BTW...I added a substantial paragraph to the reply you read most recently....I don't favor private communication, for the very reasons you mention. I am too decrepit and energy- deficient to write my own substack, and I am not an original thinker, so I have little to offer except an historical perspective, which is this: we have been where we are now; before, more than once, and we can fight it....I would encourage you to write your own substack. It is not necessary to post full-length articles; the value would lie in putting ideas out for debate. The only way we as private citizens can fight is to fight the perversion of language with established fact, and that could involve some dangers too.
I disagree. Diana's portrayal in season 5 showed her to be an ambiguous character, simultaneously sympathetic and self-serving. Season 6 did a nice job of continuing this ambiguous presentation. Her doting on her boys, for example, seemed less like true devotion to them and more like a desperate craving for love to compensate for her extreme insecurity. Her posing for the press was portrayed as unclear whether it was to protect her family or simply an excuse for more publicity. The writers portrayed her as concerned about landmines and yet still not particularly knowledgeable about them, giving the impression that maybe it was out of goodwill or maybe it was for publicity or maybe both. And since her relationship with Dodi is and will remain unknown, I like that the writers filled in the blanks for us in a way that was believable even if it was not necessarily true.
I have never had a soft spot for Diana. She seemed to me to be constantly whining about how very hard her utterly luxurious and cosseted life was. I compared that to JFK, Jr. who, when asked about the downsides of being a Kennedy, replied that there were so many privileges to his role that it would be petty and churlish to moan about the inconveniences. Of course, her sudden death was tragic, especially for her sons. But while she was alive, she gave off the same vibes as Harry and Meghan and their worldwide privacy tours.
I would like to see that day too, but perhaps we’d better not hold our breath. First, it’s way too much fun to trash and hate other people, and this sort of terminology is so very handy in providing not just the weapon but the justification for using the weapon, AND better yet, allows the user to feel ooh so superior morally to the person being savaged by the terminology. It gives the user the opportunity to be a verbal aggressor while hiding under the blanket of victimhood. Using such terms is intended to be the verbal equivalent of a checkmate, simultaneously disarming and destroying the opponent…..If we are ever going to “find freedom” from this abyss of weaponized verbiage, we are going to have to wrap our minds around one very simple fact: these terms are not used to communicate factual information; they are used as bludgeons. They are intended and deployed to force someone to give someone else a preference, a concession, or an exemption. So far, they work. They will quit working when we all simply refuse to lie down before it.
As a screenwriter, I could not disagree more with this... what is it... not critique... a Mean Girl's custard of formless opinions? It's contrarian for the sake of it, and it shows.
Peter Morgan masterfully gave a different, unexpected spin on a parsed-to-death sequence of events. Were the life lessons at the Ritz a bit pat? Perhaps, but we have strict parameters in which we must work, for good reason, unless we're making art films. Was Diana's haunting of some characters a little "pulled by the hair," as the French would put it? On the surface, yes, but emotionally as it played on film, it worked for me, very well.
What was most extraordinary was Debicki's performance. With the exception of the wide-angle traveling shots that showed the actress' full 6'3" in context, I thought I was watching a docudrama about Diana, real footage of her. Dazzling performance.
Does my opinion count? No more than anyone's, except for the fact that I watch filmed content in a different way, and see all the construction details as it's unfolding. I thought season 5 was as weak as it gets for a great show, that it may have jumped the shark, but all-in-all the first part of season 6 was near matchless. The magnitude of how extraordinary the entire story was, what the Crown herself witnessed, landed as smoothly, gracefully and above all respectfully as it deserves.
Diana married into a powerful family at too young an age with too little experience of the world. She was incapable of dealing with the realities of her situation. I pitied her situation but never respected her. What's to respect? She spent millions on her looks, supported charities in a showy fashion to demonstrate her bleeding heart, slept around during and after her marriage. No fan of her X either, but at least he's subtle.
