Meet Tracey! (You can skip the boring stuff)

If the “Globes” are any indication, the Oscars will become particularly bleak and boring this year. Anticipating this, I decided to celebrate my personal best acting experience of the year, though it isn’t even something that came out this year but already a few years ago. Apparently, the second season of “Accused” came out on dvd in 2014, and was filmed already in 2012, so the rate these things go it’s already ancient history. But I was SO ESPECIALLY PLEASED to meet Tracey that she has to be commemorated in my little hall of fame. I’ll explain why, but there is still a bit of the boring stuff first.

Rereading my blog of the last months I discovered to my amazement that I hadn’t been kidding about the doctoral thesis – even less than I thought. At least not as to what the “internal value” of a doctoral thesis is in my opinion. Which is to find out something important about the subject I am interested in by investigating it. And this is EXACTLY what I did. I didn’t really know it, not even until now, though I began quite early on to describe it. But, going over my “Tempest” posts again, I realized that I had done more than I had seen until then. I realized that I had not only developed a strategy to improve my reading but “implemented” a method of interpretation as well by observing what I am actually doing reading and dealing with fiction. And I realized as well that the reason this really worked for the first time is in fact that I applied the CORRECT CONCEPT of the “nature” of a fictional text.

Now, to avoid the big lump this time I’ll cut it into smaller portions. So, this is the first bite of the boring stuff about the fundamental question:

WHAT IS THE TEXT?

The funny thing is that this question not only didn’t get addressed ONCE during my almost six years of studying literature but that I didn’t even miss it. At least this is how I remember it though, thinking about this now, it can hardly be true??? But, even though there certainly were a few theories hovering in the background, the question doesn’t appear to have been very important. And my teachers were probably right not to address it in a binding fashion. With these subjects, there is nothing so dangerous as commitment … Nonetheless it is funny, and kind of incredible, that I answered the question now, without asking it, about thirty years later.

The answer is, of course, breathtakingly simple:

THE TEXT IS WHAT WE READ.

I suppose there is even a greater fear of simple answers in an academic context than of commitment. Of course you can’t just repeat what everybody already knows. But neither that nor the consideration that it belongs to the dead-born theory of reader-response criticism makes it any less true. Now I remember that, having written my master thesis with zero success the way I saw it, I had this “epiphany” that all these theories are crap because – though they might FEEL convincing and sufficiently sophisticated – they are no use at all if you are looking for RESULTS. (And I told my professor so (in my oral exams!) – though, of course, not in these words. Funny, when I think about it …) I like it now that I actually LEARNED something writing my master thesis, and that I was mature enough even then to see through the bullshit. I didn’t, for a moment, consider that it might have been my fault that I hadn’t been successful. Well, confidence is good, but not always. I am still very suspicious of being so pleased with myself lately, though I know I don’t give this impression. But I can’t help feeling successful when I have got everything I ever really wanted, and one of the three things I ever wanted is being able to do THIS. Dealing with text in a sensible and productive fashion. (I suppose we never know what we REALLY want until we get it, there is always a big portion of sheer luck. But the outcome still feels like success.)

I think I even knew the reason(s) back then, why these theories are crap, but I was still too much involved in the bullshit to figure it out. As most fictional texts, and especially those that literary critics value, are incredibly sophisticated compared to “average” human thinking and feeling, critics tend to think that their theories have to be AS sophisticated. There are even good reasons for this thinking, especially if we look at what damage “stupid” theories like psychoanalysis – probably not stupid as such but a blunt instrument where fictional text is concerned! – can do to a text. Nonetheless, this is poor thinking, and there is no need for more than a bit of philosophical common sense to figure this out. It might be that deconstructivism has put an end to this dilemma once and for all BECAUSE it is a great theory. It is the first theory that took the potentially infinite “nature” of a fictional text into account. Nonetheless, what comes of it when it gets applied to fiction tends to be even more ludicrous than what usually comes of other doctrinal theories. I thought I understood why, but I don’t. I don’t think I even bothered with how it was supposed to work in the end. Intuitively, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been in fact the end (and the undoing) of literary theory because everything somehow didn’t refer to anything but itself anymore. But I don’t pretend to know anything, I am out of touch now for more than twenty-five years. As it appears from “far off”, literary critics are now mostly preoccupied with ideological issues, like black women stuff, or subjects like eating and shitting in literature. Certainly all very important issues AS SUCH - where no need will arise to bother with the “basics” of text science ever again. And this would be exactly what was to be expected.

