The Queen has two bodies: amateur film, civic culture and the rehearsal of monarchy
The Queen has two bodies: amateur film, civic culture and the rehearsal of monarchy
Dating from as early as 1906, a large number of amateur films commemorate royal visits to Scotland’s town halls and schools. They capture- in lise Hayden’s terms–the “minor events” of British royalty where the monarchs” physical presence and symbolic embodiment are balanced on a “knife’s edge” as both their “ordinariness” and uniqueness must be maintained simultaneously. This tension explains why the choreographing of these events is often (wearily) similar and the films boring. Nonetheless, these amateur films sometimes capture moments of contingency (the look at the camera, the unseemly exuberance of children) that expose the limits of this balancing act and the “work” that underpins the perfonnance of monarchy. Conversely, in many cities across Scotland these royal encounters have been re-imagined in pageants and gala days also commemorated in amateur films. In these films, children take on royal functions, becoming fleshy “effigies” of the monarch in ritualistic performances that dramatize the ambiguous origins of royal pageantry, whether the monarchs involved are “real” or “fake”.
Keywords: amateur film, pageantry, monarchs, royalty
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