We Really Need to Talk About Armie Hammer
Exactly 24 hours after I begged the universe to bring us a kinder 2021, white supremacists attempted to overthrow the government. That’s not a hyperbolic statement. That isn’t even a slight exaggeration. Actual white supremacists ACTUALLY attempted a coup. And that’s not even the craziest thing that happened last week!
I could talk about Miya Ponsetto’s physical and indubitably racist attack on a 14 year old boy she falsely accused of stealing her phone (typical) or the resulting, instantly iconic interview in which she held up one pale palm to shut down thee Gayle King with an “enough” that perfectly distilled her privilege into one, forever memefied moment (jaw dropping) or those Kanye/Jeffree Star rumors in which the two of them have apparently been engaged in a steamy affair (BIZARRE) but at the end of the day, as usual, it was a white man who brought us all the way home.
Armie Hammer, Hollywood’s resident Tall White Man with a voice like inbred money, is known for playing Tall White Men to varying degrees of effectiveness. He was absolutely iconic in my favorite Aaron Sorkin movie, The Social Network. He was a serviceable foil for the more magnetic Timothee Chalamet in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. He was a black hole of personality as the leading man in Netflix’s Rebecca reboot last year. His crowning achievement, perhaps, was as a lead in the 2018 Broadway show quite literally named Straight White Men (I didn’t see it so I couldn’t tell you how he did, but I have a feeling he was sublimely cast). We know who Armie Hammer is. Armie Hammer knows who Armie Hammer is. So I have to ask: are the revelations that he might be a vampiristic cannibal really as big a stretch of the imagination as it seems?
For the blissfully unaware, this past weekend, Instagram user @houseofeffie released alleged screenshots of Instagram direct messages between an unknown person and Armie Hammer’s official account (CW for screenshot link: extremely graphic content). The contents of these messages range from him “needing” an anonymous person’s “blood”, to claims of being “100% a cannibal”, to vivid descriptions of rape and aggression. Even as I write this, @houseofeffie is still posting screenshots allegedly from Hammer to their Instagram stories, digging into the claims of cannibalism and sexual violence.
It needs to be said, because so much can get lost in the heavily ironic internet parlance we all partake in, but this is far and above something that could be considered “quirky”. Yes, the knee-jerk reaction to imagining the Whitest Face in America saying something like “I need to drink your blood” is uproarious laughter because honestly, what the fuck? But these messages aren’t a campy, ironic projection of a man who might be a little freaky in the bedroom. If these photos are true, they paint a portrait of sadistic serial cheater, one with an alarming proclivity for sexual violence all the more heightened by his position of power within the entertainment industry.
As of writing this, no one from Armie’s camp has spoken to the allegations, but a couple women who have been linked to him in the past have spoken up in support of @houseofeffies’s reveals. It is not my place to pass judgment with the little information we do have, but I will say that I for one have no problem believing the legitimacy of these screenshots. It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to believe that this is true of him. Why would it be? As Hollywood’s #MeToo reckoning has proven, there is truly no man with whom you should feel safe stanning because it’s only a matter of time before the other shoe drops. I highly doubt he’ll face any serious repercussions from this. As it stands now, these are all technically, still unconfirmed allegations and Hammer could very easily wait it out. The way things are going, it’ll only take one or two more news cycles (at most, a week from now) for this to be old news, replaced with perhaps another coup attempt, or photographic evidence of Kanye and Jeffree snuggling in Wyoming.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