Cunning, manipulative, and destructive, but very PR-savvy, Diana carefully crafted an image of secular sainthood, complete with a doe-eyed expression. The press peddled it, and the rubes bought it. If she was such a great mother, why wasn't she with her young boys instead of cavorting with a playboy in Paris?
"If she was such a great mother, why wasn't she with her young boys instead of cavorting with a playboy in Paris?" Precisely! And why was she exhorting her drunken driver to drive faster, on that or any other occasion, as she purportedly did? And since she knew that the Royal Family was a stiff, rigid, emotionally impaired system, why would she risk abandoning her children to be raised by them?
Agree totally!! Diana once described herself as "thick as a plank," which she quite evidently was. What did she think would happen when she spilled her guts to Andrew Morton, or to Martin Bashir? Yes, she got sympathy from the public, but the Queen bounced her out of the Firm. She was a stupid woman who behaved stupidly--except when creating her image as Saint Diana. Her legacy is not the removal of landmines. Her legacy is a badly damaged second son who has clearly bought the hype.
"Her legacy is a badly damaged second son who has clearly bought the hype." He is another tragic example of a child who tries to rediscover his mother in a woman who resembles her.
With your succinct words "a child who tries to rediscover his mother in a woman who resembles her” you have seen something that seems to have escaped most commenters. It ought to be obvious that Harry is trying to cast Meghan as Diana, so he can live out his fantasy of saving Diana from a rapacious press; this was the whole point of the tale of the sham "near catastrophic 2-hour car chase" in NYC. Indeed, Meghan is very much like Diana in one respect: like Diana, Meghan is cunning, manipulative, and destructive. But the similarities end there. Diana's and Meghan's facial expressions tell different stories: Diana adopted poses to make her appear wan, shy and vulnerable, whereas Meghan likes to see herself as “powerful” (while casting herself as a victim.) Diana liked to make a thing of fleeing from press attention, whereas Meghan cannot conceal her delight at media attention; in most photos, Meghan’s eyes focus directly on the camera, as if she always knows where the photographer is standing. In the final analysis, Meghan has created a whole new art form, melding the concepts of female victimhood and female power. I haven’t quite worked out the way this is supposed to work. Perhaps you can offer some insight.
Your description of Meghan is of a hard, power and attention seeking persona, which is consistent with narcissism. Diana has been described by some people as having borderline personality disorder. I don’t know if this was actually true of her, but it would be consistent with a warmer and more truly vulnerable and gullible, impulsive personality style. Harry appears to me to be very gullible, perhaps especially in the area of idealizing certain kinds of women who as you say, may not be as much like his mother as he thinks.
I feel sorry for him, because I remember him as the bereaved boy he was, and he probably didn’t get much of the mothering he needed after Diana’s death.
"The Crown" was terrific in its first 3 seasons and then precipitously went off the cliff. They really were unhinged about Diana, too bad no one reined them in.
I disagree with the writer here. I thought she was fleshed out pretty well and her flaws given due attention. She was portrayed as impulsive, erratic, deeply wounded and attention- seeking. Glamorous, yes, but not without significant fault.
I do think the Fayed thing felt a bit thrown together, especially the jewelry store/ring thing.
Overall though I LOVE the show. It is well acted and so lushly detailed that I find myself wanting to be a royal within the first 5 mins of each episode. Oh to live that life... my God.
The writers are human beings so they do what all humans do when someone of celebrity status dies "before their time" We put them on a pedestal and create a myth around them. Growing up I was always fascinated with how this was done to Marilyn Monroe, JFK, James Dean, Tupac Shakur, Jim Morrison, Whitney Houston etc....
The Crown used Diana like the Kennedy's used Marilyn.
BTW...I added a substantial paragraph to the reply you read most recently....I don't favor private communication, for the very reasons you mention. I am too decrepit and energy- deficient to write my own substack, and I am not an original thinker, so I have little to offer except an historical perspective, which is this: we have been where we are now; before, more than once, and we can fight it....I would encourage you to write your own substack. It is not necessary to post full-length articles; the value would lie in putting ideas out for debate. The only way we as private citizens can fight is to fight the perversion of language with established fact, and that could involve some dangers too.
