I have been watching the last season of The Crown. It has been, more so than other seasons, a fascinating process of cultural assessment for me as I have remembered the key, cultural events of the late 1990s/early 2000s through the cultural lens of 2023. The Crown never promised to be historically accurate but rather aimed to use the royal, public figures as a reflection on our cultural development (or at least that is how I’ve watched it).
I want to use one particular episode in this latest season to pin down the primary reflection I have had this year: cultural ‘goods’ are culturally pre-determined. How then do we judge what cultural expressions are to be welcomed and which might need to be treated with caution?
In ‘Ruritannia’ (series 6 episode 6), the Queen hits a moment of crisis as she compares her low approval ratings with that of newly elected Tony Blair whose public ratings are skyrocketing. In a moment of weakness she asks him for help to improve the public perception of the monarchy and he promptly makes suggestions for sweeping reform. Although this is presented with reluctance by the character of the prime minister, there is a sense in which the modern, poll-focussed marketing approach to public life relishes the opportunity to shape the historic, traditions of a cultural artefact.
What follows is a series of interviews by the Queen and her advisor with various royal particulars which are presented to the popular, modern sensibilities as eccentric, redundant or archaic. The rest of the Royal Family (aside from Charles, Prince of Wales) see this process as a waste of time but it proceeds as an attempt to modernise and to become relevant in the 21st century. What is being explored through the narrative is what modern Britain now wants to value and to ask the question as to whether the monarchy fits in with our new cultural vision. Tony Blair and New Labour represent the modernising force compared with the Crown as a thing of a bygone era.
Near the end of the episode the Queen announces that she has decided not to cut any of the ‘wastage’ but will maintain them for the sole reason that she has been reminded of the role of the monarchy.
The spell that we cast and have cast for centuries is our immutability. Tradition is our strength; respect for our forebears and the preservation of generations of their wisdom and learned experience. Modernity is not always the answer; sometimes antiquity is too.
What is interesting is the way in which the drama points to the shared sense that we, as a nation or culture, have not progressed into a utopian state but rather we feel as though we are in a worse place than we were before the cultural revolution that came in during the 1990s and early 2000s. The fortunes of these two political entities have now changed and the Queen, at least, became more relevant and popular as Tony Blair and his style of politics faded.
I enjoy listening to ‘The Rest Is Politics’ podcast each week and find it is now the only source of news that I can stomach or trust as Rory Stewart (a staunch monarchist) and Alistair Campbell (of New Labour fame) discuss current affairs. The common theme of this year has been the erosion of standards in public life blamed, by the presenters, on the latest version of the Conservative party and the media. I would want to push that further and say that some of the blame must land on parts of the Labour government before.
My Christmas Day sermon focussed on the addictive nature of negative news and how we are controlled by the perpetually changing news cycles that bombard us with fresh horrors everyday so we are, through social media and public discussions, forced to feel outrage, fear, disappointment and mistrust. This so shapes us that we no longer have any energy to receive or believe in good news. We are unable to conceive of a different future; to capture genuine, sustainable stories of hope. This is the mess we find ourselves in and I point the finger of blame at the unbridled, unchallenged politically progressive forces at work over the last decades.
I have long felt a discontent with the narrative presented by ‘activists’, ‘anarchists’ and deconstructionists of the late 20th century. The seeds of this new cultural narrative were sown much earlier in the growth of individualism which, under the guise of freedom and equality, failed to achieve either and perpetuate economic and social inequality. In their attempt to manufacture a revolution to destroy perceived systematic oppression within the fabric of our society, they have failed to recognise and preserve the cultural values that held our nation together during the real fight against the twin dark ideologies of fascism and communism. I look around myself now and see no basis in which to fight these political impulses. It is, in part, because we have fallen for the lie that Oscar Romero warned against.
