The Big Question, part 3: “Mother!” and other “bad” stuff

I am pleased to realize more and more – and in fact a bit scared as well! – how big this thing I am doing in my blog has become. I think that the “doctoral thesis” is a metaphor but a really good one. At least it is as close to the doctoral thesis I would really have WANTED to write as could be. So, when I am looking at my blog as one long treatise, the part until the end of my “Tempest” posts would just be the long part of the thesis where the METHOD is established by experimenting with the stuff I intend to write about, gathering as much material as possible. After having done that with unexpected success I feel that I am finally ready to draw conclusions. I am eager to start, but then I’ll always find some important material to add. As, in this case, some more about the “bad” stuff.

I already collected a lot of material on the bad stuff, doing “tests” on “Hannibal”, investigating these fundamental concepts of reading - like “ethics”, “art”, “beauty” and so on - IN THE FORM they actually appear in “live” reading. In this context the meaning of “playing” became fully established because I never before realized how important it is for understanding certain texts that are the result of DELIBERATELY PLAYING with the (bad) stuff by many people - writers, directors, actors, camera people, composers, and concept artists, providing what we see on screen - that “we” rise to the challenge and begin to play with it as well. If we don’t we won’t see more than a fraction of what they have done, and MAKING MORE of the text in this way is even how we finally make it “come together”, make it ultimately beautiful and enjoyable. In this context the concept of PARTICIPATING was fully established as the second key concept apart from PLAYING.

In this description "participating" figured as the highest form of playing, being the most active and personal form reading can take. And, consequently, as the highest form of aesthetic activity. But playing, and some form of aesthetic activity, is probably involved in every act of reading fiction. I even think that reading fiction is defined by this act. If we don’t find any form of playing suitable for the text we’ll probably stop reading. This experience can as well take a number of different forms, as when we are unwilling to play with the stuff the text provides and find it “boring”, “stupid”, or “trivial”. Or when we feel that the text is shutting us out, being too difficult for us to understand the rules of the game. Or, of course, when we don’t like the stuff we are supposed to play with. Or the way it is written, or filmed, or acted … There are probably a lot more options than this of thwarted playing, but there are lots and lots more, I am sure, of playing successfully. Ideally, there is probably even one for every successful encounter any given reader has had with a text. But of course there are often the same kinds of activities involved which can be described. Thinking and writing about these things has made me aware that there is a DESCRIPTION of what I have been doing represented in my mind when I have seen a film, or a play, or read a book. And, comparing these, I have found that the kind of texts dealing with the bad stuff often have left a much more interesting and vivid description.

The rather surprising experience about horror on screen, especially since “Hannibal”, is that it became associated with HAPPINESS. I never had this experience before about horror films, except once. That was of course the reason why I was skeptical about buying the series. I didn’t expect in the least that I would enjoy it. The first “genuine” horror film I saw in the cinema was in fact “The Silence of the Lambs” and, for some reason, I still think of it as an important film. There must have been something in it that had a great impact on me, though it is too long ago now to say what it was. It might have been that this sort of thing was rather new at the time. I remember as well that I was LOOKING all the time watching it, even though I would probably have liked to look away – which is what I do nowadays when I expect something disagreeable to happen. I certainly didn’t enjoy the experience, but I think that I was really scared only once because the scene in the lift is the only scene I actually remember. What I remember more distinctly is the aftermath – when I was scared to walk the long corridor in my shared flat, passing the two permanently empty rooms there, for some time. I think it was then that I decided that horror wasn’t for me, as I didn’t enjoy it that much anyway. And I broke this rule only once later, as far as I remember, and regretted it. So, I wouldn’t have expected to watch horror again, let alone to genuinely enjoy it.

