Hey everyone, it's Anne. I wanted to let you know about a couple of episodes that we're working on that we need your questions for. One is continuing our romance series and we're talking to the owners of an all romance bookstore. It's a very good one. The performance, the reality of tradwives and we're going to be talking with a guest host who used to be a tradwife and got out. So what do you want to know about her experiences and how her thinking has changed.
And of course, we always want your ideas for episodes. If you're wondering about the backstory to some weird piece of culture you're seeing head over to culturestudypod.substac.com and let us know. Okay, onto the show.
Oh, I was such a distinct like core memory, which was that my mother's mother, Joan, was born in England. She was a she was a war bride. And we watched the Queen's address on Christmas day. Every year it was like we went over to Nana's house for Christmas dinner and the Queen's address to the nation. Always went on and we had to sit quietly and listen. It was a really significant part of her celebration of Christmas. Do you remember what you felt about like what the Queen looked like?
I mean, I think that I associated her very strongly with my Nana. Yes. Similar age, similar sort of comportment. The only person I knew who had the Queen's haircut was my grandma and other grandmas. Yeah, that's the grandma haircut. Sort of like a set. It's a set with a little wave. This is the culturestudy podcast and I'm Ann Helen Peterson. I'm Hannah McGregor. I'm an associate professor of publishing Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and the cohost of Material Girls, the podcast.
I'm Marcel Cosmon. I'm an instructor in English and film studies at the University of Alberta. And I'm the other cohost of the podcast Material Girls. Marcel, what's your first memory of the royals? I couldn't tell you why this is the case, but it had to do with Prince Charles and Princess Diana's divorce. And it had to do with a made for TV unauthorized biography because those were really big at the time.
It was an unauthorized biography and the clip, it was an ad. I don't even think I watched the actual unauthorized biography. I think this is just an ad that I saw. And it was a moment where the actor playing Diana said, did you have a love me? And then the actor playing Charles said, no. And I just remember being really haunted by this, by this fact. So this is one of the one of my, my formative memories of the royals is that Charles never loved Diana.
I have to one is I used to love to ogle the cover of People magazine when I was waiting in line with the grocery store. I still do that. I'm never bought it. I know the same. But there were pictures of Diana, obviously, but then also of the little of the boys. And I was like, wow, Princess.
But the more vivid one, I think, kind of hazy on details here. But basically, after the revelations of Charles and Camilla's affair came out and all of like their love letters to one another, right? And there's now infamous. Like, I would like to beat your tampon comment. And that was satirized on SNL or an SNL type show. It was definitely SNL.
And so I have a memory of some actor basically pretending to be Charles and saying, like, I would like to be your tampon. And you know, teen me was like, what is happening? Like, it's so many levels. I think Cam, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if this will, if this rings any bells, but I feel like in that clip, he has transformed himself into a tampon. Right?
So there's this like bad CGI, this like little actor head and then a tampon is like, but now I'm a tampon. I'm ready to be inside forever. And she's like, no. Children show kind of transformation. Yeah. So Marcella and I were speaking with a couple of our English friends in preparation for this episode. And we were talking about how one of the great challenges of taking Charles seriously as the king of Canada, which is a wild phrase, is that we know about that one time you told this.
And we were just stressing which he was her tampon. We haven't forgotten Charles. Yeah, just really takes the romance out of the whole thing. So this episode is about the way that we talk about the royals. It's not just about the royals, but like the discourse, which I know, you know, we all love that we all love analyzing the discourse. So what do you think is going on? Do we talk about the royals differently than we talk about other celebrities?
I think so. Wait, let me qualify that. I think sometimes yes. And sometimes no. I think that depends on the royal, I think. Yeah. I think that we are willing to talk a lot of trash about the royals up to a certain point. And then it, and then it becomes inappropriate. I suspect that that's at least for Canadians, because we're still in a colonial mindset. Oh, it's so interesting. You think that like there's like, oh, well, that's it. We've taken this too far. I do. Yeah. Hannah.
I agree. I think that there is a sense both that they are more fully fair game than other kinds of celebrities because of their function, which is as like heads of state and representations of the British Empire. So there's this idea that's like your whole purpose is to be a public figure. And literally like taxpayer dollars like repay your salary. So, so there's the sense of ownership, but then hand in hand with that sense of ownership is also a sense of like you represent something.
