Today’s all but state funeral for Margaret Thatcher (hopefully) brings some closure on furious public debate as to her legacy. By Jove Artistic Director David Bullen takes a look at some of the various iterations of Thatcher that have appeared over the years…
Margaret Thatcher has successfully managed to be as controversial in death as she was in life. Since she passed away, anyone on social media will be aware of the fire-storm of conflicting opinions that are still flying here and there. Our newspapers and our televisions have been saturated in Thatcher stories from all angles. Amidst the alternating cries of sainthood and devilry, however, the whole affair has certainly raised questions for me about the crucial difference between the individual and the legend that can come to replace them in the minds of many. It is not an unfamiliar issue: fame, or notoriety, has the inevitable effect of mythologizing an individual, which is a process rapidly accelerated by the media. Those who have direct power over our lives of course hold a special place in our fascinations; Thatcher’s death has proved unequivocally that this be can expressed as often as hatred as it is adoration.
Aside from the debate as to how to mark the passing of such a controversial public figure, an important issue here is how these icons the public and the media create have been, or can be, appropriated and misappropriated by factions with a particular agenda to pursue. To call it a currency in symbolic power-playing would be an appropriate analogy predominantly because of the manner in which individual icons can rise and fall in response to a large number of factors.
Margaret Thatcher as represented in the BBC’s ‘Spitting Image’ (Source: guardian.co.uk)
Here, I’ll take three such appropriations of Thatcher-as-icon. The first is contemporaneous with her reign: the grotesquely satirical take on her leadership, as it occurred and developed, in the BBC programme Spitting Image. Here, presented for the sake of humour, is a tradition dating back to Aristophanes that continues to this day (think Dead Ringers of the Noughties or the more recent The Thick of It) whereby public figures of the moment are reincarnated in the most absurd way imaginable. It’s all very pertinent at the time, but what the two thousand year legacy of this kind of political criticism demonstrates more than anything is that it is always possible to ridicule the decisions of those in power, no matter what they are. They are, after all, in a ridiculous position: asked to lead a nation as if it is one people, one mind, one creed. Thatcher, like every politician throughout history, was charged with catering for the predilections of every single citizen from every walk of life and somehow still, in the ensuing chaos of clashes and contradictions, successfully manage a nation of millions. To that end, any decision made is going to be a negative one to somebody. To defer to the wisdom of the late philosopher Obi-Wan Kenobi, it’s all depends on a ‘certain point of view’. The writers of Spitting Image had the means and the moment to make their point of view heard, and no doubt it was echoed across the country – but only in a proportion of the country’s population.
Moving to the polar alternative, let’s look at the expression of Thatcher as an icon in David Cameron’s public response to the news of her death. They call it ‘paying tribute’, and it’s pretty standard after the passing of anybody vaguely famous. Many paid tribute to the actor Richard Griffiths when he died before Easter – in my opinion, rightly so. Many also paid tribute to Jimmy Saville when he died – you see where I’m going with this. Of course, representing Thatcher as anything other than a great leader would have been a highly unusual (and probably career suicidal) move for Cameron. Not only would his party have flayed him but he would have irked the proportion of the population who benefited from Thatcher’s reign. This proportion may be statistically in the minority but that does not make their views any less valid. The danger of sketching a figure in a particularly glowing light is that their more ignoble life accomplishments in life will be edited out of history; understandably this is the concern of those who did not look on her so favourably. Unlike Jimmy Saville, however, the judgement of Thatcher’s legacy is not so easily clear cut – no matter your background or your politics, you cannot deny that she did have some positives, just as you cannot deny that she did get some things very wrong. She inherited a bad situation that was centuries in the making: a history of tensions between class, race, gender and so forth, stemming from hundreds of years of colonialism evolving into fully-fledged imperialism, increasingly ruthless capitalism, aggressive industrialisation, strictly enforced and encoded practices of prejudice, and a continuing sense of cultural superiority. British governments, in short, have rarely been privileged with a ‘golden age’ for one and all. What can be said for Thatcher is that she was staunch and she was decisive: for better or worse, she chose her course and kept on sailing regardless. There will always be those that vilify, and always those that seek to paint the picture of an unadulterated hero. What’s essential, if we’re to learn anything from history, is decoding these appropriations of our icons and striving for an objective account of cause-and-effect – if that is ever possible.
Margaret Thatcher: a symbol of Britain? (Source: fashioneditoratlarge.blogspot)
A final iteration of Thatcher as icon brings to bear further questions that we must ask of a system whereby we reduce individuals and their lives to symbols and deploy them as such for particular political gain (noble or otherwise). In terms of pure semiotics, it’s the most complex of our examples, because we have a symbol assuming the form of another symbol in a medium composed of and read using a system of symbols. I’m talking about Meryl Streep’s turn as Thatcher in the Phyllida Lloyd’s film The Iron Lady, which bagged Streep yet another clutch of awards to add to her heaving mantelpiece and served to propel Thatcher back into immediate consideration for a brief spell.
Streep commands considerable status as an icon in her own right, albeit of a different kind. She has been hailed as one of the foremost actors of our generation, famed for her ability to assume a character with an uncannily precise eye for detail. Nevertheless, there is something distinct about a Meryl Streep performance. Her performance as Thatcher is a stunning piece of work – it’s hard to argue with that. Aesthetics aside, however, what is fascinating about the film is its valiant attempt to maintain a balanced approach to the ‘great’ woman, following neither the caricature of Spitting Image nor the beatification of Cameron’s tribute. Somehow the film manages to bypass much of the politics, seeking the human being beneath it all – her narrative, her personal triumphs and foibles, her relationship with her husband and family. According to Lloyd and Streep, that is what attracted them to the project. They were drawn to Thatcher as an icon of a woman succeeding in a world dominated by men, which is legitimate enough. She did break new ground in that respect. Reaction to the film made clear why it is ultimately impossible, however, for her enduring legacy to be as a feminist pioneer: Thatcher as a symbol cannot be divorced from some kind of political judgement. The film was too kind to her for certain tastes, not kind enough for others. It was cruel about her failing health, some moaned; it made us almost like her as a person, complained others.
Meryl Streep as Thatcher in ‘The Iron Lady’ (Source: telegraph.co.uk)
So here we have three versions of Thatcher: the monstrous tyrant, the patriotic nation-saver, and the woman behind the politics (an attempt, if you will, to explode the icon in favour of a realistic representation). Are any of them her? No. Are any of them objective representations of her? Not at all. I have deliberately endeavoured to remain impartial throughout this article, but when the dust settles after today, what’s important is to remember what this episode demonstrates. Icons are representations and, as such, have been constructed by someone who has something to gain, whether it be the person themselves, political factions or a gossip-hungry media. We must be vigilant, wary of taking these icons as definitive and constantly reminding ourselves that in Britain today truth does not exist: there’s only ever someone’s version of it.
