Finally: What’s bugging me about Richard Armitage as Francis Dolarhyde

I’ve had the Hannibal series 1 DVDs in my bag for — ten days now? And the book is here now, too. I keep looking at them and not opening them. I will. But staring at them for several days while avoiding opening them has definitely forced me to think more deeply about my problems with this project and the reasons I keep seesawing back and forth, in a way that’s bugging me — one minute cold to it; the next, intrigued.

(Yes, problems. I want to make clear at the outset, however, that they are and should remain my problems, certainly not Richard Armitage’s, and definitely not yours, either. I affirm that I can think of no legal or moral problems with Armitage having taken this role or people watching and appreciating him in it.)

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I realized sometime this week that my objection to Hannibal did not lie in its violence alone or per se (although I certainly lack the practice in watching horror or violence that some people have, and I do object to some aestheticizations of violence I have seen, I have also watched a lot of video of historical atrocities over the years). It was something else.

It was raised when someone referred to somewhere to the Stieg Larsson novels, all of which I read rapidly when they were released in German translation (before the U.S. editions. Note to crime novel lovers — German is apparently the language into which any crime novel is most likely to be translated because the German predilection for this genre is huge and the market is wealthy). Contradiction much, Serv? Those novels also gave me bad dreams for a few nights after I read them. But I can’t deny the eagerness with which I turned their pages and recommended them to friends. (I haven’t seen any of the films, but I was the one responsible for corrupting Didion and she has seen them.) They were violent; indeed, according to at least one person familiar with them all (sorry, I’ve lost the place where you said this, whoever you were), much more violent than the Thomas Harris novel at the basis of the current adaptation of Hannibal.

Something was different about those books. And I think this is it: it was that as often Lisbeth Salander was victimized, she still refused to let herself be a victim. Ever. Not a sweet revenge taker, like the ladies in 9 to 5, a movie that I loved as a girl, but someone who stood up for herself by initiating violence in respond to the brutal things she had been subjected to. A strong woman. A potential sociopath whom I admire.

It wasn’t sympathy — I’ve never been subjected to the kind of trauma that a Lisbeth Salander or for that matter, a Francis Dolarhyde was constituted as experiencing. As a straight white woman living in the West, I benefit from the public health, economic, military, educational, and cultural protections of a bubble not many people on the planet enjoy. My parents spanked with their hands and stopped when I was six, and while I had a life-changing experience with sexual harassment, I’ve been fortunate in that I have never been violently assaulted although so many women in the U.S. have. I’ve generally been immune to unusual blows of fate in general and the things that have made me suffer are pretty standard human troubles. Because of all of that privilege, I think, I’ve felt justified in building myself an even stronger bubble than a lot of people can against some things that trouble me and I have been reinforcing it in the last five years or so — the barrier against certain species of prejudice.

For instance, I simply delete — mercilessly, silently — people from my facebook page who spread material I judge homophobic or racist. I’ve read that liberals tend to tolerate less variety of political opinion in their social media. Although I don’t have that luxury because I have many close relatives who are dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, I do mute those who spread pseudo-scientific nonsense or conspiracy politics. I don’t have time for exasperation, I rationalize, and anger from reading things in my intimate sphere that already enrage me when I encounter them in public wastes my time and energy. To some extent, I can do this because of taste — I’d generally rather be reading, and I can be very selective about what I expose myself to by avoiding broadcast media. I listen to NPR in the morning (and the BBC), I haven’t had television since the planned end of analog broadcasting in the U.S. (I never got a converter or whatever was needed); I don’t have cable, am not a huge moviegover, don’t watch much video via the Internet, and so on. (Yes, I know, how strange that I’d become the fan of an actor, no? Didion did have to sort of coerce me to watch North & South the first time and my primary motivations were concern about her and the G&Ts she lured me with).

What does this have to do with not wanting to watch Hannibal? One of the biggest prejudices that I seek to protect myself from in my self-imposed media bubble is: misogyny. Now, let me be clear — I am not talking about sexism, which is a predictable outcome of a patriarchal society, and impossible to shut out unless one never picks up a book or leaves the house. Nor am I saying I have been able to insulate myself against sexual discrimination, which is a consequence of sexism. I wish. That I haven’t been assaulted is probably mostly luck. Other people in similar circumstances to mine have not been so lucky. By misogyny, I mean the generalized hate of women as women and the resentment toward women reflected as a cultural consequence of that attitude. Sometimes sexism is a consequence of misogyny, but I’m talking here not so much of a practice reflected in social arrangements and justified rationally, if mistakenly, on that basis, but rather about a general attitude, a layer of a particular worldview. If you’re a woman, you learn about misogyny at the latest when you start working for money outside the home. There are people who just hate women because they are women (and one learns very quickly that not all of them are men).

