DIANA (2013): The People’s Princess on the Screen

D

IANA

(2013): The People’s Princess on the Screen

An analysis of the manifestation of the many sides of Lady Diana Spencer’s

mediated life in the biopic D

(2013) through documentary aesthetics and

the notion of history storytelling.

Master Thesis

Rebecca van der Weijde Student number: 10631801 University of Amsterdam

MA Television and Cross-Media Culture: Beroepsgeoriënteerde specialisatie Supervisor: Sudeep Dasgupta

Second reader: Stephen Amico Final version - 16 June 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

3

CHAPTER 1 -

CHAPTER 2 -

CHAPTER 3 -

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

On the 31st of August 1997, Lady Diana Spencer died in a car crash in Paris, together with her lover Dodi Al Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Al Fayed’s bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was the only survivor. I was six years old and was watching the television with my two older sisters. The breaking news interrupted the cartoon we were watching. I understood the princess of Wales had died, and rushed to my parents to tell them the news. They didn’t believe me – surely it was the Queen who had died? – but, unfortunately, I was right.

In later years, I watched many documentaries (e.g. DIANA HER LIFE and DIANA: THE NIGHT SHE DIED) and movies about the British royal family (e.g. THE QUEEN); Lady Diana remained popular in the mass media, regardless of her death. In 2013 the movie DIANA was released, directed by Oliver

Hirschbiegel. After his earlier success DER UNTERGANG (2004) Hirschbiegel hoped to make another ‘authentic, honest and [as] true as possible’ movie about a historical event. According to the press and the audience, he failed. Among many other negative critics, the British tabloid The Times (Kürten, 2014) stated that ‘Lady Di has died a second time with this film’.

This response intrigued me. The movie was released as a dramatic biography, thereby positioning itself as a ‘biography’, a description of someone’s life, yet also as a ‘dramatic’ film, implying fictional film and the genre of melodrama. Thus, the film was marketed as a hybrid form of film, combining the fictional genre with a factual story. This can be seen in several other films, like LA CONQUETE (2011), a story about Nicolas Sarkozy, and MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM (2013), a story about Nelson Mandela. All are hybrid forms of film, just like DIANA (2013).

In DIANA, Hirschbiegel incorporated many physical similarities to Diana, giving actress Naomi Watts the same hair, outfits and postures, but somehow the movie critics called the movie ‘unreal’, ‘boring’ and ‘unjustified’. Even though the film positioned itself as a dramatic biography, admitting the fictional part of the story, the reviews seemed to forget that. What went wrong?

To find out what went wrong, it is useful to look at the process of bringing a historical person or event to the screen. This appears to be a difficult process, as can also be surmised from the recent negative reactions to the new biopic GRACE OF MONACO (2014), which premiered at the Cannes film festival the 14th _{of May 2014. This movie is comparable to the biopic DIANA (2013), as they both represent the}

story of a real royal person from real history. GRACEOF MONACO too received negative responses from the press; The Guardian (2014) called it a ‘breath taking catastrophe’, followed by ‘Naomi Watts set the bar high with last year’s Princess-Di disaster. But Nicole Kidman has outdone her’. Variety (2014) considered the film a ‘cardboard and frequently cornball melodrama’. This resembles a

characterisation of DIANA by The Independent (McNab, 2013): ‘DIANA works well enough as a dark romantic drama and is far less exploitative than it might have been’.

Both DIANA and GRACE OF MONACO seem to be criticised for being dramatizations, rather than portraying the complete historical truth as known by the audience. This leads to the question whether drama film can be used for history storytelling, or whether this is inherently impossible. It also questions whether the traits of fiction, such as narrative and the need for a linear storyline in a closed world, were ever absent from historical writing itself.

This thesis will place itself in the debate about fact and fiction, and the blurring of the boundaries between them. According to historian Rosenstone (1988), we are living in an era in which visual images are becoming our main source of information, dominating the written word. In order to present an important story to the mass media, visual images are needed. But when you shape a story into a movie script, genre conventions and the need for visual action will probably make the story different than the ‘real’. So, to what extent can a ‘real’ historical event be properly presented to the audience with film? One of the possibilities is with the use of documentary aesthetics, documentary-like artefacts and conventions, in order to portray the real. Using the movie DIANA as a case study, there will be an exploration of to what extent the many details and events occurring in a historical person’s life get presented on the screen and therefore generate a ‘truth-claim’.

To be able to research this, four themes will be discussed. The notion of history storytelling can be put into two sections: ‘history’ and ‘storytelling’. History is the historical event (or person), on which the story is based. Storytelling consists of someone telling the story, the story itself and the receiving audience. These four aspects could be considered as themes, which, in the case of a historical film, results in the following components:

1. the historical event (or person) 2. the filmmaker

3. the film

4. the reception (of the press and audience)

These four themes will feature in researching the case study, each chapter focusing on one or more themes.

Returning to the case study DIANA, the historical event is the life of Diana Spencer. It can be noted that in her life, Diana had to fulfil many roles. Andrew Morton (1997), Diana’s biographer who wrote the book ‘Diana: Her True Story’, summarized these roles as her being ‘a sex symbol, virgin mother, grieving wife, avenging saint, and, finally, liberated woman’. She was a mediated British symbol, but

also a global phenomenon, the press following her every step, and therefore also witnessing the different phases of her life. Diana’s life was not boring and not unreal, something that the press said about the biopic; therefore, something en route from the ‘real’ history to the mediated history in the movie DIANA changed the story. This leads to the following research question for this thesis:

How are the contradictions of Diana’s mediated fame and personal life manifested in the biopic DIANA?

In the first chapter, the theoretical framework needed to answer the research question will be presented. The method that will be used is the notion of documentary aesthetics, the use of ‘real’ artefacts and looks in order to portray reality, as theorized by John Corner (2003) and Fiona Hobden (2013). The chapter will also include the notion of history storytelling, focusing mainly on historian Robert A. Rosenstone (1988), but also on the opinions of R.J. Raack (Rosenstone, 1988), Ian Jarvie (Rosenstone, 1988), Hayden White (Rosenstone, 1988) and Bell and Gray (2007): is it possible to bring a historical event properly onto the screen, taking medium specificity into account? This chapter encompasses all four themes, but focuses mainly on the filmmaker and the (possibility of bringing history onto) film.

The second chapter will focus on historical information (the first theme) about the case of this thesis. The case is the depiction of the many sides of the mediated and personal life of former Princess of Wales, Diana Spencer in the biopic DIANA (2013), but in order to recognize these sides, they first have to be explored. The life of Diana can be called a historical event: her daily life regularly made the headlines globally and her sudden death was all over the news and other media, making her a creature of her time and the face of the British nation. She was, and actually still is, a media phenomenon. Very much has been written about her. From her early days as part of a wealthy British family, to her wedding, divorce and death. Besides the articles, books and biographies, there has also been a lot of visual media attention. Newsfeeds, documentaries, (fiction) films: Diana Spencer is the subject of many narratives, prolonging the attention she already had during her life and the attention which possibly also killed her. Her tragic death is arguably the most talked about part of her life. The many roles Diana had to fulfil in her life are filled with contradictions, which will be discussed and explored in chapter 2.

