Are peonies a life philosophy? Are “life philosophies” even philosophy? I have to hold on to the idea that they aren’t, even in the face of a decade or so of Instagram blitzkrieg, most currently in the form of Duchess Meghan’s eight-part new TV show, which dropped on Netflix first thing this morning. With Love, Meghan seems to have migrated fully formed from Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platform on to Ted Sarandos’s streaming service, powered by the hashtags that bypass the need for joined-up sentences, let alone thinking. Or as Her Grace explains: “Everyone’s invited to create wonder in every moment.” This is an offer not even promised by most major religions.
The mildest way to describe this show is as a ghastly artefact of a particular cultural era that recently met its apocalypse. But more on that later. To anyone who says, “It’s just meant to be fun”: bullshit. Netflix reportedly paid $100m (£78m) to Prince Harry and the manic pixie dream duchess for an overall deal, so for the streamer it’s meant to make back at least a small amount of the big amount of money they’ve lost, when audiences failed to connect with the Sussex-authored documentaries about global justice activists and polo. For Meghan, it’s supposed to assist her transformation into domestic guru. If you don’t mind arching an eyebrow at the lifestyle lunacies of fellow Montecito resident Gwyneth Paltrow, then at least have some consistency and give yourself a pass on this one. This show is sensationally absurd and trite, and if you watch it, you know it.
Language is either category-five twee or has been reduced to non-sentient babyspeak. “Good vibes, good hives”. “Clean clean clean clean.” “Single skillet spaghetti. S-s-s. S-s-s …” I won’t labour the 1% of the 1% mood, though someone driving through one of America’s most rarefied billionaires’ communities to buy a few hundred dollars’ worth of flowers while telling you, “It’s the little things that count” is obviously ridiculous. As is referring to a bucket as a “garbage vessel”. Nor will I, “as a woman”, do more than note that you don’t see successful men spending for ever on all this stuff. Zuckerberg and Sarandos presumably decided a very long time ago that part of the goal is to not even know where your kitchen is.
Of much more interest is how these Insta-perfect worlds have grabbed people by the throat and siphoned away so much of their valuable time and attention in recent years. Scrolling the platform or watching Meghan’s show (they are almost identical sensory experiences), you note how much of the language is explicitly religious. Time is described as “sacred”, practices are “rituals”, people are continually feeling “blessed”, snacks are “an offering”, the emphasis is on “honouring” this or that. It becomes hard not to see all the flower frogs and rosemary sprigs and garbage vessels as holy kit, arranged in esoteric fashion as if to summon a form of peace. Or rather, #peace. But peace through retail, always – even if the product turns out to be you.
It’s amusing to learn from publicists and Meghan herself that the duchess’s artisan this-and-thats will be available in the Netflix brick-and-mortar stores opening this year. Other eras have had their epicureans or hedonists, of course, who lived and sometimes died for the ideal of simplicity or pleasure in an epic kind of way. But today’s gazillion-strong influencer community has zero intellectual underpinning to it, which is why it’s so often the unwitting butt of its own joke. I’m trying to picture Oscar Wilde being told Netflix is going to sell limited edition artisan Oscar Wilde buttonholes in its shop, and him just fainting at the obvious horror of it all.
Sorry to press an unmodernised yet perfectly adequate word into action, but of course all this stuff is perfectly nice. It’s nice if the table is laid nicely, it’s lovely if the flowers are lovely, it’s caring of you to make people feel cared for, whatever that really means. (I wonder if the truly selfless tablescape actually exists – Meghan’s entire MO feels desperately “compliments to the hostess”.) As I say, it’s all nice. But it’s neither a long nor an interesting conversation – at best it should serve as a backdrop to one. And yet over the past rise-of-the-influencer decade, it seems to have become the conversation.
Decades often seem to be about certain things, before another, defining thing sneaks in under the radar. The 2000s seemed to be about celebrity culture and Islamist fundamentalism, but in retrospect the 2008 financial crash – both its causes and the failure to deliver justice in its aftermath – was the key event. The 10 years we have just lived through might have seemed to be about social media and what came to be summarised as woke culture. But a global fracturing was stealing under the radar.
It certainly isn’t any more. In fact, watching With Love, Meghan early this morning already felt like a past washing over me, so much so that I decided that maybe – and please stay with me for this hot take – maybe, Meghan has made a landmark TV series after all. Immerse yourself in it for an episode or eight, and you instinctively feel that both the show and the duchess embody the age that has become suddenly bygone. And that is the exact feeling that countless people have been experiencing since this year turned – that an era is dying. Or rather, that it has already died, and suddenly. There were many others, but Meghan was as good an avatar for it as any – torn between wildly ineffective social justice activism, and the narcotising retreat of the peonied table. But this is now over, and I think we can all feel it in our bones. Rest in peace/power/whatever. But godspeed to something else – something better – being born.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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