On August 31st, 1997, Diana died, and pathetic, mawkish, self centred, vain, public grief became a lifestyle choice for vast swathes of people in the British Isles.
Tony Blair was the perfect, vacuous Prime Minister to express that touchy feely, vacuous, empty feeling of grief. Bono was on hand to sing Candle In The Wind that night. Within a few days the whole thing had become a full blown phenomenon of mawk, in association with Sky News, 24 hours, every hour. The people were tearful, angry and outraged about something, about what, they didn’t know, but the one thing they knew was that they had to express it publicly, because it felt right. In Britain people said the spirit of that week was like the war, as people came together, strangers spontaneously embracing in the street. Strangers didn’t spontaneously embrace in the street during the war. They got the fook on with things. Diana’s death, on the other hand, was a public grief competition, a bandwagon embodying the values of self, self-pity and vanity which came to dominate the next two decades. Every bland tweet and publicly aceptable “show of solidarity” on Facebook with victims of worthy tragedies that don’t involve you in any way is linked back to that moment.
Other events that happened in 1997 summed up the changing mood of the times. Blair and Bertie Ahern were the perfect, value-free politicians of the emerging “me” generation and house prices became inextricably linked with people’s sense of self.
Endless banalities rushed to fill the gap of celebrity brought about by Diana’s death, because the media needed new celebrities. This brought about reality TV. Reality TV branched into music and the genie, as the great Christina Aguilera did not sing, was out of the bottle.
Then it was a short hop to the INTERNET and social media, where the me, me, me, culture, however worthless and boring one’s (lack of) talents, views, search for conformist individuality or bland expressions of publicly acceptable fake solidarity grief are, has found full expression. That culture of mindlessness had its coming out party on August 31st, 1997.