Yeah, you know, for better or for worse, you represent they continue to represent the British Empire and all of the incredibly messy historical baggage that goes hand in hand with the British Empire and are various ongoing relationships to it. But I also want to ask like who's the we there? Because I think Americans talk about the roles really differently. I think those of us in commonwealth nations like Canada and Australia talk about the world really differently.
And I think in the UK, it is a whole different media landscape. Totally. And we got so many questions that kind of span those different subjectivities. Sorry, I'm talking to academics. I just don't know where the subjectivities are.
But like some people who are from different commonwealth countries, some people who are like Brits living in the US, like and we tried to pick representative ones. I do think that more than any other time in the past, we are much more knowledgeable of the ways that those conversations are different. I think that pre exposure to the internet, there was less awareness of how the conversation about even someone like Princess Diana was different in the United States and in the UK.
My take from the American perspective, and I think I see this to some extent in commonwealth countries and in the UK, is this very interesting dichotomy between for a lot of people, not all. They should not exist. And yet I want to talk about them, right? Like wanting both of those things to be true. And then I think that anyone who marries into the royal family is available for more salacious gossip than people who are part of the quote unquote bloodline.
I think that it's not even as simple as whether they're male or female, right? Because I don't think people gossiped about Margaret. I don't think they gossiped about the Queen. They didn't do it the same way as they gossip about Diana or Fergie, right? Like all of these different generations of women who have married in. So that's my top level takes. We have, okay, we got to get into the questions because they're going to lead us in so many different directions.
The first one comes from Daniela, and it's going to set up the whole episode. When I read how we talk about the royals today, my brain immediately felt in the British royals. And then I wondered why? Why is the British monarchy so dominant in that discourse? Historical reasons? The British tabloid press? Princess Diana? The fact that they speak English?
I'm from a country that does not have a monarchy, but I'm living in a country that does. And I'm curious how we ended up in a place where the world seems to be extremely invested in the British royals, but not so much in, say, the Spanish ones or those of other countries outside maybe Netflix romcoms. So he's like the prince of what is it? Genovia?
Yeah, yeah, which is also like a plant company. So I have a simple answer, but I'm curious to hear your answers about this in terms of why the British royal family rules the discourse.
I mean, I look at these possibilities that Daniela has offered and I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, and more, you know, again, I'm going to hammer this point to an annoying degree, but we really can't underestimate the ongoing influence of the British Empire, which was the biggest empire in the history, in human history, and wasn't dissolved until the end of World War II, which I know seems very long ago,
but in the scale of human history is extremely recent. And so, you know, in Canada, when did we repatriate our Constitution? Like in the 1980s? It was the 80s, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so this is like the empire's fingers are still deeply embedded in like the global landscape. So like, that's part of it. It's just like, they are still the monarchs of way more countries than most other royal families are.
Like, they are on our currency. I know that like when I was a kid, I was like, wait a second. We, you know, we went to like, I don't know, Victoria. And I was like, why is the Queen of England on the Canadian doll?
And they just did not because she was also the Queen of Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Thinking about this question from the perspective of say somebody who studies popular culture and literature, our, at least in the US and Canada, our literary traditions come out of and emerge from a British literary tradition.
And so I think it makes sense that if our literary ancestors always take for granted the existence of royalty, whether they like it or not, I think it makes sense then that the literature that these countries develop in some way or the popular culture or literary culture, whatever in some way is also responding or or taking for granted that same fact.
I guess fact with big scare quotes, the British Royals exist. And you know, to some degree, you take over the world and impose your literature on them. It makes sense then that they continue to have opinions about you. Maybe. I think from the American context, I think part of it is a like a fetishism of absence, right? Like we defined ourselves as a country that did not have a modern. Like that's so crucial to the individualism that runs through the American ethos.
But then also once like the glamour and the subjugation of empire, right? Like America loves empire, but never got to have the sort of like the figurehead of empire in quite the same way that these countries with with Kings and Queens do. And I think that the UK just happens to be at once like the doppelganger in some ways of the US like we define ourselves against them, but we're also very similar and sprung from the loins of etc, etc.
And then we speak the same language, right? So it's a much more accessible monarchy as it were. Yeah, the other thing I think when I'm thinking about comparing the British Royals to other royal families is that I do think the British Royals have a relationship to their national press that is distinct from the relationship that other royal families have to their press.
