That nunc dimittis feeling, or: Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it

[An explanation of the title reference. No offense intended to devout Christian readers, for despite the extensive discussion of this particular metaphor, I do hope it still goes without saying that I do not think Mr. Armitage is the Messiah. Indeed, I might be trying to argue for the disutility of thinking of him as if he is one. More on the cultural usage of this expression and the sense in which I mean it below.]

[As always, when you are in need of instruction, and if you have not already, you should read pi. I had drafted this before I read her, but I felt in the back of my mind that this was the kind of thing she’d want to comment on and sure enough, there she was; I echo some of her feelings and –how could it be otherwise?– write in contrast to others. I’ve integrated a riff on her remarks into the post, though not on the comments to her post, which I’ve not read as I publish this.]

Photo: One of the breathtakingly beautiful photographs of Richard Armitage by David Venni that was used in the Strike Back publicity in Spring, 2010. Source: Русскоязычный Cайт Pичардa Армитиджa.

Along with all the joy I felt yesterday after learning the news that Mr. Armitage was cast in The Hobbit, I felt a little odd. Pi describes this as an ache. I find that accurate. Since it wasn’t what I was expecting, I had to stop today to think about the twinges I was feeling. Since a lot of stuff was going on in my life yesterday, I’m still overwhelmed, and it was helpful for me to exploit the comments of “me + richard armitage” readers as a means of exploring my own reactions. As usual you all were thinking some things that were on my mind as well. So you may find some of your own reactions recycled or referenced here.

I think we all agree that, after North & South, the role of Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit is going to be seen as THE big break in his career — the part that’s likely to be described as separating “early Armitage” from “mature Armitage” when biographers start writing books about his career. Given the success of the LOTR trilogy, this movie seems fated to do extremely well at the box office, and nothing we’ve seen of Mr. Armitage’s work in the past suggests that he will deliver anything less than a strong performance. Lots of people who’ve never heard of him before are going to see him. Now: adaptations of literary classics are notoriously more controversial than projects originally scripted for the big screen, and playing a non-human is always a career challenge, of course, one that carries with it the risk of typecasting, and we don’t know if this role will constitute the sort of signature performance that Mr. Thornton in North & South did, but from right here, right now, everything looks good. And, as pi notes, given what we know about him, this role seems as close as he’ll get in the short term to the sort of thing he was looking for, the “Elephant Man” role that is going to allow him to practice what he understands to be his craft, to act without being written off as “only” a pretty face. (Phylly3 posts one possible permutation of Armitage as Thorin, and even if Armitage does sex the character up in spite of himself, all this facial hair is not the stuff of which conventional feminine dreams are made. Though in an odd twist of fate, it may be just what Servetus has been fantasizing about.) Even if it doesn’t end up being a definitive role for him, though, one hopes that it will be well paid, and that if he’s as frugal as he says he is, he’ll be able to bank or invest some of his earnings and thus enjoy the luxury of waiting for roles he likes to come to him. He can spoil his parents some more (how adorable!) or put some money in his beloved nephew‘s college fund (probably necessary given the disturbing recent news from UK higher education.) It should guarantee him work when he wants it and leisure should he prefer it. Or maybe it will provide the seed money for developing the Richard III project that Mr. Armitage has been referencing at every opportunity for years.

In sum: It’s hard not to be moved by this news and by what we guess that it must mean to him and his loved ones. When we finally see, within our field of vision, the thing we think he, and we, have been waiting for, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed with emotion.

***

[Photo: An image from an important illuminated fifteenth-century manuscript of the Book of Hours, the so-called Très Riches Heures du Duc du Berry. The text of the canticle of Simeon begins right under the miniature at right. Source: wikipedia.]

And yet, I had the distinct feeling yesterday afternoon that I was now going to be singing “nunc dimittis.” It seems like an automatic response to being overwhelmed by a sudden, unanticipated gift, perhaps one that no longer seemed anything like imminent: “now, we can die happy.”

In the religious tradition of my childhood, “nunc dimittis” is the liturgical piece sung after the Eucharist, expressing the sentiment that the congregation has now witnessed again the testament to the miracle of human salvation at the hands of a G-d who cared enough to give his only-begotten son to accomplish it. Its text is drawn from the Gospel of Luke, where the evangelist puts it in the mouth of Simeon, an ancient man who’s been promised he’ll live to see the Messiah. Simeon’s been waiting in the Temple for a very long time when Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to be circumcised. If we were interpreting typologically, we might see Moses, who waits for a very long time to see the Promised Land but cannot enter it, as a type for Simeon, whose eyes see a deliverance that he will — in contrast to Moses — be able to experience. I’m not equating Richard Armitage with Jesus Christ, but this expression “we’re singing the nunc dimittis” to mean “we’ve been hanging on a long time to see this result, but it’s here and we’re done now” was one I heard a lot as a child, and I found out when I was doing my doctoral work that it was an extremely common phrase for exactly the same sentiment in the sixteenth-century sources I read for my dissertation. The modern secular equivalent is probably the statement, usually attributed to the Lone Ranger, but perhaps even older (I found a reference to it in the Prisoner of Zenda): “My work here is done.”

