Stand on Ceremony
I’m writing a short thought piece that I probably should have written a year and a half ago when actually watching the episode, but I had a job back then, and blogging was an all-but-forgotten activity.
The episode in question is Ruritania from the final season of the hit show, The Crown, which gave us a glimpse of the ultimate dream job, Keeper of the Swans.
Having said, and spoiler alert, I was genuinely pleased that no one was fired by the end of that episode. Watching long-serving members of the royal household look around nervously as they awaited their turn to be interrogated by Her Majesty was painful to watch, perhaps intentionally so – to make the Queen’s tête-à-tête with her trusted secretary and friend about preserving their country’s customs and antiquity more poignant.
One of the better episodes of the season, it has a monologue on people who ‘don’t want to come to a royal palace and get what they could have had at home… they want the magic and the mystery, the arcane and the eccentric and the symbolic, and the transcendent.’
However, impressive performances aside, the speech didn’t sit well with me. Or rather, the words conjured the very particular image of a different nation in all its past glory and the inherent contradiction of the same monarchy during its Empire days.
I’m referring to the rich cultural heritage of India’s cottage industries – handloom weaving and detailed craftsmanship dating back to thousands of years – that were systematically dismantled to make way for British mass-produce of dubious distinction.
A woman wearing fine Bengali muslin, c. 1789, by Francesco Renaldi
Thus, when Prince Philip speaks of the state opening (or royal audit) as an attempt to ‘humble the monarch’, so they don’t reek of ‘elitism and grandiosity’, it’s his nod to understanding the rules of the game, only he didn’t expect the same playbook to be turned around on its architects.
In a post-colonial world, such shows highlight selective memory. The same ceremonies that maintained continuity and the social and economic fabric of a nation were not then seen as magic, eccentric or symbolic, but rather threats that had to be eliminated under the guise of ‘civilisation’. Artisans were not custodians of culture, but archaic and inefficient, to be ‘modernised’, and their thriving export of ‘soft power’, trade and influence curtailed to the point of extinction.
As more countries demand the return of stolen artefacts, and citizens challenge colonial curricula and revisionist history, we see trends emerging on social media that reflect a collective hunger to reclaim appropriated legacies (and perhaps re-examine their origins and give due credit to tribal and indigenous work). Here, the show’s silence becomes a quiet commentary on how power structures operate – which traditions are granted sanctity, and which are relegated to the annals of de-industrialisation?
Today, the powers-that-were, aware of their fragility, feel a renewed sense of urgency to carefully construct utopian worlds and use the rituals they once scorned as symbols of industry, soul and greatness.
