The first King of Britain was James I. He won the prize that had eluded his mother, Mary Queen of Scots: the right to rule over a united kingdom. Unfortunately he earned himself a very bad press.But press, for better or worse has dogged royalty since its inception. Its not particularly obvious for North Americans to comprehend the British class system, which is based on royalty and the pyramid working down; the sacred geometry of the Egyptians. If there wasn’t royalty would the whole pyramid collapse.
Andy Partridge(XTC):I think the royal family are a wonderful addition to the tourist industy. And that’s it. I think, unfortunately, they made too much of a hobby of killing things for pleasure and they are the reason there is the class system. It’s the hierarchy of ass-licking all the way up to the royal family. That’s the class system, that’s the pyraimd of, “We’re superior” right down to, “You’re inferior”, and that’s the reason we have a class system is the royal family. So keep them on, strip them of all their powers, keep them on as tourist magnets, I say. And I feel very sorry for them as people., their in a zoo. Kurt Vonnegut couldn’t have written it better. They’re trapped in a zoo. Everything they do is for public gaze, and they’re like some freaky animals. I don’t envy them in the slightest.Read More:http://chalkhills.org/articles/JAM990305.html
aaaaaaaaaaaa
The ritual of these royal spectacles, is, as Guy Debord says, totally mediated by images, yet the real meaning of the pomp and ceremony has to be deconstructed and removed from the traditional classical narrative that is being spoon fed. Critically, as a post-modern event there is a need to avoid closure – the wedding- as well as rejecting the notion that the narrative of the Royal family is dominated by knowledge of end:an end which can finally determine the meaning. There is no totality. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. The Royals do fit the concept of an object hunter. The pageantry of the Royals, the grist of the mill; is to collect these discarded objects through a mass public rescuing before they reach the state of absolute decay.
In examining the Royals, these objects, You can’t count on finding anything intact, because that’s the mistake on a part of a person who lost it. There is no making sense of their story, No matter how hard we try the meaning always escapes .There is no sacred entity between royalty and commoner. Its a bit like taking perceived meaning, bottling it, and pitching it into the sea or ocean. Hence, there is no predictability and no assurance that the message will be revealed. The message of the postmodern narrative, disruptive and non-linear is a bit like the Franz Kafka short titled A Message From the Emperor: The Emperor -so the story goes-has sent a message to you, the lone individual, the meanest of all the subjects, the shadow that has fled before the imperial sun until it is microscopic in the remotest distance, just to you the Emperor has sent a message from his death-bed.( Kafka) The situation of the individual is analogous to being lost inside the pyramid…Kafka: However, the messenger never gets to the end of the chambers of the innermost palace, even if he eventually struggles to leave the innermost gate, he would still have the capital city to leave and then ‘centre of the world, overflowing with dregs of humanity. The message was never meant to be delivered. The meaning of the post-modern almost reflects the plurality of a Tower of Babel like induced fragmentation of language. The curse of prophetic words are never to be believed,symbolizing the words of the poet which are repeated in an endless cycle spoken again and again and again in order to say nothing….
The divine right of kings was the basic , prescribed teaching of the Church of England in James I time, and it had been vigorously if not so volubly practiced by unimpeacahable heroes since the inception of the monarchy. When James told parliament, ” Kings are, in the word of god itself, called gods, as being his lieutenants and vice-regents on earth, and furnished with some sparkles of the divinity,” he was not expounding anything original. Although he publicly modified some of the starker elements later, the basic belief has come down to our era.
James, prime weakness, like the present monarchy, was an inability to regulate his own finances. A financial primitiveness and constant indebted
forced him to go to parliament on a recurring basis for fresh funds. He became a pricey proposition to ape the flamboyance and magnificence of his Tudor predecessors. His extravagance, and that of his hangars-on was said to have “passed all measure of taste or sanity.” It was a world of giddy expenditure, lavish feasts and lavish shows.
Perhaps the most extravagant of all was the “double supper” invented by Scotsman Lord Hay. An elaborate banquet, featuring the rarest delicacies, was set out, but as soon as the guests had viewed it, the food was gathered up and thrown away, and the supper proper, even more elaborate and expensive, was brought in. ( Trevor-Roper)
ADDENDUM:
Guy Debord: 56:The spectacular sham struggles of rival forms of separate power are at the same time real in that they translate the unequal and antagonistic development of the system, the relatively contradictory interests of classes or subdivisions of classes which acknowledge the system and define themselves as participants within its power. Just as the development of the most advanced economy is a clash between some priorities and others, the totalitarian management of the economy by a State bureaucracy and the condition of the countries within the sphere of colonization or semi-colonization are defined by specific peculiarities in the varieties of production and power. These diverse oppositions can be passed off in the spectacle as absolutely distinct forms of society (by means of any number of different criteria). But in actual fact, the truth of the uniqueness of all these specific sectors resides in the universal system that contains them: the unique movement that makes the planet its field, capitalism.
57: The society which carries the spectacle does not dominate the underdeveloped regions by its economic hegemony alone. It dominates them as the society of the spectacle. Even where the material base is still absent, modern society has already invaded the social surface of each continent by means of the spectacle. It defines the program of the ruling class and presides over its formation, just as it presents pseudo-goods to be coveted. it offers false models of revolution to local revolutionaries. …
59:Under the shimmering diversions of the spectacle, banalization dominates modern society the world over and at every point where the developed consumption of commodities has seemingly multiplied the roles and objects to choose from. The remains of religion and of the family (the principal relic of the heritage of class power) and the moral repression they assure, merge whenever the enjoyment of this world is affirmed–this world being nothing other than repressive pseudo-enjoyment. The smug acceptance of what exists can also merge with purely spectacular rebellion; this reflects the simple fact that dissatisfaction itself became a commodity as soon as economic abundance could extend production to the processing of such raw materials. Read More:http://libcom.org/library/society-of-the-spectacle-debord-three