Friday, July 13, 2007
The Queen and the Snapper 2
So Betty didn't flounce. There is, however, expected to be some serious flouncing at the BBC today. Who complained first I wonder? Annie Leibovitz or the Palace? Still the snapper-monarch dialogue remains intact. The Queen's response to the request to take her crown off to look less dressy at first puzzled me. "Less dressy? What do you think this is?" Did she means the vast concoction of velvet, silk and gold thread she was wearing wasn't dressy, that she was, in fact, dressed down for the occasion? No, of course she meant taking the crown off wouldn't do much to reduce the overwhelming dressiness of the entire ensemble. Well, quite. Perhaps Annie was taking the first tentative step to getting her to strip completely - the Queen as nature intended. Anyway the whole thing was worth it for that shot of Betty striding down a corridor - TO the shoot not FROM - looking like a cross Womble accompanied by a woman in a business suit and a nose-up, Ruritanian flunky holding the end of her robe. As Daphne once said in Frasier, you can't buy memories like that.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
And I vote for the glaring monarch photo as priceless, second only to the look she gave Bush a few weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteSince you helped to propagate the story, Bryan, I think you should issue a formal apology to Her Majesty, to your trusting readers and, just to be on the safe side, to the city of Liverpool.
ReplyDeleteI worry about your sleeping, Ronin. And, Brit, of course, like Samuel Beckett,, I regret everything.
ReplyDeleteWell call me a starry-eyed monarchist but I think Her Maj was asking a pretty profound question there, to do with what the crown, robes etc embody and signify, which is something a whole lot bigger than her, let alone the occasion and the American snapper. What do you think this is? indeed. What we think this is is the big, perhaps the only question.
ReplyDeleteNige, you took the words right out of my head, (read them and put down your own paraphrasing). Okay, someone who has two birthdays? nonsense! these are two people occupying the same space simultaneously: the who and the what. The what was to be photographed not the who, and who could blame her, what!
ReplyDeletei wrote HM a letter when i was 4, asking about her dogs. She wrote back, saying something like "fuck off you serf, get back to hoeing out the mud." Excellent woman.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it time we had a shot of her holding a bloodied sword over the prostrate form of some foreign leader, preferably Bush, since that, after all, is what monarchy is all about?
Henry V wouldn't have kowtowed to anyone, bigod. He would have stuck his thumbs in his belt and said, "look here, Bush, you've got all these planes & bombs, but our chaps have been spending their Sunday lunchtimes bowling and learning how to shoot down stealth bombers with the good English longbow, so get out of it, clear orf before I get the dogs on you."
Then we would all cheer and go back to our morris dancing.
He also banned foopball. that's when monarchs knew a thing or two. now it's a blessing if they know more than two things - that's why they only ever are required to sign their first name. it's difficult being king.
ReplyDeleteYes he baned foopball chiz chiz chiz.
ReplyDeleteTakes me back to my schooldays...
ReplyDeleteAnd I worry about yours, Bryan! How is the insomnia these days, BTW? Mine definitely comes and goes at its own pace. Would that it went for the moment.
ReplyDeleteWhat a rotten lot you are. Just think, since 1952 her progression from youthful symbol of a new Elizabethan age to the nation's grandmother has been marked by regular meetings with, and advice taken from: a decrepit, once great, leader (Churchill), a diplomatic spiv (Eden), the wielder of a very long knife (McMillan - I bet Harold didn't tell her "You've never had it so good"), a skeletal stop-gap (Douglas Home), a manipulator par excellence (Wilson),a sailor par excellence (Heath),a delusional Jimmy ("Crisis, what crisis?" Callaghan), a woman who wanted tenancy of Buck Palace (Thatcher), a jammy sod if ever there was one (Major), and the man whose commitment to the transatlantic alliance was akin to that displayed by the boy who stood on a burning deck just before his ship was blown to bits. Add to that a dysfunctional family, 20 million handshakes, forced meetings with all manner of dodgy World leaders, 2000 garden parties, the BBC, Spitting Image, and the daily nightmare as she contemplates her successor. Is it any bloody wonder she's getting tetchy ?
ReplyDeleteNot bad at the moment, Ronin, not bad at all. Thanks for asking.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Liebowitz didn't answer with "who do you think I am?" The shoot is all about Annie, and the photo wouldn't be an 'Annie' if she didn't get HRH to do something she would not do for any other photographer. It was an alpha female face-off, and thankfully the Queen won. The only thing worse than an uppity female royal thinking that she rules half the world is an uppity female photographer who thinks she rules half the world.
ReplyDelete