The third chapter will contain an analysis of the film itself (the third theme), the biopic DIANA (2013). First there’ll be a look at the most important events structuring the main storyline, followed by quotes from director Oliver Hirschbiegel in which he explains his vision as filmmaker (the second theme). There will be a look at the decision of picking Naomi Watts as actress for the role of Diana, but also on the choice of basing the storyline on the book of Kate Snell, ‘Diana: Her Last Love’. This

book is about Diana’s romantic relationship with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan which, according to Khan himself, is based on ‘lies’ (King, 2013). After this, the movie will be analysed through the use of documentary aesthetics, using the three headings of documentary aesthetics as presented by John Corner (2003): pictorial, aural and narratological. These three headings will point out the parts of the movie constituting the ‘truth-claim’, a notion further explored by Fiona Hobden (2013), who focuses on the use of evidence in order to portray the ‘real’. After his, there will be an overview of the criticism on the movie (the fourth theme), provided by the (mainly British) press and analysed through the ideas as presented earlier in the chapter. The notion of history storytelling will also be used to analyse the medium specificity of film, adding to the overall storyline of the movie, next to the notion of the possibility of shaping a historical event into a ‘proper’ mediated story, and the way the story of DIANA (2013) got critiqued on those points.

The conclusion will give an overview of what has come before and will give an answer to the main research question. There will also be a section about possible future research, looking at questions arising from the research performed in this thesis.

CHAPTER 1

Theories concerning the approximation of reality in films

To be able to properly analyse the biopic DIANA (2013), there must first be an understanding of the method that will be used: documentary aesthetics. It is this theory that can illustrate how a film can manage to approximate reality, or the ‘truth’. To introduce documentary aesthetics, theorist John Corner will be used to explain this term, followed by historian Fiona Hobden, who uses documentary aesthetics in relation to history storytelling. Then the notion of the truth-claim in documentary film will be problematized by introducing Plantinga as well as Bruzzi.

In the second part of the first chapter, history storytelling will be further explored, talking about ways to put history onto the screen. Guiding principle is Robert A. Rosenstone’s theory, which will be evaluated through differing opinions from R.J. Raack, Ian Jarvie, Hayden White and Erin Bell and Ann Gray. At the end of this chapter, Gianna Moscardo will be introduced, talking about the reception by the audience.

This way, all four themes (historical event, filmmaker, film and reception) that were set up in the introduction will be touched upon, to start the evaluation of the approximation of reality in films in general and in the biopic DIANA specifically.

1.1 Documentary aesthetics

One way of examining and explaining film and television pictures, is to analyse their aesthetics. This is a theory focusing on the sensory: man’s sentiment, taste, feelings and sense of beauty.

Corner on the three headings of documentary aesthetics

John Corner (2003) was one of the first to write about aesthetics concerning television and

documentary. In his article ‘Television, documentary and the category of the aesthetic’, Corner (2003, 92) categorizes aesthetics into three interconnected fields: ‘The category of aesthetics points us towards the organization of creative works, the experiences they produce (or, to signal a key crux, that audiences derive from them) and the modes of analysis and theory that can be used in

investigation.’. By using these three points in examining television documentaries, Corner (2003, 93) wants to investigate the aesthetic of the medium television (a medium which at the time was not often considered aesthetically interesting), and the possibilities of using documentary features (a medium considered aesthetically interesting) in the television spectrum.

After pointing out the divisions of aesthetics in general, Corner (2003, 96) continues with a more specific theorization of aesthetic: documentary aesthetics. He divides the aesthetics of documentary

into three headings: pictorial, aural and narratological. The pictorialism of documentary stands for ‘the creative tension between reference and artefact […]’.Documentary is about visual representation and metaphors, to be looked ‘through’ (transparent access and clear representation) but also to be looked ‘at’; noticing the aesthetic qualities of the depiction and the things depicted and thereby engaging the viewer. The aural of the documentary is about the possibilities of sound. Formal sounds like commentaries and informal sounds like anecdotes all deliver pleasure, but above that is the richest aural aesthetic: music. Sound can be used as the framing of a scene, but also infuses the viewers with a certain feeling or mood. The third documentary aesthetic described by Corner is the

narratological: storytelling, action-development and editing, all of which co-produce the stories of

which the documentary consists.

Corner (2013) considers documentary aesthetics to fall into three categories: pictorial, aural and narratological. He concludes his article with the notion of criticism, a subjective experience proved to be very useful. He pleads for a practice of criticism in television scholarship, since criticism keeps the aesthetics alive where other practices simply ignore them, which points to the fourth theme

introduced in the chapter: the reception of the press and the audience.

Corner’s three categories of documentary aesthetics will be used in chapter 3, to analyse the representation of Diana in the film DIANA (2013). The notion of criticism will also be addressed in relation to DIANA in chapter 3.

Hobden on the documentary truth-claim

One of the authors putting the notion of documentary aesthetics in practice, is historian Fiona Hobden (2013), specialised in ancient Greek culture. She discusses the possibilities of using aesthetics to present a reliable historical story to the mass audience and thereby authorizing the historical narrative. According to Hobden (2013, 367), the (archaeological) aesthetic is fundamental to the documentary truth-claim. A truth-claim is ‘a claim to inform and educate’. By using and identifying conventions of the documentary, the truth-claim can be assessed. Hobden examines British tv-shows about ancient history, in which different modes of aesthetics are used: ‘archaeology as evidence’ (a live reconstruction of the past, with sensory evocation and the use of artefacts), ‘archaeology in performance’ (an observation and examination of artefacts like a forensic examiner), ‘archaeology in action’ (a mini-excavation) and ‘archaeology dramatized’ (partly factually based drama and partly dramatic re-enactment). These four modes are in Hobden’s case of course very particularly focused on ancient archaeology, but there are very useful comments regarding all history on the screen. Hobden (2013, 375) claims that by using authentic staging and props, historical legitimacy can be claimed. This gives the viewer visual power, encoding the style of a documentary: what you see, is the truth. Chapter 3 of this thesis will see Hobden’s notions at work in DIANA, with emphasis on the mode

of ‘archaeology dramatized’, but also including elements of ‘archaeology as evidence’.

Another interesting point Hobden makes is the tension between fiction drama and documentary. She takes on different authors like Corner to make a point about fiction drama being a part of the documentary tradition. Besides conveying reality, documentary can use dramatic performance to prove a certain claim. But the lines between fact and fiction are so heavily blurred, partly because of this tradition, that the viewer still has the need to see something ‘real’, and Hobden (2013, 376) thinks archaeology (or other proving artefacts) is crucial in persuading the viewer in accepting the historical truth. There is a need for authenticity and authority.

Looking back at Corner, he divided documentary aesthetic into three fields: the transparent but also visually attractive picture, the use of speech and music and the narrative, the produced story. These fields are put together by Corner using the ‘beauty’ of the documentary feature, the elements of the documentary that make it, according to Corner, a far more appealing and visual attractive medium than (programmes on) television. This differs from Hobden’s notion, which specifically focuses on evidence, another element of documentary storytelling. Hobden sees potential in showing the viewer proper artefacts from the past to prove a certain truth-claim. It is thus possible to see and use documentary aesthetics in different ways, but these two authors both use the term to convey a certain reality in television shows or programmes. Documentary has the power to convince the audience of a certain truth; it has the appeal of reality.

