Global Issues
The Crown, the Queen and their colonies -By Hamid Dabashi
“Let us start with the unrest in Egypt, where anti-colonial
passions continue to run high, and where our soldiers continue to come
under fire from nationalist insurgents.” This is UK Prime Minister Sir
Winston Churchill, as depicted in a scene in the first season of the
widely popular Netflix original series The Crown. The reference is, of
course, to the anticolonial uprising led by Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956
that eventually led to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.
It is both jarring and curiously entertaining to see how historical
events of monumental importance for the world at large are depicted in a
biopic mostly about the private life and palace intrigues of Queen
Elizabeth II, the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.
“It is vital that we remain and successfully defend the Suez Canal,”
Churchill continues to huff and puff and report to Her Majesty the
Queen, “a point that I will be making in person to the Commonwealth
heads, when I host them for the weekend at Chequers”.
Both in
this episode and in the rest of the series such references to British
colonialism abound. Though they are entirely tangential, almost
prop-like, to the actual plot of the biopic, such references give us a
clue as to how the British public at large cares to recall their
colonial atrocities around the globe. The prose and politics of the
series are drawn entirely to the queen’s personal and public traumas;
her colonial possessions serve for a bit of narrative seasoning.
At the epicentre of the series is also the predicament of the British
monarchy during Queen Elizabeth’s long and troublesome reign. Tommy
Lascelles, Private Secretary to both King George VI and to Queen
Elizabeth II, portrayed superbly by Pip Torrens, epitomises the radical
sentiments of the British monarchists.
Monarchy is God’s sacred mission
The central theme of The Crown is the survival of British
monarchy as an institution in a fast-changing world. Queen Elizabeth,
played so far with astonishing versatility by Claire Foy (seasons 1–2)
and Olivia Colman (season 3), is depicted as initially more interested
in her “egalitarian” husband Prince Philip than her duties as queen, but
eventually she grows into her role as the monarch of the United
Kingdom, the head of the Church of England, the Defender of the Faith,
and the head of the British Empire.
At a crucial point in a
conversation between Elizabeth and her paternal grandmother Mary of Teck
the elder woman tells her reigning granddaughter:
“Monarchy is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the
earth. To give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of
nobility and duty to raise them in their wretched lives. Monarchy is a
calling from God. That is why you are crowned in an abbey, not a
government building. Why you are anointed, not appointed. It’s an
archbishop that puts the crown on your head, not a minister or public
servant. Which means that you are answerable to God in your duty, not
the public.”
All majestic and rather amusing for sure but what
is compelling in this context is the manner in which the plot moves
seamlessly from those highfalutin sentiments to the all-too-human
banalities of the royal family, from the domestic affairs of Queen
Elizabeth’s household, to her duties as the sovereign of the nation, and
then as the monarch of the British Empire.
In that order, the
narrative is far more intimate with the domestic dramas of Buckingham
Palace than with the national vicissitude of the United Kingdom, and
then by extension the affairs of the empire, the wretched of the Earth
who live under the British rule, emerge entirely as props that do not
even reach the status of a subplot.
Mountbatten ‘who gave away India’
The contrast here is between the last female monarch of the
British Empire Queen Victoria (reigned 1837-1901) who was the sovereign
of a vast empire and Queen Elizabeth II who began her reign in 1952
having already “lost” the Jewel in her Crown.
As we watch
The Crown, we see all the main historical markers hit. There’s
Churchill’s re-election and battle with ill-health, the horrid London
smog of 1952, the so-called “Commonwealth” tours of the royal family,
the drama of Princess Margaret’s illicit love affairs, the disastrous
premiership of Anthony Eden and his treacherous plot with the French and
the Israelis to invade Egypt to prevent Nasser’s nationalisation of the
Suez Canal.
Initially I was disappointed that the MI6
collaboration with the CIA to topple Mossadegh in 1953 was not part of
the biopic. This however was compensated for with a fuller treatment of
Nasser and the UK-led invasion of Egypt in which they put their newly
created settler colony and garrison state of Israel to good military
use.
Here we see how the defining trauma of a nation is
entirely neglected, the fateful moment of another nation is faintly
adapted, but the alleged extramarital affair of Prince Philip is not to
be abated a bit. There are times that The Crown looks like the front
page of the British tabloids, but that is precisely where popular
culture trumps the most detailed works of historical scholarship. It is
what the popular culture cares to recall that matters, not what
historians and social scientists insist upon recording.
From Malta to remap the world
The more we see the scattered colonial references the
more we realise they are really the background prop in the picture –
and there, paradoxically, is a powerful angle precisely from where you
are staged in the background and seem not to matter at all.
