Page 54 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

The Man in the Gallery with the Writing on His Face 45

In fact, for many media commentators, public attendance at the Inquest
was only seen as indicative of one of two attitudes – a Diana fixation which
was a sublimation of unexplored psychological deviance, or a conspiracy
theory obsession which was similarly illustrative of some kind of disturbance.
In this case, audience members witnessing the events to an unhealthy degree
become conspiracy theorists seeking Knight‘s ‗compensation‘ in their own
reading of impossibly remote events, and also as figures whose appearance to
publicly claim such a status was an unhealthy parody of the dignified but
intense public grief surrounding Diana‘s death. Writing in the New Statesman,
Ros Wynne-Jones characterises this deriding of the regulars alongside a
general ‗anti-inquest‘ attitude amongst opinion formers in public and private
life, as a form of defensive apology for the very un-British display of national
grief after the death. ‖It is as if the collective shame of that very un-British
episode [the large-scale mourning] is being played out in an anti-inquest
sentiment, as the proceedings are vilified by talkshow hosts and belittled by
opinion-formers from cab-drivers to Question Time panellists‖[Wynne-Jones].
The public whose grief appeared to be so widespread as to disarm cynicism in
the immediate aftermath of the accident was not represented in this reading of
the figures present. Rather, this wider, more dignified, absent, body was seen
as being engaged in a double refusal – firstly to take an interest in an Inquest
which should be allowing the dead lovers and their driver to rest in peace and
secondly to take an interest in the absurd conspiracy narratives surrounding the
event. The reading of the social performances in the environment of the
courtroom provided, in Loughrey‘s face-paint, in Howsam‘s placard, in
Witty‘s giggles, evidence that the real ‗conspiracy‘ was the creation and
maintenance of a context in which such delusional behaviour might flourish, a
conspiracy of conspiracy theorists, obsessive, socially maladroit and seeking
to waste the time, energy and money of the state through the connivance of
irresponsible legal business. The social performance surrounding the
courtroom became confirmation of the correctness of this particular conspiracy
theory – that the only figures who might become caught up in such events
were those whose lives are empty – an insight which echoed with the general
media characterisation of Mohammed Al-Fayed himself.

CONCLUSION - PERFORMANCE IN THE ROYAL COURTS

My own sense of the reading of the events before Court 73 is that a series
of elements of social performance appeared to provide resonant insights into