So why am I worried about Hannibal? Even before I read it? I think it’s because the mere term “serial killer” calls to mind the discourse around serial killers, which I’ve always felt is seriously misogynistic. Although the psychology research limits itself to saying that early family trauma is a factor in the development of many serial killers, it’s striking in the stories of the cases well known to me (Ed Gein — the bogeyman of every Wisconsin childhood in the 1970s; Jeffrey Dahmer — ditto in the 90s; Ted Bundy; John Wayne Gacy, and others more) how often the mother of the killer is made responsible specifically in the common mind, as if behaviors by fathers played no role at all or the mother was the only member of the family. Blame the woman, and especially, blame the powerful woman. What I’ve been told about the Francis Dolarhyde story so far does not differ substantially from this narrative (and it makes me wonder about what factors in the 80s and 90s, when these stories were particularly prominent in the news and fiction, contributed to audience enjoyment of that particular kind of story). It’s a hangover from the same kind of Freudianism (or pseudo-Freudianism) that made mothers responsible for autism only a generation ago. And given that women are excoriated for all kinds of behaviors that we praise men for, an unfair one. One of the aspects of the Larsson novels that also spoke to me: that in his accounts of the violence perpetrated on Salander over the years, Larsson was unafraid either to name or indict the men who abused his heroine both routinely and extraordinarily.

[Left: Richard Armitage as Percy Courtenay in Miss Marie Lloyd. Source.]

Given how common the misogynist pattern is in the general discourse around serial killers, why am I so worried about Richard Armitage in this role? It’s not because I think he’s a misogynist himself, or at risk of becoming one — I’ve always been able to distinguish between Armitage the person and the roles he plays. Even as I wonder what Armitage the actor might be trying to work out for himself with the role of Francis Dolarhyde, I strongly doubt that it’s anything to do with the literal level of the role he’ll be playing.  Rather, I think it’s because, in contrast to most actors in the media that I do watch, Armitage has been one of the few men inside of my anti-misogyny bubble. He has chosen archetypal roles, which is sometimes a problem given our cultural patterns around women. But while he’s been a cad (Percy Courtenay, Tom Steele) and threatening more than once (Ian Macalwain, Lee Preston, Phillip Durrant), these were mostly minor roles, taken early in his career. The only major role he’s taken in which I see his character as a misogynist was Paul Andrews (and William Chatford, if you consider that a major role).

Admittedly, Servetus’ “big six” have sexist elements, and can indeed be extremely dark, if we think not just of Andrews, but also of Thorin’s gold sickness and Guy of Gisborne’s rage and madness in the third series of Robin Hood, of Lucas North/John Bateman’s torture over his past deeds, Porter’s PTSD, and Standring’s sudden discovery of his own capacity to harm in the third episode of Sparkhouse. Nonetheless, as a group, they are largely empty of any thoroughgoing hatred of women. John Standring doesn’t seem to have problems with women as such other than a paralyzing shyness that applies equally to men. Mr. Thornton loves his strong mother and his problems with Margaret are class-, not gender-based. Guy of Gisborne, whose treatment of women is typical for “his age,” killed Marian out of jealousy and humiliation, not because he hated women. This is a borderline case for me, because he hoarded a certain amount of anger at his mother that he was probably reliving throughout his frustrations with Marian, but based on his relations with other women in the series, including his sister, I would call him an egoist and a sexist more than a misogynist. Lucas North has fantastic working relationships with his female colleagues and for a soldier, John Porter is quite liberated. And the only women Thorin Oakenshield has anything to do with, I believe, in the huge “sausage fest” (not my term, but I find it amusing) of The Hobbit are Galadriel and Tauriel.

I don’t know if these choices have been accidental or purposeful with regard to avoiding misogyny. I tend to think that, although Armitage’s female co-stars have repeatedly praised his work and cooperation and support, that this pattern is more an accident than a plan. At the same time, it certainly makes sense for an actor whose fans are still primarily female not to choose a role that is blatantly sexist or misogynist. I don’t have the knowledge to parse out which factors are important for Armitage, although I wonder if the fact that Dolarhyde is more mainstream in term of the social stereotypes that constitute how we build a villian in our culture is a sign that he is loosing himself successfully from the presupposition that an Armitage fan is necessarily or incredibly likely to be a woman. And this isn’t a dealbreaker for me — I realized long ago that I would be likely to go almost anywhere with Richard Armitage in terms of roles, although I wasn’t excited about vampires. (I think snuff films were on my list of absolute noes, though.)

What “serial killer,” and Hannibal, draw me back to, however, is that atmosphere where powerful women are responsible for the mental illness of men who’d otherwise be normal. Men with a pathological gender confusion they owe to their moms. Just the terms alone draw me back into thoughts of a sea of misogyny that I try to avoid as much as possible, to insulate myself from. I don’t know yet if these retellings of the story will create that problem. But the general atmosphere of that kind of stuff makes me — unwilling. Reticent. Resistant, even. Willing to carry the DVDs around with me but not open the package and look at them.

So. I’ll try to watch an episode soon.

~ by Servetus on February 8, 2015.