The Big Question, part one

I had planned to start my post investigating how and why exactly reading interpretations might be of use to deal with real people and real life issues but, again, something amazing has happened. Apparently, thinking about in what way exactly these activities might be connected brought me back to these basic questions about reading that I probably thought I had answered a few times already. At least I had thought more often than once that my blog would come to an end because there would be nothing to write about anymore. And each time I have been wrong. Like this time when I unexpectedly answered my two “biggest” questions about reading. When I couldn’t take my bike to work because of the rain and walked all the way I puzzled them out all at one go. (Should do this more often …) So, this has to come first.

One thing that puzzled me for a long time is about WHICH KIND of fictional texts I love and get excited about, and which kind I find invariably boring and irrelevant. And what I found out applies likewise to other “text-producing” activities, especially acting. There are certainly a lot of great actors – more than there have ever been before at the same time, I dare say - and I usually can see and appreciate when somebody has done especially well. But it is not before they have done THAT THING that I kind of fall in love with them. And then, potentially, I want to see everything they have done – though I never manage to do that, of course. I am just about to do it with Christopher Eccleston, even though I can see that it will be impossible. But that doesn’t matter, he already proved to be a gold mine as to the load of relevant “text” I have collected checking him out. It was his “Doctor” who got me hooked, and I began to look for more, and found out that I already had him on dvd. As Norfolk in “Elizabeth”, which I hadn’t liked in spite of Cate Blanchett. But I remembered instantly that I had been thrilled by Geoffrey Rush as Walsingham and by that guy who played Norfolk and whose name meant nothing to me about … ten(?) years ago. (Well, he is a wee bit different in period knickerbockers and with a beard – and (almost) without his beautiful Northern accent!) This was even exactly the same thing that happened with Richard Armitage after I had seen him in “The Hobbit” – as my favourite dwarf of all times – and then noticed that I had seen him in “North and South” about five years before that but hadn’t bought the dvd because I didn’t really like the story. (And it took even more time for me to notice that because he was A GREAT DEAL different with a beard, “weird” hair, and THAT VOICE …) And I had just a funny and endearing sort of proof of having fallen in love permanently when I saw Simon Russell Beale in “My cousin Rachel” playing a lawyer of some sort, and I was so disproportionally pleased that I decided to like the film on the spot - even though I had to admit that he has NOTHING AT ALL to do with its success. This may appear ridiculous but I liked it nonetheless. In his case it wasn’t that kind of “lightning” thing as with Richard Armitage, when he came through that door and said: “So, this is the Hobbit!” in THAT VOICE! It only happened when I began to write about “The Tempest” and began to NOTICE my ongoing relationship with him. Though, in fact, there was this moment as Lear - when he stopped in the middle of the stage, raised his eyes to the sky and whispered: “Not mad! (Pleeease!!!)” So, in his case, I even know when AND why – which is, of course, great! In the case of Richard Armitage I began to make up reasons afterwards, I think, though they were by no means hard to find. As to Christopher Eccleston I remembered, seeing “Elizabeth” again, that I had fallen in love with him. But then I had forgotten about it because I never saw him again until I finally watched “Doctor Who”. And it happened at least one other time recently, with Lucian Msamati, when I saw him as Iago in the RSC’s “Othello”. I finally got it on dvd this year, and then I wasn’t as pleased as I had been seeing it on the big screen. But I am glad that I had another go at “Othello”, even memorized long scenes with Iago because I know that this is the best way to analyze them and “get into” their beautiful logic. And, watching it after I had done this, I could see again why I had loved his Iago so much. And there are a lot more old and recent examples, as for Kate Winslet in “Revolutionary Road”, or Rosamund Pike in “Women in Love” where she did this thing I thought would be impossible: to “nail” Gudrun Brangwen. Or Patrick Stewart, who already swept me off my feet as Claudius when I was a teenager, and keeps doing it, I think, by the sheer force of his “acting personality”. Or Cate Blanchett, of course, for the same reason. I know, I get carried away, and could go on for a while, but I know that it isn’t just riding my hobby-horse. It is that I know this kind of thing happens for lots of totally different reasons. I think I even love these British actors mainly for being so different – because of the multitude of possibilities to make, respectively see, something special. But what all these actors have in common – and what makes the difference between them and the many other great actors I am pleased to see every time I see them – is that I have SEEN them do THAT THING I want to see. And know that I can expect them to do it again, and that I want to see it. I probably still don’t really know what it is and maybe never will because I know that acting is something I will never come to understand. (Like reading, it is, of course, DOING IT that makes us understand it!) But, I think, making this detour about what I understand, I have, at last, come a big step closer.

