Me + Richard Armitage
a frequently irreverent and occasionally cerebral feuilleton of richard armitage studies
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Me + Richard Armitage 
Wordplay on your part. LOL. Would like to think he’s a slow lover at least some of the time.
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You like the man with the slow hands? 🙂
This is one of the better thing he’s said this round. I was just kind of shaking my head about the emos and goths.
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One needs read the question and listen to the video to get the meaning of what he’s saying – but your title alone made me think of slam, bam . . . Not usually a recommendation for a lover. Don’t get the reference to emos and goths right here, even after looking it up Went whoosh right over my head.
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Sorry — it was a previous snippet. He said Juliet and Romeo were like emos and goths or Generation Xers …
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Oh, OK thanks. Now only he’s confusing me, not you. Gen Xers? I’ll look for the snippet from the interview. Does he mean the older generation ruined it for the younger with their feud? Hmmmm.
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Now THAT is interesting ❤ It may take me only a couple more hours to listen to this & decide what I think about it 🙂 🙂 🙂
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IKR? I’ve listened to it about five times now 🙂
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It automatically repeats 🙂 …. I’ve surrendered to it XD
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I downloaded it so I can have it forever … I’m not crazy, not me.
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I did too ❤ I’ve learned how to do those things, it’s such an educational fandom 😀
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It really is. Everything I know about piracy, I learned as a Richard Armitage fan 🙂
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😉😁
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I think what he’s saying is, for love to last, we should take things (courting, et al) slow. But we’re not a patient bunch – we want it right here, right now – so we wind up settling for one-stands and hooking up. We’re not looking for a long term relationship, even though we might be better off.
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I agree that’s what he’s saying.
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I think he might also be talking about love as thrill-ride, or addiction…. as in, once you’ve been bungie-jumping, it’s hard to go back to the putt putt course. And to your point, it’s unrealistic. Real life has laundry to be done, dishes to put away, bills to pay. The passion gets us there, but the foundation keeps us there for the long haul.
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Love that little look at the end! 😉
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me too and just listening, very conveniently it keeps playing 🙂
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😄
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I just love his diction….
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I assume he speaks from personal experience…. Just makes me wonder with whom he got into a fist fight?!!
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That was the question I had. Why is “fistfight” the first thing in that list? 🙂
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My mind boggled at his comment! That scene in the film adaptation of Dr Lawrence’ “Women in Love” with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed having fisticuffs in the nude sprung to mind!! 😆
Unintentionally revealing comment from RA me thinks….
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the greater the rush, the more violent the drama … somehow I suspect he doesn’t enjoy the drama. Or maybe I’m projecting there 🙂
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Interesting – you can often find this tendency for intensity in people, but that phase can only last so long. If there isn’t more to it, the relationship probably won’t last. And with regard to Romeo and Juliet, they go through this very intense, passionate love – and self-destroy.
I was reminded of an older interview (I don’t remember which) in which he mentioned something along the lines of the hunt being more appealing to him than the catch, so to say. That would be the more intense phase.
I also think it kind of fits to him with regard to how intensely he throws himself into his roles, sometimes to his detriment since it definitely takes a lot out of him and isolates him.
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it’s interesting insofar as I would say that R&J isn’t really much of a love story, it’s more like a trainwreck (yes, I know, it’s consistently on lists of the greatest love stories ever).
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I think that’s pretty much how it would have been seen in Shakespeare’s own time and for a while afterwards. In Sturm und Drang or Romanticism it would probably have been seen (by some, certainly not all) as just great because the two are so completely ruled by their emotions and dying for love is oh so romantic. (I’m thinking of the huge success of and uncritical view of Die Leiden des jungen Werther, and also the suicides that followed its publication.) And this kind of view on intense emotions like that has stayed with us far more than older views. Ergo ‘greatest love story’.
I can agree with that in so far as a willingness to stand by your love no matter what makes it great in a sense, but these two are so out of control and unreasonable, and in Romeo’s case he enters the play fresh from another ‘great love’ that didn’t go anywhere because she wasn’t willing to go along with what he wants like Juliet will. That doesn’t make the ‘one great love’ very believable with regard to him.
I’d say in the original Shakespeare (I can’t speak for Hewson’s version yet) the two are seen as critically as the older generation that is partly to blame for the catastrophe in which the younger generation of several families is destroyed. So it’s more than a love story, although that’s in there. But I’d say it’s exactly the bad for you passion that Armitage refers to. (I actually find the play a lot more interesting if you see it critically than if you just see it as a love story. )
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I don’t think it’s that simple and I was making an offhand remark. But if you want to get onto historical terrain, we have to keep in mind that anything that appears in Shakespeare or Sturm und Drang is really not representative of general social views. There are a lot of mirrors here that have to be considered: the origins of the story; how the story made its way to England (Hewson talked about this briefly); the traditions of courtly love and love as represented in English theater; the “emergence of individualism” and cultural discussions of “love” during the English Renaissance; Shakespeare’s thoughts about his audience, “self-fashioning,” and so on. The arrival of all out subscription to what we today call “romantic love” in circles wider than a chunk of the bourgeois public and some aristocratic circles took place much later than Sturm und Drang. It’s a very specific group of people who “receive” Werther at all and a smaller one that see it uncritically.
