“Only” desire?

Sorry about not posting today — I have a Legenda ready for you, almost, but I decided to succumb to the Holiday Baking Juggernaut again, and now my back aches and I want a beer. I’ll be back at my usual work tomorrow (and will reply to comments below).

I have this to say to this:

Different texts mean different things to different people, obviously. What is valuable to me is dangerous to you, and so on. No one text says one thing to everyone who sees it. The lessons we take away from the fan journey are different ones, each unique to the fan who’s on the journey.

I didn’t care for the vid in question, not because of the roles question, or the matter of pandering — it’s a bit late and somewhat hypocritical of us to question that machine now, I fear, as we and women like us have actively supported it for years; and honestly, the schedule of Richard Armitage’s role choices has had little to do with sex appeal and, I suspect, will continue in that pattern — but because it looked to me like Mr. Armitage was being tortured. I like to see him enjoying himself, and for me, he wasn’t, even if some of the images were enticing. I don’t want him to suffer in ways that are unpleasant to him just to please me.

Even not liking the video, however, it’s an unfortunate step, to reduce the notion of desire to squeee. That’s certainly not how I interpret either squeee or desire, as if they were the same thing. But even if desire were “only” squeee, and squeee meant something like “short-term sexual titillation,” it would be amazingly valuable. For me, the notion of desire, as I’ve learned primarily through watching Armitage, is a much broader, grander, ennobling thing. It makes me remember to breathe, deep into my lungs; it makes me remember to feel.

Watching Richard Armitage’s work has been valuable to me on so many levels. I’ve learned so much about the world and myself and my place in them. But if the only thing it had taught me, the sole lesson I had taken away from it, was to be reminded how to feel desire, to be allowed to want, and to recall all the implications of that action in my life — well, dayenu.

“Only” desire? It would have been enough. It would have been more than enough.

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~ by Servetus on December 23, 2012.