But Will There Be Corgis? Thread Where We Discuss Netflix's THE CROWN

lol

i had to doublecheck he was in his early 30s when they married, i'd remembered it that he was 42 and she was 18 😬

She looked 42 and his emotional age was 18.

uncle dickie coached him well

Dickie's last note to Charles : I think I'm about to get my bollox blown off by the RA - don't be a massive paedo like me. Or am I getting this wrong way round.. Yeah I meant to say do be a massive posh paedo twat like me!

I wouldn't have thought it was possible not to know the details, but I heard John Mulaney and Nick Kroll talking to Pete Davidson on Oh Hello, the P'dcast about it, and he only had the very vaguest idea of who Diana even was. I know he's not exactly renowned for his razor-sharp brain, but he can't be the only one who doesn't really know about her.

Pete Davidson was minus 11 years old when some rich cunts from a weird island a long way away from his island got married! I'd be startled if he has much stronger a grip on the details of the American equivalent though, the starcrossed romance between King Bill Clinton and a blushing young staffer when Davidson was 2. (George St Geegland and Gil Faizon should definitely interview him again to find out.

Which episode of this has fake Australia in?

the ep is called Terra Nullius

or ep 6

bellow won the nobel prize which is exactly the kind of fact i wd expect the more diligent royals to have absorbed and processed for regurgitation in the kinds of cultural conversation the front-facers have to have -- so in this narrow sense he has certainly heard of bellow

― mark s,

Sure, but quoting from one of Bellow's more obscure and earlier novels a passage so DON'T YOU SEE in is aptness struck me as ridiculous.

This is the piece I was looking for about his intellectual enthusiasms:

The canniest of these flatterers, and the one who had the most lasting impact, was Laurens van der Post, a South African-born author, documentary filmmaker, and amateur ethnographer. He dazzled Charles with his visionary talk—of rescuing humanity from “the superstition of the intellect” and of restoring the ancients’ spiritual oneness with the natural world—and then convinced Charles that he was the man to lead the crusade. “The battle for our renewal can be most naturally led by what is still one of the few great living symbols accessible to us—the symbol of the crown,” he wrote to the Prince. It’s no wonder that Charles was seduced. The life of duty opening up before him was a dreary one of cutting ribbons at the ceremonial openings of municipal swimming pools and feigning delight at the performances of foreign folk dancers. Here was an infinitely more alluring model of princely purpose and prerogative.

Under the influence of van der Post and his circle, Charles began exploring vegetarianism, sacred geometry, horticulture, educational philosophy, architecture, Sufism. He received Jungian analysis of his dreams from van der Post’s wife, Ingaret. He visited faith healers who helped him uncork “a lot of bottled feelings.” Staying with farmers in Devon and crofters in the Hebrides, he played at being a horny-handed son of toil. He travelled to the Kalahari Desert and saw a “vision of earthly eternity” in a herd of zebras. On his return from each of these spiritual and intellectual adventures, he sought to share the fruits of his inquiries with his people.

Over the years, Charles has set up some twenty charities reflecting the range of his Bouvard-and-Pécuchet-like investigations. He has written several books, including “Harmony,” a treatise arguing that “the Westernized world has become far too firmly framed by a mechanistic approach to science.” He has sent thousands of letters to government ministers—known as the “black spider memos,” for the urgent scrawl of his handwriting—on matters ranging from school meals and alternative medicine to the brand of helicopters used by British soldiers in Iraq and the plight of the Patagonian toothfish. He has given countless speeches: to British businessmen, on their poor business practices; to educators, on the folly of omitting Shakespeare from the national curriculum; to architects, on the horridness of tall modern buildings; and so on.

ta calz!

I've got vague or possibly even fake tabloid paper memories of Aussies in the crowd loudly cheering and clapping when Charles injures himself falling off his horse!

It's fun watching fictional Charles getting increasingly jel that Diana is massively popular with Aussie plebs and finally getting completely crushed when bob hawke says something like "she's probably set back the Australian republican movement by 20 years, I thought you'd do a job for us just by being yourself"

Prince Charles 'asked New Zealand to stop making fun of him for falling off a horse'

(he had fallen three times in six weeks, most recently in Sydney)

sic - Hawkey gets the Richard Roxburgh treatment & it is v chef’s kiss

I noted you saying so upthread, yes, that's 30% of my interest!

btw total sidebar on the Hawke tip but you might somewhat enjoy the Angus Sampson / Leigh Whannell collabo film The Mule, a drug smuggling comedy set across the time the '83 America's Cup race is on TV

maybe "does prince charles read novels (apart from harry potter)?" can be my debut quora query

my alg there is already totally fucked for no reason i can discern, it will at least drag it away from dumb questions abt chernobyl

xpost oh hell yes, i will investigate! love both those guys!

