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Liam O'Dell
May 30, 2022
The Queen projected onto Stonehenge for Platinum Jubilee
English Heritage
The Platinum Jubilee weekend is just days away, and we’re already seeing some… interesting ways of celebrating the Queen being on the throne for 70 years – with the famous heritage site Stonehenge certainly being up there as one of the weirdest.
Announcing the news on the Wiltshire site’s Twitter profile on Monday, English Heritage shared an image of the display and wrote: “Our spellbinding homage to Her Majesty The Queen! We’ve projected eight portraits of Queen Elizabeth II onto Stonehenge in celebration of the Platinum Jubilee.”
A further update from the organisation, featuring a video of the team setting up the display, explains that each of the eight pictures projected onto stone is from “a different decade of The Queen’s reign”.
For those wondering if the historic Stone Circle has an origin which is perhaps not best suited to displaying images of the monarch, English Heritage themselves have said “the purpose of Stonehenge is unknown to us” and that it has “no obvious practical purpose”.
And while the meaning behind the site remains unknown, Twitter users have begun questioning the purpose of this “tacky” tribute:
\u201c@EH_Stonehenge Something ancient and now pointless that we keep under the guise of tourism, projected onto stone henge\u201d— Stonehenge (@Stonehenge) 1653894005
\u201c@EH_Stonehenge As a pagan who has visited this intensely spiritual \u201cchurch\u201d, I am disgusted it is being used like this.\u201d— Stonehenge (@Stonehenge) 1653894005
\u201c@EH_Stonehenge Odd suggestion: You could move each of the stones slightly so that - from the air - they make a 'dot to dot' pattern of the monarch's face.\u201d— Stonehenge (@Stonehenge) 1653894005
\u201c@EH_Stonehenge\u201d— Stonehenge (@Stonehenge) 1653894005
\u201cit's only monday, this week is gonna get so unhinged (unhenged)\u201d— Mollie Goodfellow (@Mollie Goodfellow) 1653904399
\u201cIt's extremely lame that there aren't sideways queen elizabeths on the sideways rocks. What's even the point\u201d— Jenny Nicholson (@Jenny Nicholson) 1653904375
\u201cStonehenge is a monument/ symbol of the dead\n\nJust saying be careful how you engage with old and powerful Gods \ud83d\ude2c\u201d— Dr. Sarah Parcak (@Dr. Sarah Parcak) 1653903967
Meanwhile, other brands have also offered up their take on Jubilee-themed merchandise which absolutely no one asked for, including Heinz rebranding their salad cream to ‘salad queen’ without realising it’s actually a NSFW slang term.
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Oops.
And that’s not the only corporate concoction. Marmite has become Ma’amite (which we think is actually pretty clever, to be fair), while M&S have brought out a new version of their Colin the Caterpillar collection and a ham and whole egg sandwich.
We’ll pass on that one, thanks – and we’re not particularly keen on the gourmet jubilee chicken crowns, either.
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