Diana's soap opera had touched the people's hearts. She had become the ultimate anti-Royal Royal. And plebeians have been captivated by the antics of dysfunctional royal families since the House of Atreus. What's new is television. Television creates an urgent intimacy between a lonely public and tinsel celebrities that stand in for our deepest longings.
TV makes celebrities larger than life, the larger the better.
Diana's struggles validate Eleanor Rigby's struggles, which in turn validates Diana. There is a difference between public business and public show. Televised spectacle inverts public and private, conflates fact and myth, and turns it all into an undifferentiated puree of Celebrity and Entertainment. Diana's love life is infinitely more entertaining than the local school board. And how much easier to grieve Diana's loss than to wrestle with our own personal losses and family heroics.