I disagree. Diana's portrayal in season 5 showed her to be an ambiguous character, simultaneously sympathetic and self-serving. Season 6 did a nice job of continuing this ambiguous presentation. Her doting on her boys, for example, seemed less like true devotion to them and more like a desperate craving for love to compensate for her extreme insecurity. Her posing for the press was portrayed as unclear whether it was to protect her family or simply an excuse for more publicity. The writers portrayed her as concerned about landmines and yet still not particularly knowledgeable about them, giving the impression that maybe it was out of goodwill or maybe it was for publicity or maybe both. And since her relationship with Dodi is and will remain unknown, I like that the writers filled in the blanks for us in a way that was believable even if it was not necessarily true.
I have never had a soft spot for Diana. She seemed to me to be constantly whining about how very hard her utterly luxurious and cosseted life was. I compared that to JFK, Jr. who, when asked about the downsides of being a Kennedy, replied that there were so many privileges to his role that it would be petty and churlish to moan about the inconveniences. Of course, her sudden death was tragic, especially for her sons. But while she was alive, she gave off the same vibes as Harry and Meghan and their worldwide privacy tours.
I would like to see that day too, but perhaps we’d better not hold our breath. First, it’s way too much fun to trash and hate other people, and this sort of terminology is so very handy in providing not just the weapon but the justification for using the weapon, AND better yet, allows the user to feel ooh so superior morally to the person being savaged by the terminology. It gives the user the opportunity to be a verbal aggressor while hiding under the blanket of victimhood. Using such terms is intended to be the verbal equivalent of a checkmate, simultaneously disarming and destroying the opponent…..If we are ever going to “find freedom” from this abyss of weaponized verbiage, we are going to have to wrap our minds around one very simple fact: these terms are not used to communicate factual information; they are used as bludgeons. They are intended and deployed to force someone to give someone else a preference, a concession, or an exemption. So far, they work. They will quit working when we all simply refuse to lie down before it.
As a screenwriter, I could not disagree more with this... what is it... not critique... a Mean Girl's custard of formless opinions? It's contrarian for the sake of it, and it shows.
Peter Morgan masterfully gave a different, unexpected spin on a parsed-to-death sequence of events. Were the life lessons at the Ritz a bit pat? Perhaps, but we have strict parameters in which we must work, for good reason, unless we're making art films. Was Diana's haunting of some characters a little "pulled by the hair," as the French would put it? On the surface, yes, but emotionally as it played on film, it worked for me, very well.
What was most extraordinary was Debicki's performance. With the exception of the wide-angle traveling shots that showed the actress' full 6'3" in context, I thought I was watching a docudrama about Diana, real footage of her. Dazzling performance.
Does my opinion count? No more than anyone's, except for the fact that I watch filmed content in a different way, and see all the construction details as it's unfolding. I thought season 5 was as weak as it gets for a great show, that it may have jumped the shark, but all-in-all the first part of season 6 was near matchless. The magnitude of how extraordinary the entire story was, what the Crown herself witnessed, landed as smoothly, gracefully and above all respectfully as it deserves.
Instantly annoyed by the fact that they clearly consulted the DSM for BPD criteria and spattered them in the script. Agressive move.
Good thoughts!
IMO The Crown went off the rails with casting
Stauton and Debicki as the Queen and Diana - the
first neither looks or mimics the late Queen sufficiently, and
the second towers over people - to me off-putting enough
to give it a pass...
As with such prestige UK series, the showrunners lose their
way from the glitter and glare of success...!
Diana married into a powerful family at too young an age with too little experience of the world. She was incapable of dealing with the realities of her situation. I pitied her situation but never respected her. What's to respect? She spent millions on her looks, supported charities in a showy fashion to demonstrate her bleeding heart, slept around during and after her marriage. No fan of her X either, but at least he's subtle.
