Jean Baudrillard And Meghan's Holiday Photos | The Royalist

Please remember to like and subscribe! Check out my Substack: https://theroyalist.substack.com/ Meghan Markle's latest Instagram carousel shows the perfect European summer holiday: sun-dappled swimming, helpless laughter on Harry's shoulder, the dog (of course the dog came), a charmingly shabby Portuguese fish restaurant, and (bit weird, this one) a visit to Princess Diana's grave, flowers in hand. There's just one problem. We already know what actually happened on that holiday, because the Sussexes told us. At excruciating length. This was the week of the great security meltdown: frantic negotiations with the Home Office, statements issued and countermanded, briefings that Harry's voice was breaking on the phone, that Meghan was left in "great sadness," that the family had been forced to separate and might never set foot in Britain again. Not, I'd suggest, anyone's idea of a dream fortnight in the Algarve. So today I'm getting my brain out (I'm staying with some very clever friends in Suffolk, the house is full of books, it's rubbing off) to ask what the great French philosopher Jean Baudrillard would make of it all. His theory of simulation and hyperreality (the copy that replaces the original, the map more real than the territory, Disneyland as the version of America people actually prefer) could have been written as an instruction manual for Meghan's Instagram. In fact, I suspect she read him at university and thinks that's exactly what it is. But here's my argument (and yes, I am picking a fight with French critical theory): the carousel proves the limits of Baudrillard. Disneyland works because it never breaks the fourth wall; you never see Mickey Mouse take his hat off. Harry and Meghan cannot stop breaking their own story. One week it's terror, tears and existential crisis; the next it's the golden summer in which none of that ever happened. That isn't lying, as the philosopher Harry Frankfurt would tell you. It's something purer: total indifference to whether any of it is true. From the jam tongs to the coronation itself, this is a video about images, and why even the most ruthless personal brand still needs a load-bearing core of authenticity. Check out my new book - The Dukes / Dukes of Hazard - here!: United States: https://a.co/d/0gmvpeQz Australia: https://amzn.asia/d/01Y4mpkj UK: https://amzn.eu/d/01mSqQKa #MeghanMarkle #PrinceHarry #RoyalFamily #Sussexes #MeghanMarkleNews #HarryAndMeghan #Baudrillard #RoyalNews #BritishRoyalFamily #DuchessOfSussex #PrincessDiana #Instagram #TheRoyalist #TomSykes #RoyalGossip #Monarchy