Ty Burr commented in his review of Tom Hooper’s ‘feel good’ film of the year and Oscar favorite, The King’s Speech, “this movie wallows in its royal privileges, and its superficial message is that a little kick in the pants from an Aussie speech therapist is all a king needs to connect with his subjects and lead them stalwartly through World War II (and then lose the colonies, but never mind).” This is a lovely American perspective on the film, but as Roger Ebert noted in his review of the film, “Americans aren’t always expert on British royalty,” or for that matter British culture. In fact, for the most part, Americans know very little about their former rulers. Disgusted by Britain’s supposedly arcane constitutional monarchy and buttressed by their own vibrant, pluralistic, republican democracy, Americans often throw scorn at their backward allies across the pond.
    The irony of that observation is that the monarchy’s political and economic sway in British culture pales in comparison to the ‘democratic’ American Presidency. And while two political dynasties, in the Bushs and the Kennedys, have run the show in the states for half a century, the Windsors have sat on the sidelines and had almost no political influence. They are, for all intensive purposes, apolitical beings, serving as cultural reference points and symbols of cultural continuity and fluidity rather than oppressive power hungry rulers.
    In fact, in last conversation in the film, George VI exclaims to Logue, I am a King and I have no power. He also says fuck a lot.
    This film is not about the monarchy. This film is about a man conquering his inner demons on the national stage. This film is about a human being living up to his obligation to his country. This is a film about a country that stood up to Hitler, when no one else would, not even the land of the free and the home of the brave.