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A Queen for Whose Time? Elizabeth I as Icon for the Twentieth Century
Author(s) -
MOSS DAVID GRANT
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the journal of popular culture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.238
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1540-5931
pISSN - 0022-3840
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2006.00306.x
Subject(s) - queen (butterfly) , icon , citation , state (computer science) , history , art history , library science , computer science , hymenoptera , botany , biology , programming language , algorithm
And this is how Elizabeth is portrayed when she is presented in the popular media of the twentieth century. The ruff, the hair, the pearls, and the elaborate dresses are the cues by which people recognize her. Indeed, in the British comic television series Blackadder II, Miranda Richardson’s Elizabeth is never referred to by name; her appearance is more than enough to indicate who she is. Richardson’s appearance, like that of so many other screen Elizabeths, is that of the Ditchley portrait (which fits Walpole’s description particularly well). The Ditchley portrait (Figure 1) has in effect become the standard image of her in popular culture. In Shekhar Kapur’s film Elizabeth (1998), the film ends with Elizabeth transformed by wig, makeup, and costume into a stiff, pale, statuesque icon in white; Kapur’s Elizabeth becomes the Ditchley painting even though the film purports to end in 1563, almost thirty years before the painting was completed.