#Tolstoy and Tom Hiddleston

[kateslife15]

Tom Hiddleston at Dickens Vs Tolstoy, 2018!

[janefrigginausten]

Dickens vs Tolstoy debate - Featuring Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton

[general-dar-benn]

Dickens vs Tolstoy featuring Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton 💕

[vivian-rutledge]

I am more of a reader now than I used to be. Books are new worlds to be explored, learned about and understood. I buy, and am gratefully given, books at a rate faster than I can read them. There is still much I don’t know, and want to know, and reading can be a way into the minds of others. I didn’t really have an angsty go-to novel as a teenager, but I read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina when I was twenty-one and was (am still) blown away. I find Levin’s journey extremely moving. It will never get old. — TOM HIDDLESTON for The Gentleman's Journal (2022)

[effervescentdragon]

*holds out a mic like a reporter* what’s your opinion on the current state of the mcu?

my opinion is that it should have died a long time ago and that everything they do is just abusing the corpse of a frankensteined thing that should have been left and buried a long time ago.

now, i am not that much up to date. i have stopped engaging with mcu after endgame, with the exception of watching the forst season of loki and wakanda forever and i think the eternals, which is good if its taken out of the wider context. my opinion is that the mcu is empty and soulless and a perfect indoctrination into individualist capitalism, warmongering patriarchy and the greedy capital-driven urge of mega corporations and billionaires to replace any sort of humanity with artificially, computer made caricatures of something that once moght have been called art.

i remember that article that tom hiddleston wrote as a response to i believe scorcese sometime way back in 2012, defending superhero movies. i am too lazy to find any refetences so whoever reads this can do their own research and correct me if im wrong anywhere, but i do believe he gave sir christopher reeve as an example. he wrote about the thruths that superheroes explore, how there is not one, but many. how it is the mundanity and the pure humanity that gets amplified and therefore explored and understood through the characters of superheroes, and it all brings us closer to the human experience. that article has stuck with me through all the years ive spent watching these movies and believing in the message - we are all superheroes in our own way. we all make choices, no matter on how much of a micro scale, to do the right thing. to protect, to shield, to fight against injustice. art is, after all, inherently political.

there is none of that in the mcu. ive seen it being chipped away piece by piece over the years, seen the ethical and moral dilemmas we all face in day to day life brought on the big screen to make us understand that there is always a choice, no matter how tough that choice may be, and that every single one of us is capable of both the biggest heroism and the most depraved atrocities, because we are, in essence only human; i have seen all that be replaced with american capitalist war and conquering propaganda, girlboss empty feminism and whatever the fuck those shit "christians" are now pandering and paddling as "family values".

the only god disney worships is obscene amount of money. the only value they respect is how little they can pay and how much they can exploit to get highest monetary value for their shitty cgi-ed recycled propaganda movies. they have turned every character into a twisted version of themselves, assigned value to only those characters who help them propagate their imperialistic capitalist world order, and are fine to spit out dozens of same content (because by now, it is content, devoid of any artistic ideation) and stomp on all that superheroes used to stand for and all that they used to teach us. they also do it in a most insidious way, giving token "other" characters, be it by their race or faith or sexual orientation or gender, while counting on the systematic lowering of critical thinking skills in people to ensure people are dazzled by the shallow representation and never look further away from the rainbow cgi and explosions to understand that mcu has become just another cog in the us imperialist war machine.

i lied. i looked up tom hiddleston's article because i think a shakespearean actor classically trained who quotes tolstoy for fun might have written a better punchline than i could write, in my despondent, disappointed and despairing state of seeing something i've loved with my whole heart be ruined ny human grief. i was right.

"Maybe playing superheroes isn't such an ignoble undertaking after all. "I still believe in heroes," says Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury in Avengers Assemble. So do I, sir. So do I."

except. except i believe in real life superheroes. in the people protesting against the genocide in gaza. in the people on the ground risking their lives to tell us in the west, about sudan and palestine and uyghur muslims and armenia and congo, in a bid that we might turn our heads and watch the actual real life crises caused by the very imperialists who use these superhero movies to try and save their status quo of opression. i believe in a man who chose self-immolation over being party to the atrocity that is the us military. i believe in my friends in germany who go out every weekend and fight against the rising nazi regime. i believe in every person that has spoken out against the atrocities in the world, every person that has donated and educated and debated and wrote to the representatives and protested. and they still do it, and will continue to do it. these people are the real superheroes to me, and guess what? they are just humans. and those people comitting atrocities right now? they are just humans too.

this is what the superhero comics and movies that i used to watch taught me. that humans are those who have the capacity for the biggest heroism and most despicable atrocities both. we just have to choose. and that is not something that anyone will be able to learn from the mcu anymore.