Armitage fans have been waiting for what feels like a long time, some of them six years, for the virtues of their object to be more generally appreciated. I say “they” and not “we” in that sentence because I’ve only been a fan for the last year, and only “out” since the end of February. My own reactions to this event are based on an emotional investment much smaller than that of the core members of his fandom, the people who’ve been maintaining websites, aggregating news and creating an archival documentation of his entire career, voting in online polls, commenting on discussion boards, continuing to provide an internet buzz about him during periods where nothing of his was being broadcast, and defending him in the comments sections of blogs when reviews of his work have been critical. So the question is why I’d potentially have a bittersweet feeling, or other fans would, just at the point at which our fondest dreams are being realized — and, I assume, these dreams are of much longer duration and greater intensity among fans of longer standing than myself, so that aches and twinges may be more severe among those fans than they are for me. (Pi writes that she doesn’t know if she’s sticking around the fandom, and while I’m not planning a departure, I feel something like the ache that she describes.) I think the answer to the question has to do with the reasons why and how we’re moved by the news. The question for me, as always, is about me and not about him. And so, I think, we have to ask ourselves what exactly it is what we’re getting from participating in the Armitage fandom and how and whether that would change now. Is the nunc dimittis feeling a reasonable reaction?

***

“Look how our partner’s rapt,” Banquo (Ken Bones) comments to Angus (Richard Armitage) and Ross (Paul Webster) on Macbeth’s reaction to his assumption of the title of Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth (RSC 2001), Act I, scene iii, l. 151. My cap. An early appearance in leather and a smirk that foresages the expressional repertoire of Guy of Gisborne.

In essence, of course, no feeling is susceptible to rational analysis. But feelings do have trajectories that relate to our experiences and they can be analyzed with reference to our broader, more rationally accessible concerns and interests. Maybe a better question is: is it fair?

The long-term argument for following Armitage through projects of occasionally dubious artistic merit has been his amazing range and power as a thespian, his unbelievable ability to draw the audience’s gaze not by posturing but by withdrawing, his ability, proven time and time again, to catch the attention of and move the viewer toward his purpose with the slightest gesture or the briefest glance of an eye. This argument asserts that he’s a great actor of underexploited talent, and that it was only a matter of time until someone, somewhere recognized the shocking lack of appreciation for his acting and cast him in a meaty classical or modern dramatic role that would display his skills at their best. Seen from that light, from the perspective of a fandom that’s never been privy to his backroom contract negotiations, the last year has been tough — a sort of famine in the midst of a feast, since on the surface his career on British television, and the prospects for its continuation, have been stronger in the last year than ever, but the scripts have been so questionable. Particularly since Strike Back aired, a sort of vague concern’s been abroad that Mr. Armitage was at risk of failing to fulfill what fans saw as his dramatic destiny, that he might spend his career on television and other roles that were “inferior.” We’ve been waiting the requisite amount of time for the new season of Spooks, but like me, most Armitage fans appear to have been strongly dissatisfied by the way that the series 8 scripts treated Lucas North, and after a brief respite, Spooks 9.4 and 9.5 took Lucas North down a rather alarming path from which viewers who do not consume spoilers –OF WHOM I AM ONE, I REMIND YOU!– have not yet been liberated. An appearance in “The Rover” would have satisfied many of the diehard fans of “art,” but news about the scheduling of that role was always limited to Armitage’s own vague statements about how badly he wanted to do it.

