Like Meghan’s love goggles, H&M doco blurs unsavoury truths

Until recently, how you felt about the Sussexes was a kind of culture wars litmus test. If you were against them, you were excusing racism and sexism and if you were with them, you didn’t have any respect for duty, public service or personal responsibility. That test may no longer be so reliable. In their six-part Netflix series, the poster couple for the progressive camp have revealed themselves to be strikingly traditional.

The series, co-produced by the couple’s company, Archewell Productions, is their story in their own words. Post-#metoo, storytelling, especially by women, is readily understood as an act of empowerment. Meghan is at pains to capitalise on this culture, positioning herself as formerly silenced (according to her truth “no one”, not even Oprah, has heard her side of the story before). While we should always encourage women to articulate their experiences in their own terms, a robust feminist analysis would also interrogate what kinds of stories they are choosing to tell.

On the surface, Harry and Meghan’s relationship is thoroughly modern: she’s no passive damsel waiting around for Prince Charming. On the contrary, we see Harry pushing the pram, we hear about how he was “blissfully sleepwalking through life” before Meghan woke him up to a true “awareness” of racism and unconscious bias.

You’d need a husk for a heart to be unmoved by the idea that love can change people for the better. But, as romantic as this tale is, it still echoes surprisingly old-fashioned narratives: that a monogamous (heterosexual) relationship is the route to happiness; that men don’t need to change themselves, they just need the love of a good woman.

Perhaps I’m being too cynical: it’s not inconsistent with feminism to be happy in a heterosexual relationship. What is even more difficult to reconcile with a progressive agenda, however, is the couple’s decision to, explicitly, in their own words, tell “a great love story” at all.

The documentary is, relentlessly, about how much they love each other and the various obstacles to that love. The idea that romantic happiness is life’s ultimate goal is at odds with the duty-first, self-abnegating attitude required of royalty (just ask Edward VIII). It is also precisely the worldview that got Meghan and Harry into this mess in the first place.

Edward VIII, who abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, alongside Harry and Meghan.Credit: Fairfax

We are told that Meghan didn’t know Harry was a prince before she went on a date with him. Her curiosity can’t have been too aroused when she found out because she was surprised, in her initial dealings with the Windsors, to find them stuffy and traditional. Apparently, it had not occurred to her before that a centuries-old institution, formerly the head of the most rapacious empire in human history, which literally exists to uphold values of tradition and continuity, is conservative. Meghan’s shock inspires as much sympathy as someone who works in the fashion industry complaining that their colleagues care a lot about appearances. The criticisms might be valid, but the surprise is hard to take.

But how can we blame her? She had her love-goggles on! She didn’t think about Harry the prince, the public figure. She fell in love with Harry the person. She was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.

The royal carriage?

And the show, with its narrative arc of a “great love story” has the same mollifying effect on its audience as Meghan’s love-goggles had on her: by encouraging us to focus on the individual, not the system, it distracts from unsavoury truths. Sure, there’s the odd analysis of the royal family’s history with empire and slavery, sure the couple continues to earn profits the size of a small country’s GDP for their association with said royal family. But they’re so in love.

In a telling scene in the first episode, Meghan picks roses in her garden. Her children are in bed, the sky is peachy, her husband loves her. She sighs, “peace”.

You might find it moving to think that true love can be a sanctuary from the cruel realities of life. But we shouldn’t pretend that, in telling this particular story, the couple is peddling anything other than a deeply traditional narrative – one more likely to put you to intellectual sleep than to enliven you to structural injustice, and with as much false consolation as the words “happily ever after”.

Diana Reid is a Sydney-based writer and the author of the novel Love & Virtue.

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