[justzawe]

I first saw Zawe with Tom Hiddleston at the Dickens and Tolstoy debate in 2018 then again at Pinter’s birthday event months before Betrayal was released on the West End. Technically they met and worked together there to deliver a great debate in who was the better Victorian novelist.

They just had a chemistry together. So much in common, and I'm so happy for them ❤️

They actually met a long time ago in 2010! They also said they’ve bumped into each other at events over the years ❤️

[free-llama-arcade]

Tom Hiddleston came to me in a dream and told me to read Tolstoy. So I'm gonna do that now.

[mentallydatingahotcelebrity]

Rreading posts today from various people I learned that Taika Waititi, director of Ragnarok, has no idea why Loki is a tragic character. Loki’s story alone and from his POV is, actually, a tragedy. But to someone who doesn’t really understand the definition of what makes a character, setting, novel, or film a “tragedy” the idea that Loki is a tragic character sounds utterly ridiculous and overdramatic.

So here’s a definition of the tragic character/a tragedy as written by E. B. Greenwood in 1994/95 for the introduction to Anna Karenina for anyone curious as to WHY I call Loki a “tragic character”. I’ve changed some words so that it fits my topic.

“What do I mean by saying that it is, in substance, a tragedy? [...] It has the substance of tragedy in that in it, as Aristotle required, a person neither of superlative goodness nor repellant wickedness (i.e. a character whom we can sympathise with, even love) makes a mistaken choice or set of choices. Aristotle called this hamartia. When this choice leads to a situation from which there is no way out but suffering, we have tragedy. Both Greek and Shakespearean tragedy involve poetic stylisation and elevation and actions out of the ordinary. Loki’s tragedy comes much closer to the type of tragedy described by Tolstoy’s favorite philosopher Schopenhauer in Section 51 of The World as Will and Representation:

Finally, the misfortune can be brought about also by the mere attitude of the persons to one another through their relations. Thus there is no need either of a colossal error, or of an unheard-of accident, or even of a character reaching the bounds of human possibility in wickedness, but characters as they usually are in a moral regard in circumstances that frequently occur, are so situated with regard to one another that their position forces them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do one another the greatest injury, without any of them being entirely in the wrong. This last kind of tragedy seems to me to be far preferably to the other two; for it shows us the greatest misfortune not as an exception, not as something brought about by rare circumstances or by monstrous characters, but as something that arises easily and spontaneously out of the actions and characters of men as something almost essential to them, and in this way is brought terribly near to us. . . We see the greatest suffering brought about by entanglements whose essence could be assumed even by our own fate, and by actions that perhaps even we might be capable of committing, and so we cannot complain of injustice. Then, shuddering, we feel ourselves already in the midst of hell. In this last kind of tragedy the working out is of the greatest difficulty; for the greatest effect has to be produced in it with the least use of means and occasions for movement, merely by their position and distribution.

When I read all of the above upon purchasing Anna Karenina, I was quite surprised at how fitting it was of Loki’s role and an explanation of why he is a tragic character. Because, in a most ironic turn of events, the god who declares ‘there are no men like him’ is, in fact, utterly and completely like the men he seeks to dominate. He’s relatable, identifiable, lovable; because he’s flawed, and hurting, and desirous of the same emotions all human beings want:

Recognition, adoration, affection, support, protection, love, companionship. 

The reason why I included that excerpt from Schopenhauer is because I think that fits Loki too-- in his universe, the things that happened to him frequently occurred, but they built and built until he snapped beneath the weight of them; something everyone who came to adore Loki recognized and found utterly relatable, to the point of being distressed for Loki. 

He’s not a villain, he never was, he’s just a tragic character. 