The question which films and series (or actors) to watch and which books to read has become especially relevant during the last few years – on the one hand because I began to understand that there isn’t an unlimited store of time. (“I wasted time, and now does time waste me”, “Richard II” and a big favourite!) On the other hand I never go to the cinema anymore because I haven’t gone for some time, or watch or read something because I think I SHOULD have seen or read it, or because I haven’t anything to read. When I am reading something, or pay money to see something, I know exactly why I am doing it. And this is what has changed during the last few years – basically since I came back to “Shakespeare” – and why it makes sense for me to write this blog. I know that EVERYTHING got changed KNOWING WHAT IT IS that I want and need. I suddenly knew the difference, but I couldn’t say exactly what it was. I think I can now.

What always puzzled me most about my relationships with texts is that, from childhood, I have preferred text that would most aptly be called “naturalistic”. Which means being based on the “real” world and appearing “believable” or, in the case of acting, what I consider to be psychologically convincing. But recently I have preferred stuff like “Hannibal”, or “Doctor Who”, or, of course, fantasy stuff like “The Hobbit”. And I am even watching “Harry Potter”, mainly, as I like to think, for catching up with great actors, but I genuinely enjoy it. And this is the kind of stuff I frequently labeled “bullshit” in my blog. I even have noticed over and over again that I have become bored with the “naturalistic” stuff I always thought I liked to watch. On the other hand, I just rediscovered “The Lakes” and “Sparkhouse”, and kind of found out why I like them – and am deep into “Our Friends in the North” right now. (****!) There is a blatant contradiction somewhere in there. At the same time I know that I basically prefer all these texts FOR THE SAME REASON. And that it has to do with another big issue that already puzzled me at uni where I didn’t come a step closer to answer the questions about how to define “naturalism”, or what exactly fictional texts have to do with the real world. I think I came so far as to concede that to be “believable” (and to be taken seriously) has nothing to do with the text being linked to the real world IN THE FIRST PLACE. There are lots of people who might find “Middle-earth” more believable than Zola or Dostojewski, that is, closer to their own experience and to how they see the world. Of course it has SOMETHING to do with it, but it is infinitely more complicated than that. And, as I was looking for answers in the wrong place - that is, somewhere “in” the text instead of looking into what happens between me and the text - I had no chance to answer this kind of questions anyway. And I kind of knew this …

For some time now I cannot get rid of the creepy feeling that, unnoticed by myself, I have finally begun to write the doctoral thesis I was never going to write. And that means this will probably get even more “reader-unfriendly” than it already is … But I must say that I am extremely pleased that I would have begun it with the statement that, in my experience, reading is an equivalent to having sex! And the reason that there is no big smiley face here is not that I still don’t know how to make a smiley face so that it shows in my blog. It is that this is NOT a joke. Not really. I KNEW that I had to wait with the doctoral thesis until I would have found a way of dealing with these matters in a SERIOUS way. More truth, less bullshit. I knew what finally beat me at uni was that it is almost impossible to tell them apart when it comes to literary criticism.  

I think I came closest to an answer about the question what a RELEVANT fictional text is for me when I wrote one post after another analyzing “Hannibal” - which I labeled “bullshit”, mostly, I think to keep the text at arm’s length scrutinizing it. And I noticed that the outworn terms “art” and  “beauty” kept popping up. In this case, “bullshit” didn’t mean that the text “was” bullshit, rather that “believable” wasn’t an issue. At least I worked under the assumption that nothing in “Hannibal” IS MEANT to be believable - which might be a weird way of looking at it. But it was possible to watch it like that, and enjoy it. And I still hate horror that is supposed to be believable. The believable – and truly horrible – content, in my opinion, in “Hannibal” isn’t to be found “on the surface”. (It isn’t a series for hard-core horror fans but rather for weird intellectuals, like myself?, who revel in beautiful and strange things, and all kinds of “bad” irony. Well, I might be wrong and just kept misunderstanding, which, I think, happens.) The real horror unfolds on a deeper level THROUGH OUR INTERACTION with the text. When we come to confront questions about our own sanity, or ethics, and have to decide how far we’ll go “following” Hannibal, answer the question if we are in fact going to “participate” … I don’t think I answered any of these questions, but I came to USE these outworn concepts again. “Outworn” because I probably thought I was through with them, taking it that the kind of text that IS SUPPOSED to be art is also the kind of text that I am bored with. And actually using them made me see them in a new light.

