The Death of Margaret Thatcher and the question of the media event
Citation
Valentine, J. (2013) The Death of Margaret Thatcher and the question of the media event, JOMEC Journal, , , ,
Abstract
This paper discusses the death and subsequent funeral of Margaret Thatcher through a
critical interrogation of Dayan and Katz's notion of 'media events'. By considering the
internal theoretical coherence of the notion, and some of the 'media events' that have
occurred since its initial formulation, the notion of 'media events' is used as a
problematic in order to analyse television coverage of the death and funeral of Margaret
Thatcher. The paper focuses on the political dimension of the coverage in order to
indicate the ways that the problem of Thatcher's material and symbolic legacy is
established in the context of the continuation of the unprecedented financial crisis of
capitalism and the attempts of the UK government of the Conservative-Liberal-
Democratic alliance to manage its consequences. The paper argues that the event can
be understood in terms of the convergence of a residual nostalgia for the social divisions
associated with Thatcher, a dominant strategic political ambiguity, and an emergent
effervescence around the absence of 'the people'. The paper concludes with a discussion
of the problem of democratic politics as precisely the absence of the 'the people'.