What I meant to say: there is nothing wrong with simple tools if they work. As long as something works and gets us the kind of results we want it can never be trivial. Theories are tools, in “text science” as well as in “serious” science. If they don’t work they will be discarded in the long run.

And the idea that only I – and every other person who actually READS a text – can make a valid description of it will never become trivial. I EXPERIENCED it as non-trivial because it made me look at the matter in an entirely different way.

First of all, it makes me view this description as a potentially impossible task – for probably even more reasons than those I have addressed in my post of November 2^nd 2017.  A fictional text is the one thing that can never be exhausted or completely understood. Sometimes this is just great, but it can be scary or uncomfortable as well. I’ll never be afraid of Virginia Woolf (because I’ll probably never read anything of her …) but I am still afraid of taking up “The Crucible” and actually read it, and I know why. It is that I know that, when I do this, the lay of the land will be completely different from what I remember seeing on the stage. And, for some reason, I don’t want to be changed, I want to stay where I am and understand where I am standing. Maybe I am still not through with it … The lay of the land WAS completely different when I took up “Hannibal” after one year, and it was great. In this case, the text suddenly made COMPLETE sense. And every time I take up “Austen” again the scene gets even worse, and I like this a lot. With “Shakespeare” there is often a sense of frustration or challenge at the beginning of something great. I know that I still don’t get “Macbeth” – though I have theories which I don’t take entirely seriously. How can I love something like this, and know it by heart, and not understand it at all??? But this is the nature of fictional texts, and, in this case, it cries for INTERPRETATION – which will be part two of the boring stuff. Rereading what I wrote about “The Tempest” I suddenly realized that I didn’t just struggle with interpretation but that there is in fact a METHOD of interpretation I apply, and have always applied, when it appears necessary. When I am not satisfied with my reading or my point of view gets challenged. Going over my posts I realized that it is always the same thing I do, and I was amused and pleased at the same time that it is exactly what I learned about Karl Popper’s theory of falsification in my first lecture at uni. (Big smiley face …) But this is already part two of the boring stuff. Now, actually: Meet Tracey!

I suppose “we” would all be a bit scared of Tracey – at least when we are under six foot tall (without the heels!) – if we met her in real life because she is an ageing transvestite - with the heels and the tits and the blond wig, and a whole face painted on, and a really BIG mouth on top of that – played by … Sean Bean! (Who would have thought …?)

The way I reacted (thrilled!) when I realized this showed me that my faith in him as an actor mysteriously hadn’t evaporated after about 15 years of seeing nothing of significance by him. I didn’t find Tracey looking for him, I found her following Christopher Eccleston who played the main character in the first episode of the first season of “Accused”. Ordering it, I realized that there was a second season with Sean Bean in it, and he was probably the reason why “Accused 2” made it to the top of my wish list for Christmas. Though this was a strange decision it turned out to be a good one. I didn’t even like “Accused” that much, and don’t care much about court drama, but there are interesting actors and some very good acting. Still, Tracey’s story stands out. It is filmed beautifully, more like a short arthouse film than a tv series. Very “poetic”, with a great soundtrack and a wonderful attention to detail. As if it was the most important thing in the world to give Tracey  a stage where she could emerge in her full glory. As, in fact, it was! She is one of these characters that are a real jewel for an actor, as well, I suppose, as damned difficult to play.

