Less Symbolism, Please
We have more news than ever, but none of it is meaningful
I’ve been listening to the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast for a good long while now, and it’s one of a handful of pods that remain in the must-listen category for me. I particularly enjoy the (sadly) increasingly rare episodes where FiveThirtyEight nerd-in-chief Nate Silver joins the show, because he brings a really weird energy to the proceedings as he’s clearly all out of fucks to give. So I really enjoyed this segment from this week’s episode, where he can barely pretend to be interested in discussing the British Royal Family:
I’m pretty much Team Nate on this one. I can’t say that my literal ancestors fought a war so I wouldn’t have to care about the Kings and Queens of England— as far as we know, they all came to the US well after the Revolution, though my mom’s half Irish, so there’s probably some way back up the line who fought the English— but certainly my spiritual ancestors did. I find the idea of monarchies in the modern age kind of tacky and silly, but basically harmless as long as nobody expects me to take it at all seriously. To be fair, I can barely summon any interest in the antics of home-grown American celebrities who actually do stuff, but I really could hardly care less about the Royals.
And yet, this story about indolent symbols of past glories has just sucked up an incredible amount of conversational oxygen over the last week. Between overblown public displays of grief and overblown public displays of anti-grief (“Here’s a 57-part Twitter thread about the historical crimes of the British Empire to make you feel bad about having any sympathy for the Queen…” Thanks, but no.) it’s been hard to fit actual news in edgewise, even when that news involves dramatic developments in a land war in Eurasia.
And I think Silver’s at least partially correct in his dismissive take on the coverage. There’s a demand for fawning coverage of the Royals, to be sure, but it’s also easy: every news service in the world has terabytes of old footage of Queen Elizabeth doing nothing interesting to edit into memorial montages, there are any number of people with posh accents available to tell charming anecdotes about her, and her funeral and the accession of King Charles III are a nice opportunity to send news anchors on an easy flight to London to stay in nice hotels for a few weeks and cover ceremonial folderol that’s stage-managed to be perfect television. Covering an actual war, on the other hand, is expensive and dangerous and requires people who know Slavic languages, and covering consequential economic news involves math which as we all know is difficult and boring. Dippy symbolism FTW!
The Queen is dead, which is a sad reminder that the world is changing and none of us are getting any younger. And, you know, she worked very hard to project a consistent image of dignity and class which is more than can be said for many of her ancestors and some of her descendants, so good job by her. My sympathies to those who feel pain over her loss; and now, sports and the weather.
But of course, this is really just an extreme and protracted example of the media fascination with dippy symbolism over substance. Shortly before the Queen’s death, we had an extended news cycle about Joe Biden’s speech denouncing MAGA Republicans. But an inordinate amount of that coverage was not about the actual speech but about symbolism, specifically the fact that there were a couple of Marine guards standing way in the background while he spoke. The presence of these guards, who were far enough back and blurry enough that I didn’t even notice them in the initial clips that I saw of the speech, is either a gross affront to the separation of military and civilian powers, or an important reminder of the unity of government in opposition to troubling antidemocratic forces.
But, like the symbolic nonsense now underway in London, this is absolutely perfect fodder for modern political media. Assessing the actual content of the speech would require relatively thankless work— wading into the swamps of the Internet to find and assess examples of the disturbing material Biden called out, or pith-helmeted anthropological reportage from points west of Dulles International Airport. Arguing about the symbolic meaning of a couple of blurry dudes in dress uniforms, on the other hand, is easy and comfortable, as it requires nothing more taxing than an “Is not!” “Is too!” exchange on a set in a climate-controlled studio in a fashionable city.
And in parallel with the coverage of the Queen’s passing, we have new skirmishes in the endless wars over media representation, specifically regarding the symbolic importance of the skin tones of actors playing imaginary creatures. The only remotely good thing about this is that the whole kerfuffle is a perfect argument for my preferred position, namely “Stop making and re-making shows and movies about pre-existing intellectual properties, and tell some original stories where nobody comes in with fixed ideas about what this or that character ‘really looks like’” (but of course, neither side wants to hear that).
To some degree, this is because late summer is the silly season in American politics, when the people who make consequential decisions are mostly on vacation. But this preoccupation with dippy symbolism carries on year-round, and I find it pretty depressing. My personal preference would be to have a whole lot less news with what there is being given more depth and substance, but we seem to be racing full speed in the opposite direction, toward infinite mountains of commentary passing itself off as news, none of it meaning anything at all.
That’s a bit rant-y, I suppose, but it was mildly cathartic to type it out after a hectic start to the new academic year that has consumed all my writing time and energy. If you want to see whether this becomes a regular Thing, or if I go back to blogging more frequently but more blandly, here’s a button:
If you’d like to make a passionate argument about how these things are all actually important, I’m not really interested, but the comments will be open all the same:
Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of this is demand driven. The Royals bring in the clicks, the clicks pay the rent, so the #content must flow. We have nobody to blame but ourselves I suppose.
Though part of this is probably a matter of "discourse about symbolism is a hazard of hiring English majors". ;)
Not the subject of the post (I don't care about the Queen either and being French, mild anti-monarchism is kind of how we roll) but Hollywood writers could write stories in the existing franchises... just off the beaten path. Except, just like editors and journalists, they're lazy (and stupid on top. At least, the Queen sells. Not sure destroying the Star Wars and MCU franchises are going to be good for DIS).
For example, in LOTR (Middle Earth, really but...) down South of Mordor and Gondor, you have the lands of Harad, where people are either Arab-looking or Black (referred to as Haradrim or Southrons).
You prefer Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, really but...)? No problems. GRRM wanted to write about Westeros by and large but knew he had to create a whole world, else it'd be problematic, suspension of disbelief-wise. Except he didn't have too many original ideas about the rest of the world so you get your fantasy Chinese with Yi Ti and Leng and fantasy Africans with the Summer Isles.
You probably would still have to pay those creators or their estate something for using their IP but you can have an entirely Black, brown, yellow or whatever cast (but not white!). And it'd be canon!