An emblematic figure of the last half-century, Queen Elizabeth II has become a true icon of pop culture over time. From the Sex Pistols to Andy Warhol, several artists have paid tribute to her… or have targeted her.
Posted yesterday at 11:09 a.m.
Music
Censorship and middle finger
In 1969, the album Abbey Road of the Beatles ends with Her Majestya little sweet and sour piece by Paul McCartney.
This is the first time that a rock band has scratched the Queen of England, but this little point is nothing compared to the bombshell dropped by the Sex Pistols in 1977. Antimonarchist as much as anarchist, the punk band finds with God Save the Queenviolent pastiche of the British national anthem, the way to rhyme ” queen ” and ” fascist regime “, with a contempt displayed for the monarch.
The song will be banned by the BBC, which will contribute to its myth.
In 1986, the group The Smiths did it again with The Queen Is Dead, in which the singer Morrissey imagines the death of the sovereign, flaying poor Prince Charles in the process.
Stone Roses (Elizabeth My Dear) to the Pet Shop Boys (Dreaming of the Queen), other British groups will give their point of view on His Highness, but the palm of the middle finger goes – ironically – to the French singer Philippe Katerine, who stages an ultra-splitting queen in his song The Queen of England in 2010.
Visual arts
Photographed and photographer
After Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell’s soup can, Andy Warhol brings Elizabeth II into the joyful world of pop art. His silk paintings, created in 1985, will be purchased by Buckingham Palace in 2012, and added to the Royal Collection just in time for the Diamond Jubilee.
PHOTO: KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol
In a more classic vein, the queen has also lent herself to the game of portraits hundreds of times, one of them having been produced by the Canadian painter Phil Richards in 2012.
The public figure was photographed even more often, but we will especially remember the shots taken by Annie Leibovitz in 2016, which will be found on the cover of the magazine Vanity Fair.
PHOTO ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Photos of the Queen and her family taken by Annie Leibovitz were published in the Vanity Fair in 2016.
It should be noted that Elisabeth was a photography freak herself, and that she rarely traveled without her small Leica camera.
Cinema and TV
Between fiction and reality
Of The Naked Gun (1988) at Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), comedies had fun including His Highness in mainstream cinema.
In 2006, actress Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her role in The Queenwhich recounts the dark hours of the royal family following the death of Lady Di.
The character appears in a multitude of other feature films – of more or less good quality, let’s face it. Among the successes are The King’s Speech (2010), where we see her as a child, A Royal Night Out (2015), where she is a teenager, and Walking the Dogs with Emma Thompson (2012), which recounts the episode where an intruder had sneaked into her room.
Not to mention the fabulous television series The Crown (2016), which focuses specifically on the Queen’s life from her marriage in 1947.
Brand image
A Marketable Icon
Queen of another time, Elizabeth II was crowned before the explosion of pop culture. However, she contributed to it with her emblematic personality. Like other sovereigns, we will see her very early on on stamps and banknotes, but also, later, on plates, cups, coasters, “gougounes” and t-shirts, not to mention postcards and the gossip press, which will make its feasts on the sovereign and her family. Marketable icon, image of Épinal, character of the public domain, she was all that at the same time, contributing, during her lifetime, to the fantasy of the masses as well as to her own myth.