Tanya Gold is a jerk; Richard Armitage nonetheless stays on message

Dear London Sunday Times interviewer, Tanya Gold,

It really kills me to write this letter to you, because you know my real name. I have loved at least two editorials you have written, and I loved one of them so much that I made the effort to track you down and write you a letter on my real university account — something you wrote about the royals in The Guardian — to which you responded kindly. I admired your language and your way of thinking. My friends and I discussed that editorial on our Facebook page and I sent you a screenshot of our conversation because I thought you might be interested in it. I thought you dared a lot with language, that you saw through things other people didn’t.

I take it all back. You see nothing.

Don’t get me wrong.

I really loved this interview because of things that Richard Armitage said in it. Some of it repeats old material, like the comment about the red carpet (he’s always hated them, he’s always thought they are weird, there are multiple comments to this effect in his early press), and some of it lets us learn new things. I knew that Gillian Lynne had praised his work, for instance, but to hear the full story? Priceless. Rock on, Mr. Armitage.

But you, Tanya Gold, you suck shit. I tell students not to curse in their writing, but you deserve this. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so irked at an interviewer, probably since I read the press interviews from 2009. Or maybe since the summer of 2011 when the Hobbit fanboyz were annoying me.

You tell the reader not to sneer, because you, yourself are sneering.

Let’s start with the way that you hate women. You hate that we can love things without having to sneer at them.

Innocent? Why don’t you just say naive? Or willfully ignorant. Because that’s what you meant.

Want to engage in a little innuendo, do you, Ms. Gold? To which I say this, a word to the wise:

What’s your problem? That we choose to enjoy something without asking for every single detail about it? That we have learned to do something you obviously can’t — what Armitage suggests in the interview you wrote should be the task of the audience — TO SEE MORE CLEARLY SOMETHING OF OURSELVES AS A CONSEQUENCE OF LOOKING AT THE WORK HE DOES — without having to have every detail of the fantasy we engage in correspond to reality? What poverty of imagination you have.

And believe me, I’m asking this as someone who has looked at every single detail about a thousand times. If there’s a detail about Richard Armitage, I’m likely to be aware of it.

Let’s move on to the fat hate.

I don’t like Vicar of Dibley. As long-time readers of this blog know, Harry Kennedy is my least favorite Armitage character. But actually, that wasn’t the point of the Vicar of Dibley conclusion. I have mixed feelings about the actual point — that a cheerful, hardworking, caring person is worthy of love and will attract a cheerful, hardworking, caring person — but you totally missed it. But I’m not a condescending jerk, either. I don’t pretend that other people’s fantasies, whether I share them or not, make them smaller. And you? If you don’t get that, that fantasy ennobles us, you’re nowhere near as smart as I thought you were.

Maybe you, you might be embarrassed to fall in love with a fat person. Frightened that people might think you were a little smaller, a little less important, a little less cool? Then you imply he cringed all the way through the role:

But you know, Richard Armitage? The guy who’s almost a star, too serious for all of this beefcake?

I know, because I spent two weeks in February 2010 watching Armitage’s scenes in Vicar of Dibley frame by lousy frame. Three times. I was interested in microexpressions. And I was interested in exactly that question. Was Richard Armitage embarrassed to be playing a character who was falling in love with or kissing Dawn French?

I can’t answer that, because I don’t know what is in Richard Armitage’s mind. But what I do know, from watching frame by frame for all that time, is that Richard Armitage never once cringes against character through any of his scenes romancing, talking to, or kissing Dawn French. That’s not true of all of his roles. He definitely cringes involuntarily when Lucas North is being lapdanced by a Russian spy. And there’s one other example of a cringe that might be characterization, and might be a lapse. But however he felt about Harry Kennedy’s role personally, Richard Armitage took the time and energy to give a perfectly convincing performance.

No, he never cringes once in Vicar of Dibley. I know, because I took the time to look. Because I am a fan, I do care. Because Richard Armitage convinced me to look at my own tendency to judge and suggested to me that it is possible to see things innocently. And enjoy them simply for what they are.

When I read your earlier writing, I thought you got something about women’s experiences, and people. I see I was mistaken.

Expletive deleted. I’ll be sending you a copy of this from my real university account — just so you know that those fans you’re slamming in this article? We are real people, with real intellects.

Your former fan,

Servetus

~ by Servetus on July 6, 2014.