By using these elements from documentary in dramatized historical film, the audience will be ‘tricked’ into feeling the same sort of reality as used in documentary, something that will come into play in chapter 3.

Plantinga and Bruzzi on documentary

According to Carl Plantinga (1997, 1), a documentary is a ‘moving picture nonfiction’. Plantinga is a professor of communication and writes in his book ‘Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film’ about the many sides and uses of documentary. But after this first definition, Plantinga refuses to further define nonfiction film. Most important is the notion that the lines between fiction and nonfiction are illicit. Plantinga (1997, 10) cites the British filmmaker John Grierson saying that

documentary is ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. This chimes with what film and television studies professor Stella Bruzzi (2006) writes in her book New Documentary: ‘Although theoretical orthodoxy stipulates that the ultimate aim of documentary is to find the perfect way of representing the real so that the distinction between the two becomes invisible, this is not what one finds within the history of documentary filmmaking.’ And: ‘Documentary does not perceive its ultimate aim to be the authentic representation of the real.’ In nonfiction, reality is sometimes represented transparently, but it is also possible to manipulate certain events into ‘fake’ reality. This is comparable to what will

be said about history on television and film in the next part of this chapter: there is no apparent truth, there are too many voices and opinions to depict one certain reality, as is the case with the many different texts and books written about the life of Diana Spencer, further discussed in chapter 2. But with the use of documentary aesthetics, the look and feel of realistic events can be brought into film and television, giving the audience the visual pleasure and direct emotions of the aesthetic appeal of reality.

1.2 History on the screen

Rosenstone on putting history onto film

A theorist combining the fields of history and visual media is Robert A. Rosenstone (1988). In the late 1980s, he wrote his article ‘History in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film’. Rosenstone, a historian and novelist, saw a trend in the field of history in which historians never seemed to be satisfied with historical cinema. As he puts it: ‘Something happens on the way from the page to the screen that changes the meaning of the past as it is understood by those of us who work in words’ (Rosenstone, 1988, 1173). For an academic historian, history seems only ‘proper’ and representational when it is written in words. This automatically problematizes history on screen, but according to Rosenstone (1988, 1173) this is not to blame on Hollywood directors, producers who must work with budget cuts, undereducated scriptwriters or the limits provided by film genres: the problem of history on screen lies in the ‘nature and demands of the visual medium itself’.

One of the problems of film, when it comes to projecting history, is the demand for a closed world with a linear story. Rosenstone (1988, 1174) states that history asks for alternatives, for stories with complexity, subtlety and multiple interpretations. Since everybody experiences life differently, it’s crucial to portray and hear different voices. Movies are mostly flat, with a single interpretation, and that strikes against the basic demand for verifiability in historic research. This problem grows of more importance by the day, since Rosenstone states that we live in a world of images, a world in which people receive their views and ideas of the past, present and future from moving pictures. It is in the line of possibility that the written word will eventually disappear, and Rosenstone (1988, 1174) puts forth the idea that our ‘chief source of historical knowledge […] must surely be the visual media, a set of institutions that lie almost wholly outside the control of those of us who devote our lives to history’. When Rosenstone wrote this text, he didn’t foresee the new and vastly growing medium of internet. Today, the chief sources of knowledge for most people are websites like Wikipedia and

Google. It can arguably be said that the written word is rising up again in the new medium, asking for

a shift from paper to screen. This event asks for a different kind and much larger research than this thesis, but it is important to keep in mind when reading Rosenstone.

Keeping internet in mind, Rosenstone is still right in stating that the interest from the audience for the information that writing historians have to offer is shrinking rapidly. Thus for historians it is important to see the pros that the highly appreciated medium of film has to offer: it can reach a large audience while dealing with any given subject. But the question arising from this is: ‘Is it possible to tell historical stories on film and not lose our professional or intellectual souls?’

Another problem Rosenstone (1988, 1178) notices is the historian’s aversion to the Hollywood genre ‘historical romance’, a genre with solid conventions and a strictly linear form of narrative. As Rosenstone says, a historical romance asks for a ‘love interest, physical action, personal confrontation […] a climax and denouement’. Also, film mostly focuses on individuals, and a two-hour film will never capture all the information the ‘real’ and represented event has to offer. But for Rostenstone himself this shouldn’t be a problem, since film has in its very nature the opportunity to capture human conflict and has enough space to speak about an accurate historical topic, even if it is just a small part of an event.

To summarize: Rosenstone thinks that film in our current progressively visual society has the

opportunity to bring a story to the mass audience, but sees problems in the way of delivering it. Film has its own medium specificity, therefore isn’t fully able to provide alternatives, complexity and different voices, something needed in history.

Raack versus Jarvie on putting history onto film

Rosenstone takes on two leading thinkers about the possibilities and problems of history on film. First is R.J. Raack, a historian who is in favour of historical cinema. Raack thinks that traditional, written history is too linear and too narrow to capture the complexness of our multi-dimensional world, a remarkable opinion in the field of traditional historians. He sees film as a medium with many possibilities, a form of storytelling in which real life can be experienced through ‘ideas, words, images, preoccupations, distractions, sensory deceptions, conscious and unconscious motives and emotions.’ (Rosenstone, 1988, 1176). Only film can capture the liveliness, emotions and experiences of the past. Concluding, Raack sees history as a personal, emotional and experiential way of knowing, and film has the opportunity to capture this.

Almost completely opposite Raack stands Ian Jarvie, a philosopher. Jarvie sees history as ‘debates between historians about just what exactly did happen, why it happened, and what would be an adequate account of its significance.’ He sees major problems in the impossibility of a historian to defend himself, to object to and criticize the problems or opinions stated in the film. There is no place for reflection or logical arguments and evidence. Jarvie does notice that film can be a ‘vivid portrayal of the past’, but he finds it impossible to see film as a serious, correct and accurate form of history

storytelling (Rosenstone, 1988, 1176).

Where Rosenstone asks for storytelling with more than a single interpretation in the flat medium of film, Jarvie agrees: film is too narrow to accurately tell history, there is no place for reflection and arguments. Raack disagrees, but he does agree with Rosenstone’s notion of using film to reach a larger audience, saying that it has many possibilities to capture the world’s liveliness and emotions, much more than the written word can do, a field that is losing interest anyway. These ideas will resurface in chapter 3, when they form part of the basis for the analysis of the criticism on DIANA.

