… cannot be fooled by little masks.
But then again, few folks can.
Context: “A Scandal in Bohemia”, aka The One With Irene Adler In It. A member of royalty decides to call upon Sherlock Holmes in disguise.
Royalty can be rather stupid.
[This category inspired by Chris Sims' The Many Emotions of Batman series.]
Things I’ve been thinking about.
Good God, eat something, man!
It’s been documented repeatedly and consistently (in many stories in the canon; in many pastiches for 100 years; in many, if not all, Holmes adaption series; and likely implied even in one-off movies from old to recent) that Holmes seems to forget to eat for days at a time. Not always (he digs into a meal heartily at times), but when he gets into “the zone”, so to speak, eating, sleeping, and general self-care go out the window.
Of course, if you don’t eat for long enough, at some point you no longer feel hungry (the body goes into starvation mode and decides it needs to conserve something serious). Mind you, then eventually you fall over (which has happened a few times in the original stories)—and Holmes’ constitution was such that a tipping point might not happen for days. Which probably makes it all the worse, strong constitution or not.
And this would explain, for instance, him falling ill in France at the beginning of “The Reigate Squires”, his dire need for a holiday (at the insistence of third-party physicians, no less) during which “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” occurred, his general paleness that worries Watson years later in “The Mazarin Stone” (despite their third major separation1 ), and his often ill-health and paleness described throughout many stories.
How many official images of Holmes lounging about?
By “official”, I mean published alongside various prints and re-prints of Holmes stories throughout the ages. Sidney Paget is the most well-known of these, but there are others (whose names escape me at this moment as I jot this all down).
And by lounging, I mean languidly on sofas and chaise-lounges. I remember twice in “The Reigate Squires” alone, at least once in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”, and I swear there are more. I need to find more of them and make them into a post, because it amuses me.
(I tend to lounge about at random myself. If you’ve never had an upbringing where your parents cared about this to some degree, I think this sort of attitude towards posture becomes more likely. Which leads into the next little thought….)
What was Holmes’ upbringing like?
Never mentioned in the original stories, so we can only guess and work out from the inconsistent canon what might have happened to shape him. People come up with everything from extreme drama, to neglect, as well as the rare theory of “he had a perfectly happy childhood, he’s just naturally a bit messed up” (nature versus nurture, I suppose, with a strong leaning on nature).
I tend to believe his upbringing was messed up, or something else occurred at some point to mess him up. (Some people propose that something happened during his university years.) You don’t get… quite as eccentric… without something occurring—and you rarely ever get to know people like this well enough to know about the something(s) in their past. I’ve seen arguments about these points get nasty when people accuse each other of projecting onto Holmes their naivete/screwed-up-ness. Because the canon is SRS BIZNESS.
Oh, fandom….
Did Watson ever learn about whatever it was? Even if he did, the likelihood of him ever writing about it (as all the canon stories were meant for the public, even in the meta-metaness of The Game) are zero. And while Holmes did seem to trust Watson more than anyone else in his (adult at least, pre-retirement only perhaps) life, Watson mentioned in “The Illustrious Client” that there was always a gap between the two. And you know, that business with “The Dying Detective” was, um, not exactly indicative of Holmes’ honesty towards Watson.
Poor, poor Watson…
I’m going to do something stupid, pay attention to me
There are theories (and these are contentious, because again, Watson would never write directly about this kind of relationship stuff in the stories) that some of Holmes lack of self-care and even drug usage were, at least in part, cries for attention. Some folks propose that the times when Holmes does act sickly (and we’re not even talking about the deception in “The Dying Detective”, though that is strong evidence on the side of the proposers), he exaggerates so that Watson is more likely to drop everything (like wives and doctoral responsibilities) and run to his side.
(An aside about the drug usage: while in the Victorian days, his cocaine use would be viewed as sinful as smoking is today, Watson was definitely on the STOPPIT YOU’RE DESTROYING YOURSELF side, in multiple stories as Doyle and others in the medical profession began to learn that, yo, cocaine isn’t so great.)
If these incidents are cries for help, Holmes is certainly devious enough for it. The other possibility is, of course, that he may be doing this subconsciously.
It’s an interesting theory—although like so many others, it doesn’t hold up against an utterly strict reading of the canon.
But strict readings of the canon are rarely fun, and besides, whether or not it’s text, subtext will always exist—especially if you play The Game.
What is canon?
Oh hell, this is the root of all flamewars in the Holmes fandom. Other fandoms have the convenience of simply competing subtext in their canon; but the Holmes canon’s text is itself self-conflicting.
