always so interesting to me to try and humanise (from both more ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ perspectives) robert because in so many ways he’s so inhuman. there are many characters in emmerdale who are pretty believable in the ‘usual’ sense - we recognise them as fairly common archetypes, and/or whose histories and characteristics add up almost neatly to result in their particular manifestation. broadly, we both understand and believe them…due to well mapped out arcs, character cohesion, easily traceable psychological patterns, the personal/anecdotal experiences we bring ourselves to media, and that we see in them, general consensus (?) on behaviour and humanity and how people tend to present etc etc…but robert’s a rare character who is both so totally knowable and unknowable. he contains a multitude of the above character aspects, he has after all been on screen for decades….but never so simply or neatly. it’s a sort of perfect mess, where his character has been built upon and built upon over the years (so there are major major threads of coherence, and trackable development) but he’s also sort of acted like a chameleon, being moulded into the character needed, the robert needed, for particular dynamics, storylines and eras. that’s not hugely unusual ofc, especially for long running tv, but i think he’s been made into something particularly changeable and complicated along the way… he’s especially so compelling and confusing, because he’s somewhat ambiguous whilst being so outrageous.. he has a very strong Character, whilst still leaving huge amounts of room for stark differences in interpretation. just one scene, or even line, can be extrapolated from and taken in so many different directions. to a certain extent you can do this w all media, all characters, all scenes and lines.. but he is especially ripe for this sort of overanalysis, because after all this time, in many ways he’s something of an enigma, and the recognisable/ grounded parts of him are all mixed up w the fantastical, the absurd, the cartoonishly unrealistic.. and you can spend an age trying to untangle one aspect from the other.. which is which. and ofc many parts exist in more than one category simultaneously. he can do something amazingly evil as the classically camp soap opera villain…and concurrently it can be traced back to the consistent loss of family in adolescence, or the last thing he ever said to his mum.. or the childhood jealousy of his brother or the masculine ideals he internalised.. etc etc… i think he’s perhaps the most knowable, most understandable in the familial context, both in his past/adolescence (<- especially here) and the roles he tends to assume within the family set up as an adult… he also becomes most recognisable in the patriarchal model. the most believable (and also most scary btw) when he’s just a Man…the abusive lover, the manipulative ex, the overbearing brother, the deadbeat dad.. etc etc. but even then theres sooo much in between the cracks, between the lines to me.. all those moments and choices that don’t add up. that don’t fit neatly into any one of those more consistent and clear narratives. he’s not just One story, even in one singular storyline. again, there are all those different shades. he is inherently conflicted, and conflicting.. hugely hypocritical and contradictory…and sometimes a moment seems completely divorced from any of the narratives at all…sometimes it can just be.. a robert action, a robert choice. by which i mean, there’s no completely tied up conceivable reason or explanation for why he did what he did. it raises a million questions and a million possible answers, but in some ways… it’s just part of his Character <- and rarely do i feel that way about any character. i love understanding characterisation, following things through, breaking down the psychological steps, patterns…and he does have lots of that too. but sometimes, it’s kind of just him. he’s crazy he’s insane he’s weird.. he’s extremely ordinary and extremely extraordinary, at the same time.. it’s really fun
