Handle with care

Diana poses with child victims of landmines in Angola in 1997. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)

When Diana, the Princess of Wales, was killed in a car crash in Paris 10 years ago, a friend of mine was one of those millions left bereft by her death. He lived too far away from Kensington and Buckingham Palaces to lay flowers at their gates, but he glued himself to the television coverage of the public outpouring of grief and wept along with the other mourners. And when an acquaintance was foolish enough to crack a joke about the global histrionics over Diana, my usually gentle friend gave him a verbal smackdown that would have rattled even the Queen’s sangfroid. A decade later, my friend still fumes over the guy’s insensitivity.

My friend might be the teensiest bit of a drama queen, but his fealty to the People’s Princess runs deeper than cheap sentiment. Like most gay men of a certain age, he had lost legions of friends to AIDS and Diana’s literal embrace of the disease made her a modern saint. In 1987 — when many still believed the disease could be spread through casual contact — a photo of the princess holding the hand of an HIV-positive gay man while they sat together on his hospice bed was a bellwether. (To put Diana’s act in historical context: it took until 1987 for U.S. President Ronald Reagan to even mention the word “AIDS” — and that was near the end of his second term, and two years after the death of his friend, actor Rock Hudson. By that time, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with HIV, 20,849 had died and infections had been reported in 113 countries.)

Such is the enduring power of the princess: she maintains the loyalty of her subjects long after her death. This summer — a Diana season of remembrance that begins with a July 1 fundraising tribute concert to mark her birthday and ends with the 10th anniversary commemorations of her death on Aug 31 — her halo will be polished to an eye-squinting sparkle. More than a dozen book tributes are due to the hit the stands — there’s one from Larry King and another by Nelson Mandela. The most talked about of all is The Diana Chronicles by famed editrix Tina Brown (of the Tatler, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker). The exhaustively researched page-turner offers up the definitive quote about Diana, courtesy of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When Brown asked Blair if Diana had signified a new way to be royal, he replied solemnly, “No, Diana taught us a new way to be British.”

It wasn’t always such a love fest, of course. Long before she was a humanitarian, Diana was, as Brown points out, silly, narcissistic and manipulative, a socially ambitious and not-too-bright clothes horse in a marriage that had soured even before the honeymoon. Brown’s famous — and explosive — 1985 Vanity Fair story, “The Mouse That Roared,” revealed a couple leading utterly separate lives. While Prince Charles wrote mash notes to Camilla Parker Bowles, Diana sulked, binged and purged.

But even then, Diana was beginning to use her considerable empathy and compassion — and most importantly her profile and the paparazzi that stalked her incessantly — to bring attention to social causes. Soon, she was walking through fields booby-trapped with landmines in Angola and visiting orphanages in India. At the time of her death, she was considering the launch of a new literacy project. The media-sanctioned metamorphosis from disgraced princess to the Queen of People’s Hearts was complete. 

With apologies to Bono and Bob Geldof, Diana was the world’s first celebrity activist. She redefined the way famous people got involved in political issues. Diana didn’t just lend her visage, or show up at a benefit. She got her hands dirty in the field and she sat down at the table with leaders and activists. In a recent interview, Brown says, “she really showed not just that she was going to raise money for hungry people or whatever, but that she could actually move the needle on an important issue. She took on a controversial issue and she actually did activate world debate and create something positive out of it.”

Angelina Jolie and son Maddox attend the Live 8, Africa Calling concert in Cornwall, England in 2005. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

If Diana created the template for a new breed of celebrity activism, it’s actress Angelina Jolie who is the current exemplar of the model. Like Diana, Jolie is a beautiful, privileged, formerly silly and wild girl with a messy romantic history who remade herself into a doting mom and world-class do-gooder. Also like Diana, she has devoted herself to her causes with a new convert’s rigour. As a goodwill ambassador for the UN high commissioner for refugees, she has put her safety and health at risk to visit some of the planet’s most troubled and forgotten places, donating millions of her own dollars and spending her spare time boning up on international law.

This month, Jolie marries her political activities with her most artistically successful work so far: her starring role as Mariane Pearl, the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, in the Michael Winterbottom film A Mighty Heart. Some have taken issue with the casting and, most notably, Daniel Pearl’s colleague Asra Q. Nomani has publicly denounced the movie. Still, it would be hard to find a more perfect fit than Jolie — global activist and mother of a multinational, multi-ethnic brood — to embody a woman who maintains her faith in a common humanity even after her husband was murdered by anti-Semitic, Muslim extremists.

All their genuinely good deeds aside, the greatest similarity between Diana and Jolie is how cannily they have played the media, even as they were victim to it. Even as she lashed out at the media, Diana, like Jolie does now, employed the power of the press to promote her causes, to promote herself and even, sadly, just because she wanted some sympathy. She routinely called up friendly reporters with royal gossip and happily co-operated with Andrew Morton on his tell-all book Diana: Her True Story. On television, she dished about Prince Charles’s affairs and her mean ex-in-laws in a no-holds-barred interview with Martin Bashir.

Jolie has had her own scraps with the press. Her bodyguards have roughed up photographers and, recently, her handlers asked reporters to sign a contract before interviewing the star, promising to not ask questions about her personal life. Like Diana did so devastatingly well, Jolie can play a naif in front of the camera (“why is anyone interested in lil ole me?”) — she doesn’t even employ a publicist, for goodness sake — but there can be no doubt that she is eager to co-operate, often offering more than was requested. She teared up in a TV interview with Ann Curry when asked about the death of her mother. In a recent cover story in Marie Claire, Jolie gushed about the studliness of her lover Brad Pitt and, in Esquire, she unzips her dress to give writer Tom Junod a glimpse of one of her tattoos. 

Diana, centre, pictured during a public appearance in 1994, sought a life in the spotlight. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)

When a foul is cried over the invasiveness of the press, it’s easy to forget that both these women sought famous lives and knew, on some level, the consequences. Jolie chose to follow in the footsteps of her actor-father, Jon Voight; Diana pursued Prince Charles with a missile-like determination. Over time, Diana and Jolie may have transformed themselves into women of purpose, strength and generosity, but they never quite rid themselves of the ravenous neediness — for love, for attention, for approval — that’s endemic to celebrities. Even their ultra-thin bodies are eerily similar. Diana struggled with bulimia, a side-effect of her self-loathing. Jolie’s suspiciously shrinking figure has been variously explained as the result of grief, fatigue and breastfeeding. Or, maybe like Diana, she’s a woman conflicted, trying to diminish herself even as she claims an ever greater share of the spotlight.

Upon hearing of her death, Diana’s brother Charles declared, “I always believed the press would kill her in the end. Not even I could imagine that they would take such a direct hand in her death, as seems to be the case. It would appear that every proprietor and editor of every publication that has paid for intrusive and exploitative photographs of her, encouraging greedy and ruthless individuals to risk everything in pursuit of Diana’s image, has blood on his hands today.”

He’s right, the media were ghoulish, but it’s much more complicated than that. The paparazzi may have pursued Diana to death — as they continue to chase celebrities like Jolie today. But the irony is that Diana couldn’t have lived without them.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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