On Friday, April 29, Prince William and Kate Middleton will be wed at Westminster Abbey. The whole affair will have an estimated cost of more than $70 million. Hundreds of journalists, foreign dignitaries, celebrities and millions of people on the streets of London and billions watching on TV, will be envious of an event that will never happen in their lives.
If you are wondering, my information about the wedding does not come from my affection for all things related to British “royalty” — but mostly because it has become virtually impossible of late to watch TV — or visit a site on the Internet — without being subjected to an obnoxious story about William and Kate.
I cannot help but wonder and ask who the bloody hell cares? I then find myself reasoning that given how television networks’ revenue is dependent on ratings — high ratings means high viewership, high viewership means ad revenue — and given the wall-to-wall coverage of the event, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that a lot of people apparently do care.
So perhaps the more important question is this: Why the bloody hell should anyone care?
Haven’t these television networks got more important things to report on – oh, I don’t know, like news and stuff? Our country is engaged in two (three if you count Libya) wars and in an economic recession.
How do we not cringe with horror at the word “royalty” anyway?
I am pretty sure the Boston Tea Party of 1773 was our way of saying “No, thanks!” to anything royal.
The very concept of royalty, a bloodline more noble (and more pure) than that of working class men and women who live working class lives, eat working class foods and wear working class clothes, is insufferable to say the least.
So why then are we subjected to a constant mediagasm of the smiling royal couple and people who are in charming awe of the cost of food, flowers and the design of Kate’s dress?
I’ve always thought that the function of journalism is to avoid becoming an extension of the establishment, collaborating with it to keep people side-tracked with utter trivialities, but to engage people in critical thinking by delivering content that is relevant to their lives.
The function of journalism isn’t to aid in the construction of a society where people’s lives are based on fictional wants, needs and envies, thus producing a people fundamentally depressed and disappointed with the state of their lives and what they’ve got; but it is to instill in people a sense of community and satisfaction with their lives.
The Cinderella story is an obnoxious piece of fiction that has occasionally come to life with the wedding of a royalty. To fill our television channels with continuous footage of such events is to reiterate to people the existence of a class distinction. I for one think we should rebel against such class distinction by turning our TV sets off for the next four days.
Reach Sohail at sbayot@asu.edu
