Princess Diana and Voyeurism

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Princess Diana and Voyeurism

Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a war. On one side are the Hollywood stars with their armies of agents, managers, lawyers, publicists, handlers, personal assistants and, of course, bodyguards. And on the other side are the paparazzi - guerrilla warriors armed with cameras, whose job it is to break through the stars’ defenses, steal small parts of their souls and sell them to the highest bidder. The lengths to which paparazzi will go to get “the shot” are legendary - hiding out in trees, digging through garbage and spitting on the stars in order to shoot their reactions. Car chases and helicopter surveillance seem to be routine. And there’s very little the stars can do about it. Even the paparazzi who were trailing Princess Diana that hot August night, one of whom called 911 while the others recorded the scene for both posterity and prosperity, got by with a slap on the wrist, if that.

The car crash that killed Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Al-Fayed early Sunday, apparently as paparazzi trailed the couple in Paris, follows a series of run-ins between celebrities and those who take their pictures for big money. Witnesses said news photographers, probably freelance paparazzi, were pursuing the couple on motorcycles. A witness told CNN that paparazzi were taking pictures of the wreck within seconds of the crash, and that one of the photographers was beaten at the scene by horrified witnesses. According to news reports, seven photographers were in custody after the accident. (Edwards, 23-4)

Chasing celebrities has become a big-stakes proposition for many professional cameramen, worth incurring the wrath of those luminaries who want some personal space left to them. Richard Wood, in his article "Diana: the people's princess", said a single photograph of Diana could have been worth thousands to tens of thousands of extra issues sold for its buyer. "She has always been a main news story for the newspapers of this country," Swift said. "The whole country, indeed the world, has a deep fascination for everything she does. And she was and will remain one of the most popular figures in the world" (Wood, 3).

While sympathy and fond remembrance for the 36-year, often star-crossed princess poured in from around the world, there was an undertow of anger at the media, whose obsession with Princ...

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