But then there was “The Shining”. I bought it, probably six to ten years ago, to have something to watch on Halloween. Somehow I got it into my head that I should watch a horror film at least once a year on Halloween – and I picked the right one. Since then I have watched “The Shining” religiously every year – except last year when I was tied up in “Hannibal” - as faithfully as I watch “Love Actually” every year on Christmas Eve, enjoying it more every time. I think I enjoyed “The Shining” from the beginning, and there was as well only one scene that scared me, which isn’t a problem anymore because I know exactly when to look away. As usual it wasn’t the horror I enjoyed. I don’t even think I was genuinely interested in the story, and I still find Jack Nicholson rather more weird than scary in this role, but the way the story is told, especially the atmosphere of “mystic” naturalism, totally “got” me. And the feeling of anticipation created by this atmosphere would have been pointless without the horror that is anticipated. I still don’t think that I enjoy the impact of the horror on me – it still doesn’t really “work” on me as it must on somebody who genuinely enjoys horror. What I enjoy is the playing with it because it is something especially nasty to play with. And to do this I endure the impact it has on me. Which doesn’t mean that I am actively looking for horror to produce this effect. But, after “The Shining” and, of course, after “Hannibal”, I can be persuaded to see a horror film when there is reason to expect that it has other interesting features.

In fact, I have three totally different experiences to relate about watching horror this year. And this was the point of writing a post about it because, as they are recent experiences, I still have this “description” I mentioned above about what happened when I was watching. The most recent, and least interesting, was about “It”. I read the book ages ago, and, even though it was a scary and nauseating experience, I remembered it as an interesting story. And, from what I read, the film was not just “about” horror but more about what happens to these youngsters, which was true. So I was right to see it and enjoyed seeing it even though I was looking away like what feels now about half the time. There are two interesting aspects to set down about this experience. The first that it definitely still isn’t ABOUT horror for me in the least. I knew this by the way I put the memory of it away CONSCIOUSLY AND COMPLETELY. Obviously, unlike when I was younger, I am able to do this now. Shut these things out. But the reason I DIDN’T REGRET doing it in this case is not to be found in the horror itself but in the playing with it. Even though I quite enjoyed the film in the cinema, knowing exactly when to look away anyway, IN THE AFTERMATH I was slightly disappointed about the naïve way the story was told. What I remember from reading Steven King – and it was probably NOT a coincidence that I stopped reading his books after “It”! – the world definitely isn’t a better place when “we” are through with the book - quite the contrary! Our view on the world, for some time, ISN’T THE SAME as it was before, and, even though I didn’t really enjoy this experience, I obviously appreciated it. As this wasn’t the case in the film, in the long run I will probably put it away as irrelevant. I certainly won’t buy the dvd, and I probably won’t watch the sequel.

The most beautiful film I saw this year was “Get Out” (at least of what came AFTER the Oscars!) – which is supposed to be a horror film. In this case I genuinely enjoyed watching it, and there was no need of looking away because there is just a bit of splatter at the end which was to be expected. Apart from this it is just a beautiful film with a formidable sound track, and of course I appreciated the irony as I always do. I think you cannot make a “real” horror film using irony as it is the best way to “sabotage” the endeavour of making us scared, as well as everything that is too “heavy” to bear and threatens to get us down, especially stupidity. So, this was a successful attempt of dealing with the fear and the bad stuff, and I already bought it on dvd and am looking forward to seeing it again on Halloween. (As I am planning to finally buy “Red Dragon” with Ralph Fiennes there will probably be a triple feature …)

