1997 was a big year for me – one of those years that you remember as a benchmark for a change in your life. The year saw me in the throes of the seventh grade, that liminal place between childhood acquiescence and hormonal rage; the Spice Girls were on the charts and pop culture was just beginning to take over my consciousness. It was the first year I had scored above a D in a math exam, the year I began making friends with people outside my own section (an early barometer for how cool any middle schooler actually is) and the year my parents took me abroad for my summer vacation.
The vacation is embedded in my mind for many reasons and while most of them have to do with chocolate and the truly life-changing discovery of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, others have more to do with Death. Those among you who were not fetuses in 1997 remember it as a summer of celebrity deaths. It began with Gianni Versace being shot dead by a serial killing stalker on the steps of his mansion, and the star-studded funeral afterwards took up much of the news during my first few weeks in America. Who killed him? Who was at the funeral? Who is Donatella? I went about discovering my new surroundings, raiding comic book stores and buying copies of the Wizard magazine. A celebrity death seemed so far away. Halfway through the trip we went to New York City. I fell in love with it within seconds obviously, and while I remember that instant rush of devotion from those first few days, I also remember being at a dinner party with my mother thrown by some desi family friends when the news broke that Nusrat Fateh Ali had died in New York. The dinner party went immediately quiet.
It matters immensely that it is happening in the present climate - a time when both an assertion of and a challenge to white privilege is at its highest
The summer went on and one day towards the end of our trip, the news had a breaking announcement: Lady Diana had been in a car crash, chased by photographers in Paris. Less than a day later the news reported that she had died of her injuries. The world began to mourn, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it since. As fate would have it, our flight back to Lahore was a few days later but scheduling required a stopover in London, so I remember being there for her funeral. I only remember snippets: a deep, guttural, global anger at the press, who people held responsible for her death; the fact that the world ran out of flowers; how a week later Mother Teresa died but how that death became subsumed in the grief of Lady Di; the letter addressed to ‘Mommy’ that Prince Harry left on her coffin.
The death was such a cultural landmark – and took up so much of everyone’s headspace for years afterwards – that part of me never really took an interest in televised British royal events since then. I didn’t tune in for when the elder Prince married; I didn’t follow the Queen’s Jubilee or her 90th birthdays; and I actively avoided reading about the latest royal wedding. But we live in a time when you can’t really avoid seeing things like this, even by accident. And so I found the Prince and his biracial bride splattered across my newsfeed.
My first reaction at seeing the viewing parties and running commentaries was undiluted revulsion. They are not your heads of state, I would think, as I saw a bunch of desis dressing in hats in their living rooms. Why do you care?
The answer that I came up with is Symbolism. First off, even though I myself didn’t watch it, I can appreciate that the event is the truest real-life version that the world has of a Disney fairy tale. A Prince marrying a Princess. I get that.
Lady Diana with Prince Charles at their wedding, 1981
And I can also see that when the bride is a black American divorcee actress, the symbolism of that infiltration into the stodgiest of white colonial power structures is not without importance. It matters. It matters immensely that it is happening in the present climate – a time when both an assertion of and a challenge to white privilege is at its highest. It matters that there was a black pastor and a gospel choir. Even though I didn’t need to see it, even I know it matters. It matters that girls of colour can see themselves represented in what has essentially always remained a bastion of white people. Credit Card Carding involves the use of the hacked card to buy carded iphones, Gucci wears, and all forms of expensive items from amazon and other online stores, gift cards. LEARN CREDIT CARD CARDING, BUY TRACK 1 & 2 DUMPS WITH PIN, BUY IPHONE FOR HALF THE PRICE. BUY CC, BUY HIGH BALANCE CC CREDIT CARD. HACKED CREDIT CARD carding cc, carding amazon, carding tutorial 2019 ,online carding, free carding websites, best bins for carding 2020, carding methods 2020, live cc for carding 2020. Carding tutorial for beginners, carding tutorial 2019, carding tutorial 2019 pdf, carding cc, live cc for carding 2019, carding tutorial for beginners pdf, carding tutorial video download, learn carding pdf.
So I checked my cynicism. Obama was not my head of state, but despite that fact, I and millions of others celebrated his victory in 2008. The royals may be a relic of a bloody and problematic past, especially for those of us in postcolonial countries; it may also be that they are nothing more than institutionalised celebrities and there are very real arguments to be made for the value of their relevance to the world after the present Queen dies. But events like Lady Diana’s death, and now the marriage of her youngest baby, remind us that sometimes symbolic Disney realities like the Royal Wedding may not be all bad.
Still, this is not to say that if you’re wearing a hat at a viewing party, you and I won’t have serious issues.