Which is that like the British tabloid media ecosystem and the British royal family are in deeply intertwined relationship in which the royal family is constantly trying to deliberately manage their public image through their strategic drip of information to the tabloids, which then means that it generates the sort of
landscape of media about the royals that people are hungry for which in turn fuels the tabloids to get ever more aggressive in seeking out that information whether or not it's what the royal family wants to get out. Even though we do have access to a lot of that media now via the internet and its various global village-esque impacts.
I still think it's hard for those of us outside of the UK to like really wrap our heads around the degree to which this homogenous British tabloid culture drives the news cycle. Right. And even like having a tabloid press, we used to have a tabloid press in the United States and I'm guessing you had one in Canada. I actually don't know. Yeah, we have the suns, the various suns. Do we know if still we still have some suns.
I think the tabloid suns are mostly gone and the legitimate suns stuck around but are. Oh, that's a fun, that's a fun home. But I definitely have a very vivid memory of a friend of mine died in high school in a freak accident. She was struck by lightning and most of us found out because the Ottawa sun, which was a rag, printed. They were ambulance chasers and they printed her high school yearbook photo with a big picture of a lightning bolt superimposed across it.
And that was how almost everybody, including many of her family members, found out that it happened. Yeah, you know, that stuff still absolutely exists like all over Facebook. It's just not in like print publications anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's such a good point about that particular relationship between the press. Like it's a very symbiotic relationship and it feeds itself and then trickles down to the way that the world consumes the royals too.
And I don't think you have that with the Scandinavian royalty. Right? For all kinds of reasons, no. For all kinds of reason. It's funny. I just, it's just never occurred to me that other royal families don't have that same kind of relationship. But it's true. Once you draw out the threads, that's probably why we don't, we just don't know nearly as much about this. I don't know what the names of any of the Scandinavian royals, for example.
All right. So our next question is about the level of detail that goes into this kind of discourse. Let's hear from Shannon. When all the hubbub around Kate's disappearance bubbled up on the internet royal fashion reporter Elizabeth Holmes told everyone to chill and not jump to conclusions. I wanted to remind her that she is the one who taught us to dissect every outfit and every accessories. Of course, we're going to read into every botched move from the palace.
How can we balance the obsession with sourcing every little thing with the need to give celebrities and I guess royals to some privacy. I feel torn about this with Taylor Swift as well. I want to see what she's wearing in every pap shot, but I also don't want her to be papped. All right. So first we should establish. Do you guys know who Elizabeth Holmes is? Vagely. I know vaguely. I really thought you were going to ask if we knew Taylor Swift was.
Elizabeth Holmes is a reporter. She used to be a political reporter actually, but she has found a real niche for herself. She started doing Instagram stories. She was actually the first person that got me to use stories on Instagram before that I was like, I'm not going to stories. I'm like too old or whatever. But she would do take a picture of usually it was Kate and she would put an Instagram story and say so many thoughts.
And then she would add all of these little details in the story around the outfit around the photo. And so analyzing the aesthetics of the outfit about what it's communicating in all these different ways. And she has gained a huge following for it. And now is somewhat imbricated within at least the US press core for the royals. She has been invited to things.
And so that's sort of thing. So how do we think about this detail? How do we even think about the idea of the right to privacy? We are a royal. How has that changed? I mean, I want to echo back to what Hannah said initially about the royals being public figures. That is that's their job to be public representations of countries, ideas, things.
And so because of that, I think for us commoners, if you will, I think it's hard for us to tell the difference between when these public figures are public in public and when they are private in public. And I think I don't know that we have been well educated in when we should or how we might tell the difference between those two things.
I think there's maybe some assumptions about common sense, you know, when they're wearing sunglasses and sweats and walking with trying to cover their faces with their hands, that might indicate that they would like to be private. But whether they want to be private and whether they get to be private are two, those are two different questions. And I certainly don't have an answer. I think it's a, I just really wanted the opportunity to say private in public and public in public.
That's what I want. Hannah, what do you think? You know, I think that it is useful to distinguish between the way that public figures, including celebrities, including royals, are deliberately performing their identities in public through intentional dressing, intentional visiting or not visiting of particular sites or particular individuals.