Rosenstone and White on the shaping of stories

Historians may say that their written words are the ‘correct’ way of storytelling, but written history is also bound to storytelling conventions of genre and language, not very different from the ones in cinema (Rosenstone, 1988, 1178). Just as scriptwriters, historians have to shape the information from the past into understandable narratives with a beginning, middle and end. This makes it a

representation of the past, shaped into a mode in which the historian wants to write (think of tragic heroes, heroic figures or romantic events). Rosenstone thinks that this is something historians, but also readers and scholars, tend to forget: every story about the past, either written or filmed, is a different shaping or alteration of history as it was. What has to happen here, according to

Rosenstone, is a mutual understanding of the power of each medium, without denigrating any of them. Written words have the power to tell a story in all its detail, from many points of view and with many complex interpretations. Film has the power to let us see ‘landscapes, hear sounds, witness strong emotions as they are expressed with body and face, or view physical conflict between

individuals and groups.’ The documentary, a medium Rosenstone takes on later in his article, also has its own power, with the capability of using ‘real’ footage from the past. It is incorrect to judge film on its fictional elements, since a certain amount of fiction is inevitable when telling a story, something that also occurs in making sense of historical events in written words. As Rosenstone (1988, 1185) concludes his story: ‘there may be more than one sort of historical truth. […] History does not exist until it is created’.

Hayden White, a historian in the tradition of literary criticism, published his article ‘Historiography and Historiophoty’ in the same edition of the journal as Rosenstone's article, prolonging Rosenstone’s arguments. White (1988) divides the fields Rosenstone discussed into two particular concepts. With historiophoty White means ‘the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and filmic discourse’. The concept of historiography is ‘the representation of history in verbal images and written discourse’. White agrees with Rosenstone that historians should be aware of the difference between written history and visual history. Analysing those two fields requires a different form of ‘reading’. Images (White calls them ‘imagistic evidence’) should be a

complement to written and verbal history; not a supplement. Historiography and historiophoty should be seen as two different discourses, with their own rights. This also brings along the different powers of each discourse, as Rosenstone discussed earlier. White (1988, 1194) argues that some information about the past, sometimes even certain evidence, can only be delivered through the visual. For instance in the reproduction of scenes, landscapes, atmosphere, emotions (see the previous stated arguments of Raack); film can be much more accurate about certain history, without the demand for verbal commentary.

Overall, White agrees with Rosenstone. But on some points, White sees shortcomings in Rosenstone’s arguments. Rosenstone said that historical film is both too detailed, but also not detailed enough. With this he wants to say that film can provide extremely detailed sets and

costumes that may not resemble history accurately, and on the other hand film can’t provide enough space for a process that might have taken years; cinema consists mostly of one and a half to two hours. This approach to cinema doesn’t appeal to White. White states that history, either verbal or visual, is never a clear mirror to occurred events or scenes. Every product concerning history is part of a process, ‘processes of condensation, displacement, symbolization, and qualification exactly like those used in the production of a filmed representation’. Just as Rosenstone said, differences in history telling are to blame on the medium and its possibilities, not the production of messages or the people producing it.

Rosenstone versus White on typification

White is in favour of putting history onto film, and he has several arguments which state the positive qualities of cinema. According to White (1988, 1197), film uses typification, representation of a type of event. The representation of a type of event focuses on the cause-and-effect at a specific time and place. It is not about completely accurate individual faces, the right clothes or a perfectly detailed living room: it is about concreteness. Next to this, it is about the ‘depiction of a person whose

historical significance derived from the kind of act he performed at a particular time and place, which act was a function of an identifiable type of role-playing under the kinds of social conditions

prevailing at a general, but specifically historical, time and place’. This is mostly applicable to larger groups, a mass of individuals not completely known and mostly anonymous in written history. But, as Rosenstone (1988, 1179) argued in his article, the historical feature as well as the historical

documentary ‘tends to focus on heroic individuals’. White (1988, 1199) explains this by saying that heroic individuals are being depicted as a kind of ‘characterization’, where they are being represented as ‘character types’, mostly known by their general social actions in a given historical event. One such heroic individual is of course Diana Spencer, known by her general social actions and characterization of the ‘people’s princess’. These actions were broadcast to the mass audience through various media,

including television, about which Erin Bell and Ann Gray have the following to say.

Bell and Gray on television’s role in the production of knowledge

Erin Bell and Ann Gray (2007, 113) begin their article ‘History on television: Charisma, narrative and knowledge’ with a notion of the exponential increase of the reach of television during the 1990’s. They published their article in 2007, drawing forward mostly on the ideas of Hayden White.

With the rise of television, there also came another field of academic research regarding history. As Rosenstone and White both mentioned, every medium has its own possibilities and restrictions, and its own way of producing knowledge, and just like film and the written word, television brought new insights on the question of how to bring history to the public.

In ‘History on television’, Bell and Gray explore the idea of academic historians as the ‘originators of work which develops historical knowledge’, and their role in the production of historical

programmes for television. Television programmes are mass productions and thereby reaches large audiences, and the central question Bell and Gray ask is: ‘in the case of history and representations of the past […] how are narratives about national and other pasts constructed, distributed and marketed through television?’ In short, Bell and Gray tried to establish an interdisciplinary ‘history of history programming’. In the already existing debates about television and history, television and its programmes has been accused of the ‘inability to do ‘proper’ history’. Bell and Gray go beyond this question and don’t want to discuss the notion of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ television, but they want to research the question of television’s role in the production and circulation of knowledge.

As will become clear in chapter 3, it is actually a number of tv recordings that are used as

Hobden’s artefacts in the biopic DIANA. This is interesting, because historian Justin Champion (Bell and Gray, 2007, 117), agreeing with Raack, says that only TV (moving images) can take you back into the past and let you experience the familiar buildings and spots of land. TV-presenter and historian Tristram Hunt (Bell and Gray, 2007, 118) adds an interesting point by saying that this type of telling history is perhaps better understandable to sociologists and anthropologists than historians, because they’d understand that our society is all about ‘telling stories about ourselves to ourselves’. This chimes with a sentiment Camille Paglia (1992) words thusly in her article ‘The Diana Cult’: ‘We have created Diana in our own image.’

Moscardo on mindfulness and mindlessness

Another way of looking at the manner in which the audience consumes media texts is that of psychologist Gianna Moscardo. According to Moscardo (1996), there are two ways of receiving information given by any cultural form of media (think of television, film and museums): through ‘mindfulness’ and ‘mindlessness’.

Mindfulness is ‘the recognition that there is not a single optimal perspective, but many possible perspectives on the same situation, which means that information can be processed and,

importantly, questioned’. Mindlessness is ‘a single-minded reliance on information without an active awareness of alternative perspectives’. Concluding, these two terms are applicable to history storytelling on television and beyond, according to Bell and Gray. There is mindless storytelling, in which there is one perspective, a linear narrative and a closed stream of information to the audience. On the other side there is mindful storytelling, where it is about the multiplicity of voices and a variety of viewpoints, in which the viewer sees the problems of history and the openness for interpretation needed to understand the past. But, as discussed earlier, this isn’t just happening on television, this is a recurring problem in telling history, without blaming a single form of media. As Rosenstone puts it: there may be more than one historical truth. This can be seen in the next chapter, where the various roles of Diana will be discussed, showing that there isn’t one linear truth in her story. The alternate perspectives Moscardo mentions come into play in the criticism on the film DIANA (2013), as displayed in the third chapter.

1.4 Comparing the theories

This chapter has been about the different ways a historical event can be brought to the audience as a film (by a filmmaker). Besides written history, there lies a possibility in presenting history onto the screen, in film as well as on television. Each medium has its own pros and cons, so it is important to keep in mind their own medium specificity. As Rosenstone puts it: there isn’t just one truth. The matter of the truth-claim in film is connected to notions of documentary aesthetics, a theory that will come into play later on in the thesis.