And it is a good background for bringing out the most important experience I wanted to write about which was about seeing “Mother!” As I wrote, I genuinely enjoyed “Get Out” from the beginning, as much as I was uncomfortable seeing “Mother!” from the beginning – which is NOT supposed to be a horror film. It probably isn’t, as there wasn’t really a reason for looking away as well. But I was uncomfortable THE WHOLE TIME I sat in the cinema watching it, and I HATED it from about twenty minutes into watching the film until about five minutes before the ending. Actually it was one of the very few times I seriously considered leaving the cinema because I thought I couldn’t tolerate Jennifer Lawrence’s stupid face for another minute. I probably hated this house from the moment she got out of that bed and stepped into that empty corridor, I hated the stupid face and I hated the “emptiness” of Xavier Bardem. (He actually is one of the actors I appreciate because he is so successful at keeping “us” at a distance, but everything can be taken a step too far …) And of course I hated these people coming in and doing disgusting things, I hate things getting broken for no good reason anyway, and of course it got worse … And still I kept watching, and still I didn’t slip away just waiting for the end, and I don’t know why. But about five minutes before the film was over I suddenly knew. Suddenly EVERYTHING fell into place. I don’t know Jennifer Lawrence well enough to tell if the stupid face actually was acting or “nature”, and it doesn’t matter because it was exactly the right face. Everything was exactly right, and every nasty piece of bad stuff just got fused and “elevated” into this BIG metaphor. It even became one of the most beautiful metaphors I have ever seen because it was SO ALIVE. - I remember thinking of the “Red Dragon” part in “Hannibal” in terms of beauty finally coming into its own because it was not about physical beauty anymore but, somehow, about being so alive. And “Mother!”, though I enjoyed it much less, was to carry this experience even one step further. There was a lot “in me” that enjoyed the stuff they were playing with creating the Red Dragon. In “Mother!” the only thing I enjoyed was the sudden and complete TRANSFORMATION of the bad stuff into a metaphor. But THIS I enjoyed so thoroughly that it made me feel happy and “complete” for about a week. (“Whole as the marble, founded as the rock …”) And it definitely became a layer of the “residue” of happiness lining my life right now. The aesthetic “immunity” I expect to see me through the winter …

It is certainly an interesting experience about what can happen when “we” are watching horror. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t horror, but the discomfort was even greater in this case because I couldn’t “block” it, as I have learned to do with horror, by not taking it seriously. And the discomfort and nauseating effect was just the same, even worse probably, because it felt more real than “proper” horror. The way I remember watching it, enduring it without resisting anything that was happening, without “fighting” it in the least, lead to a theory about what I think happened. For some reason, I gave the text complete leave to work on me as it was supposed to. To “draw out” the “bad stuff” in me completely and play with it. And this obviously was the ultimately “purifying” experience, the ultimate thing a text could do to me – though only after THE POINT of doing this got explained to me about five minutes before the film was over. And, for some reason, the bad stuff appears to be just the thing to do that.

Of course, this - like “Hannibal” - is rather “extreme” reading. The thought just struck me that, as to the purifying effect, reading horror might in fact be the contemporary activity “we” have put in the place of reading tragedy because we don’t believe in the transcendental rubbish anymore. But this is still a wild guess. On the other hand, just thinking about what I have actually DONE in this blog, it appears to me that the “bad stuff” must be a good way into what reading is on its deepest level, which I think I have been aiming for from the start. The question “Why do we read?” is still very far away at the end of the tunnel, but it appears to be the question that I am headed for. And, when I am thinking about what I did in this blog up to this point, it is mostly about the stuff that was difficult, or painful, or scary. What really started it was “Shakespeare”, and I don’t think I neglected “Shakespeare” for such a long time because I thought that it was boring, or irrelevant, or that I was “through” with it. I rather didn’t think I was up for it, I didn’t really BELIEVE that I’d ever be able to read it. Because, if I did, it would have to be special. And then I was too SCARED to actually start on one of the plays and had a go at the sonnets instead – lunatic! I think now I got myself started by shock treatment … (though I knew I have always been rather successful with poetry when I finally kicked myself and went about it.)

