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‘The Crown’ Devolved from the Best of Human Storytelling to Nationalist Propaganda
Final seasons boast a concerning antagonization of ‘outsiders,’ Prince Harry and the Al Fayeds
I began watching The Crown in a hotel room in the UK, the week of my graduation from Oxford. I binged the first season in days and couldn’t stop talking about it to my friends.
“Why are you watching something about the monarchy?” They said to me. “Aren’t you sick of it?”
And we were. We were all sick of it, the racist howling at us in the streets, the people at our own colleges who would block us at the doors. The cashier at Tesco who shook their head when we tried to make a membership card. You’re a tourist. You’re not allowed to settle here.
When I tried to make sense of the cruelty that we all encountered in the United Kingdom, in big and small ways, the inalienable fact of the matter was that we resided in a land which stratified people into God-given ranks. The reigning Queen meant that there existed a royal family; the existence of royals necessitated aristocrats; the existence of nobles signalled the position of commoners; and all of this legitimized the soundness of England’s colonial history, one which explicitly and implicitly viewed me as an Oriental, a foreigner…
