From Dancing Queen to Plaster Virgin; Elizabeth and the End of English Heritage

This is not the first essay to look at the film 'Elizabeth' (UK, Shekhar Kapur, 1999) but it is the first essay to link it up with the two other 'royal' films which preceded it in the 1990s. It argues that these three films advance beyond the previously acknowledged confines of the 'heritage' film and so change the trajectory of heritage cinema. By linking 'heritage' cinema with contemporary social and political events, these films take on a new significance and create a new climate for film-makers within this genre, rather than the previous tendency simply to idealize 'the world we have lost'. The essay takes as its starting-point Guy Debord's famous polemic 'The Society of the Spectacle', and argues that now, as never before, the concept of 'spectacle' - and of culture as the star commodity of the 'spectacular' society - are not only central to any social critique but inform all cultural production. The essay draws on Regis Debray's controversial article' Admirable England?', delineating the social and political implications of Princess Diana's funeral and the attendant public hysteria. It concludes by suggesting that not only do the trilogy of films under scrutiny form a new strand within the genre - but that 'Elizabeth' goes further, making of itself the first postmodern heritage film, the first to jettison period fidelity, to engage in ostentatious pastiche, and to open up new artistic and political possibilities for future 'heritage' cinema