And I HAD to write about “The Crucible” and “Hannibal” because there was something about the experience that bothered me A LOT. And, somehow, I have learned to take this as an indication for the QUALITY of a text. I just remember taking up “Pride and Prejudice” again after having read “Longbourn”, which was interesting reading but felt kind of stupid at the same time. And I was so pleased how the experience obviously had given depth to the original text because I was able to see even more clearly how clever and genuinely “bad” Austen is. And there are lots of texts I enjoyed that never got into the blog. In fact, I haven’t really written about “Doctor Who”, or even “House of Cards”. Or, after my nephew finally convinced me to watch “Harry Potter”, I am just blown away how good these films are – both the writing and the incredible cast that is almost a “Who is who?” of the greatest British actors living or, regrettably, recently deceased. (Either way immortal: Imelda Staunton – in shocking pink! – turning Hogwarts into horror, David Bradley making an icon of Argus Filch, and of course Alan Rickman as the “darkest” wizard ever – legend!!! And my intention of writing only good things about Ralph Fiennes is easy to put into practice. WHO ELSE but him should be the “dark lord”, as he has obviously become THE specialist for the bad stuff? But what I liked most is that, though we don’t see Voldemort do anything but wicked and cruel things, the human content “shines” through the character from the beginning. He is as “equivocal” a villain as Richard III – the kind that has been created from torture and pride. To achieve this with so little to go on with is just amazing. And after they got Michael Gambon to play Dumbledore that part of the story began to work as well. AND SO ON …) Obviously I was more than pleased, but I probably won’t write anything about it apart from silly praise. About what I just enjoy there isn’t that much to write. It is certainly an important part of reading – probably the most frequent, and one that is usually present in every instance of successful reading. What happened with “Mother!” is rather the great exception. I am still kind of unsettled that it actually WORKED. Dealing EXCLUSIVELY with the bad stuff. And there is certainly still a lot of avoiding the bad stuff on my part which, I think, mostly comes into selecting what I am going to watch or read. And occasionally it takes me by surprise in a way that I don’t appreciate – even though I know that I should – because it is probably MY OWN bad stuff. As when I watched “Desperate Romantics” – which was REALLY GOOD, by the way, though quite unsettling. I endured it until the end because I wanted to know what the ending would be but am still sorry that I didn’t bring myself to watch it a second time. Maybe I’ll come round and buy it someday …

So, from what I did in my blog so far, I know that the Big Question about the nature of fiction, and reading, is, in my experience, intimately connected with the “bad stuff”, though I haven’t completely figured out why. In any case, it appears to make a NECESSARY connection between me and the text. Not what I might want to watch or read, not even what I enjoy, but what I really NEED to watch or read. Even what it takes to make me GENUINELY happy, makes me connect with myself on the deepest level. And, though I haven’t quite figured out how this is supposed to work, I already consider this insight as the biggest step towards answering the Big Question so far.

The Big Question, part 2: about reading Shakespeare

One of the big questions that guided me through my blog and kept it running is a very short one: WHY “SHAKESPEARE”?

(If anyone is actually reading this they might be confused about the quotation marks, but I always use them to indicate clearly that I am not speaking about the person but the “world” created by their writing. (Realizing that there is no getting away from actually writing the equivalent of this doctoral thesis I am aware that I should be more thorough about these things. So there have to be footnotes. But I hate footnotes – though I finally got the hang of them reading Tolkien who packed a lot of valuable information into footnotes. And I think I used them in my master thesis to store away all the ironic and critical stuff, which won’t be necessary here. There is no way I am going to use footnotes in my blog, and there will probably be this maze of brackets I am hating already …))

There might even be a very short answer to the short question: BECAUSE IT MAKES ME BETTER. And this is not an opinion but a fact because reading Shakespeare was THE ONLY THING that could make me better when things inside me weren’t looking so good. I knew that for that special predicament there would be nobody who could help me. There wouldn’t even be a single person in the world who would understand me, but I knew that I had to do something about it because, if I didn’t, I would have failed doing the only important thing I did in my life, squandering the greatest gift I ever got. Back then, it appeared totally hopeless because I knew that the experience could not be repeated or prolonged, it had to be CHANGED. And I didn’t have a single clue how to do this.

