Watching Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday? Columnist Charles Passy questions the American obsession with the British royal family. OPINION
Many Americans will be watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, even if it requires waking up in the early hours of Monday to do so. They will probably be among some 4.1 billion viewers or around half the world’s population that could tune in to the event.
And yet, so many Americans treat the royals as if they were our very own. Or, at the very least, they pay attention to a lot of royal-related news and events. Consider that about 30 million Americans viewed the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. As one report noted, that’s more than the number that viewed the Oscars broadcast the same year. And American women started getting plastic surgery or non-surgical fillers to emulate that “Markle sparkle” — particularly, her nose and lips.
I’m hardly the first to pick up on this point — quite the opposite. Observers of pop culture have long talked about the royals as, well, pop-culture icons. Media critic Bill Goodykoontz sees the parallel between the royals and the Kardashians, but also likens them to sports figures or teams. As he recently wrote, “The royal family is like sports for people watchers — something ultimately meaningless in your daily life that is fun to become invested in.
Another often espoused theory worth mentioning: Americans look to the royals and the form of government they embody — the constitutional monarchy in which the family has a largely ceremonial role — because our own democratic state has become such a messy, polarized affair of late. It’s a point that former President Barack Obama even made when he hosted Prince Charles in 2015.
Nearly 250 years ago, we fought a revolution to free ourselves from the shackles of a British king. To quote the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
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