And the problem with this is that tragic characters are not absolutely good nor utterly evil, they’re a bit of both and completely relatable from the audience’s point of view. That’s the reason why Marvel couldn’t figure out how to adapt him or develop him, because a tragic character is, always, fated to die.

Hamlet, Anna Karenina, Romeo, Juliet, Loki-- their roles are to bring to the foreground that the typical nature of humans is to destroy themselves for a motive they think in their own minds will help them while meanwhile the reality of it is that guides them toward their eventual end. We are all heroes in our own minds where we tell ourselves how much good we’re doing; but our actions make us deplorable to the people looking on. The Tragic Character role in all forms of writing is to wake up other characters to the realization that they need to change how they act if they want to prevent the same end. 

[Which is what happened in the end of Thor. Thor realized that anger can lead to self-destruction, and Odin learned that not mentioning his love for his sons can lead to their downfall]

The problem is that in order to continue to make Thor and Loki interesting, new and unique storylines would have to be created-- risk would have to be made. Loki would have to keep on being a tragic character and he’d have to die. Which he was going to do in The Dark World. But with Marvel, as with most things in this day and age, Loki’s name goes synonymously with money. He’d been making them money, he generated interest. Look how massive Ragnarok’s box office income [or whatever that’s called?] was on day one alone. 

Yeah, sure, there were people there because their interested had been piqued by the [bad] trailers for the film, and they also came because a large majority of people love Thor-- but who hadn’t been seen living, breathing and walking around for 4 years?

Loki.

People wanted to know what happened to Loki more than Thor-- sucks for Waititi and Hemsworth, but it’s the truth. We’ve been seeing Thor in basically every Avengers film except Captain America: Civil War. We know that he’s alive, how he’s doing, how things are going for him. But no one knew about Loki. Because Loki is the tragic character, the human one in a sea of unhuman, “good” characters (Thor, Odin, Frigga, Sif, Volstagg, Hogun, Fandral, Heimdall), if you will. He’s the one we look to and go “I wonder what he’s thinking” “I wonder how he’s feeling” because as soon as we see it:

“Trust my rage”

“Because I’m the monster parents tell their children about at night?”

“The humans slaughter each other in droves while you idly fret”

We can RELATE to what he’s saying, we GET what he’s saying. Yes, we all think with a grin at one another, Thor really is going on about nothing, wish he’d stop some of our wars. Yes, TRUST RAGE, because when we’re angry the truth comes out ungilt with fancy falsehoods and pretty pretendings. Yes, we all sometimes feel we’ve become what our parents warned us against when we were younger--no wonder it seems as if their love for us has diminished into nothing, they hate what we’ve become.

This is, 100%, a tragic character. People either love them or hate them because they remind us of who we are and what we’re capable of. Murder? Yes. Hatred? Yes. Rage? Yes. Self-doubt? Yes. Fear? Yes. Self-loathing? Yes. The capability to be good or bad or both in turns? Yes.

And the fact that the person who plays this role is someone who studied roles like this (among others) for his higher education? Well, it (quite literally) can’t get any better than that. Not only is Loki a tragic character, but he’s played by an actor who understands the method of performing tragedies, who understands how those characters have to be played out, and who can relate to them at the same time to make that performance dynamite. 

The reason why Ragnarok!Loki is so appalling is because he’s played in the same method as Thor, however not in the role of “Morally Good” character but rather in the role of Touchstone the Jester. He says some clever things amidst his largely joksy lines. But he’s really just there for giggles [also as a foil for the main characters to bounce sage-sounding lines or soliloquies off of], and not much else.

And we, as fans, hate that because that’s not Loki’s role. He isn’t the god of jokes. So I’ve taken to looking at this whole Gagnarok problem as an attempt at erasing the Tragic Character That Is Loki because he’s very difficult to write. It was difficult for Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina in the beginning because of how human the characters were, how easily their actions could very well become his own. There’s a reason it took him some three years to complete that novel: writing Tragic Characters is hard. In the process of creating them, writers have to admit things about themselves that all human beings would rather shove into little dark places in our hearts and ignore.