Several theories have been discussed in this chapter that will be relevant and useful for the analysis in this thesis later on. At first, the documentary aesthetics divided into pictorial, aural and

narratological, theorized by John Corner, and the archaeological evidence theorized by Fiona Hobden will be useful to analyse to what extent the movie DIANA (2013) incorporated truth-claims. As

Plantinga said, filmmakers usually treat reality creatively. Second, the notion of history storytelling can be divided into several relevant theories. It is important to use the notion of linear stories in film versus complex stories in history. This notion points towards the ideas of Rosenstone and Raack, both noticing that film is a flat medium only using linear narratives but with a lot of potential to bring emotions and ‘real’ life to a large audience, against the opinion of Jarvie, who asks for more complex narratives in films about historical events, asking for different opinions and alternatives.

Also relevant is the opinion of Rosenstone that film is both too detailed, but also not detailed enough, against the opinion of White, saying that history is never a clear mirror to occurred events.

With this, Rosenstone means that film provides a lot of detail in a set and costume, more than a written story can do, but film has a shortcoming in length, generally only producing stories around 90 to 120 minutes. White disagrees, saying that every story in history somehow got shaped into the specificity of the medium used.

Another theory as extracted from this chapter is that of the type of event used in a historical film. White uses the notion of the ‘depiction of a person whose historical significance derived from the

kind of act he performed’, against the opinion of Rosenstone, saying that historical documentary

tends to focus on heroic individuals. Bell and Gray talk about historical programmes on television being able to take you back into the past, whilst reaching a large audience, and therefore making television a good base for the production of truth-claims. The reception of the audience is analysed by Moscardo, talking about two different ways of receiving texts: mindful and mindless. These theories will reappear in later chapters.

In the next chapter the many different sides and contradictions in Diana’s personal and mediated life will be discussed. Her role in society was very apparent, but it is difficult to see her as a ‘solid’ part of history, due to the perceived different sides and contradictions of her personality.

CHAPTER 2

The historical event of the case study: Diana’s contradictions

Now that it has been discussed how documentary aesthetics can work in history storytelling, this chapter will contain an analysis of the historical event (the first theme) the biopic DIANA was based upon: the different roles Diana fulfilled in her life, as seen through the media. This information is needed in order to evaluate whether the movie DIANA accurately portrays the historical evidence. In addition, questions concerning para-social relationships and the social influence of a celebrity will be introduced, to understand the emotional responses of the audience, especially after Diana’s death. Diana’s life will be told, using many details and a complex narrative like historian Jarvie mentions, focusing on different sides and alternatives of Diana’s personality rather than on one event, like the representation in the movie DIANA, as will be explained later in chapter 3. Like Rosenstone says, historical documentary tends to focus on heroic individuals, a theme that becomes apparent with the analysis of Diana Spencer, therefore this chapter also focuses on Diana as individual. It must be said that the information in the press and media is of course bound to limited sources, probably not providing the whole story as it happened. Therefore, this historical story is, like White said, shaped into a story within the limits of the media.

2.1 Princess for the world

The most daunting aspect was the media attention. My husband and I, we were told, when we got engaged, that the media would go quietly, and it didn’t. And then when we were married, they said that it would go quietly, and it didn’t. And then it started to focus all very much on me. And I seemed to be on the front of a newspaper every single day. Which... is an isolating experience. And the higher the media puts you, place you, is the bigger the drop. And I was very aware of that.

(quote from Diana Spencer in an interview with Martin Bashir for BBC, Panorama, 1995)

The media have always played a big role in Diana’s life, the cameras chasing her every step, but it is always a question of what the media present of a celebrity and show us, and more importantly – don’t show us. As Camille Paglia (1992), writer for The New Republic puts it: 'Mass media have made both myth and disaster out of Diana’s story'. Diana’s death in 1997 was wildly represented in the media, the newspapers exploding with articles discussing various opinions regarding Diana’s life and death. Although she officially hadn’t been part of the royal family anymore for over a year, she remained the ‘people’s princess’, or the ‘queen of people’s hearts’ and ‘princess for the world’, as she

declared herself in the same national television interview for the BBC show Panorama in 1995 as quoted above (Morton, 1997). By 1997, the British people were still very intrigued by the former Royal Highness and her death brought along very emotional responses, as well as many conspiracy theories.

William J. Brown, Michael D. Basil and Mihai C. Bocarnea (2003, 587), three researchers in Communication Arts, discuss the social influence of Diana’s death in their article ‘Social Influence of an International Celebrity: Responses to the Death of Princess Diana’. They start their article saying that 'perhaps no other celebrity’s death in the 25 years since the death of Elvis Presley has had as much social influence as the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales'. Interesting about this approach is the naming of Diana as an international celebrity, comparing her with international superstar Elvis Presley. Brown et al. explain this by analysing what a celebrity is: 'a primary role model [..] who demonstrated extraordinary acts of courage and achievement'. Next to this, a celebrity is a character manipulated and created in public images, generating power and social influence because of the large media coverage. The audience becomes involved with such a mediated character on television, and develops an imaginary relationship: a para-social relationship, a sense of friendship, intimacy and one-sided psychological involvement.

Diana is a good example of this influential celebrity status. Being surrounded by cameras and attention all the time, she appeared on the screen very often, letting the audience develop a relationship with her. Jan Morris (1997), a journalist writing for Time Magazine, states that ‘the audience have been deluded into thinking they actually knew her by the tireless machine of the media, and they have cried for her as for one of their own children.’ Diana was surrounded by mass hysteria. Articles regarding Diana’s life confirm this positive and celebrity-like view of the audience as well as the press on the Diana they saw on screen: Ian Buruma (1999) from Time Magazine called Diana ‘a celebrity royal, a movie star’ and Andrew Morton (1997), Diana’s official biographer, called Diana ‘a legend with an endlessly enigmatic personality’. But next to these positive remarks, the press also noticed something else. Buruma continued his article saying that ‘her whole life was a movie [...] and Diana was astute enough to understand the power of television and the voracious British tabloid newspaper, trying to use the mass media as a stage for projecting her image’. This was also something Diana said herself, looking at the quote from Panorama’s interview above; she was aware of the media taking away her privacy. This leads to the first contradiction in Diana’s life; the media produced para-social interaction with Diana by giving her media attention, but she herself encouraged this by, for example, the Panorama interview and earlier media appearances like speeches for the good causes she supported. Diana had the image of the beautiful, young, powerful and innocent princess, but behind that picture lured many other sides of her personality, and also various contradictions.

‘We could make her anything we chose, and her evolving image often said more about what we wanted than about who she was.’ Nancy Gibbs and Priscilla Painton (1997) described Diana’s changing image in her article ‘The princess of hearts’, but she wasn’t the only one who noticed Diana’s evolving persona. Joe Chidley (1997), writer for Maclean’s, calls her evolution ‘From Princess Shy to Princess Di to Saint Di’ and Camille Paglia (1992) describes it as the step from ‘Cinderella’ to ‘The Hollywood Queen’. Roughly divided, the different roles Diana fulfilled in her personal life and her appearance in the media fall into four contradictions: local versus global, mother versus lover, silent victim versus eloquent ambassador and needing the media versus hating the media. Each of these four contradictions will be explored in full below.