Like this is a deliberately constructed text and to close read that deliberately constructed text is actually just doing the thing they're asking us to do anyway. You're doing their homework. We're just doing the thing. Like you want us to read Kate Middleton. You're being very intentional about it. Where I think, you know, we get into gray zones. I mean, I think that there's just some very clear, like, probably you shouldn't chase people down in a car and cause a deadly car crash.
Like probably that's really crossing a line. And probably you shouldn't like spy on people's children. Like there's lots of things that are, I think, are we can pretty clearly say like this is immoral behavior. Trying to get topless photos, for example. Yeah, when people are obviously trying to be in a private space. Like the idea that as a public figure, you never get to stop being in public. I think is immoral, I think it's unethical.
And different countries have legislated this, right? Like have made it a lot easier for celebrities to create that sort of privacy. And not by like saying like, you cannot photograph a celebrity when they're on the street. It's more like you can't get within this many feet and use your telephoto lens or your drone to take pictures of people in a bikini in their private space. Right.
I think that one thing to keep in mind with someone like Taylor Swift, like, I remember when the, she released like a YouTube short, like a competition to take talk around the release of tortured poets. That was all of this footage of her, like having an amazing time essentially on vacation, all these different places.
And no one had seen her in these places, right? Like she, there is at a certain level when you are the sort of person who is pursued to the extent that these people are and who has the means that they have, you can very easily avoid the paparazzi when you want to. There are some instances in which that is not the case, but most of the time you can do that. And so I think the tricky territory comes when like they're like, I want to be public, but I also want to be private, right?
Like I want to go out to this club, but I also want to be private in a public space. Or I want to be public. Unless it turns out that people are going to interpret my publicness in a way I don't enjoy at which point I'm going to retroactively say actually I wanted to be private the whole time. Where I think we get into a really tricky situation, which is what happened with Kate recently is that Kate clearly wanted to be private about having cancer.
And the absence of a public performance of what was going on her disappearance from the public sphere led to this sort of like escalation, the vacuum that then people filled in with conspiracy theories, right? The tabloid press filled in with conspiracy theories. And I thus continue to find it deeply baffling whose idea it was to release the terrible Photoshopped Mother's Day picture. Okay. Can we talk about this picture for a minute? Yeah, because I saw that photo and I was like, okay.
And then I saw the internet blow up about it being Photoshopped. I was like, I can't. I couldn't tell. I wasn't examining it. And then, you know, people do the thing where they like they blow it up, they circle all the things. I'm like, I just like people were questioning it in part because she had created through the absence of communication. I don't want to say invited invited is the wrong word, but like that vacuum made it so people were ready to speculate.
They were ready to take out the microscope and be like, yeah, this is Photoshop. The other thing too is that like their lifestyle is funded by taxpayer dollars, right? Like this is the hard thing to reconcile. And so it's different when I don't know like the president of the United States kids, right? Or the prime minister's kids. Remember when Melania disappeared for how long was that? Was that one month? Was it three months?
I don't even remember. And people were like, free Melania. All of a sudden people were like, oh, this woman isn't horrible. We are concerned about her. The degree to which the Trump family didn't care about how people were reacting versus the degree to which the British royals were in constant damage control. I think I think says, I'm not sure what it says. I feel like it says a lot about some kind of sense of responsibility. I don't know.
But like an unspoken sense of responsibility. Like it's improper. It's like ghosts that people should be curious. Yeah. When you have created the circumstances for this curiosity to flourish. Yeah. And yes, maybe like in a different era people would be like, oh, we just haven't heard from her in a bit. She'd be quiet. Right? But like that is not. People used to walk away from months all the time. I think that's true. Eath are them while they give birth. They'd slowly bite.
Melania just said in the chat like, well, she did say something. She said that like she had a, there was a medical condition. She had surgery that she wasn't going to participate in public duties for a while. And that's true. Right? But it was so, I say this word, weird, vague. It was so vague that vague. It was so impercise. I don't know. It was so imprecise that it like, and also it happened so quickly that it's a sort of thing like when people call in second.
Like if you told your boss that like, I'm having women's issues or something. I don't know. Like just what kind of surgery would take you out for that long? It gave just enough information to invite speculation, but not enough information to shut down speculation. Does that make sense? Yeah. And then the other thing too is like, you cannot be a royal. A family can choose not to be royals. Yeah, you can't be a royal. We live in that reality now.