Cunning, manipulative, and destructive, but very PR-savvy, Diana carefully crafted an image of secular sainthood, complete with a doe-eyed expression. The press peddled it, and the rubes bought it. If she was such a great mother, why wasn't she with her young boys instead of cavorting with a playboy in Paris?
"If she was such a great mother, why wasn't she with her young boys instead of cavorting with a playboy in Paris?" Precisely! And why was she exhorting her drunken driver to drive faster, on that or any other occasion, as she purportedly did? And since she knew that the Royal Family was a stiff, rigid, emotionally impaired system, why would she risk abandoning her children to be raised by them?
Agree totally!! Diana once described herself as "thick as a plank," which she quite evidently was. What did she think would happen when she spilled her guts to Andrew Morton, or to Martin Bashir? Yes, she got sympathy from the public, but the Queen bounced her out of the Firm. She was a stupid woman who behaved stupidly--except when creating her image as Saint Diana. Her legacy is not the removal of landmines. Her legacy is a badly damaged second son who has clearly bought the hype.
"Her legacy is a badly damaged second son who has clearly bought the hype." He is another tragic example of a child who tries to rediscover his mother in a woman who resembles her.
With your succinct words "a child who tries to rediscover his mother in a woman who resembles her” you have seen something that seems to have escaped most commenters. It ought to be obvious that Harry is trying to cast Meghan as Diana, so he can live out his fantasy of saving Diana from a rapacious press; this was the whole point of the tale of the sham "near catastrophic 2-hour car chase" in NYC. Indeed, Meghan is very much like Diana in one respect: like Diana, Meghan is cunning, manipulative, and destructive. But the similarities end there. Diana's and Meghan's facial expressions tell different stories: Diana adopted poses to make her appear wan, shy and vulnerable, whereas Meghan likes to see herself as “powerful” (while casting herself as a victim.) Diana liked to make a thing of fleeing from press attention, whereas Meghan cannot conceal her delight at media attention; in most photos, Meghan’s eyes focus directly on the camera, as if she always knows where the photographer is standing. In the final analysis, Meghan has created a whole new art form, melding the concepts of female victimhood and female power. I haven’t quite worked out the way this is supposed to work. Perhaps you can offer some insight.
Your description of Meghan is of a hard, power and attention seeking persona, which is consistent with narcissism. Diana has been described by some people as having borderline personality disorder. I don’t know if this was actually true of her, but it would be consistent with a warmer and more truly vulnerable and gullible, impulsive personality style. Harry appears to me to be very gullible, perhaps especially in the area of idealizing certain kinds of women who as you say, may not be as much like his mother as he thinks.
I feel sorry for him, because I remember him as the bereaved boy he was, and he probably didn’t get much of the mothering he needed after Diana’s death.
"The Crown" was terrific in its first 3 seasons and then precipitously went off the cliff. They really were unhinged about Diana, too bad no one reined them in.
I disagree with the writer here. I thought she was fleshed out pretty well and her flaws given due attention. She was portrayed as impulsive, erratic, deeply wounded and attention- seeking. Glamorous, yes, but not without significant fault.
I do think the Fayed thing felt a bit thrown together, especially the jewelry store/ring thing.
Overall though I LOVE the show. It is well acted and so lushly detailed that I find myself wanting to be a royal within the first 5 mins of each episode. Oh to live that life... my God.
The writers are human beings so they do what all humans do when someone of celebrity status dies "before their time" We put them on a pedestal and create a myth around them. Growing up I was always fascinated with how this was done to Marilyn Monroe, JFK, James Dean, Tupac Shakur, Jim Morrison, Whitney Houston etc....
I loved the series but found this season disappointing. Wish it were true for her children.
Why does anyone care about brit royalty? Why is anyone funding leftism by suscribing to netflix et al?
scripted television is a waste of time.
Don't you people understand history?
Don't you care about history
The ending should be she was fucking a Muslim
And the killing of Jews in isreal