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To wear the crown too easily

A bizarre new reign begins
by
October 2022, no. 447

To wear the crown too easily

A bizarre new reign begins
by
October 2022, no. 447
King Charles III arrives at at Buckingham Palace, London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II (photograph by Zac Goodwin/PA Images/Alamy)
King Charles III arrives at at Buckingham Palace, London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II (photograph by Zac Goodwin/PA Images/Alamy)

Has anyone else been chuckling upon hearing the words ‘Charles III, king of Australia’? In my household, the movie Anchorman is a sacred text, and its buffoonish 1970s news anchor protagonist Ron Burgundy is our holy fool. So devoted is our fandom that we own the Anchorman out-takes DVD. In one scene that was cut, the ambitious and glamorous television journalist Veronica Corningstone confides to Burgundy that she dreams of being the first female network news anchor. Incredulous at the idea that a woman could helm the network news, Burgundy declares mockingly to her: ‘And I want to be the king of Australia.’ The joke lands not only because Burgundy is a moustached American and such crass swagger precludes noble dignity, but because the very idea of a king of Australia seems preposterous in the twenty-first century. And that is why my family are in stitches: it has come to pass; there is a king of Australia; underlined by twenty-one gun salutes in Canberra and free public transport in Sydney so that we can witness the proclamation of Charles’s ascension on the steps of the State Parliament House.

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Comments (2)

  • A disappointing item in ABR (quite apart from the reference to avocado toast which is completely missing the point as to the original intent of that newspaper article). I agree with previous commentator that this does nothing to address the actual issues of our system of governance, which is a constitutional monarchy at the moment. This article is short on analysis, to say the least. As humour…hmm
    Posted by Jill McKeough
    25 October 2022
  • Arguing that the idea of a king is arbitrarily more laughable than than that of a queen of Australia fails to stand up as an argument at all. Approaching such a complex subject with citations from a family's favourite movie doesn't bode well for the capacity of this country to sever ties with tradition and to go it alone.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    14 October 2022

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