Local versus global

Andrew Morton is a royal biographer, who wrote the book Diana: Her True Story In Her Own Words (1992, with a revision in 1997), a collaboration with Diana herself. Shortly after Diana’s death, Morton wrote the article ‘Her true face’ for Newsweek, making a recap of Lady Di’s life story. Diana was, according to Morton, at different times ‘a sex symbol, virgin mother, grieving wife, avenging saint, and, finally, liberated woman’. She was the face of the 1980s and 1990s and grew out to be a global figure, or better said, a global superstar.

Diana Spencer grew up in a wealthy British family in Norfolk, with many royal members in her family tree. When she married the British Prince Charles, she became Diana, Princess of Wales, the future Queen of England. She was a very shy, young and conforming girl, living a protected life as a mother and wife, although she struggled with her life and relationship. In the 1990s her private life fell apart, her marriage ended and she fell into the ‘dark ages of her royal career’, as Morton puts it, breaking free from traditions and gaining strength to ‘battle against the Windsors’. She wanted to help the world and look further than the walls of Buckingham Palace. This transformation made her into ‘a princess for the world, not the Princess of Wales’. She travelled the world, got involved with many charities and used her status to move people. Andrew Morton closes his article saying that ‘Diana’s appeal now had a truly global resonance’, after her appearance in the campaign against landmines in Angola.

Nancy Gibbs and Priscilla Painton (1997), journalists of the Time, agree with Morton, seeing the global popularity of the British princess of Wales. Comparing her to Grace Kelly, they see in Diana the ‘old American fantasy, the real-life fairy tale’, loved by all the world. Camille Paglia (1992) already saw this attention from overseas in 1992, stressing that ‘the fascination with Diana is more than a British phenomenon, it is an international obsession whose scale and longevity show that it is more than high-class soap opera or a reactionary wish-fulfilment fantasy for American Anglophiles’. Diana

became the most powerful image in global popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s. She was a modern celebrity with an American lifestyle and attitude, but also a troubled 'former' British royalty.

As Morton said, Diana started her life as a relatively anonymous British girl, having a local (national) resonance without attention from abroad. After marrying Charles, her status grew to a global one: she turned into a ‘princess for the world’ (Morton, 1997), with ‘a truly global resonance’ (Morton, 1997). She was living the ‘old American [fairy tale] fantasy’, loved by all the world, (Gibbs and Painton, 1997), and became an international obsession (Pagila, 1992). Diana went from a young and shy girl, to a British phenomenon, to the most powerful image in popular culture all over the world, turning from a local figure to a global superstar.

Mother versus lover

Although the public loved Diana’s appearances on the screen, her problems and troubles were also loved, mostly by the tabloids and gossip magazines. Her life was so blown up, almost like a fictional drama, that the audience felt her every step with ‘hysterical intensity’, as Jan Morris (1997), journalist of Time Magazine, puts it. In his article ‘The naughty girl next door’ Morris discusses Diana’s different sides as presented in the media. He says Diana was a terribly mixed-up kid, who ‘represented herself so many of the worries our own children are likely to foist upon us – disappointing school grades, anorexia and bulimia, unsuitable young men, a tendency to show off, a preoccupation with clothes and publicity, a rotten marriage, single motherhood and trouble with the in-laws’. The troubles in her personal life, mostly romantically, were unavoidable in the press.

Camilla Paglia (1992) divides Diana’s personality into many different sides: ‘the betrayed wife’, ‘the princess in the tower’, ‘the mater dolorosa’, ‘the pagan goddess’, ‘the Hollywood queen’ and even ‘the beautiful boy’. Her article The Diana Cult presents Diana as a mixed-up personality, focusing on many roles, of which the most important one to Paglia is the mater dolorosa, the grieving and betrayed mother. Besides being a princess and a global figure, Diana was a mother of the two boys William and Harry. Paglia compares Diana to a Weeping Madonna, a grieving lady figure with a lot of love for her children. Joe Chidley (1997) wrote a piece for Maclean’s, called ‘The tabloid princess’, in which Chidley states that Diana has always been very loving and close with her children. In 1992, Diana herself stated that ‘my first priority will always be William and Harry, who must be aware of the tradition they were born in, but also deserve all the love, care and attention I can give’ (Donnolly, 1997, 64).

Two months after the birth of George, the child of William and Kate Middleton, rumours were reported that Diana had made a secret tape for Prince William and his future family, in case Diana would not be around herself (Daily Star, Pauley and Spillett, 2013). In this tape, Diana reportedly said:

‘Cherish your children for me, let them know I’ll love them and watch over them’. Whether this particular story is true or not, it adds to the portrayal of Diana as a loving mother by the media. Her undeniable love for her children was apparent in the media, but as shall be seen in chapter 3, the biopic DIANA seems to almost ignore her sons, stressing she only saw them once in roughly every five weeks.

Even though she loved her sons, she wasn’t happy in her marriage with Charles, who paid more attention to his mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles. ‘Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded…’, as Diana put it herself in the famous Panorama (BBC, 1995) interview also quoted above. She was depressed, got several physical illnesses, tried to kill herself by throwing herself off the palace’s stairs and was jealous of Charles’s relationship with Camilla. She felt like a victim (Morton, 1997).

Soon after the divorce of Diana and Charles in 1996, Diana found a new love in her life, Dodi Al Fayed. This news commenced a new chapter in the media writing about Diana, with the press having their own opinion about what Peter Donnolly calls in his book ‘Diana, princess of the people’, a

playboy (Donnolly, 1997, 112). This time, Diana was extremely happy, as she reportedly said to the

media and close friends. The Al Fayed family later became a large part of the chapter that would follow in Diana’s life – her and Dodi’s death. The movie DIANA (2013) portrays another view on Diana’s love life, focusing on her intimate relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, instead of her heavily mediated relationship with Dodi. This will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, about the biopic itself.

Diana’s first priority was, as she stated herself, her two children William and Harry. According to Paglia (1992), Diana was a mater dolorosa, a grieving and betrayed mother, with a great love for her children. While she loved her children, the media mostly focused on her romantic life, Diana herself also bringing attention to it while talking about her marriage in the Panorama interview. Diana’s relationship with Dodi Al Fayed was heavily reported, and Kate Snell wrote a book about Diana’s less known relationship with Hasnat Khan, upon which the movie DIANA was based. Thus, while Diana had been and still was a loving mother, the media increasingly focused on her being a lover.

Silent victim versus eloquent ambassador

Diana grew up in a British wealthy family, going to private schools. She was a ‘child of privilege and substantial, if declining, wealth’, living a life filled with servants and nannies (Chidley, 1997). She met Charles during a shooting expedition. Marrying a Windsor was a logical step in her lifeline, already enriched with royal family members. Diana was in every way trying to conform to the situation, admitting in her first television interview: ‘I feel my role is supporting my husband whenever I can,

and always being behind him, encouraging him’ (Morton, 1997).

