Power, and The Queen

Power...it's something we're talking about this week in the writing class I'm taking. It's also something I thought about a few days ago when my friend and I went to see the movie, The Queen. Helen Mirren was amazing as Queen Elizabeth and her Oscar was well deserved. This movie made a few statements about power. We might picture "power" as a man in a dark three-piece pin-striped suit on Wall Street, or the dictator of a faraway country, or even as a huge, grey metal electricity transformer sitting in a field behind our subdivision. And yes, we may even picture power in the form of someone like Queen Elizabeth, even though we know that realistically, the monarchy in the U.K. is now more a figurehead than anything else. Wikipedia says, "In legal theory she is the most powerful head of state in the world, although in practice she personally exercises very little political executive power."

The story of The Queen begins with the world was reeling in the aftermath of the accident that killed Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed. Diana's official status as a member of the royal family was questionable—she was already divorced from Prince Charles—yet she was being eulogized as the "People's Princess" and millions were dropping flowers and notes at the foot of Buckingham Palace. I remember the news well. I had a month-old baby who often kept me awake during the night. I would switch on the television to stay awake while feeding her and settling her back to sleep, and saw the story about the accident soon after it happened. I also clearly remember the 1981 fairy tale wedding of Diana and Charles, having spent that long ago summer as a teenager with my grandmother in Albuquerque while she was dying. I sat by my grandma's bed as we drank in all the details of the beautiful wedding and forgot about the cancer for one afternoon. In August 1997, I woke my husband as I was crept back into bed and told him the news because it really was shocking and sad, even though we were here in the United States. I think Diana truly was the "People's Princess," and most of us had come to admire her humanitarian efforts and felt sorry for her because of the media's persistent dogging and attacks on her character.

In The Queen, Queen Elizabeth begins to take flack from her subjects and the world as the media asks why the royal family isn't observing Diana's death as formally and publicly as expected. They're not flying a flag at half mast over the palace, they haven't made a public appearance at the gates to observe the tokens of sympathy left there, and the queen has made no public statement. She defends her actions, or apparent lack thereof. She tells those questioning her that a) the only reason the flag was ever flown was simply to let the world know when the monarch was in residence at the palace, and had never flown at half mast, even when her own father had died, that b) she and her family were dealing with their grief in their usual manner—in private and with decorum, which is what they had always done and what she believed her subjects expected, and c) that most of all, she was caring for her grandchildren, who had lost their mother.

In several telephone interchanges with the new prime minister, Tony Blair, the queen stands her ground, but finally, she realizes and acknowledges the world has changed, and that she must change along with it, at least in the public eye. She begins to make new plans.

In a subsequent scene, Queen Elizabeth is stuck in her vehicle in a riverbed, having driven her Land Rover to meet her husband and grandchildren somewhere on the Balmoral Castle estate. The boys were being "distracted" by stalking a huge elk. (My companion was amazed at a similar previous scene..."Who would have thought they'd cook for themselves on a grill?" she said.) Queen Elizabeth uses her satellite phone to call for help, and as she waits, she sees the prize-winning elk, standing silent and regal only yards away. Suddenly and briefly, tears spill from her eyes. She hears her family nearby and shoos the elk away so it can't be shot. In a later scene, however, she discovers the elk has been shot on a neighboring estate, and she asks her neighbor to let her see it. She stands in silence and views the dead elk. These sequences, although perhaps fictionalized, seem to represent her coming to grips with the lasting image of royalty to the world, Diana's death, and even perhaps a belated understanding of Diana, in spite of her sometimes scandalous actions in the limelight.

The queen and her family return to London and visit the overflowing gates, viewing flowers alongside notes that accuse her of being cold-hearted and threaten to topple the monarchy. Then, she notices a small girl holding a bouquet of flowers behind a fence. She asks the girl if she wants her to place them, and the little girl says, "No. The flowers are for you." The line of people at the fence begin to bow and curtsey in deference as she smiles and takes the flowers, thanks the little girl, and walks on. She goes on to make a public television appearance and gives a gracious speech.

The power demonstrated by Queen Elizabeth was exemplified in restraint. First, obvious restraint in the initial actions that came to her naturally. Second, restraint in understanding that because of the power and influence she held, she had to change her actions, even when it went against the grain of what she had always believed to be right. She recognized that the responsibility bestowed on her at such a young age was "for life," and that it required her to go outside herself and do what was "expected," even when it was the unexpected.

In the final scene, Tony Blair arrives for his second audience with the queen, and she asks him if he has sensible shoes on, because her best advising is done on her feet, and it's time to walk and talk and get on with modernizing the kingdom.

We all have power in some shape or form. How will we use it? Will we recognize that sometimes using power for good requires us to take actions outside our comfort zone? Using power for good may require us to stretch and change to meet those who look to us as leaders and role models. Nothing earth shattering, but something to think about.