“Less famous you are, more you can do for people”.

This great thought I heard today from my best friend when we started talking about today mass media. For me this story actually started a week ago, from “Diana”, a recent movie about Princess Diana with Naomi Watts. You know these moments when idols of your childhood suddenly become unsteady and some of them even fall, because you grew up and found out that they were way far from being ideal? So that’s what happened with the image of Lady Di in my world after I watched the movie.

I don’t remember the day this “queen of people’s heart” died, but I do remember this beautiful, blondish angel with a warm smile and kind eyes, always elegant and shining, always ready to hug kids and beggars and to help everyone in poor Africa. A real princess, the one I wanted to be like. A true princess from fairy-tales, killed (together with the man she loved) by evil British prince and his mom-queen. A perfect plot of the story for kids… and - as it turned out - for half of the world adult population too. You can imagine, how high were my expectation from the movie.

It was a complete disappointment. First of all, there wasn’t a poor, unfairly offended woman whose husband cheated on her, while she wasn’t allowed to say a word because her husband was a prince. There was a smart and strong politician, who knew the rules of the game and who made this interview with BBC about her marriage with the exactly right words in the exactly right time. And who celebrated her victory over her disgraced opponent, as well as counted how many points she got by that speech in the morning newspapers. There was the woman who easily organized a media scandal with pictures of herself on Dodi Fayed’s (son of an Egyptian millionaire) yacht, pretending to kiss the guy she didn’t have any feelings to (according to the movie).

Second of all, the whole movie was mostly about her ridiculously banal relations with this Pakistani doctor. There was no even an attempt to persuade the viewer that Diana found something precious in this unconfident guy with the inferiority complex, who pretended to be independent, “real man”. As a result, the viewer actively dislikes the guy and starts doubting where Diana is actually a smart woman. After all, it’s really hard to believe that he accused her in not understanding how much his job meant for him – she wasn’t even trying to make him quit his job, she did the opposite, she tried to find him better place to work as a doctor in the other country. Honestly, I didn’t get what was the problem and why they couldn’t be together if they really loved each other (which again looked very questionable in the movie).

The last, but not the least thing, that actually bothered me the most. Diana doesn’t really help anyone in the movie!!! Ok, she comes to the hospital in Africa to see kids who lost parts of their bodies because of the land mines. What does she do there? She makes a sad face and strokes their heads so that the photographer can make a perfect picture for the morning magazines. That’s it. How did that picture help a scared, 5-year-old, black boy in his broken life?! She fights for banning land mines and even walks on the mine-free field in Angola. To make another perfect picture and an amazing story for the world newspapers.

The land mines were finally banned, and everyone praised Lady Di for that. Nobody remembered that there were hundreds of people who fought against those mines years and years before her! That in all those associations against AIDS or supporting prisoner’s families, there were thousands of people who actually worked there every day to help by giving not just money, but medical and psychological treatment to those who needed it. And these people are not on magazines’ covers (oh yes, Lady Di appeared 7 times on Newsweek cover, 8 times – on Time cover, and 50 times – on People cover), nobody knows their last names (except their patients), but THEY were the ones who changed our world to better, THEY were the ones who stopped peoples’ deaths from land mines and AIDS.  

I guess, Princess Diana was a wonderful person and she truly wanted to help people by giving them extra money that she still had left from buying nice clothes. She also probably was pretty unhappy woman who had to deal with her husband’s unfaithfulness and indiscretion. So let her rest in peace! However, a lot of this “angel” image was created by mass media and her good acting, starting from the smart idea to charm the prince who dated her sister. I’m not saying that it’s only her fault. “Less famous you are, more you can do for people”, as my friend says. Doesn’t sound that controversial any more, does it?

P.S. Lady Di had an inborn love to kids: she even worked as kindergarten teacher when she was 18! Small remark: it was a private kindergarten for kids from rich, privileged families.