Diana’s presence reportedly caused the popularity of the royal family to blossom again, after ‘years of slow decline in influence and popularity’ (Chidley, 1997). But Diana’s relationship with the Windsors, especially Charles’ mother Queen Elizabeth, wasn’t good. Queen Elizabeth seemed to be much more taken with Sarah Ferguson, and it has been said that it was Elizabeth urging Diana and Charles to divorce after the rumours about them both seeing someone else. In 2006, a movie about Queen Elizabeth got released, THE QUEEN (2006), directed by Stephen Frears. This movie focuses on Queen Elizabeth after Diana’s death, the Queen being accused of not being able to cope with the situation and ‘not caring’ about Diana’s death at all. The movie DIANA stresses Diana’s deteriorating relationship with the Windsors when she speaks with Dodi about being fond of foxes, when they are sailing to an area called ‘Fox Creek’. When Dodi asks why she’s fond of foxes, she responds by saying ‘They’re like me. We all escaped from the Windsors.’ (Diana, 2013).

But when the marriage of Charles and Diana was falling apart, Diana grew in her strength, as Morton (1997) puts it, to ‘battle against the Windsors’. She gained public support, a very strong weapon, and the will to help people and finding good causes gave her the strength to carry on. She went from ‘silent victim’ to ‘eloquent ambassador’, being able to shape her own life and

achievements. Turning into a ‘princess for the world’, she gave the audience a sense of identification, especially women who saw themselves echoed in Diana’s difficult marriage and break-through after the divorce.

Nancy Gibbs and Priscilla Painton (1997) from Time Magazine put it as follows: she went from ‘Princess Victim’ to ‘a shrewd operator, better at public relations than all the palace spear throwers’. Diana broke loose from tradition and protocol, turning her image into being a strong and

independent woman, striving for her own goals. By developing into a mediated public icon, the para-social relationship with the audience grew as well, as explained above, conform Basil, Bocarnea and Brown.

The cameras loved her to death: Needing the media versus hating the media

Although this fourth contradiction is not a contradiction existing inside the mediated identity of Diana, it concerns her relationship to the media on a meta-textual level. This relationship features prominently in the movie DIANA and therefore merits special attention here.

As was mentioned earlier, Diana was aware of the power of television and British tabloid newspapers, she herself encouraging the media to give her attention. According to Ian Buruma (1999), Diana used the mass media as a stage for projecting her image, ‘as the wronged spouse, as the radiant society

beauty, as the compassionate princess hugging AIDS-patients and landmine victims, and as the mourning princess crying at celebrity funerals’. As he continues, ‘they needed her to feed the public appetite for celebrity gossip, and she needed them for her public performance’. Diana’s life wasn’t private, so she used that status and positioned herself as the ‘Queen of Hearts’, a ‘patron saint of victims, the sick, the homeless’. In this way, people could identify with her. All her different sides, faults and problems were projected on the screen, making her recognizable for every member of the public. She accepted her mediated fate and turned it into something she could use to her own advantage.

In 2006, the book The Firm by journalist Penny Junor got released, a behind the screen view on the British royal family. In the book, Junor severely critiques Diana and her alleged ‘mental illness’ (Junor, 2006, 73). Diana having bulimia turned her into an unhappy and dishonest control freak, according to Junor, being unable to step into someone else’s shoes, a struggle for the royal family as well as for Diana herself. She was able to hide it in front of the cameras, but in the palace Diana grew to be a stranger to her surroundings. This need for control can also be seen in her manipulation of the media, her need to control the images of her painted by them.

But although she was able to manipulate and use the media, they also isolated her, as stated in the book Diana by Sarah Bradford (2006, 298). When she was out, the media always swirled around her, making Diana feel rushed and lonely. In 1994, Diana let go of the police protection she had had during her marriage with Charles, opening up the gates for the paparazzi. They were always there, yelling at her and calling her names to see if they could shock her, or make her cry, something Diana hated (Bradford, 2006, 299). She sometimes had to hide on the floor of the taxi, to shake off the paparazzi chasing her. Diana felt the need for friendship and affection, but according to Diana’s acquaintance Meredith Etherington-Smith, Diana had a ‘royal aura of a meter’, making intimacy almost impossible (Bradford, 2006, 299).

The aggressive approach by the media reportedly played against Diana on the 31st _{of August 1997.}

Andrew Morton (1997) describes the events as follows:

As she stood on the brink of a new life, her past, a universe she could never escape, caught up with her in the shape of the trailing paparazzi. She may have flown the cage of Buckingham Palace and liberated herself as a woman in her own right, but the world would never let her break out from her abiding image as a glamorous and rather frivolous woman. Her life came a tragic full circle: the camera loved her to death.

close reading of the night of Diana’s death and what possibly happened shortly after the event itself. As Lacayo says, the world was trying to comprehend that night in Paris and the events that led to her death. The first suspects were the paparazzi, chasing Diana’s car, but several photographers declared that they hadn't done so, since ‘a moving photo of a car would have no value at all' and they were riding 'hundreds of yards behind’. The second suspect was the driver, Henri Paul, who reportedly had four times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. These discoveries led to many conspiracy theories among the grieving audience. Lacayo summarized the two most speculated conspiracies: the Arab world would have been against the Egyptian Dodi marrying a Christian girl and the Windsors would have been against Diana marrying the foreign playboy Dodi and wanted to avoid a public scandal. The truth is still out there.

Concluding, it can be said that Diana loved the media, using them for her own advantage, letting them picturing her as the ‘Queen of Hearts’: a compassionate woman and patron saint of victims, letting the audience develop a para-social relationship with her to attract public attention and support, something she also needed in order to break free from the Windsor tradition. According to Junor (2006), Diana was a control freak, her mental illness forcing her in wanting to take control over everything in her life, including the media. But on the other side, the aggressive approach of the media made Diana feel lonely and isolated, them chasing her onto the floor of her cab and making it impossible for Diana to develop normal friendships. Reportedly, the same paparazzi eventually chased Diana into her death, surrounding her car in the Pont de l’Alma in Paris. Diana loved and used the media, but hated them at the same time.

In this chapter about the historical event, it has become clear that Diana wasn’t just Charles's wife, she represented much more roles in the media. She was a British girl, but also an international superstar, the most famous woman in the world, as director Hirschbiegel calls Diana. She was a loving mother, but also a depressed lover. She started off her young life as a conforming British girl, married into being a Windsor and eventually broke free from tradition, turning into a strong and independent woman. All these different sides are well-known in the media, making Diana a loved celebrity. She was aware of the media, and used them to her own advantage in order to have control, but in the end the media turned into an aggressive swirl of attention, eventually chasing her into an early death.

In the next chapter the ‘historical’ Diana will be compared with the Diana as presented in the biopic DIANA and analysed by the use of documentary aesthetics and history storytelling.

