Curiosity about American Declarations of Non-Interest in the Royal Wedding
American Flag, by uhuru1701, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
I already blogged about the Royal wedding last week, and wasn’t planning on mentioning it again, but these past couple days several articles about why Americans shouldn’t watch it have been plastered across the news sites. They go from declaring, “if you get up at 3 a.m. on Friday to watch the wedding on television, you are a traitor to your country,” to announcing, “America’s infatuation with the upcoming royal wedding means that we basically loathe all the values upon which our nation was founded.” I guess because they kicked out King George back in 1783 or something, and this means anyone who so much looks at a picture of William and Kate is stabbing their country in the back …(okay, that’s an exaggeration). My first reaction was – whew, I live in Canada so I can be interested in it without feeling guilty – until I realized there’s enough Canadians out there who’re against the monarchy as well. So nationality doesn’t cut it – Christian Hitchens, who I mentioned last week, is British himself. Which just goes to show that being a monarch is a rough job nowadays – everybody hates you.
But these articles seem pretty vocal. Maybe they’re all just tired of over-exposure. What I don’t understand is how watching the wedding = supporting monarchy = a betrayal of United States’ proud history of democracy. Okay, I’m not deeply attached to the institution of monarchy, but I’m interested in the wedding anyway. Why? Well, as I said before, I discovered I have a mushy romance streak in me, I’m just plain curious, and I still think princesses and princes have a certain mystique (even if they’re just plain ol’ people). And can’t you just watch because you’re rooting for the marriage to succeed in a family where so many marriages haven’t?
But, I’m not American. And other things about America are mystifying to me (eg: their whole health-care debate), so I could be missing something here. I mean, I haven’t heard anyone calling for a replacement of Obama with “King William and Queen Kate.” Plus, the American Revolution was two hundred years ago, and I though America and England were good buddies now? You know, helping each other out with wars and all that? Isn’t the least you can do is be happy for the other country’s little celebration?
Ah well. I guess old habits die hard.
By the way, I guess a future post should address the reasons monarchy is so interesting to me – because they’re such a useful trope to use in literature!
What’s your opinion? Can you watch the wedding without guilt?
Hmm... 
I watched the Royal wedding on TV just a bit but I didn’t know what both Americans and British though about.
In Japan there is the Emperor who is positioned only as a symbol of the Japanese people.Most of us seems to be unconcerned them or not to tell about them much.
LikeLike
Yes, here in Canada we never think about the Queen, but somehow we were all interested in the royal wedding anyway.
LikeLike
Why do we care about the British wedding? And I’m talking the general, figurative “we,” not necessarily including me. Let’s adjust the question. Why do we care about people named Snooki and The Situation? I don’t know, either. Bottom line: we like stories, and I guess we like happy stories more than anything else. We like stories with a good ending, which is why I maintain that Shakespeare’s tragedies would never have caught on if he were American.
To be fair, Momma says they got out of school for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth back in the 50’s. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this.
LikeLike
oh, p.s. thanks for stopping by my blog!
LikeLike
Yes, you’re probably right – we like stories. I’m not even sure why I was so interested in the whole wedding thing, but I guess as humans we are hard-wired to enjoy a good story. Especially ones with ‘happy endings.’
LikeLike