Peter Macduff (Richard Armitage) responds to the news that his wife and daughters have been murdered in Shakespeare Retold. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery

Without question, The Hobbit will propel Mr. Armitage to international attention. At the same time, no matter the prominence and significance of this production, no matter how much we love and appreciate J.R.R. Tolkien’s storytelling, Thorin Oakenshield is not Lear or Richard III. (Bilbo Baggins wouldn’t have been, either.) I do not mean to discredit children’s literature or fantasy as vehicles for great performances, but this role will not satisfy anyone who espouses arguments about the higher value of the great, unforgettable, canonical dramatic pieces. It will definitely make Armitage a face recognized around the world. All by itself, however, it seems unlikely to engrave his name in the rolls of the stellar adepts of Melpomene, next to the likes of Marlon Brando or Richard Burton, and even less likely to push him into the ranks of players like Lawrence Olivier or Alec Guinness. It may be a path on such a journey, but this choice seems just as possible to foreclose that path in the end, changing Armitage’s reputation from “sexy television star” to “prominent film actor” rather than “classic dramatic lead.” Now, he’s never said what he wanted in any sort of self-limiting language beyond seeking to surprise his viewers and to diversify his repertoire as much as possible. Even if this attitude doesn’t represent what I hope it does –a desire for the greatest growth and depth possible in his art– it would have been professionally foolish given his career progress so far for him to have done so. So he’s all over the place in discussing his desires. I’m not the first to have noted his apparent willingness to get something out of any role he lands. Though quoted on his love for the thrill of live theater, he’s also stated that television offers the appealing chance to repeat it until one gets it right. He’s been quoted repeatedly as having formed the desire to become an actor during a visit to Stratford while at school, but he’s also said that at approximately the same age, he wanted to be in movies. I want to stress that this is only a hypothesis, BUT I do have my own heretical reading of his career. He’s no fool; he undoubtedly knows what actors have to do to obtain the kinds of roles they seek. So I suspect that he knew that if he wanted a career treading the boards of the important stages of London, Stratford, and elsewhere, his best path to that end lay where he already was at a very early point in his career after leaving LAMDA: the Royal Shakespeare Company. That he did not stay on that road and ended up doing television work suggests to me that for whatever reason he concluded that the traditional path to canonical dramatic leads was not desirable or available to him.

So yes: I read him as being willing to take a number of alternative paths — often more willing than we might have been initially to go with him. It’s striking how often I find myself thinking — and reading — about how Armitage takes his fans where they never would have gone before. But even in my own experience, this hasn’t always reflected my own eagerness, but rather a concession I’m willing to make for his sake. In January, my current feelings about this notwithstanding, I was hesitant to watch his roles other than North & South and I wanted something “better” than I understood either Guy of Gisborne or Lucas North to be. In short, if what we get from the fandom is a mood akin to the emotional tenor of Jewish messianic belief — in which the desired goal of a plum dramatic role is always yearned for, always receding just slightly beyond the horizon, but no less devoutly to be wished or dearly beloved for all of that — if, in the narrative of the nunc dimittis, we never want to occupy the role of Simeon, if we prefer on some level to wander the wilderness because we appear to be barred from actually realizing our goal, then thinking about The Hobbit may make Armitage’s artistic future appear quite suddenly to be alarmingly concrete. I hope that this role expands his opportunities. But it will also give him a much clearer identity as an actor in the minds of a much larger group of viewers and fans than he has ever had before. There’s a level on which that kind of decision has to be frightening — maybe as much or more for us as it is for him. Once he appears in this role, it’s going to become more difficult for us to make him over into our favorite roles, albeit only in the theater of the mind’s eye. If his recent responses to his fans, which have been less effusively grateful and more openly assertive of his own stance, are any index, his own sense of his artistic identity is solidifying as well. Once you have chosen to be someone, you exclude the possibility of being someone different — and every decision has consequences.

I want to express some sympathy for this stance, since it’s easy to ask — well, if this role doesn’t make you happy, Servetus, other fans, what will? And it’s not that the role isn’t making people happy — far from it. I am overjoyed and I think most people are overjoyed and even people who are only marginally less than overjoyed are happier than they are sad. But great gifts are also tinged with lost alternatives. And what’s often forgotten in the nunc dimittis story, because his final words are left out of the liturgical canticle, is that after he thanks G-d for having seen the Messiah, Simeon gives Mary and Joseph a warning, that their child will be important — and that a sword will pierce their own souls, too. Leaving out the devastating soteriological consequences — which is, as I said above, where this metaphor breaks down — it would have been much easier for everyone in that story in terms of their own emotional lives if Jesus had stayed a sweet little baby upon whom they all could have written their own narratives, indefinitely. Children who never grow up also never have to be made responsible as adults for the disappointments they may cause. And the adults they disappoint never have to take responsibility for interrogating their own expectations.

***

[Photo: Sky publicity photo for Strike Back that tries to make John Porter (Richard Armitage) look like Achilles.]