As
we watch this series, and by “we,” I mean people around the globe at
the historical mercy of British imperialism then and Netflix programming
now, we realise how narratively incidental we are to this filmic,
widely popular, rendition of British imperial history.
We are
drawn to her life, the drama of being catapulted into public life
against her and her parents’ will when her uncle abdicates. We identify
with her, share her happiness, partake in her predicament. Only with a
reference to Egypt, or Palestine, or India, or Australia or Africa does
it suddenly hit us that we have been at the mercy of the factual
ferocity of this monarchy.
There is a magnificent moment in a
speech James Baldwin once delivered at Oxford about watching Western
movies in his youth, when he says, then it suddenly occurs to you, “the
Indian IS YOU”.
In the very first episode we see the newlyweds
move to Malta, where the newly minted Prince Philip re-joins the
British Royal Navy. The young Elizabeth then gives birth to their son,
Charles, back in England. In the second episode we see how Elizabeth and
Philip go on a tour of the Commonwealth, where Elizabeth learns of her
father’s passing while in Kenya. Some of Philip’s legendary racism is on
display in his encounter with the Kenyans. Though The Crown has a
“jolly good time” making light of his racism.
In another episode depicting the great smog of December 1952,
we see how Churchill’s mind is entirely on the Egyptian uprising and
disregards the daunting domestic issues. In yet another episode, Anthony
Eden having replaced Churchill as Prime Minister now becomes trapped in
an escalating dispute with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser over
rights to the Suez Canal. The plot, the script, the camera, all come
together to make it impossible for any viewer for a split second to
identify with Nasser or the Egyptians putting claim on the sovereignty
of their homeland.
For the rest of the first season, Egypt
remains a constant prop in the events more intimate to Elizabeth’s
household such as her marital quarrels, or her uncle, Edward VIII, who
had abdicated to marry the woman he loved, demanding a stipend to
sustain his luxurious life, as Philip’s uncle, Earl Mountbatten, “the
man who lost India,” warns Elizabeth about Eden’s plot to invade Egypt,
which royally angers Elizabeth upon learning Israel had crossed the
Sinai Peninsula in cahoots with the British and the French.
‘Silly ideas, like becoming independent’
As Eden reveals the invasion of Egypt is part of a secret
agreement between the Israeli, French and British governments to reclaim
the Suez Canal without approval from Parliament or the United Nations,
Elizabeth’s mind is somewhere else, with the Russian ballerina Ulanova
with whom she suspects her husband is having an affair. We see her going
to see her perform in a ballet as Israeli, French, and British forces
invade Egypt. As our hearts begin to bleed for Elizabeth’s bleeding
heart, we remember, to paraphrase Baldwin, “the Egyptians are us”.
The next season opens with Philip on a global tour of British colonial
bases where he has his colonial fantasies with native women put on full
display.
Such popular television versions of history are 10
times more important than any erudite piece of scholarship in measuring
the sentiments of the public at large, and it is right here that the
colonial calamities of British empire become a mere background noise to
flesh out the more immediate vicissitude of an outdated institution
coming to terms with a vastly and swiftly changing world.
In
one of the episodes of the third season we see how the BBC once tried to
do a propaganda “documentary” on the royal family to promote its
significance. The piece became such an embarrassing flop that the Queen
forbids it being shown anymore.
In many ways this show we are
watching, The Crown, is an overcompensation for that catastrophe the BBC
made to propagate the British monarchy, where even a monster like
Churchill appears as a deeply human father mourning the death of his
infant child Marigold with an incessant probing of a pond in his
paintings.
This Churchill is not the Churchill the savagely colonised and robbed world knows.
This lovely dialogue between Queen Elizabeth and her two delightful
children Charles and Anne sums up the running tension between the
domestic chores of the young Queen as a caring mother missing her
handsome husband Prince Philip and the mandate the global British
colonial “territories” has placed on her crown. Mother and children are
in a lush and spacious hall in Buckingham Palace looking at a globe:
ELIZABETH: Now, Anne, what’s this?
ANNE: A penguin.
ELIZABETH: Very good. And, Charles, who do you suppose is surrounded by penguins at the moment?
CHARLES: Daddy.
ELIZABETH: Yes, that’s right. That’s because he’s in the Antarctic, and
from there, he goes to the South Shetland Islands, then he goes on to
the Falkland Islands. And then he goes all the way up here, to Ascension
Island. All these are British Overseas Territories, and they have to be
visited every once in a while, so they don’t feel neglected or
forgotten, and don’t get any silly ideas like becoming independent.
Right, brushed your teeth?
CHARLES. Yes.
ELIZABETH: Good. Have you said your prayers? Yes. Jolly good. Right. Night-night.
ANNE: Night-night, Mommy.
NANNY: Come along, children.