13 dead and not forgotten

 

"Thirteen dead and not forgotten, we got eighteen and Mountbatten."

That's a statement made on behalf of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) in The Crown, after Royal Family friend Lord Mountbatten gets killed when his boat is blown up.

(With the Irish guy's accent, the word "forgotten" rhymes with Mountbatten - pronounced Mount-bah-ten...)

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One Internet commenter said what I often think when watching The Crown:  "...very weird royal traditions affording incredible privileges and stultifying constraints."

In a way, the Queen is in charge of everything, and in a way, she can almost never have her way.

        "Of course, I shall have to take advice," she says.  She wants Martin Charteris to be her secretary; Tommy Lascelles tells her that her secretary will be Michael Adeane because he is next in line.

        Custom; tradition; protocol.

Another Commenter wrote, "I thought The Crown brought out the immense role that the palace staff had in terms of being advisers, handlers, and minders for the royal family."

comments

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* The Royal staff seems to consider themselves more "royal" than the actual royals.  I believe that is why Diana, Fergie and Meghan were so frustrated by them.

* That is the fault of the Queen.  She could have slapped these people down and put them in their place, but did not.

* Easily enough said but I think the momentum of a thousand-year-old dynasty subdues even the one person it focuses upon.

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custom; tradition; protocol

 

John F. Kennedy; Queen Elizabeth; Jacqueline Kennedy; Prince Philip

1961

        I read a review of Diana: The Musical, in The Guardian, written by Peter Bradshaw.

        It is one of those reviews that reminds us of the fact that complaining unrelentingly about a show and that it exists is not the same thing as reviewing a show.

The review employed the same tactic I observed once in a review of Bob Dylan's book, Chronicles:

Just stating that the book said this,

and the book said that.

Mr. Bradshaw's review included that same exercise --

lyrics of one song said this;

in another song the lyrics said that....

Simply repeating something from the work -- the play, or the book -- doesn't make a point, really, it just fills up some space.

Maybe that's what reviewers are doing, sometimes--just filling space.  (Like the Netflix problem -- take a minute's worth of action-situation-dialogue and wanting people to make an hour-long episode out of it.)

Editor:  "Here, review this show."

Writer:  "OK, they sang and danced and told a story.  

It is very bad.  

According to me.

The End."

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Watching Diana: The Musical and The Crown --

Enlightening, because they tell some of the same stories, and each telling reveals things in a slightly different way, and puzzle pieces can sometimes be fitted together.  Impressions can be compared.

The Crown is so interesting, because you really get a granular sense of royalty and tradition and England's relationship to its own history, literature, and drama.  How tradition works -- 'we do things in the settled way, the way we've always done them, because that is the tradition, that is our custom.'

        'It is what protocol requires.'

And custom, tradition, and protocol steer everything, except for when they don't -- when "CHANGE" occurs.  When Prince Philip says, "Let's televise the Queen's Christmas speech," for example....

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queen of hearts

 

headline in Elle online:

Actress Jeanna de Waal Thinks Princess Diana Would've Loved 'Diana: The Musical'

I agree!  I agree!

Ms. de Waal does an excellent job, imo -- she has to talk part of it and sing part of it.  And while she and the rest of the terrific cast only had to do it once for the Netflix film, they're going to have to do it over and over once they start up on Broadway.

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up early in the mornin'

 

I read a list of Britney Spears songs in The Guardian, and typed some of them out onto a list for myself to dig into her music a little more.

Listening to something from the list, over the Internet, I noticed the phrase "can I get a witness" was in there.  The song was not "Can I Get A Witness" but the line was incorporated in.

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a story's rhythm and speed

Then today I was watching something new on Netflix and ran into same problem I've encountered before.

Boredom.

And that's saying something because of two reasons:

1 is that the show was supposed to be suspenseful, with tension and action and mystery and detection; and the 

2nd is the fact of personal taste -- my favorite movies and plays and TV shows might be deemed "boring" by some people who have different tastes.  Like Joey Tribbiani on Friends when he says, "Hey, Shakespeare is great, but how 'bout a car chase once in a while...?"

        It's sort of -- if I think it's boring, then -- Man -- it's boring...!

The one I started watching (listening to) today, it was just -- you started to get riveted by it, but then it kept repeating, going over the same "gripping moment" over and over again.  With different words.  But it was as if it was stuck, sort of.  You wanted to get some chains, hook to the bumper, and pull it out....

        It made you wonder:  does the producer write two minutes of material, then put it on a table in the Writers' Room and direct them to, "Make this into a 30-minute episode" -- ?