I’m mostly hypothesizing above, as it’s already clear that that is not my position, at least not most of the time. In principle, one might conclude, to shred this metaphor even more aggressively, I’m happy to be Simeon and just sit back and be grateful for any and all human deliverance that materializes on my horizon as long as it’s not immoral. Indeed, I said just last week in rather prolix terms that I really don’t care if he ever plays Lear. Prospero, maybe. Hear that, Mr Armitage? If you get offered Prospero somewhere I can afford to fly to, you better take it or risk the wrath of Servetus! Some week I’ll only write a few hundred words about you instead of a few thousand! Or I’ll stop commenting on how gorgeous you are! I bet that would hit you where you live! Take that, you flimsy poltroon!

While thinking about how I felt about a potential career for him in which Strike Back and Captain America were more typical than Hamlet and Macbeth, I spent a lot of time justifying why I’d be happy to keep watching Armitage no matter what he did, even if he never moved beyond television, BBC Radio 4 productions, and audiobooks, and even if we kept seeing him in roles that exploited his body as much as his acting. I founded my stance on grounds that had to do with him: his right to follow his art for his own reasons and in the direction he thought his career was taking him, the doubtful stability of the art vs. entertainment distinction, his clear ability to transcend by miles the limitations of the vast majority of the roles in which he’s been cast, and the unfairness of blaming him for our reactions to his physical beauty.

Of course, you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time that I repeatedly point out that no argument is ever disinterested. I have my own reasons for liking to see him on television. That was the actual followup post to the career maundering I published last week, and a post about what I see as more broadly significant about the emotional level of my response to him as a tv actor was in the works on Thursday afternoon before I left to go to the art museum with my student organization members — and then sidelined by the news about The Hobbit. I will get back there, no doubt, because when I met him he was a television actor, the roles he played were important to me in fairly specific ways, discussion of certain themes that underlie this blog are becoming increasingly pressing in my life, and this news changes none of that history or those sentiments in any significant way.

But back to the question of twinges in the background of my euphoria over this new evidence of Armitage’s success, I’m asking myself if all of that reflection about why tv and radio drama are just fine is now immaterial. If he’s really as good an actor as I believe him to be, it seems unlikely that television will continue to tempt him. If offers for film roles pour in (and since I do subscribe at least facetiously to the Armitageworld dogma that Richard Armitage is the best actor in the whole wide world, how could it be otherwise?) it’s hard to see on the face of it why he would continue to work in television. Now I’m not saying there could be no reason for him to do so — he could potentially be offered a role in the sort of television he enjoys very much himself; or he could find any number of personal reasons to want to stay in the UK and thus seek work in British television; or he could discover that he hates working in films; or this role could indeed eventually generate for him the kind of offers he wants in live theater — I could spin out a number of scenarios. It’s just that if he in fact does seek greater room to test his own artistic skills and more respect in conventional terms for his achievements, given the reward system in his world as it currently stands, and considering sentiments about the art vs entertainment distinction that are more broadly held than mine, on balance, he is more likely to find the opportunities he seeks in film. It’s obvious to me that given all the crazy script writing that he’s endured since 2006, one reason to be happy to take on a film role is simply that one’s performance won’t have to be rewritten or redeveloped as a group of scriptwriters employed on a temporary basis and who care more for thrills than for an actor’s efforts at consistent characterization and leaving a signature performance in place take gleeful aim at everything one thinks one’s accomplished.

When I was a kid, I had this story book about the nunc dimittis and the tale never bothered me. In the last twenty years or so, though, I’ve learned a little bit more about how people actually react when they get what they want. In light of this problem, I’ve wondered what happens to Simeon after the promise of the Holy Spirit is fulfilled and he finally sees Jesus. Does he drop dead as soon as he gets home, because he is, after all, very old, and he’s just seen what he’s waiting for? Does G-d grant him the grace of an immediate departure? Or does he have to hang around awhile waiting to die? And if the latter, does he immediately realize that the Scriptures have been fulfilled and that he doesn’t have to observe the rules of the temple cult any more? And if he does stop observing the law, does he miss doing it? It turns out, I think, that I’m much more temperamentally akin to people who aren’t able to leave behind their presuppositions about Armitage’s career than I initially would have thought — I just have slightly different presuppositions. (It’s a common problem of academic life: discovering your work is way less original than you initially thought it might be.) The point of this rather strange discussion from my perspective is this: though Simeon did not wonder about the gift of seeing the Messiah, he did warn Mary and Joseph that there would be problems, and indeed, it seems like there are good reasons to wonder whether Armitage in film will really give us what we want, if it will not be just as challenging to our desires as it will be fulfilling. For instance: one immediate consequences for viewers who wish they could see more of him is that we’ll actually be likely to see less of him, as it will take quite some time to film two full-length feature films, and we won’t be able to count on the regularity of series television, as his fans have been able to do for the last four years. And it’s not just regularity, it’s the question of what that regularity means in terms of one’s own attitudes, and in terms of the constitution of community. A lot of new people — WE HOPE! — will be joining our ranks, and yet it may be difficult to accommodate them at first — we will have to be patient. As kaprekar asks, what will happen to his fandom under these circumstances? Musa notes that there are ways to keep it going, and I remain committed to providing my own little bizarre contribution here as long as life permits.

