Armitage as father

Picking up on an affirmative comment by OML, here, I wanted to think a bit more about what is appealing about the possibility of seeing Mr. Armitage playing a father, as he will apparently do as John Porter in Strike Back. He’s commented, in regard to a prompt about the father/daughter relationship: “It’s a difficult one. He was absent when Alexandra was born, and for a lot of her childhood, and his marriage to Diane is pulled apart by his job. But as much as there’s a difficult relationship between father and daughter, there’s actually an incredible relationship there. As she gets older you see that she’s a phenomenal girl. She really challenges Porter, she presses his moral buttons and he likes the fact that she’s bolshie. She’s also confrontational about what he does and that’s a problem he carries with him, he’s always thinking, ‘How would she judge me?’.”

Obviously, this is not the first time he’s played a role that involved fatherhood. For instance, Paul Andrews is a father to Fiona and a step-father to Kieran (and seems a pretty decent one, when he’s allowed to be — one of the redeeming features of this series is exactly how complex a character Paul Andrews is despite his commission of what is, in my opinion, a rather more serious crime than the script itself concedes):

Richard Armitage as Paul Andrews in Between the Sheets, episode 6. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

Claude Monet is a father, and although this is one of those charming moments from The Impressionists that sets my teeth on edge, the real Claude Monet does seem to have enjoyed a close relationship with his sons and several of his stepchildren:

Isobel Pravda as Camille Doncieux and Richard Armitage as Claude Monet with their son, Jean, in The Impressionists, episode 1. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

And, of course, Guy of Gisborne is a father. Cough. Not one of Guy’s shining moments: indeed, one that prevents many viewers of the series from ever sympathizing with the character in his quest to win Marian, but also one that many fanfic writers have tried to address in tying up the “loose end” of Seth and Annie:

Though Guy has recently abandoned their child in Sherwood Forest, Annie believes there is a side to Guy he cannot show. Joanna Horton and Richard Armitage in Robin Hood 1.4, “Parent Hood.” Source: RobinHood2006.com [site now defunct]

Then, of course, there’s the role in which Armitage has to confront his failure to have all the things that other men have: Lucas North. And other men are fathers.

Richard Armitage as Lucas in Elizaveta’s kitchen at the end of Spooks 7.2, looking in pain at a drawing by her son, which he’s taken down from the refrigerator to examine more closely while waiting for her to arrive. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

Ditto. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

This particular moment of Spooks 7.2 is epic–it says so much with no words at all. It actually reminds me of Iliad, Book 18, in which the poet describes the shield of Achilles. Though this object has been interpreted in various ways by different critics, I have always understood it as a sign of the paradox that creates the tragedy of Achilles. On his shield are wrought all of the symbols of civilization which are liable to be destroyed by war, all of the things that Achilles is fighting to preserve but which he himself will never be able to have. In the Spooks script, this is one of the moments that allow us to glimpse just how high the price is that Lucas pays for the life, calm, and happiness — but always of others. Lucas has lost everything and suffers for it dearly; and yet his suffering is the cost of the things that MI-5 works to preserve for the citizens of the United Kingdom.

Oops, got a little far afield there. Anyway, I’ve been puzzling about the reasons that I find the question of Armitage as parent so intriguing and have come up with some possibilities. It is a facet of human life that his roles haven’t capitalized on before, so it will definitely be something new. John Porter’s relationship with his daughter fits well into the hurt/comfort scenario I broached much earlier and then never developed. Maybe I just like the idea that Mr. Armitage would take the role of a character who is proud of his daughter. (This issue pushes a personal trigger for me, since my relationship with my father is challenging, and presumably for my father as well.) I sense a wish-fulfillment aspect in my thinking, in that Mr. Armitage is close enough in age to me that I could daydream about having had his child. There is also a melancholy note to all of this in that Armitage has occasionally mused inconclusively upon the potential of reproducing in some of his interviews and called himself “broody.”

What makes us want to see Mr. Armitage in the father role? The floor is open.

~ by Servetus on April 24, 2010.