Looking back I know that it wasn’t ENTIRELY hopeless because I trusted in my skill in self-medication. This is actually something I have been amazingly good at all my life, even on a physical level. But on a psychological level as well, both because, unlike most people, I know myself very well. (In the present state, I think, I would actually see MYSELF in the magic mirror at Hogwarts …) So I notice when bad things happen with me very early on, and take them seriously, which many people don’t before it is too late for self-administered therapy. I had massive help, though, or luck, because I wouldn’t have hit on a therapy on my own. But the art of self-medication lies in the intuition to discern what things, of all the stuff that “chance” throws in your way, are the ones that will help you. I had a strong feeling that “Shakespeare” might be one of them, and I approached it tentatively and with great care. I couldn’t have dreamt of the success, though, because I experienced something I never have before. It was an EQUIVALENT of writing - and loving, by the way – but it was very different because it was READING. Even though reading has always been so important I still underestimated its potential. It was as if I was reading FULLY CONSCIOUSLY for the first time in my life.

Now the BIG QUESTION is, of course: Why? Why “Shakespeare”? Why can “Shakespeare” do something to me that no other kind of reading has ever achieved? I never really believed I would answer this question, and was perfectly fine with it, because I knew it to be the same kind of question as the one why it is THIS PERSON that fits so exactly everything that “we” might ever have expected any person to be that we HAVE to fall in love with them. This question might be answered IN THE END, but not before there is a long line of proofs leading to the final conclusion. Nonetheless, we know FROM THE BEGINNING that we are making the right choice. (I just cracked the ending of “The Crucible” by the way …) Of course I couldn’t have ANSWERED the question in the beginning. I needed a lot of PRACTICE to develop a theory.

“In the end”, after having gone through all this, it is a disappointingly short answer. I suppose Richard Armitage felt really good playing John Proctor LIKE opera, feeling that it was “AS BIG AS LEAR”. But in fact it is REALLY BAD STUFF he was dealing with, and it is vital to REALLY understand this for doing it right as well. Now I know that Arthur Miller isn’t Shakespeare, but the comparison, of course, is not just about quantity but about structure. To say that it is, basically, THE SAME THING. - I am glad that, in the case of “House of Cards”, reading the “histories” at the same time, I distinctly remember that it reminded me of “Shakespeare” before I heard anyone else mention it. I’d even go as far as to say that “Shakespeare” often emerges clearer through its impact on other texts and worlds than when it actually IS “Shakespeare” because the practice of playing and reading Shakespeare is so much “muddled” and complicated by questionable traditions and prejudices. And, even on the British stage, where a “direct” link to the world is obviously still there, there are so many considerations and doubts about what “we” are “allowed” to do with Shakespeare that it often becomes toil instead of play. Shakespeare acting will always be difficult, and wrought with failure and problems for actors, but having tried to solve these problems and finding THEIR OWN WAY through it, in my opinion has improved most British actors to the “gold standard” they acquire much more frequently than others. I already mentioned that I never liked Ian McKellen as much in any Shakespeare role as I liked him as Gandalf or Mr. Creakles. (I know, he wouldn’t like that!) And, generally, on the occasion of the Tolkien films, about the amount of “Shakespeare actors” casted there, I realized that, when somebody has worked his way through “Shakespeare”, it is comparatively easy to achieve the larger-than-life quality that these characters need to appear convincing. At least they will understand it, and find a way how to do it. (There are definitely other ways as well, to do it as convincingly. See Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn! But I think he needed a long “run-up” to get there.)

I think that the secret of “Shakespeare” is the SCOPE and POTENTIAL it provides for PLAYING with the BAD STUFF. Shakespeare, the author, was the person who obviously developed this kind of poetic activity to its MAXIMUM POTENTIAL. What he did is just so strong that the challenge often is too much for the stage – especially as it requires ALL THE ACTORS to play along on the same level. But if you can make the dynamics so strong that everybody is swallowed up in it I suppose it just begins to be “fun” instead of toil, it becomes JUST PLAYING. My stellar example for what “Shakespeare” might be like at its best is the recent “Titus Andronicus” by the Globe Theatre – which I have now on dvd. In my present experience – there are probably still half of the plays that I haven’t read! – “Titus Andronicus” is the play with the greatest quantity of bad stuff in it. Basically, just people tearing one another apart and doing the cruelest things to other people that can be imagined. Just killing is definitely not enough when it comes to retribution! - What the Globe has made of this string of abominations is one of the most entertaining and enjoyable performances I have ever seen on a stage. And, strangely, the cruelty and horror is NOT diminished by the playfulness. On the contrary, it is fully developed and kind of brought to life by it. I never understood THE POINT of the play until I saw this. Which doesn’t mean that there might actually be a point in showing all this. Just, while the play was on, I understood WHY things are happening in this way. The inner logic of the play got “released” on me. And this is what I often noticed happens when I can SEE the playing. For example, recently seeing “Richard III” with Ralph Fiennes which, from the beginning, was so funny that it beat most of the comedies I have seen. And the humour brought out the inner logic so much more clearly.

