Margaret Thatcher died yesterday.
Coming home from a (mediocre, except for a couple of singers) Nabucco at the Royal Opera House, at about 11pm, I passed through Brixton.
About 150 people had gathered in front of the Ritzy (a very nice, quite hipster but in a good way, cinema). The marquee read: "MARGARET THATCHER'S DEAD". The banner (yes, there was a banner too) read: "THE BITCH IS DEAD".
(By the way: why do you always have to resort to gendered insults when attacking a woman...?)
Now, on to a personal story. I had an old relative that had harmed me (something I can forgive, or try to) and others dear to me (something I am not so sure I can forgive, not being the interested party). She had a stroke, that took away the lively 70something years old lady that she was and left... someone else. I am sure that the person that had harmed me died with the stroke. The years between that and her death certificate were more of a P.S. on her life than her life.
I did not celebrate my relative's death. In some ways, I will even miss her! (Stockholm syndrome? Maybe.) But I will not deny her faults. Especially the ones that damaged (deeply) the lives of others.
Now, I am not a British citizen. I am not working class, even.
I did not celebrate Margaret Thatcher's death. I saw the celebrations, I recorded the facts, that's it. As I will not celebrate her funeral, but possibly be curious about it.
I know enough history to have a glimpse of why some people would celebrate. Or mourn. As I am trying not to judge her, I am trying not to judge them.
Can we go on living, now; if posible trying not to harm or desire harm to others?
And yes, I believe that that means partly not celebrating a death, but partly (mostly) also not cutting benefits to the poor and disabled.
A last note: I think that the idea that you cannot speak evil of a dead person definitely does not apply to public figures. And I love British satire, also because it dares to laugh even in the face of death, in a way that is like laughing in the face of anybody's inevitable death. But that is a long story...
P.S.: this tweet by Seaneen Molloy. Who is Northern Irish, working class, and has a disability. A class act.
I agree with you about all of this. I'd just like to add two quick points:
ReplyDeletea) this is yet another instance of the bizarre way this country does collective public rituals. The little anthropologist in me wonders if this is also a consequence of the aggressively individualistic society that Thatcherism helped generate (not Thatcher herself, please note).
b) Much as I dislike the idea of what happened in Brixton, Glasgow, Bristol & co, I am much more unsettled by the plethora of revisionist obits and op-eds that glossed over her support of Apartheid, Pinochet, military repression in Ireland, Section 28 (lest we forget). I am getting more and more convinced that history teaches us nothing.
Well, about gendered insults... you know: if you are insulting a big african trucker, probably you will name it like "nigger". In the other side if you insult a woman probably you will say "bitch". Of course, you could insult Margaret Tatcher saying "nigger" and insult an african trucker saying "bitch" , even I doubt you will get the same effect. I mean, to wonder because insults are adapting to the subject is pretty strange, i guess insults are always "gendered" and "raced" somehow, to be effective. We could discuss if it makes sense to insult dead people, that's a different issue.
ReplyDeleteByron/a: Interesting.
ReplyDeleteByron/b: The obits are almost always glossing over some aspects, in order to paint you as a "good" or as a "villain". History is something else. It's the difference between marriage and wedding day...
Uriel/1: I would try not to involve race/gender/etc in insulting someone, if only because it would insult also other people only because they are of that race/gender/etc.
Uriel/2: Yes, we could discuss that. With variations on the theme: what is insult and what is satire of the person's legacy, for instance (which is why after all I like the NewsThump article but not the "bitch" banner); if there is a mourning period in which you simply do not speak any ill of the dead...