A Prayer for the Living
Let us pray that something more than the body of the princess was buried Saturday. It’s a longshot, but let us pray that the whole gassy culture of image, of celebrity--of what made Di Di and, quite possibly, dead--went into the ground with her. Deliver us, Lord, from tabloid reality in all its manifestations.
Spare us pictures of Frank Gifford in the sheets, or that other princess sucking her paramour’s toes, or Nicole Brown Simpson cavorting topless on some beach. Save us from ambulance drivers whose first act at a crash scene is to fire up the video-cam, hoping to capture some footage suitable for Real TV. Save us from “Larry King Live,” and all its imitators.
Let the tabloids return to covering Bigfoot sightings and martian rock formations that resemble Abe Lincoln’s face. Let the mainstream newspapers return to covering news. If Bosnia is dull, and JonBenet Ramsey is riveting, give us dull every day. Let not one more word be said about Oprah’s diets or Michael Jackson’s menagerie or, for that matter, Bill Clinton’s genitals.
No more Lorena Bobbitts. No more Joey Buttafuocos. No more of these media creations so outsized they require only a single name.
Madonna.
Deion.
Di.
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Certainly the private moments of the powerful always have been a source of fascination. The shelves of classic literature are packed with the theme. Nor is the converse notion of exploiting the drama in everyday lives at all novel. Human-interest features have long been a newspaper staple. “Queen for a Day” was a quite popular show.
At some point on our watch, however, a cultural shift has occurred. Who can say just when, where? A personal theory is that it started with the sneaked photo of John Lennon’s corpse on a mortuary slab. Others suggest it was further back, sometime around Liz Taylor’s fourth or fifth marriage.
In any case, a rationale bubbled up in mainstream newspapers that allowed almost anything to go: If it was in the tabloids, people were talking about it; if people were talking about it, then it was news. And if it was news, print it--oh so tastefully, of course--and let people devour it without feeling a whit of guilt.
At the same time, and not coincidentally, celebrity took on new value. People who were famous only for being famous became powerful as well, and for the same reason: They were celebrities. And because they were important, they were fair game.
Diana apparently understood this transaction better than whoever was controlling the Mercedes as it roared into the tunnel. In her last interview, she spoke about her influence as the world’s Most Photographed Woman: “Being permanently in the public eye gives me a special responsibility. Notably that of using the impact of photographs to get a message across, a message about an important cause or certain values.”
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Under the same rules of celebrity, advocates of medical research funds would dispatch to congressional hearings, not a real doctor, but an actor who played one on television. Long-tolerated sweatshop conditions would emerge as a popular issue only after Kathie Lee Gifford took up the cause. And corporate CEOs, who once did their heavy lifting in obscurity, would pop up all over television, hawking everything from hamburgers to electric razors.
It’s all part of the same fiesta, all part of the fun. And it can be fun. Certainly those gotcha snapshots of Gary Hart on the good ship Monkey Business caught the eye. The cell phone transcripts of Diana talking lovey-dovey to a boyfriend gave the world a chuckle. Even O.J. and Co.--the most obvious monument to tabloid culture--had some moments. Fun. Fun. Fun.
And yet no party can go on forever. The trick--and this was the final dilemma for the princess--is how to wind it down. For the longest time, it seemed, nobody wanted to go home. Now a few movie stars are on the case, proposing all sorts of assaults on the 1st Amendment. Should they succeed in hobbling the paparazzi, these same actors no doubt would be among the first to complain about dwindling fan interest and flagging box office.
Censorship in any form is a worrisome solution. A press law designed to keep the tabs from poking around Bel-Air could well become the preferred tool of political figures with bad news to hide. They say paparazzi. We say Pentagon Papers. No, the cleaner exit is simply to walk away from the party, turn off the lights, go home. To let it end with the princess. It’s an enticing notion, a collective disconnect from the tabloid culture, a whole world gone cold turkey. To be realistic, it does not have a prayer.