The royal baby is due this summer. If you are at all excited about this and neither your line nor your wallet are about to expand as a result, I advise you to strip ass-naked, throw on your ceremonial bearskin hat, and parade around Trafalgar Square, belting out the score to the H.M.S. Pinafore until Boris Johnson decides that you've got too little dignity to be allowed in public. If that's over the top, it's because I'm overcompensating.
The curse of the Anglophile is not that we know about the baby (everyone does). It's not that we can locate Cambridge, Cornwall, and all the other dukedoms and princedoms sullied by the Windsors on a map. It's not the lazy rebelliousness of romanticizing a culture that's not radically different from our own (compare to Western Japanophiles). It's not even the connotations of old-school Toryism, Etonian-style classism, and visions of racial homogeneity. It's that the posh, royal-obsessed, Hugh Grant-tolerating Anglophile image is so firmly entrenched that it's useless to deny the affiliations. It doesn't matter if your Anglophilia came to you via the Beatles, or Monty Python, or Doctor Who, or, less commonly, Tolkien; if you make the mistake of demonstrating a semi-working knowledge of British culture and politics and history, you're lumped in with George Will and Madonna.
In his essay, England My England, Mark Dery examines the sources of his own Anglophilia and the probable sources of it in American culture--a culture and polity that, by most rights, shouldn't allow for a fascination with England. Dery doesn't get very far on the second aim. As he acknowledges about mid way through, "[e]very Anglophile has his own private England, which is, of course, unrecognizable to the English." Like Batman fans, the Anglophile meshes cherry-picked ideas about England and Englishness into a mostly unique and mostly sturdy whole. The England we invent in our heads may bear only a passing resemblance to the real thing, informed by media, popular culture, a posh accent overheard at a coffee shop, and the occasional visit.
That last imprint is interesting because while there probably aren't any solid numbers to back this up, I suspect that relatively few American Anglophiles migrate to the Isles permanently (at least compared to the numbers of Yankophiles in the UK and elsewhere who make a point of coming here and staying). Those that do risk bursting their Albion bubble because they must confront the fact that England is like any other place on Earth: overflowing with terrible people. "Yes, Patrick Stewart is very charming. Oh look, here are some chavs."
Their politicians are as loathsome as ours. The news media is as intolerable there as it is here and maybe more so--the Murdoch toxins have been at work for much longer. They produced Shakespeare, sure, but they also produced Piers Morgan and decent chunk of our reality shows. Yes, the NDAA is cringe-inducing, but so is CCTV. They've barreled into the same rushed and congested 21st Century we have (Anglophilia is often frozen in time, usually pre-War, but occasionally jumping forward to 1960's mod London), complete with the same economy-crashing bankers who will never be made to regret their avarice. And the Brits have still got the breathing anachronism that is Betty Windsor's brood; to say nothing of the Cult of Diana.
These can be harsh realizations and you can't stay long and expect to keep your Anglo-cherry intact. It's easy for those of us have dealt with this disappointment and come out on the other side to lament these plastic Anglophiles for the deluded pushovers they are. But at least it culls the weak from our numbers.
Some of us (or maybe it's just me) wonder why the "Anglo-" must dominate the -philia. Can't the rest of the Isles be thrown in, too? History leans toward "no" on that question. The "United Kingdom" is a relatively recent political creation, from which much of the rest has either escaped or is ever-trying, featuring more than a few instances of war, famine, and terrorism over the last millennium. Dery mentions this Celtic-branch (which he calls "the Braveheart demographic") and describes it as a generally Anglophobic phenomenon, usually unaffiliated with the royal watchers who prefer the scenery south of the Tweed. It's a very American desire that I should want to ignore inconvenient historical facts. However, if one also genuinely loves the Irish and Scottish cultures, can they claim the mantle of Britophile? Is that any more absurd than Anglophilia already is? No, so I'm keeping it.
As for why an American should feel any such affinity, well, if you don't already share it, you probably won't get it. And if you do share it, you probably have a hard time seeing why it's a little ridiculous. Sure, you'll sheepishly admit your infatuation in that way that you think is oh-so self-deprecatingly British. But you never really understand why your friends get weirded out when you go wobbly-kneed at the mention of words like "pudding" and "Sandringham."
For me, it's pubs and the more sensible British drinking culture (now sadly succumbing to the scourge of binge drinking); a class consciousness that leaves little room for the Ayn Rands of the world (Dery mentions this as well); the serious commitments to public transportation (which may be more of a rejection of America's inexplicable love affair with cars); the weather (try spending a summer in the DC swamp and you'll get it); the breadth of history; the encouragement of dry wit as a virtue; the suspicion of unreserved emotion; Charlie Brooker; the more casual swearing (everything except "arse"); and, yes, goddammit, the accents.
Maybe it was something in the water I drank as an infant, but these things are real to me. However stupid they
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