I watched the Australian episode and: 30% good job, 63% lol at faking Australia*, but holy shit is this terrible writing. Does Morgan always do the all-exposition all-the-time dialogue?

QUEEN: "As you know, the Australian Prime Minister is an ex-unionist who believes it is time for a republic. Perhaps this trip will win hearts and minds among the colonies."

AUSSIE PM: "As you know, [GOOGLE NAME OF A SECOND AUSTRALIAN LATER, IF YOU HAVE TIME BEFORE FLYING TO VIENNA TO VISIT YOUR FIVE PRINCE AND PRINCESS CHILDREN. LEAVE BLANK OTHERWISE], I reckon it's past time we became a republic. This jug-eared bastard might turn the tide for us by parading around the joint."

QUEEN: "One hears that she is becoming popular with the heathens whom one desires to continue owning."

CHARLES: "You're becoming bloody popular by clinging to that baby!"

DIANA: "Maybe I'm becoming popular BECAUSE I'm clinging to that baby, who is my son. And yours!"

AUSSIE PM: "As you know, you jug-eared bastard, I reckon we ought to become a republic. But that woman has become bloody popular parading around the joint. Have a beer, I know you must also possess a growing jealousy toward her that will escalate in future episodes."

* the CGI'd Sydney Opera House was hilairs: characters in the foreground in focus, crowd of thousands in background out of focus, enormous building behind the crowd somehow magically in focus again. I guess they just went with the first result on Shutterstock?

prob not the best idea to watch that one episode & nothing else? lmao

a lot of the dialogue is expositiony bc they dont assume the audience knows or remembers much of anything
i think maybe also bc overall timeline for the show is pretty truncated

but it is honestly not an impediment to enjoyment of the show or at least not as big of a deal as you make it out to be

Until the Falklands War, Gillian Anderson, sorry, is just awful. I know she's playing a caricature, but the Thatcher I've watched in dozens of videos and read about wasn't this dry plank: she knew how to flirt and charm even if the queen paralyzed her.

This is a poor SNL parody.

how dare you use those words to describe Thatcher

the drier the better i say

she knew how to flirt and charm even if the queen paralyzed her

Lol, also greatly enjoyed Bob Hawke and the mention of his status as a former Guinness Book of Records holder for skulling a yard of ale, which iirc he was doing in public up until his death?

Without waving away every valid thing you wrote -- everything, by my estimation -- dramatically we have to understand why Thatcher worked, in the same way Reagan did, and, maybe I'm the American responding to her secondhand through YouTube, bios, and the news after 1987 (i.e. when I came of age), but, even acknowledging her problem with women, the Anderson take is TOO self-conscious.

"everything, by my estimation" = all valid

like, Anderson's Thatcher comes off as a Greer Garson rendition of Margaret Thatcher, yet what I've seen Thatcher was rather good at constructing this role.

I think perhaps the producers were wary of being seen to soften her image, certainly there’s a big swathe of people even just in the UK who like/are interested in the royals but despise Thatcher to this day. Not sure if you’ve seen the coverage over here (no reason why you should, really), but tons of Tories are having their piss boiled over it because they think the portrayal is too unsympathetic. Again, though, I take your point but I think you are focusing on the wrong reasons why she won people over - her image was a part of it, but it was her hardness and decisiveness that a certain type of person responded most to.

lol I'm communicating poorly. Until the Falklands episodes, her hardness is laughable -- a goon show caricature. And, yes, I know, many will say YES THAT'S HOW SHE CAME OFF but Gillian Anderson comes off as a person who's studied what people wrote about Thatcher. I understand the meticulousness with which Thatcher constructed her poshness, but certainly in America Thatcher, like Reagan, came off as a thorough Gatsby-esque fabrication; the seams didn't show.

i heard a podcast interview w the creator & he said Anderson often takes many months/years to develop a character

ie the voice she did as Thatcher was noticeably much improved that in post production she volunteered to do some ADR on her initial episodes

i think she grew into her performance overall as the season progressed

anderson's thatcher is great. the harshness and fragility, the self-consciousness that hides behind self-righteousness, this is not just a performance of a human being but a whole economic and moral outlook. she's playing thatcherism.

the performances are tremendous this season. and of all of them, helena bonham carter is the best.

charles wins it for me, lizzy close second

they're all very good. i find myself feeling real anger toward him due to his cowardice and selfishness.

emma corrin's diana also incredible. very understated, really.

