While Morrissey has, over the years, often become a greater source of polarization than the monarchy itself, he is perhaps more “unapologetically British” than said institution. As such, he’s not only a prime example of the “quintessential English wit” (thanks to the likes of Oscar Wilde being one of his early idols), but also of someone who detests English royalty and all that it represents. Can it be any wonder, then, that he penned a song called “The Queen Is Dead”? And yes, she has been for quite some time. Whether one takes that to mean she’s secretly been six feet under for a while and what we’ve been seeing is her hologram/clone or that everything she represents has long been dead—well, that’s up to individual perception. Either way, the monarchy has projected a macabre specter over England’s demise for ages. And the fact that the so-called British Empire clung for so long to “the Colonies” it infiltrated is just another indication of that phenomenon: “you’ll have to pry power from my cold, dead hands.”
This will likely be the case with Queen Elizabeth II, who is almost certain to become a ghost that haunts the halls of Buckingham Palace (and, when she’s feeling more mobile, Windsor Castle, Balmoral and Sandringham). At the Jubilee marking seventy years of siphoning money from the Brits, she dragged her body to the balcony to give the little wave that’s cost so many taxpayer dollars over the decades, all while the crowd sang, “Long live the queen.” But the more appropriate finale would have been for Morrissey to close out with The Smiths’ classic, “The Queen Is Dead.” As the opener to the band’s third album of the same name, the record was released in June of 1986, just two days after the Queen rode to Trooping the Colour on horseback for the final time. Maybe, in some sense, The Smiths were already signaling her slow but omnipresent decline in a nation that seemed evermore determined to Americanize itself (ironic, considering that the U.S. was founded by Brits) as ’86 would also signal the year that would come to be known as the Big Bang, characterized by extensive economic deregulation, as spurred by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Bizarro World Ronald Reagan, as it were).
October 27th heralded “Big Bang Day,” when the London Stock Exchange not only became computerized, but also opened up to foreign corporations. In the wake of such unabashed ardor for American-style capitalism, the monarchy was (and forever is) starting to seem increasingly incongruous. What place did it have in such a landscape? For while capitalism does favor the rich and privileged, it still tries to put on the air that everyone has the same “fair shot” to make it to “the top.” British royalty, instead, is in direct contrast to that ideal. And no one makes that more evident than the progeny that has been sprung from the House of Windsor (see, for starters: Prince Andrew). The absurd notion that some people are born with a “divine right” to rule while others were “born to be plebes” is the most elitist form of propaganda ever bandied. And, looking at the royal family (who we shouldn’t humor by capitalizing that term) and their grotesque behavior, it’s difficult to buy into the collective “belief” that these people are somehow “better” than the rest.
At one point in “The Queen Is Dead,” Morrissey asks, “Oh has the world changed, or have I changed?” It’s a question that we would like to believe the Queen has demanded of herself over the past century as she might have noticed the monarchy’s total irrelevance and out-of-touchness. One such example being mentioned in the song when Morrissey references how Michael Fagan was so easily able to break into the palace and end up in the Queen’s bedroom in 1982. Because no one really gave that much of a shit about the Queen’s security when the nation’s own was in free-fall mode. Even someone with such an inflated opinion of themselves and “their kind” would have to be brain-dead not to notice that level of insignificance, meaning something only to those working-class types who held her up as a shining instance of all that’s wrong with the world.
In addition to perhaps occasionally questioning her institution’s purpose, there enters the fact that Britain and its monarchy have been gasping for air with each gutting of one of “their” Commonwealths deciding to go independent (Barbados being among the most recent nations to do so). A “decline” (for one nation’s decline is another’s independence) that palpably began in the post-WWII era, when Britain could no longer justify their colonization creed. Which was, in effect, all they were ever good for: gunpowder and “glory.” Without it, their only peaceable options were tea and biscuits as the twentieth century wore on.
And yet, despite the glaring uselessness of the monarchy (apart from pomp and pageantry), it’s no secret that many Brits still look to the Queen as the “Mother of England,” a matriarch for her subjects as much as a “ruler.” To that Freudian nightmare, Morrissey derides, “But when you are tied to your mother’s apron/No one talks about castration.” More than just another dig at Charles, it is a general lamentation of Britain’s self-imposed political chokehold. Forever doomed to stay stuck in the past as a result of this reverence for the so-called “tradition” the monarchy represents. A tradition, let’s say, of power’s abuse and, of course, incest… hence, another line in “The Queen Is Dead”: “And so I checked all the registered historical facts/And I was shocked into shame to discover/How I’m the eighteenth pale descendant/Of some old queen or other.” This, too, being a sardonic allusion to how every “royal” affiliated with the “Family” is constantly counting their place in line for the throne.
All while the rest of the island (and oh, how very much an island Britain is) toils away in bleak misery for a few quid here and there. So it is that Morrissey should have also bemoaned at the Jubilee, “Farewell to this land’s cheerless marshes/Hemmed in like a boar between archers/Her very Lowness with her head in a sling/I’m truly sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing” (this last statement also echoing Morrissey’s sentiments for “Margaret on the Guillotine”). Maybe that would have briefly stopped Louis from cocking a snook (or, to make the gesture sound more British, giving his mum the Queen Anne’s fan). But probably not, since white princes (and privileges) can’t see or hear beyond themselves. Nonetheless, the song would have been a far more fitting addition to the “festivities” than Diana Ross singing “Chain Reaction,” you know, a single that’s patently about orgasm. Something the Queen likely hasn’t encountered or thought about in many moons. And you know what they say: a sexually dried-up leader makes for an all-around dried-up nation (see also: Joe Biden). The latter aspect of which is something that Morrissey and so many others with the “gall” to do so have been calling out for ages. For the longer Britain remains yoked by the monarchy, the more of a relic it becomes.
Alas, many Britons would sooner prefer to imagine the end of the world (not that difficult) than the end of the monarchy, so rooted as it is in a collective sense of “identity.” But one must inquire: is this really the identity to tie a nation’s already busted-down wagon to?
Britain may have once been called “the empire on which the sun never sets,” but that jig has certainly been up for far longer than the members of the monarchy would care to admit. Including, of course, the Queen herself, who appears well-aware that “the Firm” isn’t liable to be around for very much longer once she isn’t. But “life is very long when you’re lonely,” and that’s most assuredly at least part of the reason for the Queen’s longevity (read: refusal to die). As for how that statement applies to Britain itself in the wake of Brexit, the more appropriate saying would be how short life is without the cultural and economic bolstering of the European Union.
