ZEYNEP TUFEKCI: Kate Middleton is yet another victim of the Royal Circus
EDITOR'S NOTE: Zeynep Tufekci is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and formerly was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest.”
After months of secrecy, followed by a global sport of intense speculation, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed Friday that she is undergoing cancer treatment.
As if the medical ordeal weren’t difficult enough for her family, the public side of this episode has revealed, once again, the way Britain’s royal family has become the center of a media circus, now spreading globally to the masses, thanks to social media.
Princess Diana was killed during a paparazzi chase; her two son’s lives were further damaged by invasive and destructive interest since they were children.
But things have gotten worse in the social media age.
Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, was hounded into suicidal ideation by persistent vicious and racist coverage during her first pregnancy and was treated like a liar or a drama queen in the British media when she revealed it, and internet mobs gleefully participated. Social media has been full of conspiracies about her and her children for years.
The same forces turned Kate Middleton into a symbol of counterpoint, sanctifying her as the perfect princess.
All the pressure to symbolize perfection probably contributed to the baffling actions of the royal minders who tried to keep the news of her cancer under wraps. (And why is it always the royal women who are thrown under the bus? Maybe Prince William could have apologized for the doctored photos, rather than his wife, who was undergoing cancer treatment.) Her three children are in school, and whatever gossip circulates about their mother will eventually reach their young ears.
It’s clear that the British royal system has taken yet another step after having evolved from a traditional monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. Currently, it is practically a zoo enclosure in which members of the royal family are trapped, for the purpose of entertainment, distraction and political and symbolic fights. They may have access to luxury and wealth, but they have little power or freedom.
And they are no longer shielded by the presence of Queen Elizabeth, who functioned as a symbol of stability, by virtue of her extremely long reign. Social media has now reduced the size of their enclosure and enlarged the number of people who can participate in creating a spectacle.
The results are inhuman for everyone, including the ones purportedly at the top of the hierarchy.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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