But this, of course, is often the same thing. I loved the frustration of the actor Kynaston in “Stage Beauty” about having to play male characters because: “What is the point in that?” It is always so gratifying to still discover traces of this vanishing kind of (stage)-acting in British actors. The only time I saw Sean Bean in the theatre (as Macbeth!) he was really bad (sorry!), but Tracey would have done beautifully on a stage. And she is just the kind of character that makes me forget every single disappointment of the past in a heartbeat. That was my first great satisfaction, of course, that I hadn’t been wrong. I knew I couldn’t have been wrong about “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “Clarissa” which are, basically, the two reasons I didn’t give up on him. I liked him as Boromir in “The Fellowship of the Ring”, but I think I liked the character more than the acting. Then I was so thrilled about him to play Ulysses in “Troy” because this is one of my favourite characters in literature (the Ulysses of the “Iliad”, not the “Odyssey”!), and Sean Bean would have been my dream cast for him. But the film turned out to be total crap, and it was certainly not his fault, but I was sorely disappointed. I think “Macbeth” came after “Troy”, and I should have given up on him then but, obviously, I didn’t. Sometimes I am really stubborn, and, if I am, I obviously know what I am doing. I remember that I saw him in “Far North” – a beautiful film but not mainly for the acting – and in “Cash” where he played twin brothers. I didn’t like it that much, but the acting was really good. And that was the first time, after all these years, that I thought I might have been right after all. But Oliver Mellors, though probably not as popular, is one of these great iconic and singular characters of English literature, like a Mr. Rochester, Mr. Darcy, or John Thornton. To bring him to life and make him feel absolutely right you need a really special actor who knows exactly what he is doing. Being capable of such mature acting at a young age cannot just “go away” – though experience shows that it does sometimes. But not in this case: As Tracey, the Sean Bean I had seen was finally back, with a vengeance.

Expertly strutting on high heels as if he did it every day might even have been the smallest challenge, but it never fails to impress me. (Of course, actresses have to learn it as well at some point, and I am never that impressed with their dexterity.) The voice is great as well, I don’t think it is easy to get this SO right. And the face, which is, of course, partly nature. This amazing face – which, in my opinion, has become more beautiful and expressive with age - is probably the reason why Tracey suited Sean Bean so well in the first place – or the other way round? But the “biggest” part of the face we see is always face-acting. Actors look as “nondescript” as the next person if we ever see them in the street. This is even more obvious when we are looking at Simon. Simon, as such, is not interesting at all, but without self-effacing Simon there would be no Tracey. Beautiful, brazen, vulnerable, scary, naughty, caring … Tracey. This contrast, and their strange relationship, makes Simon important in his own right. Looking nondescript is not enough. In my opinion, Sean Bean plays him very sensitively when he “slips on” the languorous beauty of Victorian poetry like a soft cocoon. Tracey has absolutely no respect for him and his “camouflage” which she refers to as “deedum shite”. But the cocoon is there to protect her own life, so that she can emerge from it and soar sky-high. We don’t know what will happen to her after she decides to tear it apart and “come out” in front of the court to avoid a prison-sentence …

Of course, this is exactly what I like: this kind of singular character that is so much larger than life – with so much more scope and variety than any real person could ever have. And that - even because of this! - appears so totally life-like. Though I have never met somebody like her, from the first moment I had an impression that I knew her. And I know that this is because I had been waiting for her  - because I wanted to meet her. Which is strange when I am thinking about it. If I met her in the street she would certainly intimidate me. I don’t think I would want to talk to her, neither would I know what to say. Nonetheless she impressed me more than any real or fictional person did in a long time. Even more: thinking of her warmed my heart – and still does. And what is the reason for that?

On the surface we don’t have much in common – if anything at all. The deliberate, artful, and painstaking creation of what somebody wants to be is something that I already found totally fascinating about the Red Dragon - my number one acting experience in 2016! - but it has nothing to do with me. Being deeply moved by Tracey as I was must have something to do with what I want to have in my own life, or understand “through” my own life. And of course I know what this is. By putting on this person, Tracey is actually able to change into what she really is. Not the “false” face, tits, hair and voice are the truth about Tracey, but the person she creates with their help. And this is the most beautiful thing about Sean Bean’s creation that he makes us believe in Tracey as she believes in herself. She knows that she is successful in establishing the truth about herself, and this is the reason she cannot be intimidated or diminished by others. Being who she is makes her vulnerable, and often scared, and it takes a lot of courage. She doesn’t hide, not before others nor before herself. Which means that she can be hurt, and will be hurt because what she wants and needs is hard to get – and will become harder to get the older she becomes. Many people are Simon because it is so much easier. I have to ask myself if I am one of them. Tracey is one of these rare beings that have got completely past the bullshit - at a high prize which she pays every day. It is what makes her more “real” than all the Simons sitting opposite us on the underground.

I know I could never be as brave as she is. Nonetheless she gives me courage, and I have to believe in my affection for her. What we have in common, though it was anything but spectacular in my case, is that I had to make this decision as well: the decision if I wanted to believe myself or others about who I really am and what I really want. 

(I just put “Broken” on my wish-list, by the way. I think I’ll risk it …)