There’s something about Richard: Getting to grips with RA fan fervor

Nerd Alert! I seem to have written an essay. If you make it to the end of this post you have my admiration. I’ve been trying to write something on this subject for a while. As usual, inspiration strikes when one least expects it. I was compelled to put fingertips to keyboard after reading this insightful post on RA Frenzy. It’s also 2am. So whether this thesis will still make sense in the morning remains to be seen. Weird prose and typos abound; enjoy!

As some of you may have gathered from my various posts and commentaries on other blogs where we may have entered an exchange, I am fascinated by the fan fervor that surrounds Richard Armitage. It was, after all, my curiosity about this fervor that led me to watch North and South for the first time. I was incredibly curious to see the performance that inspired the formation of an army; a remarkable feet! As a sociologist burdened with unrelenting curiosity, social phenomena of unexplained origin tend to capture my attention; I want to know why, what makes it so. While the interest and enthusiasm for actors, artists and celebrities is nothing new, there is something quite unique about RA fans that has intrigued me enough to want to ponder and investigate this enthusiasm further. It has sparked a desire to understand that which even fans themselves have a hard time deciphering.

The aspect of the RA fan base that has caught my attention in particular, is the bewilderment many have expressed toward their own enthusiasm for this man. I’ve encountered many accounts of rapid decline into fanatic fervor that express confusion and bemusement at their own response to this actor. Most notably, many have little or no history of becoming enamored with an actor or well known person of any sort. This experience is something new, or at least something that has not occurred since they were a teen. Why? Why now? Why him? Is this about Richard Armitage, or something else? Is there an unrelated state of affairs in the lives of an inordinate amount of women that has led them all to fixate on the one man? – Unlikely? There is something about Richard, but one can’t quite nail down what it is. It’s many things (with which we are all familiar, so I wont attempt to itemise them here), but of those things, why is it that this particular actor has drawn thousands of women with no history of active fandom to flood message boards, create fan art, start blogs and write fan fiction? Richard Armitage is not the only handsome, talented, detailed actor to have enjoyed a stellar series of roles – so why is it him that has attracted such intense attention from a cohort of fans for whom enthusiastic fan fervor is a feeling quite foreign?

This question has been lurking around my mind now for quite some time. Readers of this blog will know that Richard Armitage has frequently appeared in my dreams, and I think this is perhaps why. I’m fascinated by the fans, by their bewilderment at their own fan fervor, and wonder what it is about RA that lures so many into such an acute brand of fandom. As to my own interest in this actor, it has been propelled, not only by my admiration for his artistry (and let’s face it, criminally good looks), but also the fans. My interest has become intertwined with my curiosity over the fan fervor that accompanies him. The meeting of these interests are now hard to disentangle and define. I am both a card carrying fan and a keen observer of his fandom. I too are surprised by my own interest in RA because my main passion in life is music, and it is in this domain that I usually follow the careers of artists, so to some extent I share a degree of bewilderment that others speak of.

I come from a world, however, in which fandom is done differently. It’s a world of independent arts, music and culture, of artists, musicians and actors; these people are my friends, peers and neighbours. This is my community. For me, actors and musicians are not other people “up there”, they are right here next to me. This world is imbued with a punk rock attitude that shuns placing people on pedestals, and this is a philosophy that I share. So whilst I am a card carrying RA fan, my appreciation of him is also grounded very firmly in the view that he is just an ordinary bloke. An ordinary bloke with an extraordinary talent, yes, but still ordinary, nonetheless – and it is this fact that I sense sometimes gets lost in fan fervor and most certainly in celebrity worship. I do not claim to be unique in holding this view. I note that many fans are very respectful of RA’s private life, and this is evidence that others share this belief. Even so, I still feel that I am inclined to “do” fandom in a different fashion (a fan with out high velocity fervor, you might say), and this difference in experience, in part, fuels my fascination with other fans.

Returning to the main subject of this post; getting to grips with RA fan fervor. It was while reading this post on RAFrenzy that it suddenly occurred to me what the critical ingredient of this fan fervor might be. In her post RAFrenzy explains how empowering and life changing it was to apply what she had learned in a women’s self defense class and yell STOP! to a suspicious stranger “It gave me power I really wasn’t sure I possessed until the moment of crisis”. The instructors of RAFrenzy’s class informed the group that research has found that women find it difficult to raise their voice to strangers, even when a circumstance requires it. What struck me about RAFrenzy’s post is how she relates the epiphany she had when she yelled STOP!, to when she extolled PHWOAR! in response to Richard Armitage. She explains that this had the same life altering effect on her as when she yelled STOP! “It was the passionate me, which I had buried for so long, rushing to the surface.”

I think that in this wonderful omission RAFrenzy has nailed, in part, what RA fan fervor is about. It’s an awakening of passion and desire that for so many women is dormant, unacknowledged or unexpressed. One of my favourite bands has been described as a act that “commands respect”. In a similar fashion, there’s something about RA, that for many women, commands a passionate response. In making this suggestion it is not my intention to claim that RA’s fans are a group of repressed sexual beings. One does not need to be repressed in order to be stirred by RA’s aura in such an intense fashion; that would be an entirely ridiculous (and offensive) contention. But I do wonder if something of a similar order is taking place. Not unlike the liberating experience of claiming power and authority through the raising of one’s voice to STOP! a man of ill-will in his tracks, PHWOAR! is the claiming of a different voice; that of desire. Perhaps always held, but not always expressed. PHWOAR! refutes the denial of desire and liberates it to an unleashed and publicly exposed status. RA fan fervor is one means through which this untapped desire and passion is ignited and expressed.

As RAFrenzy mentions in her post, in the face of threats to personal safety, most women are silent or meek in voice. They are powerless. What I am about to say may seem heretical in this supposed era of female sexual empowerment, but I do not believe that the modern woman is remotely as sexually liberated as we would like to think (see my post The modern woman is not sexually liberated, she’s more insecure than ever for more on this issue). I think our sexual expression is still bound and suffocating under the desire to please the other, at the expense and exclusion of ourselves (a generalisation, of course). Our own passion is denied, muted, and weak of voice. We don’t tend to yell PHWOAR! We just giggle and go mute. PHWOAR! is an unadulterated acknowledgment of passion, arousal and desire – all the things that good girls should not express.

In answer to the question; is there something about Richard, or something about the women that comprise his fan base that gives rise to such enthusiastic fan fervor – I would tentatively suggest that it is both. The culmination of a near impossible multitude of factors, that of exquisite talent, handsome manly looks and memorable roles, plus the complicated dynamics of desire that have been denied, forgotten or simply put aside, a casualty of women’s busy modern lives, have all collided in an army of women unable to restrain or control the thunderous chorus of PHWOAR! that RA seems to evoke.

In a previous post, A Caveat from Beatlemania for Richard Armitage Fans, I summoned parallels between Beatlemania and RA fan fervor, and the hypothetical dangers that lurk within. The other parallel that I did not connect at that time was the unleashing of women’s usually dormant or subdued passion and desire. Although RA’s fans are not screaming and crying hysterically as he walks down the red carpet, they are “squeeing” madly on the inside, and trying to understand why.

Stalking my curiosity about RA fan fervor is the feeling that some things should not be defined. As soon as we nail down and understand what drives passion, attraction and desire, the object of affection may cease to hold its majestic power. Nonetheless, the sense of bewilderment and question of why? is one that many fans seem to be genuinely confused and bemused by. I doubt that my contribution to the treatise on this issue offers any thing more than an inconsequential insight, so this question, no doubt, will remain open and continue to stir this perplexing debate.