And we have it very vividly demonstrated in this specific royal family. So I think that that is hard. I'm skeptical of whether or not they can choose not to be royal. Like Harry can choose not. Harry and Megan can choose not to be royal because he's the spare. He wrote a book about it. But I think the machine of the wincers, the British royal family, churns very fiercely. I think it would be very different for them to make that choice.
I think while Kate might want to choose that, I'm not convinced that William wants to choose that. I'm not convinced that Kate wants to choose that. Oh, I'm not convinced that. Definitely don't think she wants to be the queen. Yeah, for sure. For sure. She's got that energy. She really does. I also feel... I also feel... Imperial energy. Becoming a royal energy. I also think that our media landscape is a hypervisual landscape. And so people are not satisfied with the statement.
Yes. And we see this in the way that celebrity is communicated across all kinds of different forms of celebrity. But like it is a hypervisual media cycle. And so even saying, like, I will be stepping out of the public eye for a while, like that doesn't mean anything to us until we stop seeing you all of a sudden. And then we're like, why can't I see you? I hate to see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are your outfits for me to analyze?
Yeah. Okay. So we're going to talk now a little bit about the way that Americans talk about the British royal family, which will give us some opportunity to talk about how Canadians talk about the British royal family. This question comes from Susanna. I live in London and I hear far more about the royal family from friends back in the States than I do from people here.
When the queen died, of course, people queued to see her here, seemed like mostly older conservatives from other parts of the UK. But no one my age, I'm 30, really talked about it that much past the initial headlines. Meanwhile, tons of people from the US asked me all about it and were so invested in what was happening. What is this American fascination with the royal family? Also, from an American perspective, I've always assumed liberal people generally like Megan.
Of course, there's controversy over her, but if you're not a monarchist or conservative, I thought people mostly sided with her on the mistreatment she's talked about. I was surprised to find that my young liberal British friends here still really, really dislike her. Even if they see her points, they hate the way she's broadcasting it all over and seem to just dislike her as a person.
What do you think this is about? Is it some form of protection over the crown, trickling down for more traditional British parents? All right, so, as Canadians, what was the conversation like in your world when the queen died? My corner of the world, the queen's death led to significant increase in conversations about getting rid of the monarchy. That Queen Elizabeth II was an institution.
She had been queen for the entirety of my life, but also the entirety of my parent's life, and also a significant chunk of my grandparents life. It was like, given to the monarchy, she's just a Nana. It's fine. And then all of a sudden, it was like, you have a king now, and we were like, no, we don't. No, that's weird. And it's the Tampa boy. No, no, no, no, no, no, he's not going on our money. On our money?
No, no, no. So what I saw was the rise of significant conversations about like, wait, okay, how would we actually do this? Like, we can do it, right? How would we do it? Can we do it? We should do it. We don't have a king. I wonder Hannah, if it's because we, all of a sudden, were face to face with needing to make change in relation to the monarchy anyway, right? So it's like, well, we got to change the money. We got to change the documents.
We got to change, we got to get out of the habit of saying her majesty and start saying his majesty. And I think the way that I described it to a friend was I felt like Queen Elizabeth II, QE II was like wallpaper that I had gotten so used to seeing. I forgot that there was a wall there. It like all of a sudden like, wait, you're changing the wallpaper. Couldn't, can we move the wall? This room is quite small. Is it load bearing? Oh, that's the difference.
That wall is full of black mold. It turns out. Wow, we should, we should really get rid of this wall. Rotten at the core. It's not, it's not. It's not really worth it, is it? In the US, I think that the curiosity that this question asked her was receiving is like classic US stereotype of what British people are, which is like, oh, they're all on like red phone booths, like listening to Elton Johnson candle in the wind. You know, like just like that everyone is a monarchist, right?
That like they care in some way. And that's so obviously not the case, but relies on a stereotype of how people in other places relate to the monarchy and the Queen. There's this whole second question of a Meghan, which... My son, I love just shaking her head so hard. Just, I'll just add that on there. Just like the whole, like there's, but it's real.
For people who don't know, there is a real difference in the way that people in the UK talk about Meghan in particular, and then people outside of the UK. And I think a lot of it has to do with the way that she talks, right? The way that she gossips and the way that she has criticized the monarchy specifically. So get into this question. I think that we can add in this question from Jennifer first and then talk about it all.