But I know that this wouldn’t have worked if the “bad stuff” hadn’t been equally strong. I noticed, and appreciated from the beginning that Ralph Fiennes embraced the “bad” inside this character in a way I have rarely seen. I think it is the ultimately contemporary way to play a vice character, kind of lovingly, making yourself suffer. And I should have known that he would be perfect for the job because HE DOES THAT. It might even have been my unconscious reason for keeping my distance, not liking him as much as I should have done. (Well, now I do! He even completely erased my eternal regret of not having seen Kevin Spacey play Richard.) And the same with Lucian Msamati. Of course he played Iago beautifully, but Iago is almost always played beautifully. I think Iago can even become a “trap” because the text is so beautiful and brilliant that it almost automatically “rubs off” on the character. My example for this is Kenneth Branagh playing Iago in the film with Lawrence Fishburne. At first I was pleased because he evidently loved the text at least as much as I did. Then I noticed something important was missing. There was great “Shakespeare”, no doubt, but there was no Iago. Lucian Msamati was the first Iago I saw who gave this character the humanity he needs to unfold his full potential. He showed us that Iago is NOT elegant and easy-going. What he did was showing us how DIFFICULT it actually is to BE Iago. He is one of these characters who couldn’t let go for the world. I could almost smell the sweat on him – I could see it anyway! I think, understanding and playing how tough Iago is made it EASIER for him to play this. And the “naturalistic” playing didn’t diminish the playfulness and brilliance contained in the text in the least. Somehow I could see the toil and harshness of it better on my little screen and was disappointed at first. But I remember my first impression about the supreme BEAUTY of his speaking and playing the text when it came back to me the other day relaxing in the gym after having worked out. (I suppose it was the audio. The sound on my computer in this case was even lower than usual whereas “Cinema” sound is usually very loud. I may have lost one of the most beautiful features of his Iago on dvd.) And this is also part of the great technique of Shakespeare’s playing with the bad stuff that the “naturalistic” cannot do any harm, on the contrary. It is really important that we understand that Iago DOESN’T FEEL GREAT doing all this. That he is fundamentally unhappy with his carrier, his marriage, basically everything. And – like most people - he doesn’t look for faults in himself. To be honest, he would be hard pressed to find them anywhere he could be expected to look because, from all we know about him, he is really smart and particularly good at everything he does. Lucian Msamati didn’t play him as a villain but as a stickler and perfectionist. The kind of person who is always there when you need them and is generally taken for granted. It is a very common predicament which everybody knows from real life, and the actor makes it very clear how uncomfortable it is to be in this place. But somebody like him will always strife to wriggle out of it.

And this is only the one part of what Shakespeare did, playing with the bad stuff. Setting up a vice character like this. To invite the actor that he may find and enjoy the hard path “into” him. (I usually dislike vice characters and find them boring, unless the actor takes up the challenge of playing with them, making something extra special of them. When this happens they become the most impressive characters on the screen, like the brilliant Sheriff of Nottingham by Alan Rickman in the stupid “Robin Hood” film with Kevin Costner, or the vicious French spy character Mark Strong played in the not so stupid “Robin Hood” film with Russell Crowe. (Of course he beat Russel Crowe in every respect, especially riding. I watched the whole thing once just in order to make sure that he did all that riding himself. As far as I could see, he did. I don’t even MENTION the acting!) Or Richard Armitage as the Red Dragon who just pushed “screen-acting” one step further than everything I had seen when he set up this character so impressively in his first episode WITHOUT a single line of text! I didn’t even NOTICE that he didn’t say anything the first time I saw it as everything he DID carried so much meaning.)