The Church, then, is in an hour of aggiornamento, that is, a crisis in its history. And as in all aggriornamenti, two antagonsitic forces emerge: on the one hand, a boundless desire for novelty, which Paul VI describes as “arbitrary dreams of artificial renewals”; and on the other hand, an attachment to the changelessness of the forms with which the Church has clothed itself over the centuries and a rejection of the character of modern times. Both extremes sin by exaggeration… So as not to fall into either the ridiculous position of uncritical affection for what is old, or the ridiculous position of becoming adventurers pursuing “artificial dreams” about novelties, the best thing is to live today more than ever according to the classic axiom: think with the Church.
Óscar Romero, “Aggiornamento”, El Chaparrastique, No. 2981, January 15, 1965, p.1.
I fear for the future of Britain, not because of the current Conservative government (although that is a major factor) nor the abusive state of the media in this country (although I am planning on reducing my media diet significantly in 2024) but because of the vacuum that now exists where the rich foundations on which our culture was built. Our institutions have lost any sense of why they exist and what necessary role they play in public life. We have allowed ourselves to be pushed out of the public square under the charge of irrelevance or, worse, wrongdoing. I am shocked at how little we, as citizens, remember our history and, therefore, our cultural values. I am saddened by the popular self-loathing we have of our nation, culture and heritage.
I wrote the following about the modern attitude to the Church.
The Church has taken quite a battering over my lifetime, and I’m sure prior to it as well. It is regularly criticised for being slow, unwieldy, unnecessarily dogmatic, restrictive, stuffy, irrelevant, etc. The curses spoken over the Bride of Christ have been so constant that it is rare to hear her speak positively of herself. She has become so self-critical that she has begun to talk only of a complete make-over akin to surgical enhancements and distortions.
Ned Lunn, ‘Ash Water Oil: Why We Need A New Form Of Monasticism’ (London:Society of the Holy Trinity, 2020) p.xv
What is true here of the Church is the same of our nation and culture. If our cultural amnesia continues then we will have nothing on which to build a better future. All political parties, as we head to the inevitable general election next year, will promise that they can. I fear they will be unable to persuade me if they continue to speak of modernising without a great vision of our past.
The danger facing Bradford as we approach 2025 and our celebrations as UK City of Culture is that we will have no coherent or meaningful way of judging what is culturally ‘good’. We currently have no established, shared cultural narrative by which to compare new cultural expressions against. This means we cannot hope to celebrate ‘our culture’ as we do not know how to define it. We now exist only with fleeting novelty and current cultural acceptance which increasingly pass and change. What is to stop the things built and begun in 2025 from being ‘cancelled’ and ripped down in favour of newer, ‘better’ cultural visions in 2030?
This is where I see the Church, like the Crown in the Netflix season, as an important part of the creation of 2025 in Bradford, and indeed in the cultural reformation that is required in 2024. We must grasp hold of our historic role and be confident in our place within our civic life. There is a seemingly logical demand put upon the Church and on all institutions to be ‘relevant’ to have meaning for the 21st century. The character of the Queen in the Crown suggests an alternative vision.
People don’t want to come to a royal palace and get what they could have at home. When they come for an investiture or a state visit; when they brush up against us they want the magic and the mystery and the arcane and the eccentric and the symbolic and the transcendent. They want to feel like they have entered another world. That is our duty: to lift people up and transport them into another realm, not bring them down to earth and remind them of what they already have.
What we lack in modern Britain is the transcendent link with our forebears and our history. We have, like petulant adolescents, dismissed our ancestors because of their many faults and mistakes. We lack any maturity to hold in tension the rightful critique of their flaws and the appreciation of their strengths and virtues. We have also allowed the spiritual and metaphysical things that bind people together across generations and cultures to be exorcised from public life. We have reduced our conversations down to the prosaic, the immediate and the ordinary. Is it any wonder that we are so disenchanted?
I want to re-enchant our political and cultural vision in 2024. I want to encourage the people of Bradford to encounter the transcendent in order that they may dream new dreams and catch a fresh vision beyond the everyday. I don’t see any politicians doing this and, sadly, I do not see many artists doing so either.