But I do think this new role raises questions for me about the whole point of my bizarre little contribution. Just in the sense that a crucial piece of information we discover in Spooks 9.1 in one of the early scenes carries significant power to change how we understand all of Spooks 8, a successful career for Armitage in film casts a different light on all of his early roles. I may not be the only one having these feelings, given the amount of interpretive attention that fans have been devoting to his every gesture for years. If Mr. Armitage becomes a big film star, does that make everything that I’ve been writing about him all this time, all of the investment I’ve put into thinking about Lucas North, and John Porter, and Guy of Gisborne, and Mr. Thornton, invalid? Certainly not. Those roles were still important to his career, and I think people will continue to be interested in watching Lucas, Guy and Mr. Thornton for some time. (Yes: despite my love for John Porter, I think the role will be seen as less important for him, based on what we’ve seen so far, and if he is able to leave his obligation before filming series 2, that will definitely be the case. But maybe he will still play the second series of Strike Back, and maybe the scripts will get better.) Perhaps the news of The Hobbit will even draw some viewers to those roles. I hope so. But even so, I can’t avoid at least the initial reaction that all of this effort will have focused on his “early career,” not the “important” mature career. And seeing his choices on the big screen is certainly going to affect how I view his earlier choices on the little one. I’m even wrestling with the possibility that I have some secret fear that I won’t like him as much as a film actor as I do on television.

To go back to the nunc dimittis story, which I’ve been interpreting throughout as an allegory about how people are likely to deal with change: from the Christian perspective, the change that’s just entered the world is good. But it can’t have been easy. And it may not end up being good for everyone in ways that are immediately apparent; not everyone may accept it; it may not even end up being good for me in the open-ended sense I thought I could embrace with pleasure. I’m happy for Mr. Armitage, and I’m happy for me, and I’m happy for everyone else who is happy. But I am more sympathetic to the twinges than I thought, a little surprised by my own resistance, and I am going to have to learn more about the nature of the happiness on offer, too.

Getting back to where I started asking the questions: What is it I’m getting from this fandom? In part, a renewed confidence in my capacity to employ my interpretive gaze. Knowledge, authority, gratification, pleasure that comes from the ability to think and write creatively. And then the subject of the analysis turns the tables on me and insists on actually exercising the right to artistic growth that I’ve sketched out and tried to defend for him — and I am just a little bit shocked. I insisted on his rights as an artist to develop in the directions he thought best and now I am going to have to put my money where my mouth was. If it’s fair for him to be changing, as I have insisted repeatedly, of course, it’s certainly fair for me to have twinges and what I’ve termed here “that nunc dimittis feeling.” The question is maybe why I underestimated Armitage so much as to think that I wouldn’t have that feeling. But I’m asking myself as well why I didn’t realize ahead of time what I was bargaining for in attempting to speak as an interpreter. In sum, I think this is the problem: the Armitage I “know,” the elusive figure on whom I’ve been trying to put my rhetorical imprint on for over six months now, is going to be changing. As should have been apparent all along, he’s going to turn into much more of a challenge than I realized in February, when I thought that a few months of blogging about a bizarre obsession I seemed to be developing would serve as a way to figure out what was bugging me, and as a sidelight, as an entertaining diversion from my burgeoning personal problems. If he’s going to grow and take risks, I will have to do that, too — with all of the same hypothetical consequences. If he turns into a different interpretive object than I bargained for, I also run the risk of becoming a different interpreter than I realized I would be.

The story of The Hobbit seems on point here. It’s about a creature of comfort who sets out on a journey partly out of curiosity and partly out of feeling that he can’t avoid going along. I think we’re all going to find out — or at least all of us who remain signed on for the ride — a lot more about our commonalities with Bilbo Baggins in the next two years than we would have initially have thought possible.

***

There’s one more piece to this that relates to fandom and our own participation in it, but I have to stop now. This is almost 5,000 words now, anyway, so if you made it this far you’re probably exhausted. It doesn’t really relate all that well to the nunc dimittis issue, either, so it makes sense to discuss it separately. Thanks, as always, for your tolerance of my verbal diarrhea. I’ll try to put that piece down tomorrow afternoon some time.

~ by Servetus on October 24, 2010.