Finally
My students are now engrossed in “North and South”. We’re discussing the film and especially the characters’ decisions in light of the cultural influence of three different thinkers: Calvin, Smith, and Marx. Today was Calvin. It was a LOT of fun and definitely cheered me up! I’ll be doing the cleanup from Fanstravaganza in the next little bit of time. Thanks for your patience!
Me + Richard Armitage 
Let us know your students’ reactions.
As you know, one of the Armitage team, is having surgery; all the best to this lady.
And thank you for all your contributions – AND please could we do do a Fanstravaganza again (week of August 22 maybe?)
Will enjoy discussing Mr. Armitage’s light?medium? whatever voice again, and all the other body and voice issues you’ve raised. (suspect I’ll lose any argument/viewpoint anyway – but it’s fun!)
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[…] I don’t think any of my reactions to the piece at that time were very novel; I was horrified by Thornton’s first appearance on screen and like viewers since 2004, gradually seduced by Mr. Armitage’s portrayal into falling in love with both him and Gaskell’s narrative. Of course I loved the tea scene, and of course my friend and I repeated the train scene at the end a few times before putting away the DVDs. (I have another colleague who estimates that she’s seen the train scene roughly five dozen times.) We talked about it for quite some time — perhaps an hour so after finishing watching it. We agreed that Armitage is beautiful. Interestingly, I think, we looked at the interview with Armitage himself and were both sort of turned off — I think because it somehow broke the spell created by his creation of Mr. Thornton, interfering with the magical world of the piece — and our reactions were a testament to the skill of his acting, as at the time, he apparently was a much better actor than an interviewee. We also discussed the potential for using the film in the classroom. My friend shows the scene where Margaret encounters the mill for the first time. Although I don’t care to show fictional dramatizations in classes because I prefer primary sources, I made a mental note that I needed to look at the novel, with which I was not familiar. I remember thinking it was odd that I didn’t know the novel, since I took a doctoral prelim field in modern European social history and had read dozens of continental novels from the mid- to late nineteenth century. But then dealing with life took over and I didn’t think about Mr. Armitage again until January. (I’ll also talk about that some more at some point — those viewings seem key to me because that was the point at which I stopped being able to look away from the screen anymore — and as you know, I eventually did end up using it in the classroom.) […]
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Obsession update: End of summer 2010 edition « Me + Richard Armitage said this on August 25, 2010 at 3:35 am |