sherlock: a qualified yes
Aug. 10th, 2010 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhSo I've now watched all three episodes of Sherlock and I have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS which are perhaps not as organized as they could be. For those of you in the US being good, Sherlock was a co-production with Masterpiece Mystery so it will be airing on PBS later this year. I'm not sure why, given that it's a coproduction and not a rights buy, that PBS couldn't just air it when it aired in the UK, but that might be a wanting content for the fall thing.
I've read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and books within the last six months or so, having put them on my phone, and certainly when you think about that canon you think about the British Empire. So much of what is going on in them is about the intense fear within the central imperial city of the impurities that are being brought in from the conquered lands, be they artifacts, foods, goods, customs or people. So much of the villainy in Holmes was connected to empire—disputes between men of good breeding and education but no money who went to India/South Africa/Australia/the Middle East to make their fortunes. The central city has to hold firm against the regressive uncivilizing forces of the conquered countries. There are pygmies with blow darts and trained exotic animals that cannot be entirely controlled by the white men they came to England with. Men go away from England and See Things—Watson included.
In addition, and I know![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mardia touched on this but I think I may need to disagree with her here, Holmes is deeply misanthropic but also specifically misogynous, mostly because he can't predict the behavior of women nor clearly discern their motives. In other words, and Watson is very clear on this, Holmes doesn't like women because they fuck up his system. He can sometimes get them to do things for him, but only by subterfuge and misdirection. He says about women, at one point, "Who knows why they do anything?"
House notwithstanding, these two central themes in Holmes will always make it quite difficult to create a modern day adaptation where Holmes is still Holmesian but the entire project isn't an imperialist, misogynous mess. At this the first and third episodes of Sherlock succeed, mostly by taking elements of the original stories and recasting them, playing them against one another. (Mycroft, in particular, is a frightening neocon delight.) The misanthropy and misogyny are still there, but they're seen as more of a problem, especially from Watson, than as a necessary side-effect of Holmes's genius.
I liked quite a lot about the adaptation. I liked the strong mysteries and pacing of the first and third episodes. I liked the relationship between John and Sherlock, which was richly nuanced and superbly acted. (I think there's something to be said, by the way, about how straight gay-positive men negotiate close friendships--how do you say you're straight without sounding like some homophobic asshole--but I'd rather get more stories about actual gay men then about how straight men are dealing with not being mistaken for apparently-invisible gay men.) I liked how much John's army past was fed into his character and the way he reacted to the events around him. I loved Lestrade. I adored Mrs. Hudson. They did a great job updating the cases.
Things I did not love: Sally, who seems to exist only for the viewers to dislike her. Molly, who has to be smarter than that. Moriarty, who reminds me of evil!Angel, and evil!Angel is one of the big reasons I can't watch Buffy; I don't give a shit about how evil you are, or how clever you think you are, evil dude; stfu and go away. The evil monologuing at the end of all three episodes, which drove me to such distraction that sometimes I had to leave the room. The reliance on serial killer plots. The "I will call you and taunt you and then make you solve a mystery in a certain period of time before I kill random innocent people" plot of the third episode, which I've seen done before and I didn't like it then. (I don't really like serial killers; I think they're overused.)
Meanwhile, the second episode is just dreadful on all counts, isn't it? Sarah's great, and there was a moment of yay when she saved Sherlock, but making her the tied up damsel in distress to torture Watson was really retro (in a bad way). So was the whole "ancient Chinese [fill in the blank]" which just made me think of this:
The dragon-woman villain, the incredibly shoddy circus that was attended by all of six people, the Chinese acrobat who can scale skyscrapers (funny in the Ocean's 11/12/13 movies, because they can use it to make a series of jokes; neither funny nor particularly interesting here), the orphaned brother and sister taking different paths. The way they kept referring to Sue Yin as "obsessed" with the teapots, and the way that her demonstration of her expertise was to ... perform an ancient tea ceremony.
And then on top of all that fail, it was a terribly paced, badly shot, poorly structured mystery. Nothing compelling, nothing to really figure out, just a lot of violent set pieces strung together with some running around. I remember getting through an hour of it and thinking, my god, it's not over yet? When will it end?
