Marie Antoinette has recently taken up court on social media. It is this fictional Antoinette, with its exaggerated references to excess and luxury in relation to femininity and rich visuals, that has most influenced our contemporary digital iteration of the queen. Indeed, the aesthetic influences of Coppola’s playfully anachronistic depiction of the pre-revolutionary French court and the relationship between consumption and female power can be seen everywhere from Netflix’s Bridgerton to drag. Perhaps the best-known iteration today is Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006) starring Kirsten Dunst. Actresses from Lise Delamare and Jane Seymour to Diane Kruger have all taken their turn in portraying her in films. It was a highly stylised performance of femininity by male and female dancers alike. In a wonderfully camp performance, Madonna used Antoinette’s likeness to invoke the lavish ballrooms of 18th-century France to draw connections between the rich queer culture that voguing was born into. The queen was invoked in Madonna’s famous 1990 MTV Awards performance of her hit song Vogue. However, her status as a pop culture icon was really cemented in the late 20th century. In the centuries since her death, Marie Antoinette’s image has been constantly revisited, often providing a mirror to reflect contemporary issues. Satirical images often focused on the excessive hubris of the French court and the eventual dismantling of royal wealth.
Some images portraying her as a greedy aristocrat and others a noble victim. During the French Revolution, in which the queen was imprisoned and eventually executed, her image appeared on both sides of the English Channel in sympathetic and critical renderings. The easily drawn connections between Johnson and Antoinette prompted satirical artist Cold War Steve to share an image swapping the government flat for the throne room at Versailles, depicting the prime minister’s wife in period clothing amid stacks of money.ĭuring her own lifetime, Marie Antoinette’s image was coded with political meaning and circulated both to assert and undermine the power of the royal family. Marie Antoinette’s own extravagances ran to near-constant renovations of her palace Petit Trianon.
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Reportedly disliking the “John Lewis furniture nightmare” left over by previous prime minister Theresa May, the couple decided to redesign the property and install gold wallpaper at £840 per roll. This was in response to the Johnsons’ controversial refurbishment of their Downing Street flat.
She is a queen steeped in centuries of myth and subject to constant reinvention.Ĭomparison on social media between Carrie Johnson and the ill-fated consort of King Louis XVI, executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, first appeared in 2020. Part historical detail, part cinematic influence, the Antoinette of popular imagination is regularly used as shorthand for the evils of excess, for femininity and indulgence. Since then, Antoinette has become something of a pop culture icon, appearing across film, television and, more recently, social media in works that often seek to explore the performance of gender and the power that might accompany it. Even in her own time the French queen’s image was used for political gain and to comment upon the evils or good of women. Focusing on Carrie distracts from Boris’s actions, which have made him the first prime minister to break the law.Ĭomparisons between the 18th-century queen and contemporary female figures are in no way limited to Carrie Johnson. Those events include the recent fines issued by the Metropolitan police to those who attended illegal Downing Street parties during the pandemic, including Johnson and his wife. Commentators feel it relies on gender stereotypes and distracts from unfolding political events. The hashtag #CarrieAntoinette, which compares prime minister Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie Johnson to the French queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), has been criticised as sexist.
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