It reminds me of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" when Lou Grant calls a meeting to figure out how to  make their news show better.  Someone suggests making it longer.  Lou says, "It's not doing too great, now.  That would just make it not doing too great -- stretched out."

Netflix producer to writers:

"Take this thin premise and -- stretch it to cover an hour...."

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I remember reading a Comment under a You Tube video where the person said,

"I work in television, and in truth it's just like any other job.

People don't care, and they just want to get done and go home."

That was a little disillusioning to me!

I always want every show to be great.

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♪♪   ♪♪♪♪    ♪

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school

It's a wonder I can think at all

And though my lack of education hasn't hurt  me none

I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

Give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew when I was single

And brought 'em all together for one night

I know they'd never match my sweet imagination

Everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome

Leave your boy so far from home

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama don't take my Kodachrome, mmmh

Mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Okay

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{"Kodachrome" - by Paul Simon}

-30-

don't you know that you're toxic

 

        In Diana: The Musical, Prince Charles tells Camilla in bemused tones that young Diana's favorite music group is 

Duran Duran Duran.

Camilla has to help him with the correct name....

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        Also on Netflix now is Britney vs. Spears, a documentary chronicling the infamous conservatorship whose most recently revealed feature was a listening device in her bedroom.

        Asked why people were going along with this crazy s--t, one of the music-business people said, Well, Mr. Spears is "very intimidating."

        Sounds like he just bulled his way through to basically enslave and traffic his daughter and cut himself in on her money.  Why do people allow this stuff?  Well -- it isn't hurting them, and they think it will hurt worse to fight it.  But somewhere you gotta have some ethics, and a conscience.  Jesus.

        One lawyer they have on there, sitting in a chair, his blue eyes confident in the sunlight, making a little word-salad -- what a prevaricator!  I thought my android tablet was going to explode into flames.

Someone quotes Britney as saying in the early years of her stardom, that she's afraid "any minute, her family is going to burst in and take everything."

        It seems like her worries were prescient.

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I miss you most on Sundays

 

When I watch / listen to the Prince Charles-Princess Diana relationship, in The Crown and in Diana: The Musical (both on Netflix) I involuntarily arrive at a theory that the best way to exist in a marriage to someone like Charles would be to never show true feelings.

...Which is what they say they're supposed to do anyway, as royalty, according to The Crown and Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles and other reading.  Don't show true feelings.  Don't express them in words.  Don't show your true self, don't be "individualistic" -- (Winston Churchill's favorite word with which to bombard his various and sundry targets in The Crown).

        Inexplicable side note:  somehow the actress portraying Camilla in the Diana-musical kind of resembles Tina Brown....

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When I was re-watching The French Lieutenant's Woman recently, it kept comparing to The Crown -- the traditional and beautiful interior décor.  The tea.

The décor being so similar is interesting, because French Lieutenant's Woman is set in the mid-1800s; The Crown is set in the mid-1900s.

        One hundred years apart, and yet the furnishings and decorations in homes and offices are the same, at least to my eye....

        This is partly because in The Crown we're seeing where royalty lives, and they keep tradition.  Tina Brown wrote in The Diana Chronicles that royalty are the last bastion of tradition.  While society changes around them, they are the last to change.

Also -- the tea.  Charles Smithson in The French Lieutenant wakes up in the morning and asks his servant to bring him tea.  In The Crown they are often having tea.

        They press a button and ring for tea.

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------------------------- I've noticed that the word "tea" can mean different things...

In The Crown it's a beverage.

On You Tube, young people type in, "Spill the tea!" and what they mean is, 'give us the gossip' -- 'tell us the lowdown'....

In Raymond Chandler novels of the 1940s, tea is a word for marijuana.

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All reviews of Diana: The Musical are -- like -- just attacking it like mad!

        I watch it and see a very good musical play.

        Then I look at reviews and it's this ubiquitous and savage wall of hate.

        (Am beginning to wonder if Buckingham Palace has planted all this hectically negative verbiage....)

-------------- You know, my courtiers, if you didn't want to see Prince Charles being a jerk in the Musical and an ass in The Crown, then maybe Charles shouldn't have been so

false 

and jealous 

and mean 

in the first place.

(On the other hand, Charles is shown, in more than fair fashion in my view, to have his own humanity and exotic pressures placed on him, in both Crown and Diana-Musical.  The audience can see his stress and no-win situations, too.)

        And I had to say, Diana: The Musical is great because it even had me sympathizing somewhat with Camilla Parker Bowles, and I've always seen her as a villain.

        "I Miss You Most on Sundays"...

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