We Killed Diana

Deceased author, philosopher and noted sociographer, Joseph Campbell, would be shaking his immense and wise head right about now. Best known for his writing on the power of myth, Campbell would have weighed in mightily upon frenzy over the Princess myth, and the death of Diana Fellowes -- properly called Diana, Princess of Wales.

While the Princess myth has been around for many centuries, Disney perhaps is most responsible for welding it into our sub-conscious -- and Diana fit the magnificent mythology. She even died magnificently.

Diana is buried. Still, like a blood thirsty pack of sharks, we pick at her bones. Newsstands throughout the nation sold out of its news magazines within two hours of arrival after her death ---- all had Diana covers.

Not a newsstand in the world had anything but hundreds of photographs adorning the covers of the tripe being sold there.

Some of that has died down….but that’s only until there's a "remembrance."

And then we self-righteously begin the clucking again:

• Was the legally drunk driver of the limousine guilty of her death?
• Were the photographers who pursued her guilty?

It would seem that the time-tested formula of alcohol and high speed caused Diana’s death......but not so fast.

You are also guilty.

And let the first man, woman or child who has not rubbernecked at the scene of an accident, cast the first stone at the alleged killer(s) of Diana.

As well, it was disgustingly disingenuous of celebrities (and also politicians who climbed aboard the blood stained Diana bandwagon) to proclaim the sins of the paparazzi, when those same people ordinarily lust after the produce which they claimed to despise.

Diana herself in particular went out of her way to be a public figure. The reason so many revealing details about her are known is that she went out of her way to make sure they were known.

Running from the camera? Hardly.

She had an elaborately manipulated public presence -- she made love to the lens.

At the same time, our behavior in being the voyeurs she so clearly sought is a parallel to the eternal contradiction of our culture---articulated by John Steinbeck so well in his book Cannery Row. Steinbeck said:

“The things we admire most in men, kindness and generosity,, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.”

In this parallel vein, we scream about the unjust death of a Princess, and then rush out and buy every scrap of paper can with her picture on it -- or sit glued for hours as the Diana parade goes on....and on....and on, even as we go on and on and on, clucking our tongues about who killed The Princess.

And what about this so-called Saint Diana? Are we talking about the same woman -- this same woman of incredible privilege, who committed adultery not once, but twice? And then blithely told the world about it?

She’s no more a saint than was John Fitzgerald Kennedy ---- but he, too, was taken early in life. Thus, we conveniently forget that the sheets were barely cold before Kennedy moved on to his next sexual conquest, bragging to his friends while doing so -- and doing so while leading the so-called court of Camelot.

We are all guilty -- guilty of fascination, and, in turn, feeding (by buying the produce of the vermin who create it) at the same trough -- making life difficult for professional photographers and journalists alike.

We have become the pimps of modern culture.

And the disgusting spectacle we saw after Diana died means we have descended even further into this pop-culture, TV-land, movie-script mentality --- one in which the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of this so-called Princess takes its rightful place along side tabloid TV and pandering evening news shows..

There are many other persons far more worthy of your grief.

Agreed. Diana displayed more humanity than did (or does) her royal colleagues. But that’s only because they -- in the self-perpetuated isolation of royalty -- display little humanity at all....so anything displayed by Diana would seem to be a lot............when it reality, it wasn’t even what the average citizen does in volunteering, or other charitable activities -- and at far less actual cost to her, than to you.

Still -- we have become the pimps of modern culture.

We, in fact, and now that most of us are removed from the pain and angst of daily survival, suffer from the emptiness of too much time and too much money -- becoming, therefore, bored, seeking respite in a princesses who ‘dared’ to show us she had -- what was in reality a carefully orchestrated “heart.”

In the process of easing the boredom of too much time and too much money, culture comes to us now in ever increasingly Madonna-like packaging.

Most of us are no longer participants; we are only spectators of culture­ We read about and see on television our celebrities and, vicariously, feel fear, courage, lust, or the wonder of a child.

We, in fact, all are guilty of killing the healing powers of culture, along with contributing to the death of Diana

You might almost say that culture has begun to protect us from ourselves; becoming a surrogate for us acting with freedom and spontaneity­

Modern man is not spontaneous; we simply regurgitate; hence the sense of meaningless existence --- hence the David Koreshs’ and Heavens Gates of the world filling that void for some -- hence the worshiping of Saint Diana, when a true Saint, Mother Theresa, quickly become a footnote in history, to be covered over by the very dust in the streets down which she trod as she sought to relieve the suffering of others.

We are all Diana’s murderers -- killers of our collective soul in the process..