Instead of “art” I might rather have said “poetry”, but I obviously stopped saying that even more definitely than art. To avoid confusion, even in my own head, I should say that, strictly speaking, neither “art” nor “poetry” are terms that can be applied to texts like “recreational” novels, theatre productions, or, least of all, “bullshit” science fiction or horror series. In fact I started to use them as some kind of comprehensive metaphor, like, for example, I may speak of the “poetry of life”. This kind of use of a term may be highly questionable, especially because a potential reader has to “get into” the experience as well to understand what I mean. But this is the only thing I know to do when my experience doesn’t FIT the frame of ready-made concepts available to describe it. An example might help – or make it even more confusing. I just retrieved one from my last post where I described “The Crucible” in terms of an art form which I called “Greek tragedy”. Of course this is a metaphor as well – one that helped me to analyze what I “read”. This made me remember that Richard Armitage spoke of the play as “opera” – which is also a metaphor, of course, that I put down as interesting and telling without really analyzing what it meant. I just took it to mean the same thing that I meant, but of course it doesn’t. Though, as far as I know, opera might even be what “survived” of Greek tragedy because, I think, on the Greek stage at least the chorus actually SANG their part(? To be checked out …) Anyway, the two metaphors are linked because opera is an ART FORM that usually processes TRAGIC content by transforming it into sublime beauty. So it might rather be some kind of emphatic concept about HOW to do these things the best way. I might even call it a WORKING METAPHOR, containing instructions how to act, something like: “If I am able to do this LIKE an opera singer, holding this tone, or phrase, or inner movement, until the very end of beauty and perfection, I am doing this right.”

So, dealing with a text AS IF it was art - or, in fact, ANYTHING ELSE than it “says” it is! - is what, in my experience, makes texts “poetic” – which is almost the same thing as to say that it makes them genuinely work. And it is, by the way, exactly what Schiller meant by “playing” – if we cut out the idealist bullshit. What he described is A CERTAIN FORM of poetry, and exactly what applies here: subjecting the content “we” are passionate about to the RULES of an art form, transforming it into “beauty”, or anything that goes “deeper”, shifting things inside us. WITHOUT this poetic activity the shifting will not happen. We will stay unmoved and unchanged. And when I notice that THIS happens is the exact moment the text begins to work for me, and I begin to enjoy the reading. It doesn’t depend on the content. I can get interested in all kinds of bullshit – and real-life stuff! – when I can see and appreciate the PLAYING with it. It might just become especially interesting when it is something like horror, blood, and fear, or some “real-life” stuff I can relate to. And there don’t have to be SPECIFIC rules, as there are for opera, but the rules can be made up as we go. What makes the text poetic in this case is that WE, as the audience, are beginning to figure out the rules and play with them. This is even the kind of poetic activity that I prefer (see “Hannibal”!). And, even though it is usually less obvious, it can happen in so-called “naturalistic” films or series – or not, same as it does or doesn’t in science fiction or fantasy. I even said once that I don’t care for “naturalistic” stuff, and I was right in this respect that I don’t care in the least for texts that are just trying to reproduce something in the real world, without any attempt at telling a story of their own or establishing their own aesthetic rules. In this case, the acting might be brilliant, and I won’t notice. (Though I use to think that, in these cases, there isn’t any “genuine” acting involved.) And I judge that Tolkien’s books - or even the one’s by Karl May, which I label “fantasy” as well - are “poetic” because they are genuinely playful. Whereas, for me, “Narnia” or “Game of Thrones” (the series!) are boring because they are just put together from ready-made bits that fail to get “fused” through playing and to come to life. (But this might be quite the reverse for other people, of course, because they might like to play different games with different things.)

And of course I don’t think that this is in any way news – not even for me! But, probably because I had “buried” poetry, I couldn’t make this connection and use the idea of playing as a TOOL to say which texts – or feats of acting – are relevant and worth reading or watching. In fact, it was the question I was trying to answer writing my master thesis and knew I didn’t. Nobody could, just looking at the text, because, as I wrote, the text is just the text, and we can argue about its relevance and worth using all kinds of reasons and concepts without ever getting anywhere. In fact, “we” don’t have to argue, we KNOW. I suppose Richard Armitage knew exactly what he was saying. He KNOWS what happens when he is standing on a stage singing beautifully because he has done it. And Simon Russell Beale does “that thing” on the stage OBVIOUSLY IN ORDER to get this human response out of us. Of course, seeing poetry as playing – which is a metaphor as well, by the way! - the stage must be the most poetic place in the world, but of course it happens anywhere when we are reading. On the stage it is often laid open, for one thing because it is the only place where the fourth wall is real. I just thought of Lucian Msamati standing there WATCHING the audience, in fact playing cat and mouse with us, taunting us to grant that he is just doing the same thing with us that he is doing with all these other people he is manipulating. Kind of TRYING OUT if we, as well, can be manipulated. (Of course we can! As a faithful follower of Frank Underwood I knew that anyway …) There is a world of meaning that can be created on a stage just by doing a little thing like this.

And this makes a beautiful connection to the other big question I think I answered. Basically, it is a short and simple question – the question that stood right at the beginning of my blog: Why “Shakespeare”? (To be continued, of course …)