I wonder if it helps that she wasn't around for this when it was happening.

Unfortunately people of my age remember it too well.

I realize I've never heard Charles speak a single sentence, and I've grown up with him.

Is that accent real?

legit

Lol, also greatly enjoyed Bob Hawke and the mention of his status as a former Guinness Book of Records holder for skulling a yard of ale, which iirc he was doing in public up until his death?

He set the Guinness Record for a yard as a 26-year-old Rhodes scholar at Oxford in 1955, quit booze flat for his entire parliamentary career (1980-91, set a zero emissions by 1995 target before getting knifed out), and returned to it gradually afterward. He would publicly skull a glass deep into his eighties to entertain randos, but just with regular schooners (375ml), not the yard glass he'd made his name with (1400ml / 2.5 pints / 91oz?).

Here he is being handed a cup at the cricket and taking it to the dome in ten, aged 82 or so:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2skct9

anderson's thatcher is great. the harshness and fragility, the self-consciousness that hides behind self-righteousness, this is not just a performance of a human being but a whole economic and moral outlook. she's playing thatcherism.

― treeship.,

An excellent description of the scriptwriters and director's intentions.

behold Prince Chuck in all of his warm-blancmange glory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg_fib2gQaU

the scriptwriters and director's intentions.

The scriptwriter has been dating Anderson since 2016, incidentally (he split from his princess wife unrelatedly in 2014).

so is the critique that the performance is heavy-handed?

Interestingly GA spent her much of her childhood in England and left around the same time Thatcher won her first general election. She didn’t come back to live until 2002. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, really.

Something that really struck me watching this season was how POC are represented. Beyond the Commonwealth Heads of Government, I don’t recall very many POC at all in the episodes set in England - the occasional soldier maybe. Nobody in the Fagan episode, or am I misremembering? Anyway, then when Diana visits New York and there’s a focus on HIV/AIDS and poverty there, the vast majority of extras and minor characters are black. It was really striking and seemed like a rather muddled point was being made, or that somebody decided to make England (as a country rather than the royal family’s obviously very white circle) a stark contrast on purpose to make a point. Or was it just out of ignorance of how multiethnic the UK, particularly its cities, were in the period this season is set? I dunno, I’m still trying to decide why the NYC episode jumped out at me for that reason. But it sits a bit uncomfortably with me.

One problem GA faces is that the script demands that everything she says has to explain current events, history, Thatcher's character, background etc and how it influences her political philosophy. So whether it's an interview with the Queen or a chat with her daughter in the kitchen, she's given these paragraphs of text to get across as if she's delivering a lecture, so the audience understands. It's true of most characters tbh; the writers really believe in telling rather than showing.

Morgan gives one writer one co-write credit on one episode out of ten; I'm gonna assume that that is his style after all.

def not sure how i feel abt Gillian Anderson's portrayal of Maggie, i think is great but somehow does not fit but maybe id the point - was fascinating to watch tho - someone (here, elswhere?) said it made them think of a drag queen's version which yes, but, yeah i can't pin down how i feel abt it

did appreciate some of the music endings, Linton Kwesi Johnson'd Inglan' Is a Bitch, The (English) Beat, Stand Down Margaret. Even made me remember for first time in decades the Exploited Let's Start a War (Said Maggie One Day)

So assume Charles & Camilla must be unhappy with the new season as getting attacked by fans of the show anew https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adeonibada/season-the-crown-trolling-camilla-prince-charles?ref=bfnsplash

seeing Dominic West is being mentioned as Charles for next two seasons which makes no sense to me

Charles comes across as a massive prick throughout, I’d be raging if I was him.

Prince Edward's "that was impressively cunty" was probably my favorite line delivery of the season so far.

The problem with Anderson is that her's is more of an impression than a performance, there's no air in it. O'Conner's performance of Charles suffers similarly but not to the same extent. They both solely use a particular strained register that both Maggie and Charlie do have but they don't only speak and move in that register, as you can see from the C&D interview just posted. It's near impossible to flesh a character out tho given the either didactic or purely expositional dialogue.