Harry and Meghan Give Us Front Row Seats on Insanity
Harry and Meghan Give Us Front Row Seats on Insanity
They're Cashing In and Losing Everything at the Same Time
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Tolstoy, Anna Karanina)
A glutton for punishment, I watched the last trilogy in the Netflix saga about Harry and Meghan in the television room yesterday. My husband mocked me briefly and ran out of the room. Then I settled in for three hours of pain.
This last trilogy of the Harry and Meghan show gives us a close up view of a couple, who have a very loose relationship with reality and who have traded their closest relationships for money. From beginning to end, it is sad.
Like Helen Lewis in The Atlantic’s article “The Cringeworthy End of ‘Harry & Meghan’,” I know too much about the royal soap opera to simply take their story at face value. At times, this story was truthful with important facts withheld and, at other times, their story was simply false. Netflix describes this show as “documentary,” but fails to even include one opposing or challenging voice; it would be more correct to describe this show as an infomercial or just plain old propaganda.
Among the many omissions in the Harry and Meghan show, there’s no mention that the conflict with his family revolved around Harry and Meghan’s demands to represent the crown AND make tons of money privately. The so-called “the half in/half out proposal” never even comes up in the show. The British media, subReddits, and a legion of haters on Twitter are currently slicing and dicing all their most serious failures in truth in this show. I’ll defer to them for the full list of inaccuracies.
A huge theme in the second half of the show is the unusual relationship between the royals and the press, which I wrote about a couple of years ago. As I said back then, I thought castles and tiaras were worth those inconveniences, but YMMV.
Being part of this media circus, the press might write gooey articles about her beautiful gowns one day, and another day, a weird avocado article. Too think skinned, they couldn't handle even the silliest of criticisms. As described by the blind gossip bloggers ages ago, they wanted the press to duly reprint Meghan’s daily press releases about Meghan’s perfection, and to completely ignore reports from their staff, who left the palace in tears. At one point, Meghan says that she wants the press to be respectful, which sounds a whole like that she wants control over the world’s press. That’s not how the free press works, dears.
The more that I get to know Harry and Meghan, the less I like them. As numerous commentators have pointed out, they aren’t very interesting. One writer described them as “basic.” But boring and basic don’t capture the craziness. Meghan can’t say enough great things about herself, which is certainly not normal, though it’s Harry who comes across as the most damaged. At times, Harry’s craziness stems from a toxic mix of enormous insecurity and enormous entitlement. But other times, his craziness is just plain crazy.
In one scene, Harry and Meghan clutch hands and sweat, convinced that the paparazzi were chasing their car through the streets of London (yet still remembering to press record on their cameras during that frightful moment). All we see out their back window is some guy on a bike. Harry talks about his dead mother way too much. He looks shattered by his family’s predictable unhappiness to his accusations.
Harry seems to honestly believe that his family, including his brother, wants to hurt him. And equally convinced that his saintly wife and their grabbag assortment of revolving door employees and friends are the only ones who don’t want him killed by a terrorist drone in a Los Angeles canyon. This show is Grade A Looney Tunes.
All that stuff about “freedom” is insanity, too. His family had no problem with them stepping down from royal duties. But Harry really believes the freedom narrative, which isn’t even clearly explained. Who was trying to keep them caged in? Did the Queen tell them that they couldn’t relocate to New Zealand or the United States? Of course not.
My husband ran out of the room, because watching someone else’s mental health breakdown on the screen is just plain uncomfortable. Like Britney Spears’s Instagram account or Kanye’s podcast appearances, we now have front row seats on celebrity instability. If Harry and Meghan didn’t have so much money and power, with the potential of undermining America’s greatest ally, we absolutely should not be watching this stuff. It’s self destruction at its finest. It’s pure poison.
Perhaps the saddest part of this whole show is this couple’s alienation from her father and his entire family. In my experience, extended families are worth the hassle.
I live twenty minutes from my brother and his family, my sister and her family, and my parents. We all get on each other’s nerves from time to time. Don’t even get me started about my dad’s phone calls begging for help with technology. But this gang is worth the annoyances. No-one else will listen to my rants and buck me up when things are rough.
In just a few days, 16 of my relatives — grandparents, sisters and cousins — will drink too many glasses of wine and scarf down too many dishes of fishes, while Harry and Meghan drink their eggnog in their mansion alone. I wonder if their isolation was worth $100 million.
Disclaimers and all that
I am not an entertainment writer. This is pure hobby and pure speculation.
A few years ago, I developed an unusual interest in the British Royal Family. From time to time, I do a brain-dump and write blog posts about them. For the whole series of blog posts about the Royal Family, tag: royal mess. To start from the beginning, start here.
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Sometimes I think Tolstoy's deeper message is that there's really no such thing as a happy family (though perhaps Kitty and Levin's is as close as we can get). The Netflix series is, of course, just one side of the story--at this point, the Sussexes control the narrative, but that narrative does not make them very heroic or, frankly, interesting. I appreciate all your devoted reporting on this--I really do feel you're making a sacrifice for the rest of us.