Diana Doubled: The Fairytale Princess And Photographer

In order to acknowledge the relationship of Princess Diana and the media, I read an article titled Diana Doubled: The Fairytale Princess and Photographer by Jill Chancey. As the opening of the article, Chancey stated that:

“Her image in the tabloid media changes suddenly after her death in a very specific way: the princess was no longer portrayed in a negative manner (as she had been shortly before her death), but rather the focus was turned to her roles as mother, humanitarian, and fairytale princess.”

In her article, Chancey argues that media’s portrayal of Princess Diana pre- and post-mortem could be explained by Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum. According to Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum, in this era of technology and information age, the media representation of a person, a thing or an event becomes more relevant than the real person or thing or event itself. With this concept, it could be concluded that simulacrum-Diana, or the media’s representation of Princess Diana, is just as real as the reality-Diana in the eye of media. Chancey also demonstrated how the simulacrum-Diana, who was first seen as a “bad-girl” by the media, was later altered into the “fairytale princess” after her death. She theorised that “when it is a celebrity death instead of stranger’s, the …show more content…
The media may also be driven by the guilt, because according to Chancey, weeks prior before her death, there were a lot of pictures or headlines that were harsh and cruel towards Princess Diana and a lot of people also blamed the media, more specifically the paparazzi, to be the cause of her death. Because of these reasons, the media attempted to make up to Princess Diana by honouring her in that way. However, this scenario may less