Why I have always disliked the Gospel of Friendship according to Richard Armitage

Continued from here. [edited for typos.]

Wow, this one has been a long time coming, too.

A lot of fans have praised Richard Armitage’s virtue over the years — to the point that a few years ago, I came up with a name for the action of praising Armitage for being a good guy: the trope of “virtuous Armitage.” It’s never been my favorite trope for describing him, mostly because even the kindest people I know have flaws and sometimes large ones. I certainly do. I don’t think he’s Dorian Grey, but I have never thought he was Jesus, either. When he does something virtuous I approve of, I tend to praise it, because as a fellow fan said of me a few years ago, I’m a cheerleader personality. When he does something I disapprove of, I usually I don’t say anything about it, because who am I to disapprove? And he’s not listening to me, anyway. He has his own conscience. I do plenty of things that are disapproval-worthy by others’ standards. I make mistakes. Frankly, although I was often intrigued by the wit, intellect and style of its author, I never wanted to find myself in the position of feeling I was writing this kind of blog. I don’t want to be an anti-fan. And from the other perspective, I have never spent significant time worrying about what Richard Armitage might be thinking of me, but if he were aware of me, presumably there would be things he would disapprove of. Maybe everything about me. He’s my crush, not my deity; I’m his fan, not his publicist. I have my own conscience.

So when fellow fans talk in glowing terms about his general virtue, I tend to clench my teeth slightly. Particularly when they cite Armitage’s messages at Christmastime. Mostly because those messages have regularly been used to bash me over the head. Not so much lately, I think because the fandom is so much more diffuse and not all fans who disagree are even aware of those messages, but two or three years ago, I used to hear regularly that I should shut up when I said something controversial, because Richard wants his fans to get along, or that I should stop writing my fantasies down because of the children who might run across my blog, and there was proof in his messages that Richard wanted us to think of the children. Or because he might read something I said about him, and someone so good as he didn’t deserve to be written about as nasty as fan as I am.

And who hasn’t thought that — when we see another fan doing something we disapprove of? — I wonder if Armitage would approve of that?

In short: we generally don’t use Armitage’s command to be kind to each other or to modify our own personal behavior. Admittedly, I don’t see that step in other people’s brains, so maybe there are people who say, when they find something they dislike, oh, I am going to shut up about that because I should be kind. I know, because at some point the private conversations have begun to outnumber the public ones in my fandom, that are some fans who look at themselves first before criticizing others — but over the years I have seen plenty of exhortations of fans to other fans to change their behavior, made “in the name of Richard.”

Now, when the exhortation came one day a year, or two, that was okay. Or perhaps even praiseworthy. The guy cares about how his fans behave to each other. Although one sort of wonders why he cares so much more than the other celebs whose fandoms I see from the margins. As a fellow fan of mine asked me recently, why is he so curious about us?

One of the problems with the Armitage fandom in Twitterverse, however, is that the potential for this kind of disciplining of the fan base becomes ever greater. It’s been curious to me that Armitage’s comments on Twitter in the press round this week have been related specifically to fan behavior that he has called “vicious,”  precisely as his presence has enhanced people’s competitiveness in the first place. The strategy he has been pursuing of following a few fans and then unfollowing (is this something your publicist told you to, Mr. Armitage?) only makes it worse. One sort of dreads watching what happens when he approves of something that a fan did. One fan whose graphic he retweeted was two days later kicked out of a facebook group of which she was the heart and soul for being “confrontational.” Hard not to read that kind of policing as the result of jealousy or competitiveness. If Armitage does or says anything that can be interpreted in the most remote way as a response to what I am saying here in the next little while, the consequences to me will be unpleasant. Not because people disagree with me — but because he will have responded. It’s one of about five reasons that I never tweet @RCArmitage.

Richard Armitage’s entrée on Twitter was explosively filled with admonitions about cyberbullying. The problem is that he doesn’t have the space to provide a definition of that. Admittedly, I find it hard to take seriously statements about not bullying other people from someone who has Anonymous — the epitome of cyberbullying, no matter what we happen to think of their politics and their aims — in his follow list. Do you know, Mr. Armitage, that some members of Anonymous have threatened to give photos of the children of their opponents to porn sites? The problem is that a lot of political action (campaigns, like ones I have participated in such as the Chik-Fil-A boycott) looks suspiciously like bullying depending on how you define it and where you think the line is. Talking about anything critically means people will disagree, and disagreement can breed arguments, contention — competitiveness. Is critical discourse bullying? I disagreed with someone once this summer on Twitter and was called a bully. If bullying happens in his presence, will he be called in to referee? What about disagreement?

And given his statement that he wants fans to relax and have fun — I wonder when the exhortations will get more expansive? I don’t follow Twitter closely, but a fellow fan who does told me that @RCArmitage followed someone this week, asked her to follow him back, then asked her to remove a photo she had tweeted, and subsequently unfollowed her. I’m not entirely convinced that @RCArmitage is only one person, but if he is — Armitage? Are you going to be your own fan police?

In the next post I will talk about why I think a fandom that Richard Armitage is an active part of is ultimately harmful to us.

It’s again weird because as I just said, I really still love his work. But I didn’t sign up for a fandom in which my crush was going to tell me regularly what it was okay to feel, do, and say about him. I liked better his mood of 2010 — “I realized they had had to get on with doing their thing.” That Armitage apparently wants to participate is, of course, one of the potential consequences of Twitter. The tradeoff for access is inviting someone into my space whom I may really not want there.

Continued here.

~ by Servetus on December 18, 2014.