I think what is so special about Shakespeare’s technique – and the reason why these texts and characters can only come into their own on a stage – is this other thing I first noticed clearly seeing Lucian Msamati play Iago and which then completely “got” me seeing Ralph Fiennes as Richard. It is the potential and necessity created by the text to be played in a way that it has an immediate impact on the person playing. I suppose this is why it is called “play-acting”. Ideally, “Shakespeare” is pure PLAY-ACTING. There CANNOT be any Shakespeare line spoken properly without having an immediate effect on the person speaking it. And I even think this is the source of Shakespeare’s “naturalism” because this is as it IS SUPPOSED to be. ORIGINALLY, speaking wasn’t MEANT to be “just” talking. It is much MORE than that. I just found out WHY my favourite word of all times is the old Norse word “ráða”, and why I have so little patience for people just making conversation. The word “ráða” actually is one of these words that don’t translate, respectively translates into a hundred different meanings, because we have lost the concept. At first I loved it because, as these words do, it provided this kind of loophole into a forgotten world. Now I can see that there is something even more basic and “philosophical” at stake. In my opinion “ráða” is an amalgamation of THINKING about, respectively debating an idea (with yourself or others), DECIDING what to do, and actually DOING it. And these three in our experience completely separated concepts originally where thought AS ONE. And the structure of play-acting in “Shakespeare” is just this: PUTTING THEM TOGETHER again. It is probably what makes playing Shakespeare so difficult as well as useful for actors. And so ultimately rewarding. I know that it might even be the “healing” thing I experience reading his stuff because I just enjoy putting things together that shouldn’t be separated. I enjoy the world MAKING SENSE.

And it certainly isn’t a coincidence that – though my favourite play, for some reason I haven’t cracked already, will always be “Macbeth” – my absolute favourite TEXT in “Shakespeare” always has been Iago’s long speeches where he plots and develops strategies ON THE SPOT and releases them on his victims with such incredible psychological efficiency that it is rarely matched nowadays. And I think I could even EXPLAIN now why my absolute favourite bits from “House of Cards” are the very beginning when Frank Underwood kills the fatally injured dog, and the part where Claire Underwood gives “her” interview. They are just pure “Shakespeare” in a contemporary setting. And the point is of course the PLAYING with the bad stuff, not just SHOWING it at the height of grizzly naturalism today’s film industry can provide. (We don’t SEE the dog, by the way! Didn’t I say that I became rather fond of “Standards and Practices” …?)

I think what made reading Shakespeare such a stunning experience is that, as soon as I found out how to make it difficult for me – which was automatically effected by trying to REALLY understand the text – I got my reward. And I got more, recently, when I finally managed to memorize Iago’s text – which I didn’t think I could do. But I managed it, I think, because I love it so much. And this is why playing Iago must feel so good, of course, especially when you really understand him, when he really becomes TOO BAD. So it becomes EASIER, or even becomes finally possible, to play a Shakespeare character if you go about it the hard way. Seeing Lucian Msamati, through all the sweat and toil and fear even, all I saw was how rewarding and deeply satisfying the experience of being Iago must have been. And I remember now that I liked Joanna Vanderham’s Desdemona from the start even though I disliked her stilted style of acting. But I obviously saw that it was her way of “doing” Shakespeare, letting every sentence, or even every word, go through her and physically affect her. Though the ultimate revelation was Ralph Fiennes who exposed himself to the text as I have never seen before. He obviously perfected the art of letting the text play him, finally, I think, making it EASIER to get further than anyone I have ever seen with a Shakespeare character. Though it felt really painful it felt even more like PURE JOY. And there is probably still more depth in Richard Armitage’s experience of John Proctor being “as big as Lear” than I thought as he said that he still couldn’t say some of the sentences he had to say. Of course he could! But he knew that this attitude would create exactly the right way of doing it – CONVINCING HIMSELF ultimately how BIG these sentences are. The first thing I saw when he entered that stage, even before he said his first sentence, was how much he had GROWN as an actor. So, doing the ultimately rewarding thing FOR YOURSELF by making it AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE is probably what I was after as well when I tackled Shakespeare again as a reader, and it was so successful because I finally knew what I have always wanted to do, even why I studied German literature back then: to learn how to get THE MOST out of a text. I always knew there was more than “that”. With some things, there will always be more.

