself on that count.
However, I do have a lot to say about how people here in the US are handling this moment. The media, both news and entertainment — with a blurred line between the two, of course — that is being created and consumed here is extraordinary.
The queen's death, and dramatisations of her life, are getting more airtime, more clicks, more dedicated space than inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the climate crisis.
The tabloid daily ran a special report with the Union Jack and the US flag flanking a full-page photo of a young Queen Elizabeth. Articles in the usually sober were almost comically obsequious, like the one entitled: 'Long an Uneasy Prince, King Charles III Takes On a Role He Was Born To' that begins: "Once an awkward, self-doubting young man, he comes to the throne, at 73, as a self-assured, grey-haired eminence."
They cannot get a hold of themselves. And they cannot get enough of the British monarchy, the social hierarchy, the imperial loyalty — but why?
First of all, some context. The original American colonies used to belong to the British, but they grew increasingly allergic to their faraway rulers and declared their independence in 1776.
They sent a copy of their declaration across the Atlantic, where it reached King George III. He was Queen Elizabeth's ancestor on two sides because the royal family often had kids with their cousins so they wouldn't have to blend their divine blood with mortals.
The official British response was to reprimand the "misguided Americans" and "their extravagant and inadmissible Claim of Independency."
The Americans ramped up their revolutionary struggle and forced the British to recognise their independence in 1783. After that messy and violent start, the nations stayed close, a parent and child caught in a toxic circle of interdependence. They didn't see it that way, obviously, cultivating their famous 'special relationship' over the years.
Today, they're positively fawning on the US government website for their embassies in the UK: "The United States has no closer ally than the United Kingdom, and British foreign policy emphasises close co-ordination with the United States.
We get it — you're besties! That being said, the reaction here to the queen's death and the ascension of her son Charles to the throne is something to behold.
They have taken the story presented to them at face value — a story that goes something like this: a lovely old lady who was in charge back when things made sense has died, so now we don't know what will happen, and we're a bit scared.
I wonder do some Americans miss being subjects? Do they miss the days when a small group of rich white people were in charge?
The Republican Party is busy getting back to a version of that scenario as quickly as possible, as are the billionaires. But for others, maybe it's just the spectacle they enjoy.
TV news networks have committed enormous resources to this story that has no impact on anyone's lives here — but people are watching, so they keep it coming. There are days and days of special programming on American television paying tribute to the life of Queen Elizabeth.
CNN, CBS, and ABC have all devoted their primetime hours to specials, and networks have dispatched anchors to the UK in the days before and after the funeral on September 19. CNN's Anderson Cooper's voice cracked on live TV as the official statement of the queen's death was posted on the gate of Buckingham Palace.
As I write this, CNN is airing live images of the airplane flying the queen's body to her final destination. Flagship shows across networks such as , , and are being hosted from London.
NBC's streaming channel has been carrying the Sky News feed and live special coverage. Remember, none of this will have any material effect on anyone's life here.
But there's a lot of coverage, hours and hours of it, all of it shallow stuff. There is little discussion on the big networks about the violence and death caused by British imperialism under Queen Elizabeth. And I haven't heard much debate in this avowed democratic republic around the intrinsically anti-democratic nature of monarchy.
The news people are picking up where their entertainment colleagues left off. In 2020, , a Netflix drama loosely based on the story of Queen Elizabeth's reign, has been a massive hit here.
Season four, featuring the fictionalised retelling of Charles and Diana's marriage, garnered the most attention. The series broke a record here, with the rating measurement firm Neilsen reporting that it had the highest single-week total to date in the streaming rankings, with viewers watching 3.36bn minutes of the show from Nov 16-22 of that year.
But perhaps not everyone watched it that week; either that or they're rewatching it now because the data analytics firm Whip Media reported that the US viewership of more than quadrupled from the Friday to Sunday after her death compared with the previous week.
This myopic devotion has been years in the making. In the book, , the scholar Mandy Merck points out that moving images of the British monarchy, in fact and fiction, are almost as old as the moving image itself.
In 1895, the Edison Manufacturing Company released an 18-second kinetoscope film titled . The following year, Queen Victoria was filmed at Balmoral riding in an open chaise attended by a Highlander.
In the decades that followed, more and more documentaries and dramas in every medium emerged, including commercial hits like , , and Helen Mirren's Oscar-winning performance in .
Film critic David Thomson noted that the latter was "the most sophisticated public relations boost HRH had had in 20 years."
Merck wrote back in the 1990s that the British monarchy and its image, in film and television, had already merged in a spectacle whose dominant meaning was the power of spectacle itself.
Even before the younger Windsors such as William and Harry stepped into their starring roles in this soap opera that sanitises a power structure, polishing it as they came and went, the audience was locked in.
On and on the spectacle rolls, and Americans can't look away.
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