I'll definitely watch future episodes, though if they start to irritate me I'll feel free to fast forward through them. So, a qualified yes.
I've read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and books within the last six months or so, having put them on my phone, and certainly when you think about that canon you think about the British Empire. So much of what is going on in them is about the intense fear within the central imperial city of the impurities that are being brought in from the conquered lands, be they artifacts, foods, goods, customs or people. So much of the villainy in Holmes was connected to empire—disputes between men of good breeding and education but no money who went to India/South Africa/Australia/the Middle East to make their fortunes. The central city has to hold firm against the regressive uncivilizing forces of the conquered countries. There are pygmies with blow darts and trained exotic animals that cannot be entirely controlled by the white men they came to England with. Men go away from England and See Things—Watson included.
In addition, and I know
mardia touched on this but I think I may need to disagree with her here, Holmes is deeply misanthropic but also specifically misogynous, mostly because he can't predict the behavior of women nor clearly discern their motives. In other words, and Watson is very clear on this, Holmes doesn't like women because they fuck up his system. He can sometimes get them to do things for him, but only by subterfuge and misdirection. He says about women, at one point, "Who knows why they do anything?"House notwithstanding, these two central themes in Holmes will always make it quite difficult to create a modern day adaptation where Holmes is still Holmesian but the entire project isn't an imperialist, misogynous mess. At this the first and third episodes of Sherlock succeed, mostly by taking elements of the original stories and recasting them, playing them against one another. (Mycroft, in particular, is a frightening neocon delight.) The misanthropy and misogyny are still there, but they're seen as more of a problem, especially from Watson, than as a necessary side-effect of Holmes's genius.
I liked quite a lot about the adaptation. I liked the strong mysteries and pacing of the first and third episodes. I liked the relationship between John and Sherlock, which was richly nuanced and superbly acted. (I think there's something to be said, by the way, about how straight gay-positive men negotiate close friendships--how do you say you're straight without sounding like some homophobic asshole--but I'd rather get more stories about actual gay men then about how straight men are dealing with not being mistaken for apparently-invisible gay men.) I liked how much John's army past was fed into his character and the way he reacted to the events around him. I loved Lestrade. I adored Mrs. Hudson. They did a great job updating the cases.
Things I did not love: Sally, who seems to exist only for the viewers to dislike her. Molly, who has to be smarter than that. Moriarty, who reminds me of evil!Angel, and evil!Angel is one of the big reasons I can't watch Buffy; I don't give a shit about how evil you are, or how clever you think you are, evil dude; stfu and go away. The evil monologuing at the end of all three episodes, which drove me to such distraction that sometimes I had to leave the room. The reliance on serial killer plots. The "I will call you and taunt you and then make you solve a mystery in a certain period of time before I kill random innocent people" plot of the third episode, which I've seen done before and I didn't like it then. (I don't really like serial killers; I think they're overused.)
Meanwhile, the second episode is just dreadful on all counts, isn't it? Sarah's great, and there was a moment of yay when she saved Sherlock, but making her the tied up damsel in distress to torture Watson was really retro (in a bad way). So was the whole "ancient Chinese [fill in the blank]" which just made me think of this:
The dragon-woman villain, the incredibly shoddy circus that was attended by all of six people, the Chinese acrobat who can scale skyscrapers (funny in the Ocean's 11/12/13 movies, because they can use it to make a series of jokes; neither funny nor particularly interesting here), the orphaned brother and sister taking different paths. The way they kept referring to Sue Yin as "obsessed" with the teapots, and the way that her demonstration of her expertise was to ... perform an ancient tea ceremony.
And then on top of all that fail, it was a terribly paced, badly shot, poorly structured mystery. Nothing compelling, nothing to really figure out, just a lot of violent set pieces strung together with some running around. I remember getting through an hour of it and thinking, my god, it's not over yet? When will it end?
I'll definitely watch future episodes, though if they start to irritate me I'll feel free to fast forward through them. So, a qualified yes.