My best proof that my theory about Shakespeare is “operative” is that I basically answered all the questions that nagged me about reading Shakespeare – besides other important questions I had about reading. For example why vice characters, like Iago or Richard, have always been my favourite. Why “Shakespeare” kind of happens for me only when I am digging up the “bad stuff”. When I have hit on tragedy. And I have probably answered my question about why I fall in love with certain actors as well because all the examples I came up with recently follow the same pattern. I always fall in love with them over the bad stuff.

I always thought Cate Blanchett was great, but I finally fell in love with her over “Blue Jasmine” – and then there came “Carol” on top of it (Bliss!) The same about Rosamund Pike playing Gudrun Brangwen or Kate Winslet playing April Wheeler in “Revolutionary Road”. There is a genuinely nauseating and disturbing quality in both of these characters that both actresses nailed to a degree that cannot be surpassed. I noticed that I fell in love with Christopher Eccleston years ago when I saw “Elizabeth”, and I didn’t know if this was because he is weirdly sexy in this role until I saw a lot of other stuff by him – especially his Ben Iago in this contemporary adaptation of “Othello”. It might have been the reason I NOTICED him, but Norfolk is certainly one of these Shakespearean characters, with zero scruples about what he does to achieve his ends. And I am convinced the singular precision and kind of instinctive understanding he applies to these multi-faceted characters became the reason he “stayed with me”. (I am still skeptical about him playing Macbeth, though, which I am determined to see next year, even if it means that I have to go to Stratford. I know what he does works great on the screen but on the stage he would have to be a lot “louder” than that.) And I just hit on another example for having fallen in love that is significant in this context. I always liked Gemma Jones when I saw her but I came to love her as Connie James in the “Spooks” where she turns out to be a Russian “mole”. As such, it is one of the less interesting bits, following this old-fashioned spy-story pattern, but the way she plays this ultimately viciously, and then kind of redeems herself in the end without a hint of the sentiment we usually see in men doing something like this, is legend! – And, to finally get back to Shakespeare: Of course I was just delighted with Simon Russell Beale’s smart shortcuts to the human abyss in “Lear” and “The Tempest” and his digging up the worst in Falstaff.

But answering interesting questions usually leads to new interesting questions. The next question is naturally why it has to be the bad stuff. Why playing with the bad stuff has this kind of impact on “us”. I have a feeling that the question is still far from being asked exactly enough to provide an answer. There is a short and pragmatic answer, though, that might lead to another string of questions. Basically, all our lives, even the particularly “good” and successful ones, are filled with bad stuff. “We” are just constantly walking away from it because we can’t deal with it. Playing with it might be a good technique to deal with it, to kind of break free of it – though, obviously, we don’t like playing with OUR OWN bad stuff. Shakespeare is great too because THE BARBARIANS might have raped girls and cut their tongues out. It is quite unlikely that this will happen to us. Playing with lying in hospital dying of cancer – which is likely to happen to us if we just live long enough for the cancer to catch up with us – is rather a difficult matter. And WE might enjoy seeing York and Lancaster tearing themselves apart over the “hollow crown”, but Queen Elizabeth I evidently wasn’t amused about kings being deposed on the stage. I still think that the answer somehow BEGINS with the bad stuff in our own lives that cannot be dealt with. But it is certainly a lot more complex than this.

So, there will probably be some more about the “bad stuff” in my next post – especially after having seen “Mother!” recently which provided me with some surprising “material” on this subject.