If you play The Game, e.g., considering the canon as if they were real events between real people, then conflicting text yields to even more complex subtext—and given that real people are complicated, you can interpret many different possible motives between Holmes and Watson.
Or even simply how Watson himself narrates. What did he leave out? Why did he put such-and-such this way or that way? How much did Watson see—did he write himself stupider than he really was, in order to highlight Holmes’ brilliance even more for readers? Did he make some of this crap up entirely?2 Holmes often accused Watson of romanticizing his exploits; Watson contends this is needed for writing stories that people actually want to read for entertainment—a point, by the way, that Holmes gives in on in one of his few self-narrated stories.
In the realm of “making some of this crap up entirely” are, for instance, people who believe that Holmes died at the Reichenbach Falls, roughly halfway through the canon’s fractured timeline, and that all stories after the Falls are Watson’s delusions or denials. (That some people believe a Holmes imposter did come back, possibly Moriarty, and Watson was either too stupid to recognize him or actually in collusion or needed money, I don’t even know.)
I tend to just shrug at people who play hardline canon, play fast and loose with the canon, and all shades inbetween, because really, “what is canon?” is a really stupid thing to argue about when it’s this shoddy. Even Without a Clue, a tongue-in-cheek movie where Watson is actually the smart detective and is using a stupid actor as a front, could be considered a valid interpretation of the canon. Which just goes to show how weak the canon can be; there are those who sincerely believe that Holmes never abused cocaine at all, and Watson was exaggerating for the drama, and an even smaller number who think that Holmes never actually used cocaine.
Most of that weakness, of course, stems from the unreliable narrator problem, which just goes up if you start playing things like The Game.
I laugh at people who fight over what is or what isn’t canon—or attempt to use “but this is canon!” as a card against people interpret things differently. And it isn’t just older fandom wanting newer fandom to get off their lawn; I’m starting to see odd-out fans of Sherlock Holmes (2009) begin to use this card, and good gods, they should stop, right now. Both sides. All sides, whatever. The stupid, it burns.
And those are my thoughts on yaoi. Well. Only metaphorically speaking. Probably I’ll get into literally some day.
Romance? Bromance? Friendship? Hateship?
By the by—you think it’s bad that people accuse each other of projecting their own mental illness—oft unsupported, or filtered through the most aggressive lens possible—when trying to divine Holmes’ childhood? No. That’s not bad. Not compared to people accusing each other of turning their own “sexual perversions”—oft filtered through the most heteronormative lens—into slashy relationships. Because obviously being mentally ill/being homosexual/being bisexual just makes you stupid. /sarcasm
On that note… let me just say that My Dearest Holmes made me reconsider homosexual relationships in general as not being wrong or simply about sex.3 It is that well written. And… damn, it was just so sweet, in the old-fashioned sense, not the modern slang sense. This was when I became a shipper of Hwatson and stopped being a Hadler.
And so I leave my keyboard for now4.
So that I don’t forget. One thing I’m grateful to the New Movie for is that the Deviant Art Holmes searches/categories are now FULL, fast and furious. I mean I put in an offset of like 10,000 trying to get to ones that I remembered from a few years back, and DeviantArt apparently doesn’t accept that high an offset.
I think I’m going to start up a new little section on this here blog just devoted to stuff I’ve found and quite admire. I think it’s going to be low-traffic, but I’m not quite sure. It depends on how crazy people have gotten; from what I can tell, the archives for DeviantArt are filling with both “New Movie” Holmes and reiterations of older Holmes depictions inspired by Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, and some kind of ancestry dating back to Sidney Paget’s drawings.
Anyways, some things that I can think of so far. These are oldies but goodies.
Much is often made of this exchange from A Study in Scarlet, where Holmes and Watson are introduced by Stamford as possible roommates. Because I can’t help myself, I’m going to include comments on random other things via footnotes.
Sherlock Holmes seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. “I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street,” he said, “which would suit us down to the ground. You don’t mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?”
“I always smoke `ship’s’ myself,” I answered.1
“That’s good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?”2
“By no means.”
“Let me see—what are my other shortcomings? I get in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that.3 Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right. What have you to confess now? It’s just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together.”
I laughed at this cross-examination. “I keep a bull pup,”4 I said, “and I object to row because my nerves are shaken, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am extremely lazy. I have another set of vices when I’m well, but those are the principal ones at present.”5
And this leads to a number of interpretations…
I love you now; but not, till now, so much
But I might master it: in faith, I lie;
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!