I'm really fascinated by how the Kate versus Meghan discourse, at least in the US, has become a proxy for political affiliations, especially because they are both representatives of wealth, power, and imperialism. Do you all have any insight on this and why this is the case? I think racism is the obvious answer, but is there more going on here? There is more going on here, but also there's racism. For sure, those are the things.
I feel like I might have the least to say, because it genuinely surprises me to learn that Meghan is a gossip. I did not know. However, that being said, that doesn't change what I think is maybe an important thing to keep in mind. I think that the news media, not just news media, I think that media in general tells us how to feel about the stories that it's giving us, right? The framing that it uses tells us whether we should be sympathetic to someone or sympathetic to a group of people.
We see this with all kinds of things. I think that my immediate go-to is always that the concept of a terrorist wasn't a racialized concept until 9-11, right? Before that, you had white people who were terrorists all the time. Afterwards, it was really hard to label someone who caused widespread acts of terror until, unless, of course, they were a racialized person.
So, my guess is that even for liberal-minded people who might otherwise be inclined to sympathize with a black woman who experiences a tremendous amount of class and race-based hatred from her in-laws, I think the way that the media represents her and represents her experiences is largely to blame for informing us how we should be thinking about her. Because none of us know her. We don't know anything about her.
I will say, when I say she's a gossip, I mean it in a positive way, as in she spoke truth to the machinations of what it goes on within the royal family. And they see that as being a gossip. Gotcha. And that you told our secrets, instead of staying silent and bearing it cheap, you let the winters decide what story will be told and she went by herself, classic American, was like, obviously I'm going to tell my story.
And that was seen as an outrage because that's not what you do when you marry into this family. I mean, I really think obviously we cannot underestimate misogyny war here. Of course. You know, the very particular valences of anti-black racism as they're applied to black women. Also, I think we can't underestimate how much a lot of British people hate Americans. I don't know if you guys know this, but kind of almost everybody in the world hate you. Wow.
I'm really sorry. You know, not as individuals, but as a nation, right? You know, Canadians so Canadian flags on our backpacks when we travel so that people won't mistake us for Americans because we're treated better when they know that we're not Americans. So that is that's undeniably part of the like, I'm surprised when liberal British people still don't like her. How much of it do you think that she is also like a celebrity, right? And there's something gauche about being a celebrity.
Like she was on a TV show. She was a supporting character on a TV show. Yeah. New money on Marcel's point about like the media teaches us how to interpret the stories that we're being given. And like most people are not close reading the media that they're consuming. There's this great piece by Ellie Hall in Buzzfeed news. Do you know this piece? Yeah. It's one of the biggest traffic. Yeah. Yeah.
A lot of time from this week. Like side by side headlines comparing how Megan Markle's talked about and how Kate Middleton has talked about. And it is like I really, if you if you are one of the people who has already gotten clicked on this really do because it is breathtaking. And it's a level of propaganda that I think unless you are deliberately critically engaging with it. It's like propaganda is effective. It shapes public opinion.
Well, and we should say clearly like there's a reason why they would want to make people dislike Megan, right? It's because it discredits what she says about the royal family. That's actually totally like it's so transparent. Yeah. And yes, Marcel, were you going to add something there? I was going to ask if the two of you think I don't know. I was thinking about whether or not you know the Madonna whore dichotomy that women in public are allowed to have, right?
You're either allowed to be this like, virginal, caring, loving mother or you are a whore. I don't know how else to describe whores. A sexualized. Yeah. Yeah. You're a little bit of a tailor. Sure. Yeah. Exactly. And so part of me also wonders if if we already have a Kate Middleton, if Megan never had a shot, right? Like because Kate Middleton has to be untouchable because she's going to be the future queen, the future mother of the nation.
If unless Megan is a is a I just feel like even if she were a perfect match, I remember when people talked about like people were shipping Pippa Middleton and Prince Harry and like poor Pippa, like that would have been a nightmare for her. No, and Pippa would have been framed as like in some way, you know, you have to have that differentiation in order to construct the center, right? Which is, which is Kate as like that unpeachable, yes, feminine ideal. That's right. Yeah.