In other words, I personally can’t imagine that Hewson’s version or Armitage’s opinion (whatever they are) have all that much to do with the sixteenth century. Hewson’s probably somewhat moreso than Armitage’s.
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I’d say Hewson is very aware of what was expected of young people during the Renaissance (marry the person your parents picked for you, based on considerations like wealth, influence, social rank). His Romeo and especially Juliet break those conventions, which he (among other things) puts into the context of the Renaissance being a time of great change. (I’ve listened to part of the play now, so can say bit more than before. This is definitely emphasized.)
Armitage seems to go at it from a modern point of view, but with the awareness that giving yourself up to this kind of very strong emotions isn’t necessarily ‘good for you’.
Regarding your reference to general social views: Yes, in Sturm und Drang or Romanticism the larger part of the general population wouldn’t have been into these movements, but they strongly influenced later times. Western people nowadays have a lot less sympathy for Juliet’s parents with their marriage arrangements than people a few centuries ago would have had. (I guess people from cultures where this is still the norm might see it differently.) I would imagine that people during Shakespeare’s time or before, when the story was originally told, would have been more inclined to see her as a ‘bad daughter’, but likely also with some sympathy for the couple’s intense ‘young love’. That doesn’t make either the modern nor the old view less valid. I just find it interesting to look at the play through different lenses, so to say. It’s much more complex than just an unhappy love story. That’s why I actually liked your trainwreck comment. That’s in there, too.
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We’ll have to disagree about Hewson’s awareness; I doubt he took doctoral exams in Renaissance history. From what I’ve heard of the excerpts, he’s made the R&J relationship into something that sounds like modern teens. This is why, when analyzing this, I prefer NOT to consider everything I actually know about history, because I don’t think Hewson knows it and I don’t care to be disappointed. Thus I embrace my OWN modern viewpoint (in the context of modern discussion about love and marriage) that the play makes me feel like I am watching a trainwreck. That’s apart from anything I know about the marital politics of Renaissance communes or Shakespeare’s England.
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You know, one of us could ask him who he had a fistfight with this afternoon while he’s on Facebook.
Just saying…
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Go for it!
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Lol! You know me – I’m just brazen enough to do it. 😀
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I guess I too find this one of his most interesting comments in a good while, so I can’t leave it alone 😀 It’s interesting to me that many people I know who’ve been happily married for a long time (say 25 years or longer) fell in love and married in months, not years (in some cases, even weeks!) I’m not really recommending rushing into commitment, but sometimes when you know, you just know. And perhaps it has to do with knowing yourself. I can’t really say about that, but I have to say that when I’ve watched people take years to decide if someone was right for them – well…..
And actually I think the hangover was the first thing on his consequence list XD I can picture scenarios for ALL those things, but I’ll leave that for the actual fan fic writers 😉 If someone wants ideas, you can DM me though 😀
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I agree, I thought this more interesting than most of what he’s said lately. “Hangover” completes the metaphor he started with “intoxication,” though, so it’s pre-programmed (not that I would put it beyond him to mix a metaphor, of course). “Fist fight” is a free association.
I definitely think there are all kinds of ways to be in love, be married, etc. If one doesn’t really want to be or expect to be married, though (in reality, as opposed to what society tells us we must say), one’s picture looks really different. I also think that’s part of what he’s saying here. That kind of thing might be “good for us” but it’s potentially not what we really want.
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Correct, and I was actually coming back to say that just as I assume he’s speaking from his experience, so am I speaking from mine as both a people-watcher and for myself – each person’s mileage will vary, clearly! ❤ And what you’re saying is part of knowing ourselves too….
I was partly sticking my oar in just to say I don’t entirely line up with the good Friar on the “slow and moderate” thing lol. Nor do I think that’s what’s necessarily “good for us” even in making a commitment to a relationship- to paraphrase what you’ve stated, it really depends more on if we are wired to WANT a committed relationship. And I do think some aren’t, and that can be because they will always love something else more, and be more committed to it.
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aha, I see.
(This is part of why I’m not enthused about listening to the adaptation. When I hear the Friar in the play, I find myself thinking that he’s paraphrasing a lot of the philosophical consensus of the day — how best to love was a big topic in the Renaissance. It’s never entirely clear what Shakespeare read, but it is clear that he was somewhat aware of the philosophical and moral discussions of his day. So if you move from that, to an adaptation, to what do you think of an idea as it is expressed in this adaptation — I think — wow, the whole intellectual basis for talking about this question is fouled up. So I’m just trying to enjoy the interview and forget that whole level of the discussion. Not like me, I know 🙂 ).
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Intoxicated yes, kind of like RA addiction? But fistfights? Can’t say I’ve ever experienced that as a price to pay! I suppose it could be fistfights between a husband and a lover, though.
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I don’t know what he was talking about. But I think physical violence in these situations may be more common than we realize.
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