[Craic] Roots and Rootless...a response to the essay on Privacy & Publicity

[Rob and Nora]

Greetings everyone,

Thought you might find this of interest as everyone seems to be watching The Crown.  In response to a “McLuhan” take on the series.


Watching the Crown (still in season 2 ) has caused me no end of interest and deep concern as the larger themes suggested by the scripts emerge.  I enjoy the series, but I must admit though that my Catholic background still leaves me recoiling at what we used to call detraction, slander and calumny.  Media critics say “get over it; it is just a soap opera.”  But I sure would hate some imaginative writer taking a go at my life...Charles comes to mind...and reassembling it or inventing scenes and dialogue to suit dramatic interest.  I mean it is one thing to do so with Cleopatra or Julius Caesar.  The question arises, “Dies the ‘real’ Queen or Charles even exist given this hyper milieu?  Have JFK, Jackie and Margaret been recast from the original or actually been transfigured by a fertile imagination?

Bill Clinton with his saxophone on late night tv, not to mention celebrity culture figures such as Megan Markle, Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and Kim and the clan, come to mind as time, space, personhood and identity float fluidly across the media spectrum.  The pull of tradition, coherence, causality still draws me away from celebrity make over, illusion and tooting one’s horn.  No doubt in our time, one illusion replaced by another!  Such is the great tension underlying The Crown.  The old illusion of Victoria, Churchill and the Empire captured people’s love and loyalty even, at its most offensive, it led to colonial exploitation and economic and racial violence on a massive scale.  The new illusion, however, is so ephemeral and empty that we merely bounce around to an endless series of empty and momentary distractions.   The centre cannot hold....

Roots replaced by Rootless!

Bob

Subject: Privacy & Publicity

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/craic-integralshift.ca/attachments/20201222/9b1200d1/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: _Privacy & Publicity.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 155815 bytes
Desc: _Privacy & Publicity.pdf
URL: <http://lists.integralshift.ca/pipermail/craic-integralshift.ca/attachments/20201222/9b1200d1/attachment-0001.pdf>