The one other thing that I want to name is class, which I think you know is entangled with anti-American sentiment in the UK, but also anti-Canadian sentiment. You know, I lived in the UK for a year during my undergraduate and people really tried to get me to feel bad about my class standing.
And it didn't work very effectively because class politics manifests so differently outside of the UK that when people were like, you're from the commonwealth, I was like, this isn't, this isn't going to do it. You're not, you're missing the mark here. But, but I do think like Megan is not, does not come from landed aristocracy. She does not come from wealth. She was not educated in elite institutions. Like, she is the wrong class for the royal family.
And and Kate's not either. She's very like her, her background is very like wealthy middle class. But she can play the part.
And she's aspirationally moving upwards toward a British understanding of aristocracy, which I think again, like similar to people calling me a colonial and me being like, like, I can't picture Megan being particularly invested in class ascendance on the terms of very of whiteness and of like a wildly antiquated class system that I think is quite hard to read from the outside. Yeah. Okay. Next question. This comes from Simran.
I someone who grew up in India, a former British colony, the fact that the royal family is given so much importance bothers me. In my mind, they serve no purpose and are nothing but a reminder of the crimes perpetuated by their bloodline. Why do so many people from former colonies have such a colonial hangover and love everything British, especially the royals? I love the phrase colonial hangover. What do you think here?
Oh man. Stockholm syndrome. It's such a, it's a really, really good question. And like Hannah was describing earlier, like, I think about my grandma's fondness for the royals and how she like really enjoys, you know, she'll buy those hello Canada magazines that will, you know, imagine what the new royal babies nursery will look like. And I don't know why.
Do you think it's nostalgia for like a time where order seemed more firm in some capacity is that the colonial hangover for people who had some, some component of power? Definitely an element of nostalgia. I remember, um, here's a classic Hannah story. I remember getting in a fight with my yoga instructor. Um, because I was at yoga class and it was the day after K and Williams wedding.
And everybody was talking about like, did you, you know, wake up at 3 a.m. to watch the wedding and so many people had and they were also excited and we're talking about it. And she asked if I had and I was like, no, absolutely not. I have absolutely no interest in watching the monarchy get married. And I asked, I was like, why are you interested? Like, why do you think so many people are interested? And she said, well, I think it reminds us of a simpler time.
And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? Like what? And this was a white person that I was talking to. A white yoga instructor. A white yoga instructor. So a lot happened in rich text. But like that fetishization of monarchy as a signifier for a time particularly for white people for a time when whiteness could be unthinkingly held in a place of dominance.
And gender roles were so heavy-handedly ascribed went, right? Like it's this sort of like, yeah, there's nostalgia. I think it's a deeply conservative nostalgia as many nostalgia are. And you know, I think that I'm always suspicious when people are like, oh, it just makes me feel nice. I'm like, why? That's to get your pleasure. Truly. Marissa, what do you say? Well, and I think too, I don't know. Tell me if you agree, Hannah. That time never actually exists. Right?
Like, it's a fairy tale. So when people say it reminds me of a simpler time, they really mean it reminds them of the shire before Frodo is handed the ring. Like it reminds them of a time that isn't, isn't real. It's fictional. And it sounds nice because all all of the complications of class and imperialism and racism and sexism are conveniently left out of the narrative.
Now, I think when we're talking about India, the conversation is more complex. And I do think that there is something that happens to historically colonized nations, particularly ones that were colonized for very long stretches of their history, where part of the violence of imperialism is the deliberate stripping away of your own cultures and histories.
It's done intentionally. It's sort of, you know, these patterns of education in British history, education in British literature, the ownership of cultural institutions, like, and this leaves such a lasting effect on countries, even countries that are at this point decolonized. And we can all see this, right?
This sort of global hangover of colonization. And I think the royals are like something to put in that void. It's like, well, my history was in many ways destroyed. And so if I'm going to claim a history or feel a kind of nostalgic fondness for something that came in the past, like, well, that's what I've got.
And, you know, it isn't. There's obviously many other more complex histories. But I do think that this colonial hangover is just that that, like, colonization is a kind of cultural poisoning. And that it has these really, like, it takes a really long time to get it out of your system. And if you ever can, I don't think we, we yet know if it's a damage that can be repaired.
