Why I hate the Daily Mail, as distilled into one edition

it's still pretty insulting to her. i mean, what do you reckon she personally thinks of it?

I don't object to her feeling insulted by it. I object to her feeling insulted being a big deal simply because she married a Prince.

No idea what her feelings on the latter are. Doesn't mean it's still not a pretty insulting way to talk about somebody. How does she know where someone else's choice or desire for choice begins and ends?

what this situation needs is for DCam to weigh in.

i cannot believe this has just happened, gaping at the idiocy on display today

still at least the BBC are keeping things in perspective by having an article about some runner who may or may not have shot his girlfriend as their lead story

genuinely can't work our whether people are being opportunistic or illiterate here

*out

btw, why is this particular thing the 'most offensive' thing yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTf0rPhEmP4

I can't stand the monarchy, and the Mail will obviously be the Mail, with Cameron too just gathering attention from it. All of that said, aren't Mantel's comments still quite clumsy?

If you really want to make a point about monarchy there are probably better ways to do it than this. It is very personally worded. And if the point is about sexism then why insult an individual who is being subjected to it or subsumed by a sexist institution?

http://cdn.theweek.co.uk/sites/theweek/files/styles/theweek_article_main_image/public/hilary-mantel-190213.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_-nmpEaAYNWA/SuyyxIu460I/AAAAAAAACY4/EpvCzQmUXRk/s400/BSD0.jpg

valuable commentary on hilary mantel's looks from dog latin

bit mean, sorry.

wtf man she looks nothing like glenn close

I don't even think the Mantel piece is that good but rmde at such obvious manufactured outrage from that noted feminist organ the Daily Mail.

xpost LG, the article (rather than the Daily Mail version) is not that personally worded towards Kate Middleton, it's not much about her at all, really - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

I think the article's OK, it reminds me of some blog posts (ones which seem to get lavish praise from readers) which makes up for substantial things to say by running to great length and rather portentous tone. Which is not to say the writing's bad, of course.

I've read it all, it's more a general thing rather than the wild howling about the specifics that the Mail went in for, fuck the Mail obviously, but this bit, for example:

Antoinette as a royal consort was a gliding, smiling disaster, much like Diana in another time and another country. But Kate Middleton, as she was, appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished.

Talking about a person in this way kind of jars a bit for me, it's like by saying someone is being objectified or dehumanised by institution it's then okay to repeat that process as factual analysis of that person, such is its success.

I mean, if Kate does indeed tire of being looked at, isn't this piece just a sort of detached continuation of that? Just don't think you get away with such deep comment on someone's appearance, the piece generally feels patronising, like Mantel wrote it in assumption that this lab insect was never going to read it.

I get what you mean, and I sympathise, it's just that the bit you quote is as personal as it gets and doesn't seem "such deep comment". The royals must be as aware of how plastic their smiles are!

As I write this, though, I am agreeing with you more, though - Mantel could run the argument "Kate or her advisors let no hint of personality emerge from behind the facade" or similar; to play that as "Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made..." is pretty similar but removes any agency from her at all. That might be the point but it won't really do in a (broadly) feminist article. I mean, it might be true that Kate is powerless and puppetty but I don't suppose Mantel knows that any more than I do.

I still don't read that as personal, although I can see why people are. It hinges on the "appeared". Mantel is talking about, and levelling her "personal" comments at, the Kate-persona as manufactured by the media.

Lab insect probably never will read it tbf

That was an xp; Tim's quotes do make the piece much muddier than Mantel should have allowed it to become. Xp

I think it's deep in the sense of how much is presumed about the person in question.

It has the feel of intellectual snobbery, a sort of study of the natives from someone who is well-to-do enough and smart enough not to feel in any way intimidated by royalty. Which would be fine if it actually had real insight rather than speculation, in the bits where it does mention Kate. I agree there aren't many, but there's a reason they were so easily picked up by the tabloids.

As I say, can you really imagine Kate Middleton thinking this is a fair piece? And if not, why? Cos she's brainwashed? Or cos someone presumes to speak for her or know her motivations?

oops xposts

Mantel is talking about, and levelling her "personal" comments at, the Kate-persona as manufactured by the media.

Shouldn't she be dismantling this if it's a bad thing, rather than fuelling it with more presumption of her own?

right, it's about the Kate-persona - and she's also pretty carefully structured the material - so we get the superficial/appearances stuff early on, and the comparison to Marie Antoinette. All that is slightly acid and gets the attention (& has worked too effectively), but then she starts bringing in the Diana references, which open up the unreason and strangeness of the monarchy - "In looking at royalty we are always looking at what is archaic, what is mysterious by its nature, and my feeling is that it will only ever half-reveal itself. "

how that plays itself out in relation to royal women is her topic & I don't think there's any hypocrisy in wanting or needing to talk about that, when it's obviously coming from a position of sympathy:

We don’t cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago. History makes fools of us, makes puppets of us, often enough. But it doesn’t have to repeat itself. In the current case, much lies within our control. I’m not asking for censorship. I’m not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.

