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| The Crown’s portrayal of history is an insult to my generation’s struggles The Crown’s portrayal of history is an insult to my generation’s struggles | |
| (21 days later) | |
| The writer LP Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Hartley was not wrong because, at 93, my foot rests more in that far-off land called history than today. But if I were to rely upon how television drama has interpreted the story of my generation, I would not be able to recognise it. Sadly, dramas about events that occurred in my youth deal almost exclusively with the pageant of nobility. | The writer LP Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Hartley was not wrong because, at 93, my foot rests more in that far-off land called history than today. But if I were to rely upon how television drama has interpreted the story of my generation, I would not be able to recognise it. Sadly, dramas about events that occurred in my youth deal almost exclusively with the pageant of nobility. |
| It concerns me that the history of my generation may be lost to my grandchildren because television producers would rather anaesthetise viewers from the unpleasantness of our past with idolatry for the aristocracy and the monarchy. | It concerns me that the history of my generation may be lost to my grandchildren because television producers would rather anaesthetise viewers from the unpleasantness of our past with idolatry for the aristocracy and the monarchy. |
| It’s why I am angry that Netflix has spent $130m (£105m) on the 10-part series The Crown. This is a biopic concerning the marriage of Queen Elizabeth when she was still a princess in 1947, followed by her coronation in 1953. Unfortunately, The Crown views postwar Britain from the perspective of our sovereign and all who inhabited her world. This does an enormous disservice to the epoch, because it was a time when a socialist tide raised all boats. History was literally being made from the bottom up because, while Princess Elizabeth was being fitted for her wedding dress, ordinary Britons were dismantling a thousand years of feudal mentality through the creation of the welfare state. | It’s why I am angry that Netflix has spent $130m (£105m) on the 10-part series The Crown. This is a biopic concerning the marriage of Queen Elizabeth when she was still a princess in 1947, followed by her coronation in 1953. Unfortunately, The Crown views postwar Britain from the perspective of our sovereign and all who inhabited her world. This does an enormous disservice to the epoch, because it was a time when a socialist tide raised all boats. History was literally being made from the bottom up because, while Princess Elizabeth was being fitted for her wedding dress, ordinary Britons were dismantling a thousand years of feudal mentality through the creation of the welfare state. |
| We’ve seen this approach before. Nothing better illustrates TV’s lush treacle homage to the landed gentry than Downton Abbey, a drama that ran for six series as a parlour-room interpretation of historical moments that shaped Britain at the turn of the 20th century. But Downton has not been the exception to the rule, rather a template used by TV and movie producers to crush the truth from history and make the entitled the heroes of narratives about our nation’s collective past. | We’ve seen this approach before. Nothing better illustrates TV’s lush treacle homage to the landed gentry than Downton Abbey, a drama that ran for six series as a parlour-room interpretation of historical moments that shaped Britain at the turn of the 20th century. But Downton has not been the exception to the rule, rather a template used by TV and movie producers to crush the truth from history and make the entitled the heroes of narratives about our nation’s collective past. |
| The Crown, like Downton Abbey, Victoria or even Indian Summers, depicts moments in history as a pageant in which the wealthy, the entitled and the nobility oversee the lives of millions with benevolence, wisdom and grace. As I have been both a witness to and participant in history since 1923, I can tell you that was not the case. Millions lived lives of abject misery during the 1930s while the 1% of that time enjoyed an obscene opulence. Despite the vast wealth of 19th-century history a TV dramatist can draw upon, our nation’s rich heritage too often becomes an infomercial for monarchy and empire. | The Crown, like Downton Abbey, Victoria or even Indian Summers, depicts moments in history as a pageant in which the wealthy, the entitled and the nobility oversee the lives of millions with benevolence, wisdom and grace. As I have been both a witness to and participant in history since 1923, I can tell you that was not the case. Millions lived lives of abject misery during the 1930s while the 1% of that time enjoyed an obscene opulence. Despite the vast wealth of 19th-century history a TV dramatist can draw upon, our nation’s rich heritage too often becomes an infomercial for monarchy and empire. |
| The Crown is like an expensive painting in which the only subjects in focus are the rich and privileged. Everyone else, people like me or your grandparents if they came from the working class and even the middle class, are considered no more than background scenery. We are the undefined face in the crowd waving religiously at our so-called betters. | The Crown is like an expensive painting in which the only subjects in focus are the rich and privileged. Everyone else, people like me or your grandparents if they came from the working class and even the middle class, are considered no more than background scenery. We are the undefined face in the crowd waving religiously at our so-called betters. |
| To my mind, The Crown is an insult to the struggles my generation overcame and the triumphs we earned from our sacrifices in both war and in peace. But what is most frightening is that the tableau of our past shown on Netflix and other TV networks will be most people’s window on my generation’s history. Too many in the 19th and early 20th century lived thwarted lives because of the exploitation they endured in the mines and mills. Yet no one tells the tale of these workers unionising, fighting for their rights or trying to find and maintain love in the harsh conditions of the slums they called home. | To my mind, The Crown is an insult to the struggles my generation overcame and the triumphs we earned from our sacrifices in both war and in peace. But what is most frightening is that the tableau of our past shown on Netflix and other TV networks will be most people’s window on my generation’s history. Too many in the 19th and early 20th century lived thwarted lives because of the exploitation they endured in the mines and mills. Yet no one tells the tale of these workers unionising, fighting for their rights or trying to find and maintain love in the harsh conditions of the slums they called home. |
| Too many of my generation died young because they lacked the money to pay for a doctor, but in The Crown our sympathies are directed to a king dying of lung cancer rather than the thousands of miners who died painfully of black lung because that monarch and his society didn’t believe the average citizen deserved medicine if they couldn’t afford to pay for it. | Too many of my generation died young because they lacked the money to pay for a doctor, but in The Crown our sympathies are directed to a king dying of lung cancer rather than the thousands of miners who died painfully of black lung because that monarch and his society didn’t believe the average citizen deserved medicine if they couldn’t afford to pay for it. |
| Our Queen, no matter how much we should respect her service to the state, doesn’t deserve to be turned into a cinematic icon. In the great sweep of events our monarch is like a garden ornament sitting immutably on the field of history because she is not the author of our nation’s destiny. | Our Queen, no matter how much we should respect her service to the state, doesn’t deserve to be turned into a cinematic icon. In the great sweep of events our monarch is like a garden ornament sitting immutably on the field of history because she is not the author of our nation’s destiny. |
| Because of austerity and Brexit, Britain has become a house divided. We need now more than ever our great film-makers and television producers to tell the stories from our collective past that reflect all its pathos and wonder. And they need to tell it from the perspective of those ordinary, brilliant and profound men and women who, a lifetime ago, helped shape the way we live today through their deeds. | Because of austerity and Brexit, Britain has become a house divided. We need now more than ever our great film-makers and television producers to tell the stories from our collective past that reflect all its pathos and wonder. And they need to tell it from the perspective of those ordinary, brilliant and profound men and women who, a lifetime ago, helped shape the way we live today through their deeds. |