CHAPTER 3

D

(2013): The making and reception of a historical romance

Following the previous research on the historical event, this chapter will contain an analysis of the biopic DIANA (2013). After a summary of the film itself, there will be a look at what the director has told the media about his creative treatment of reality. This is followed by an exploration of the contradictions in Diana’s life as presented in the previous chapter, and the way the contradictions manifest themselves in the movie. Hereafter, the documentary aesthetics as presented in the first chapter will be used to analyse the film. Then, there will be an analysis of the media coverage and criticism from the press, followed by an analysis of the criticism by the use of the ideas of history storytelling.

In doing so, this chapter will include all four themes as presented in the introduction, as applicable to the case study:

1. the historical event (or person): the last two years of Diana’s life 2. the filmmaker: director Oliver Hirschbiegel

3. the film: DIANA

4. the reception: by the (British, Dutch and American) press

These four themes will come together in the analysis of the movie, to begin with the summary of the main events structuring the film.

3.1 Summarization of the movie

The movie DIANA (2013) starts with a black screen and actual radio footage most likely broadcast in the last few years of Diana’s life, in either 1995, 1996 or 1997: ‘it’s not the horror of landmines that is making the headlines back home, but reports of the princess’s romance with Dodi Fayed.’ Looking back at the last two chapters, the use of this first sentence is an interesting choice. A closer reading reveals important information regarding Diana and her life, selected by the director and introduced to the public before the movie even begins properly. With ‘headlines’ they mean media and with ‘home’ they mean the local people of Great Britain, focusing rather on her romantic life than her professional work for good causes. With this sentence, the focus of the movie is already clear at the beginning. After the radio footage, the story begins on the 31st _{of August 1997, where there are sirens and}

crowds in front of a Paris hotel. This already seems the ‘end’ of Diana’s life (the car accident), but instead shows the media attention for Diana staying in that particular hotel, as the camera swirls into a hotel room where Diana is still alive, collecting her belongings. After this, the story skips back to two years earlier, 1995. In this part, the viewer gets to see the strong and powerful Diana as presented in

the media, waving to the crowd, visiting charity events and helping good causes. But as soon as Diana leaves the crowd, her smile disappears: it is clear she is in a bad mental state, most likely struggling with her ending relationship with Prince Charles and their separate lives, although this isn’t clear yet in the movie.

Following this picture of Diana in the media, the story continues with her practicing her famous interview for the BBC's Panorama in the mirror. Here, the viewer slowly gets to understand Diana’s private story. Several activities that follow explore this: Diana gets emotional when she hears Charles’s interview on the television about cheating on Diana with his mistress Camilla, Diana seems stressed while getting a massage and acupuncture and she talks with her acupuncturist and friend Oonagh Toffolo about having bad dreams, in which she falls without anyone catching her.

The scene after is a short, but important one, describing Diana’s relationship with her two children. During an evening at the opera, Diana talks with her son William over the telephone. Diana says: ‘I see you next week, or the week after’ and after a short pause, continues saying: ‘That’s what the palace decided. As long as you are happy.’ she herself looking very unhappy. After this, Diana talks to her press chef Patrick, saying: ‘Perhaps you want to indicate to the palace that I’d like to see my children more than once every five weeks!’This explains not only her being unable to see her children often enough, but also her relationship with the ‘palace’, meaning her in-laws.

Following this in the movie is the introduction of the main storyline: Diana’s meeting with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan. After receiving a call from Oonagh that her husband is in hospital because of complications after a bypass operation, Diana rushes to the emergency room. Everybody in the hospital, patients and nurses as well, seems to be excited that Diana is around: they all know and recognize her, laughing nervously as she runs by. In the hospital, Diana first meets Hasnat Khan, the surgeon of Oonagh’s husband. Meeting Hasnat again in the lift later on, Diana explains her fascination with hospitals. ‘Every time I’m in a hospital, I get excited. I feel like I can make a

contribution.’ Hasnat responds with an offer to lead Diana around the place; she accepts. During the tour through the hospital, they talk about families, Hasnat’s family helping him becoming a heart surgeon. Hasnat says: ‘Families can be useful.’ Diana responds: ‘And bloody irritating,’ referring to her in-laws in a negative way for the second time.

The relationship between Hasnat and Diana develops and when Diana is asked what she likes about Hasnat, she responds: ‘He doesn’t treat me like a princess. It’s like he doesn’t even know who I am’, followed, after a short pause, by a laugh, indicating that it’s not likely that someone doesn’t know her. The movie follows Diana and Hasnat falling in love, spending the night together and going out in public with Diana wearing a dark-haired wig, to remain anonymous. This is needed, because the press is always around. Hasnat struggles with this media attention, him being very fond of his

privacy and needing focus and concentration to perform his job.

The film moves onwards to the 20th _{of November 1995, to Diana’s famous interview with}

Panorama for the BBC. In this interview, Diana explains what went wrong in her marriage with Charles. ‘There were three of us in this marriage’, alluding to Camilla Parker-Bowles as the third one. Diana confesses wanting to be ‘The queen of people’s hearts’. This brings Diana a lot of media attention, appearing in the newspapers. After the interview Diana uses this attention to give a podium to different good causes she helps: she travels to Angola to bring attention to the danger of mine fields, she goes to Sydney to talk at the Victor Chang fundraiser – Victor Chang being a mentor of Hasnat - and she auctions her dresses for an AIDS fund in New York, collecting 5.5 million dollars. This is difficult for Hasnat, wanting to live a private life, especially as their ‘secret’ relationship gets public. His family makes Hasnat choose between his career and family on the one side, and Diana on the other side, his brother explaining: ‘When you marry Diana, you marry the world’. The media stand in between Hasnat and Diana, and Hasnat initially chooses his career and family over love.

After the break-up, Diana falls into a depression. The paparazzi start to follow her more and more – eventually mentally breaking her during a shopping session with cameras chasing her into her car. Together with her press chef she decides to set up a media strategy. When Dodi Al Fayed offers Diana to go on a boat trip with him, she accepts, embedding Dodi into her strategy. When they sail to Fox Creek, an Italian area, Diana calls Jason Fraser, a journalist of The Mirror. She gives away her location to attract the media to take pictures of her and Dodi, possibly to protect the privacy of Hasnat, but it is also possible she does this to make Hasnat jealous. After this, Diana seems to be more content with her life, explaining to Oonagh that her nightmare of falling into the darkness changed into the good feeling of flying. She concludes: ‘Now that I’ve been loved, I don’t feel lonely anymore’. Together with this, the movie gets more intense: the music gets louder and the cameras and flashes get brighter. This part concludes with Diana calling the press, saying that it is enough now. After this, the story is back at the 31st _{of August 1997. The silence has returned and Diana’s}

strength seems to be gone, her being silent and calling Hasnat time after time, without him taking the call. The screen switches to Hasnat, who is thinking of Diana and deciding whether to call her or not. When Diana has left her hotel room, Hasnat wakes up from a nightmare and the sound of his telephone, ringing to tell him the news about Diana’s accident.

The movie ends in front of the palace, the people of Britain sending their love to the deceased Diana by crying and giving flowers and pictures. Between the crowd, Hasnat shows up to bring flowers with a note attached: ‘Somewhere between right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.’ Diana responds in voice-over: ‘I will meet you there.’ With this, Hirschbiegel shows that Diana and Hasnat loved each other to the end, Dodi only being a distraction for the media.