So I'm going to summarize our next question because I think you teed it up in a really interesting way. So this comes from someone who's from Cyprus and now lives in Australia. And really just wants to know, like, what's going to be the thing that breaks the Commonwealth? I mean, like, this was a great opportunity, right? Like, sometimes people call it like a plastic hour, right? A moment when change is really possible.
Is it actually going to happen? Like, do we have to wait for Charles to die? Like, what's going to break up this imaginary empire hangover? And I feel like people are asking that same question about the American empire right now. I feel like people all over the world in marginalized social positions are asking that question about living under late capitalism. Yeah.
It feels very much like change is imminent. And has it already started? And we just haven't, we just haven't seen, I don't even know what the metaphor is that I'm looking for here. We haven't seen the lion's share of it to use a very British metaphor. I think folks all over the world are asking when that change is going to happen, whether it's about late capitalism or the monarchy or climate change.
I think they're all, like, all of these things are really interwoven. And it feels like, okay, when is the tide going to turn? Like, when are we, like, I keep thinking that we're, like, we reached the, the nadir. And somehow, like, we can only go up, but I don't think we have yet. We have not hit it yet.
I still falling. My God. I, so I love, I love myself's answer because it's so beautiful and capacious and speaks to the way that the monarchy lies within a sort of larger global oppressive system. Whereas last night I read several articles about constitutional law. I was like, say no, actually, actually, no, yeah, actually don't know. So I looked the monarchy, the head of state in Britain being the head of state in Canada is in trying to our constitution.
And in Canada, constitutional amendments have to be made via unanimous vote. So all 10 provinces and the upper and lower houses have to all agree. And it is very, very difficult to get unanimous consent for constitutional amendments, particularly because as soon as the constitution is being opened up to amend everybody then wants to like get in there and add more amendments. The other route that can be taken is to do a popular referendum.
And so if a majority voted, if there was a national referendum and a majority voted, we could vote out the monarchy. What that would require is a federal government that was invested enough in getting rid of the monarchy that they would put the time and energy and communication energy into developing a coherent public opinion behind getting rid of the monarchy.
And that is really, I mean, it's going to be tricky in every commonwealth nation. The trickiness in Canada mostly has to do with the fact that all of the indigenous treaties are technically treaties between the indigenous nation and the crown. They're not treaties with the federal government, the federal government. And then I can just see if government just being like various actors trying to renegotiate poor. Right.
And then the other real complication is the fact that so in most provinces, the opinion level is like around 50, 50, like, most of them sort of tip towards a majority wanting to get rid of it in the prairies, it tips towards a majority not wanting to get rid of the monarchy. But by very close margins, there's one province where there is a massive like 80% want to get rid of the monarchy and Marcel, what province is that? Is it Quebec? It's Quebec.
And there is a huge in the rest of the country. There is significant ongoing anti-Francaphone sentiment. And so the fact that Quebec is like absolutely get those British royals out of here is also going to massively complicated as a conversation. Yeah. You know, you know what would be just as easy is if we have a national referendum in the United States on late stage capitalism. Yeah. How do you think that would go?
I just, you know, I'm part of me is like, I think maybe it's not the fight that the left is most invested in fighting right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it doesn't feel as urgent as a lot of other things. Like are we going to get rid of the monarchy? What if we actually just decolonized instead? Right. Like, what if we gave all the land back? Like, then then we're not even having a conversation about the money.
What if we just stop like denying residential school survivors, right? Like, great. You know, that makes sense to me. And it's a hard answer, right? Because it's like, oh, well, we should, we should just do this, right? But if it's an that arduous of a process, and there are other things that we could be doing that would also change the way that we live in the world. Like symbols are so important in that capacity, but also, you have to prioritize it now.
To your point and about climate change, if we think about the fact that climate change is extremely pressing an urgent, and then we remember that Charles is pro environmentalism, then all of a sudden, instead of being a huge pain in the ass, he's a potential symbol for change towards a greater future. Yeah. And it's annoying. Plus, he's de-stigmatizing tamp on you. That's a great place for us to end. Thank you both so much for joining me for this wide-ranging conversation.
If people want to find more of you on the internet, where can they find you? Well, all of our various podcasts and shows are available at owichplees.ca and on Instagram at owichplees. Yeah. And if you're thrilled with this conversation and you want to hear a slightly more unhinged variation of this kind of conversation, you can also check us out at patreon.com slash owichplees, where we have a whole bunch of wild and goofy content. Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.
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