Harmless as Doves: On Casey Affleck and Separating Your Heroes From Their Actors
Patrick Kenzie is a fictional character, the protagonist of a six-book series by Dennis Lehane.
He’s a devoted husband and friend, and a private investigator who specializes in “find[ing] the people who started in the cracks and then fell through.” The survivor of horrific child abuse who grew up in one of Boston’s roughest neighborhoods, he’s acutely aware of the cyclical nature of abuse and that it can be a constant struggle to avoid falling into that loop once you’re a victim yourself.
Casey Affleck is a real person who, 10 years ago, received critical acclaim for playing Kenzie in his brother Ben’s directoral debut, an adaptation of the fourth book, “Gone Baby Gone.” Three years later, he was sued by two female coworkers for sexual harassment and attempts to coerce them into sex. He later settled both claims out of court.
An actor who plays an honorable person being a piece of shit in real life is hardly an earth-shattering event; the very nature of acting means what you see onscreen is a simulation of a real person, given life by an entirely different one. If you get too caught up in this dichotomy it’s easy to wind up as one of those weird cranks who won’t see movies starring liberal actors.
For me, though, Patrick was different. I discovered the book series shortly before the release of the movie, which meant for the past decade, Kenzie and Affleck have been more or less visually interchangeable in my mind. Most of my favorite literary protagonists are women, but Patrick spoke to me in a way few male protagonists did.
The literary detective, particularly the male variety, tends to run on snark and tough talk, with very little room for vulnerability. He typically has little patience for women, and his interactions with them tend to tip into outright misogyny. Not so for Patrick, who respects no one more than his partner and eventual wife Angie Gennaro, and who understands how toxic masculinity and the perception that an Irish Catholic husband and father always knows what’s best for his family turned his father into a monster. He similarly disdains the racism and homophobia common in blue-collar Boston and refuses to play along as a condition of being “from the neighborhood.” He’s tough without being mean, introspective without being self-pitying and, as his livelihood, battles with monsters without becoming a monster. As silly as it probably sounds, he’s been my role model for healthy masculinity since I read the books. In “Gone Baby Gone,” he quotes Matthew 10:16 on how to remain a good person while surviving in this cruel a world: “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”
So where does that leave Casey Affleck? I’m a visual learner, and, as I said, when I picture Patrick Kenzie the image in my head has Affleck’s pale blue eyes, hoarse voice and wiry black hair. The paradox, of course, is that Affleck is the kind of man Patrick Kenzie vocally hates throughout the book, a man who thinks his position in society entitles him to predation and gets away with it because of that position. In “Moonlight Mile,” the series’ final book, Patrick loses out on a full-time job with a corporate security firm he contracts with because he can’t hide his contempt for their clients; Affleck’s proclivities wouldn’t be out of place among those clients.
I’ve never been a person who can’t separate art from artist, or actor from character, and my purpose in writing this is not to excuse Affleck’s actions because of what a character he played meant to me, or to argue that I’m also a victim of his depravity; indeed, I think having to separate the two is a much-needed mental exercise for me, and to some extent, a lesson in why fictional characters may, on some level, make better heroes than real people. Patrick, because of how he’s written, would never do what Affleck was accused of, and thus, there’s no pedestal for him to fall from. There is, of course, the simple matter of Kenzie not being a real person, and thus of little use to helping the world out of its sorry state, which I guess is where I come in. I’m not a private eye, and I’d probably suck at it, but the best thing I can do in my position, with my privilege, is to be the Patrick Kenzie I wish to see in the world.
