Never mind the Bugsy Malone
Pistol's cartoon recreation of punk is as empty as the Jubilee's version of the Queen.
In Bugsy Malone, a cast of children pretend to be gangsters with whipped cream taking the place of bullets. Pistol, Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols biopic, manages to have even less jeopardy. It’s a cartoon world in which no one talks like a human (Thomas Brody-Sangster’s Malcolm Maclaren purrs lines like “show me that rancid brilliance that you have,” at all times) and every character arrives fully formed as the thumbnail sketch you’ve come to expect (oh look, there’s Billy Idol shouting about Bromley).
When Sid and Nancy first take heroin together, the scene is so softly shot it makes Bugsy’s kid gangsters look gritty. You know Nancy is set for a horrible end but when it comes it might as well be ketchup that’s been tossed around in that Chelsea Hotel bathroom. There’s very little filth and only the most sensitive of viewers will be startled by the fury. Boyle isn’t able to show us that what’s happening is important so Craig Pearce’s script has to have the characters tell us repeatedly.
That said Pistol does make a good prelude to the Platinum Jubilee weekend in so far as it offers up a painfully simplified version of a complicated and depressing story. In the four day feast of pompousness and pageantry, the country will be presented with the same vision of an imaginary Queen over and over again, smashed over the head with her “service” as if it were a giant gilded mallet.
Keir Starmer’s comment piece for The Daily Telegraph — another transparent effort to pander to people who will never vote for him — is a great example of the Queen myth in practice. From the headline on (Britain is a better country thanks to the Queen), it is a series of assertions without evidence, as convincing as Maclaren’s declaration in Pistol that Steve Jones, who he’s just given a guitar, is “the world’s greatest guitarist”.
Starmer begins by giving the newspaper an easy line to misrepresent:
The Jubilee weekend isn’t just an opportunity for us to reflect on the 70 years since Her Majesty’s accession to the throne – although it will, of course, be that.
And it isn’t simply a chance for a country wearied by the extraordinary circumstances of the past few years to let its hair down – although it is, of course, your patriotic duty to do just that.
The Telegraph took his use of the phrase “your patriotic duty” and his toady endorsement of its “call for local authorities to try to ensure that as many events can take place and as many people can celebrate as possible” to promote the piece with a news story deceptively headlined Keir Starmer: It’s your ‘patriotic duty’ to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
But the op-ed is nearly as cloying as that sentiment. Starmer (or whichever aid is currently tasked with mimicking his robotic delivery) writes:
… Her Majesty has guided us through turbulent times and stood alongside us during the good and the bad.
How the Queen has done this is never explained in detail because it’s an argument that doesn’t stand up. Her meetings with Prime Ministers are secret and the accounts of them we have of them are from the self-interested perspective of politicians. What we know for sure is that she has ensured that inconvenient laws do not apply to her or her family and that the ‘evolution’ of the monarchy — such as it is — has been the product of scrabbling self-preservation.
Starmer continues:
… the Queen has been able to rise above much of the archness and cynicism: the hope and surety she represents sometimes feel like a throwback to that former age. The admiration people have for her goes far beyond the typical relationship between monarch and people.
There is no great secret as to how she has managed this. Her Majesty’s commitment to duty and her passion for furthering our country on the world stage have not just benefited each of us – they have also conferred on her the respect and love of people here and across the world. She has shown us that integrity, hard work and selflessness are the antidote to pessimism.
What is the ‘hope’ that the Queen represents? The hope that inherited power abides? The hope that people will simply forget that she funded the payoff that ensured her nonce-adjacent favourite son Prince Andrew would not have to face a courtroom?
The Queen’s integrity is unimpeachable as long as you ignore how she has actively used the system to protect and enrich her children even further. Her “hard work” is defined as such only if you class the performance of ritual as true graft and her “selflessness” is arguable only if you shut your eyes to the vast pantomime of wealth that supports her.
It also seems that Starmer has the Queen confused with Spider-Man:
It is a truism that with great power comes great responsibility, but the Queen’s reign has been a continuous reminder of the way to deal with that – to block out the noise and get on with the job at hand.
Another way of looking at that “blocking out of the noise” is that monarchy ignores what’s happening to its ‘subjects’ until that ignorance threatens its own position. From the Aberfan disaster to the death of Diana, the Queen has been slow to react until her lack of reaction has aroused public anger.
Starmer concludes with a slab of rhetoric so sickly sweet and thick it’s like cheap toffee:
Just as the Queen has led us through the past 70 years, all that she has taught us – about duty, tolerance, humility and responsibility – will continue to guide us into this next era. We are a better, brighter country because of her. Our history is richer, our future built on firmer foundations and our great country made greater still by her rule.
“Us” is one of the sneakiest words that emerge from the mouths of both politicians and hacks alike. “The Queen has taught us…” says Starmer in a manner that brooks no counterpoint because voices that say otherwise are rarely given the same prominence or volume in the British media.
It is an article of faith to say that “we are a better, brighter country because of [the Queen]” and across the Jubilee celebrations, it will be the mantra that runs through every piece of coverage, every article and TV package. The arguments to the contrary will be considered far too rude to mention.
There is no such thing as a royal reporter in Britain. There are only royal cheerleaders because despite they all buy into the fundamental belief that the monarchy is good and necessary. Starmer’s op-ed shows show how the same is required from senior politicians; the former republican leader of the nominally left-wing opposition genuflecting to the monarch in the pages of The Daily Telegraph.
The story of this Jubilee is just like Pistol: Too clean, too simplified, and too keen to instruct its audience on when to clap and cheer, and who its heroes should be. God probably won’t save the Queen but the British press always will.