I don't think it's that she sees Kate as not-an-agent, more that monarchy is this massive superhuman psyche-warping machine that britain's lumbered with & that she doesn't want it/us to destroy another young woman.

a position of pity maybe, i wouldn't say sympathy.

xp Don't fully agree, Woof. For the reason of this para again:

Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana...

The Kate-appearance only comes in halfway through before that, we have what Kate is. As you say, this is carefully-done...

Ugh I wish I could proofread what I write here, it's a disgrace.

That last linee should have read "The Kate-appearance only comes in halfway through. Before that, we have what Kate *is*. As you say, this is carefully-done..."

if were parsing on that level, the first sentence opens with 'seems'

The question LG raises about what real-Kate would think about the article if she read it is an interesting one, and not one to which there's necessarily a simple answer. It's not impossible to imagine her being quite pleased that she and her team have managed to control her image to the point that she seems irreproachable; presumably Kate herself believes she has a personality distinct from her public persona, and she might be rather invested in the two remaining separate?

And I have known plenty of people who have taken "painfully thin" as a direct compliment!

but it's "seems to have been selected" not "seems painfully thin".

xpost to max

yeah but i think it arguably brackets the whole sentence

the diana comparisons are a whole other can of worms, that is her deceased mother in law, afterall.

xpost, maybe, though clumsy was one of the earlier criticisms.

I actually think "creepy" was a good criticism of the piece, at least the Kate bits.

i read "painfully thin" as appropriating the daily mail's own language - note that it's followed by "as anyone could wish" (but who could possibly wish to be "painfully" thin? is it even a phrase you hear outside of the tabloids much? is it not - along with phrases like "flaunts her curves" - the very essence of tabloid scrutiny of celebrity bodies as if they're public property?)

I agree that it is, but I don't give her the benefit of the doubt there, I think the piece at worst comes off like part of a problem, rather than a remedy.

One of the interesting things in the article (to me) was that it took the (sound) feminist line that we objectify and alienate women by locating our sense of them their bodies rather than their minds*, and extended it to the whole of royalty.

Charles becomes a nicely-tailored suit; Henry 8 becomes a succession of medicalised physique-speculations; the whole lot of them become pandas in a zoo.

Apols for the clumsy expression, doing this in snatched moments at work.

NB haven't thought this through very well but I suppose I think there's a bunch of interesting stuff in here which is not helped by the somewhat creepy stuff about Kate. Makes it topical though, eh?

i don't think it's meant as a remedy - the "now back off!" concluding paragraph is the weakest section, because it seems way too pat and comes out of nowhere, it doesn't fit what the piece had hitherto been about - drawing parallels between how contemporary and historical royal/celebrity bodies are pored over, by the media/the public/historians.

I tweeted, out of frustration at the way the Mail uses this stuff with such aplomb, "Please RT if you prefer Wolf Hall to the Daily Mail" - it's fast becoming my most RTed tweet ever.

#fail

yeah, the 'back off' is a little weak - imo it's because there's a kind of fatalistic unreason at the back of the lecture, which is both its strength & a limit - I think she thinks this kind of story plays out as it must.

Why's it taken two weeks for this to come into contention, I wonder?

LRB article was published in hard copy end of last week, giving time for Mail hacks to do hatchet job early this week.

Aha.

ajhsdljdluegfliedfl ed miliband has weighed in

our entire political establishment is stupid and illiterate

The best either Cameron or Miliband could have done was to say nothing about it at all, and concentrate on actual issues affecting the UK. But politicians today don't know how, or when, to shut up.

yeah, I got a little wrapped up in defending the lecture there, but just so much ridiculous about this whole affair, especially now the really pointless noise-making from politicians.

Good for the LRB though, that's something.

Page hits bruv

Ed says her comments were offensive. I can sort-of see him being politically offended even by a correct reading of it. How dare she say that our establishment objectifies royalty and reduces it to meaningless ciphers etc etc. Bet he doesn't mean that, though.

LRB article was published in hard copy end of last week, giving time for Mail hacks to do hatchet job early this week.

think there was a specific lrb speech/lecture in the last couple of days this was linked to. article was ok I thought, nothing special but a bit of a coup for the lrb and clearly coming from the angle of how to interpret the metamorphosing of a concept rather than a personal attack. language sailed close to personal attack in tone, I thought as much as anything out of a desire to get a bit of argument/angle to the piece, but on the whole I subscribe to lex's illiteracy/mail anger manufacture. there's a question I guess of how much mantel or agent, say, could have foreseen this, courted it even. I suspect not much. "Author writes article in lrb" not much of a story in book world after all.