Or there’s another reason they have to crush his beautiful writing into the garbage chute: 

He’s

a) going to turn up alive and well but just for shits and giggles in A4

or

b) going to turn up alive and well and hatefully backstabbing in A4

I’m voting on the latter instead of the former. I’ll be really pleased, however, if he has a proper Tragic Character ending. As in, he comes back, helps the Avengers out, and then agrees to die anyway to save the “better” characters. Or dies in the process of actually saving one of the “better” characters. Because that crap at the beginning of Infinity War will never please me, I’m sorry. Tom’s acting: lovely. Loki’s role before kicking the bucket: garbage.

Annnnnd I think I’m done for the evening. I hope this made sense-- I’m sick so I’m doped up by the doc to the point of constantly feeling drowsy and half-lucid. If anyone wants to have further conversation on this, reblog the post or message me or ask me.

[alexjcrowley]

I just wanted to remind the world that Zawe Ashton, who you may know as Tom Hiddleston's girlfriend (and you may do, if you follow my page that is mainly about Loki), is an Amazing Actress (yes, double capital A) and you should check out literally every production she has worked in because her talent is unimaginable.

I am a fan of Tim Hiddleston, I knew about her through Tom, and let me tell you: the guy has taste. I am watching a literary debate of Dickens vs Tolstoj, in which both Tom and Zawe recite and when she started acting a piece from Great Expectations I was more than impressed.

Her Estella and her Kitty gave me the chills.

I berate myself for not finding out about her sooner, I knew she must have been good 'cause I knew she was casted for Betrayal on Broadway, but I would never thought that good.

Please, do yourself a favour and, if you aren't a fan of her work yet, you'll become one as soon as you go check her.

I'll link the debate I was watching (also, a very interesting debate, though you could just skip to her acting, I highly recommend to watch it entirely):

[wurwurz]

Tom Hiddleston - Dickens VS Tolstoy reading (2018).

[sleepynegress]

Heads up! Tom Hiddleston and classic English and Russian lit fans.... This is a live staged debate/battle about Dickens and Tolstoy as argued/performed by writers, John Mullan and Simon Schama and actors Kit Kingsley, Zawe Ashton, Timothy West, Julia Sawalha and Tom Hiddleston for Intelligence Squared from 2018.  Moderated by playwright, Bonnie Greer. #QuarantineUplift timestamps stolen from a youtube comment: Charles Dickens 

(12:48-18:40) Great Expectations performed by Zawe Ashton, Timothy West, and Kit Kingsley. 

 (21:10-22:55) Bleak House performed by Tom Hiddleston (25:10-30:25) 

Great Expectations performed by Zawe Ashton, Julia Sawalha, and Timothy West. 

(33:15-37:55) David Copperfield performed by Zawe Ashton, Julia Sawalha, Timothy West, and Kit Kingsley. 

Leo Tolstoy 

(44:45-47:25) Hadji Murat performed by Tom Hiddleston 

(53:23-58:38) Anna Karenina performed by Julia Sawalha and Zawe Ashton 

(1:00:12-1:04:50) Anna Karenina performed by Tom Hiddleston and Julia Sawalha 

(1:06:00-1:10:20) Anna Karenina performed by Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton 

(1:13:02-1:19:40) War and Peace performed by Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton

[maryxglz]

intelligence2: "#ThrowbackThursday to this time last year when Tom Hiddleston and @zaweashton performed this excerpt from Anna Karenina in our 'Dickens vs Tolstoy' debate. #iq2 #tomhiddleston #zaweashton"

[general-dar-benn]

Dickens vs Tolstoy featuring Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton

[effervescentdragon]

hi akira! number 26 for the weird asks!

i’m so glad you are feeling better, love you lots! ❤️

fati dearest thank youuu love you i finally feel more alive than dead 🥲❤️ and thank you for the ask!

26. A scenario that you’ve replayed multiple times?

oooh honestly i havent daydreamed in a while! i dont do it often, not anymore, but back when i used to do it one of my favourite scenarios was having tom hiddleston as my teacher for a class on media analysis in uni 😹 the saddest part is that it wasnt even an explicitly sexual or romantic fantasy, i just used to daydream about us talking about shakespeare and tolstoy and the concepts of hero/villain/antihero etc in superhero movies. also for some reason, we'd always dance randomly to some street music. take from that what you will 🤭

[justzawe]

Y’all seeing this shit?