The ability of television and other new media to help the monarchy appeal to audiences had yet to be discovered. Rather, this anxiety over presenting the monarchy on television speaks to broader, classist concerns about ‘trashy’ popular culture and its potential to ‘dumb down’ the population, as described by cultural theorists like Raymond Williams.
Television coverage of the coronation was a huge success, and UK TV licence holders increased from 1.45m in March 1952 to 3.25m in 1954. The sheer scale of the coronation makes it a watershed moment in the history of television, further mythologising the relationship between the monarchy and the media.
Over the next few decades, the monarchy continued to experiment with developing media forms. The 1969 BBC/ITV documentary ‘Royal Family’, commissioned by Buckingham Palace, was essentially an example of early fly-on-the-wall reality television, with cameras following the royals for a year. It showed intimate moments such as family mealtimes and a family barbecue. Despite its popularity, the programme was controversial for allowing too much access to monarchy. The palace has since redacted the 90-minute documentary, forbidding all but short clips to be aired.
Visibility vs invisibility: a balancing act
The controversies over the coronation and the ‘Royal Family’ documentary reflect what I see as one of the most important debates about contemporary monarchy: the balance between visibility and invisibility. Some elements of royal life are hyper-visible: royal ceremonies, royal weddings, royal babies, charity visits. Other elements are entirely invisible: the royals’ wealth, status, and connection to global corporate power, for example. The monarchy’s survival relies upon this balance. It needs to be visible to be believed, otherwise it remains an intangible institution and the public won’t invest in it. But it can’t be too visible, or its operations are unmasked and questions raised about its purpose in contemporary Britain. What we see most of the time are tightly choreographed representations, such as the Cambridge family Instagram account, which documents family holidays and outings. These might suggest voyeuristic glimpses into royal life, but what we’re actually seeing are staged performances of intimacy.
This is what has made these last few years so interesting. While she has given plenty of scripted speeches, the Queen was well known for never giving a full-length interview. We rarely knew her opinion on matters beyond horse racing, and knew very little of what she was actually like as a person. The Cambridges have followed the same model.
What we’ve seen recently, however, is some royals giving more personal interviews, which have (albeit for very different reasons) complicated this neutral framing.