Is it Netflix displaying a lack of reverence or our entire contemporary culture? Does today’s scandal-prone monarchy merit reverence anyway?Morgan was called “callous” for using the death of five-year-old Leonora Knatchbull to precipitate an insinuated romance between her mother Penny and the Duke of Edinburgh. Due to intrusive press coverage, oversharing interviews and soul-baring memoirs, we know more about the royals than ever. There is an argument to say The Crown is merely a scapegoat, taking the rap for a wider shift in attitudes. The royals themselves stayed characteristically tight-lipped but Charles’s biographer Jonathan Dimbleby called it “nonsense on stilts”. The backlash had ramped up by the fourth season, described by the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins as “fake history … reality hijacked as propaganda and a cowardly abuse of artistic licence”. The real Philip considered suing Netflix over the “upsetting” season two subplot where he was blamed for the 1937 death of his sister, Princess Cecilie. There were early grumblings about speculative storylines, such as young Princess Margaret’s wish to be queen or Prince Philip’s refusal to kneel at his wife’s coronation. The fourth season was described by the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins as ‘a cowardly abuse of artistic licence’ The closer The Crown creeps to the present, the more historical distance is lost and the more contentious it becomes. Viewers now have vivid memories and their own takes. Suddenly most of its characters are alive, vocal and consulting their lawyers. Over its six seasons, The Crown has steadily caught up with modern times and this has become a mounting problem. Emmys and Golden Globes were duly plundered like colonial treasures. It was part posh soap opera, part history lesson. Any arguments were limited to whether actors looked enough like their real-life counterparts. The people it portrayed (Winston Churchill, Wallis Simpson) were long dead. Most viewers had no memory of the postwar events it dramatised (the debut run covered 1947 to 1955 – like, totally olden times) nor strong views about them. When Peter Morgan’s regal saga first swept on to Netflix in 2016, it was lavishly produced and largely non-problematic. So artistic exploration comes a full circle.The Crown’s controversy-bait status has been a gathering storm. However, Hirst’s latest creation is about birth where the various stages of a foetus are captured in an installation in a medical centre in Doha. The piece acts as a memento mori, a reminder of the inevitability of death. Its teeth are real and belong to the skull. The skull is likely to that of an 18th-century man of European/Mediterranean ancestry and was bought by Hirst from a London taxidermist. Its title comes from an expression regularly uttered by Damien Hirst’s mother on hearing his early ideas for artworks. A human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless pavé-set diamonds, For the Love of God cost £14 million to create and weighs 1,106.18 carats. Then why ape the West in shockology?īut then contemporary art has always cocked a snook at classical arts - dance included, calling it pretty pictures caught up in a time warp, but why must art be ugly to be contemporary? Death has been a recurring theme in Hirst’s art, stretching back to his very earliest works. Indian art has made that transition where its reference points were rooted in the West. It is the same approach that wants to shock to make a statement a la Lady Gaga wrapped in raw meat clothes. Who will have the courage to bell the cat and call off the bluff? High fluting juxtapositioning of jargon has been the mainstay of ignorant. The situation is like an emperor’s new clothes. Enough damage has been done already - some of it irreparable.
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