Sunday, March 13, 2011

Did you know?

Did you know that back in high school I subscribed to an import magazine from Great Britain called “Majesty”? You may not have known that…although you think you know me. It was an expensive magazine all about the British royal family. Why did I beg for this magazine subscription? Well, I had just traveled to Europe the summer between my junior and senior year of high school with the All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir (you can guess the origin of the group from the name) and I had adored being in England. It was the summer of 1981, and Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were about to be married. I remember being in St. Paul’s Cathedral just three weeks before this exciting event and I could hardly be contained! It was so exciting, all the history, all the glamour, all the pomp and ceremony. I wanted to get my hands on everything about the royal family. Of course, I wanted to be invited, but just as my invitation to a royal wedding seems to be lost in the mail again, the pleasure of my company was not requested! Do you remember the back of Joan Rivers’ comedy album from late 1981? It had the famed picture of the royal family at Chuck and Di’s wedding, and Joan Rivers had had herself superimposed into the picture bearing her wedding gift of a blender with a bow bigger than the hat of any of the royals.

So that fall I subscribed to “Majesty” so I could indulge my love of the royal family. Over the years I have continued an enjoyment in learning about this House of Windsor. Anyway, it would seem that I am the most eager cinephile to welcome the acclaimed film, The King’s Speech. After all, it is about one of my most abiding enjoyments (obsessions?)—that family.

However, when the movie came out this fall—I kind of held my breath when I was home in the United States—I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see it. Well, of course I wanted to see it, but I didn’t know if I wanted to see it with anyone. Moreover, I kind of hoped no one asked me if I had seen it, or what I thought of it—I just didn’t have a ready answer. I just wasn’t sure how to handle the discussion.

Why? Well, King George and I share something that neither of us particularly enjoy discussing (I know I speak of him here as if he were still alive—I am well aware he has been dead for nearly 60 years) nor know how to explain to practically anyone else. One of the stories that ran in “Majesty” that I remember, lo these nearly 30 years ago, was a story about HRH Albert, the Duke of York, and a speech he gave in the mid-1920s and about his “debilitating stammer.” I remember the phrase exactly. I remember wondering what this royal personage had thought about his speech, and if he would like the phrase, “debilitating stammer.” George and I share this phenomenon, and neither of us particularly likes talking about it. I think I avoid the subject in large part, because like Bertie, neither of us likes to think about how uncomfortable it makes other people. I know that I always wish I could just give out a card when someone meets me announcing the stutter so that then they know what is coming. So I avoided the movie when I was home, but when it won the Oscar two weeks ago tonight, I knew it was time I should see the film. But I didn’t want to see it with anybody, I just wanted to see it alone here with my bootleg DVD I can so easily get (sorry any of my blogosphere friends who get upset about that intellectual property stuff). I curled up on the couch last weekend and lost myself in the story of the King’s speech. Do you know the story of the film?

The story largely unfolds during the Great Depression, building to the compulsory rousing end in 1939 when Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, world calamities that almost don’t have a match on the urgent matter of the speech impediment of HRH Albert Frederick Arthur George, the new King George VI (played by Oscar winner Colin Firth). As a child, Albert, or Bertie as his family called him, the shy, rather sickly second son of King George V developed a stutter. As his royal duties grew more important he and his wife, Elizabeth, a steely Scottish rose, (and the mother of their daughters, Elizabeth, the future queen, and Margaret) sought ways to conquer the speech problem.

Albert meets his new speech therapist, Lionel Logue, reluctantly, and only after an assortment of public and private humiliations does he decide to continue with the sessions. In one botched effort, a Royal Court-appointed doctor instructs Albert to talk with a mouthful of marbles, a gagging endeavor that might have altered the imminent monarchical succession. As eccentric and expansive as Albert is reserved, Logue enters the movie with a flourish, insisting that they meet in his shabby-chic office and that he be permitted to call his royal client, then the Duke of York, by the informal “Bertie.” The actors who portray Albert and Logue play a symbiotic pair whose relationship gives each something he hadn’t expected, even as they develop a greater understanding of their own fears and weaknesses.

But it remains Bertie’s story, a story about suffering and enduring something that is so hard to know why it is happening. Bertie has spent his life suffering the pressure of his father, King George V to get his stutter under control: “Relax!” the old man shouts and brays at him, while trying to give him a lesson in addressing the radio microphone. His brothers mocked him for his impediment, yet as we see, he is the most conscious of his responsibility as a royal. Yet with his father aging, Bertie is required to make more public appearances and speak to audiences, something that terrifies him because of the anticipation of humiliation.

The movie opens actually with the event that I remember from that long-ago story from “Majesty.” The director and writer do a masterful job at creating suspense, the agony of the anticipation as everyone awaits his speech, in that first scene in 1925 at a stadium to the Empire about a series of sports events. Everyone around Bertie looks stricken as they plead, “Just take your time.” The director makes the radio microphone so scary looking, as scary as it must have been for Bertie, and Colin Firth is perfect here, his eyes almost bleeding with the terror he feels at any moment of potential embarrassment. As he waits on the words to come forth, Firth perfectly captures the feel of a stutterer facing the gallows or otherwise feeling doomed. It’s just talking. But it is not easy. And sometimes nothing comes out. A horse neighs with what can only feel like an expression of growing impatience. Bertie speaks. It is not his finest hour.

As I watched the film, of course I loved the film—it is a beautiful film that is only sort of about fighting a speech disability—it is about a man conquering his fears. We are too embarrassed to divulge our shortcomings to the world and most importantly to ourselves, assuming it will only invite ridicule. So in this vein, the way Firth loses his temper mostly on himself, every time he feels he can never get rid of the stutter is terrific. As I have already said, one feels his pain and anguish. He feels ashamed of himself every time his father looks at him in the eye with regret. His trauma touches your soul. Helena Bonham Carter renders a heartfelt performance as the loving wife Elizabeth who wants her husband to believe in himself and his abilities. She even tells him, “When I married you, I told myself, he stutters beautifully.”

Everyone makes it sound so simple, they all say, “Relax,” or this expert advice: “Inhale deep in your lungs Your Highness, and you will find confidence.” His wife Elizabeth asks about the marbles-in-the-mouth business and the toady doctor says, “It is the classic approach from ancient Greece. It is what Demosthenes did.” And HRH the Duchess of York quipped, “And has it worked since?” As Bertie begins to gag on the marbles, the doctor bellows, “Fight against the marbles, Your Royal Highness,” and then pleads, “A little more concentration!” Angry and helpless, Bertie spits out the marbles and spits out to Elizabeth, “Promise me no more treatments!”

When the Duchess of York first meets Lionel Logue she does not divulge who she is or who her husband is. She says, “My husband is required to speak publicly,” to which Logue says, “Perhaps he should change jobs.” Elizabeth simply says, “He can’t.”

Watching how difficult it is for Bertie to tell stories to his daughters, it reminds me all too easily how the simplest tasks can be overwhelming—going to the bank teller, a drive-through window, speaking to customer service on the phone—the simplest things, but sometimes the words don’t come out. No amount of “Take your time,” or “relax” helps. Logue puts it very well when he says, “Every stammerer feels like every conversation puts them back to square one.” Logue asks Bertie: “When did the defect start?” Bertie replies, “I can’t remember not doing it.” Logue then asks, “Do you hesitate when you think or when you talk to yourself?” Later he asks Bertie if he knows any jokes, and Bertie responds, “Timing isn’t my strong suit.”

The film's title does double duty. When Bertie assumes the throne in 1937 as George VI, Hitler is consolidating his power in Germany. A nation needs to hear from its king. This reluctant-yet-stalwart king must speak to the Empire and calm their fears. Writer and director create an expected stirring conclusion here, and Logue smiles after the speech and says to his monarch: “You still stammered on the ‘w.’” The king grinned and said, “I had to throw in a few so they knew it was me.” Evidently, as a child, writer David Seidler had a stutter. George VI became his hero. The King's Speech makes him ours as well.

Over the years I have had a number of therapists or treatments. None of them have really done any significant improvement, but here I am, in a career choice where I speak publicly every day, loving my work, but certainly knowing the pain and anguish that Bertie endured every time he spoke. I am very well aware of the supportive family that I have had. It has not been a topic of conversation very often, but I have only felt love and support from my family. Perhaps it is, as I have hoped, just not the most interesting thing about me. As I look back over it all, there have been so few, so very few times in childhood and adulthood where people treated me poorly because of it. It could have been the most “go-to” of childhood taunts and ridicules, but it never overwhelmed interpersonal dynamics. The strangest part for me, unlike Bertie, is that I love public speaking. I would love to have pursued acting, but, well, you can’t make an audience wait or wonder if the speech will come out! Bertie never enjoyed that speaking, and I do, and since I do it often, I simply have to think ahead of myself and check on the words in my brain, and see if this is a day where an L word, or an R word, or an M word, or W word, or a Cr, et cetera et cetera can make its way out fluently. Maybe the best thing my family ever did for me was what Lionel Logue did for Bertie. He says, “I am here so that my patient can have faith in their own voice and make them feel like a friend is listening.”

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