– Troilus and Cressida
While there exists a Geek Code, there does not exist a Sherlock Holmes Fan Code, and I sometimes wonder if the fandom would be better off with one. Or perhaps not. When you have a fandom that’s been rolling around for over a century, you’re going to get enormous sprawl no matter what anyone does. Often there are turf wars, and sometimes there’s just jolly understanding and feeling that we are all part of one gigantic epic fandom… but in the end, many of us stand upon our own carefully constructed patches of privet, for there is nothing any Sherlockian or Holmesian would rather do than reinterpret the characters and timeline, since Doyle left so little Word of God with respect to the Canon.
And because there’s no official line to fall back on—for the Canon is as nebulous a canon as you can get in almost any fandom, and also Doyle didn’t care very much about keeping an official line in the first place—everyone’s personal Holmes and Watson is slightly different from the next fan’s. And sometimes quite wildly divergent. The fact that the Canon has been reinterpreted throughout official media itself multiple times over, in the form of movies, TV series, radio shows, and pastiches, has also done quite a lot to push Holmes and Watson into the same multiple-vision land that any mythology receives over millennia.
Over the years, my perspective on Holmes and Watson has changed, and will doubtless change more the older I get. Currently, this is where I stand on things—it’s quite a simple list, and if any of the items make you upset, remember to prepend each one with “I think”:
Holmes and Watson have a friendship much, much closer than most friendships today, and even most friendships in the past. You might even call it co-dependency; for, in just about any variation of Holmes and Watson, Holmes is a conduit of adventure for Watson, and Watson is a conduit of humanity for Holmes. It’s too easy for the very odd, much less the very odd and arrogant, to become isolated, and I tend to agree with Bert Coules—if it weren’t for Watson, Holmes would have ended up killing himself, through misadventure or worse. And if it weren’t for Holmes, Watson would have bored himself to death.
Whether Holmes and Watson had a romantic relationship as well—either interpretation, and indeed the various degrees between “yes” and “no”, is fine with me. I actually enjoy all of them—from the platonic interpretation, to the hot raging repressed love interpretation. This also includes the ones involving gender flips.1 I tend to fall somewhere between when it comes to the Holmes and Watson in my head, but I admit to guiltily enjoying the rest.
Irene Adler deserves more than to just be Holmes’ Catwoman Date. And this is often why I don’t like Holmes/Adler pastiches.
The best Watson is an intelligent Watson. I would have liked Rathbone!Holmes more had the Bruce!Watson not been thoroughly castrated in body and mind. Give me Burke!Watson, Hardwicke!Watson, Williams!Watson, Serkis!Watson2 or Law!Watson any day. Also, Doyle’s original!Watson got dumber and dumber as the canon was published, because Doyle thought Watson a rather stupid fellow.
The best Holmes is a psychologically oddball Holmes. Rathbone!Holmes is too much of a Vulcan for me. I think anyone who reads the Canon and sees Holmes as a normal, happy human being might be a bit sheltered—but arguably, I myself might be too damaged to “see normal”, which is a fair accusation. At any rate, give me Brett!Holmes, Merrison!Holmes, or Downey!Holmes and I will be quite content. As for original!Holmes, I think some time after The Return, Doyle started whirling in Flanderization circles before he finally ended it all years later.
There are several ways to enjoy the canon:
I haven’t included the New Movie here, because the New Movie is actually a play on the Canon itself, just about all the way. In other words, the New Movie is actually a meta-extension of the original Canon into a more 21st-century sensibility (I call this the inflation of dramatic excitement, e.g., it takes more to make an audience go “Wow!” then it did a century ago). It’s a reboot, essentially.
I think having some relatively faithful interpretation of the Canon to hand thus increases amusement and enjoyment of the New Movie. And also knowing the Canon allows one to extrapolate material for New Movie fanfiction pastiches and such. I do want to write up a Sherlock Holmes sequel soothsaying, similar to the rather popular post for House Season 5 just after Season 4 had ended.
On the other hand, note that I’ve never said you actually need to read the original Canon in order to enjoy its flavor and underpinnings. This is the kind of blasphemy that gets you run over by a lot of the older fandom.
My favorite Sherlock Holmes story has been, for the last several years, “The Reigate (Puzzle) (Squire(s))”4. To me, the interaction between Holmes and Watson in this story is the quintessential one, and also has the advantage of being as interpretable as hell in all degrees of interpretation.
My favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is My Dearest Holmes. That probably gives you a good bead on where my sympathies lie.
Over the years my enjoyment of Sherlock Holmes has morphed into a meta-enjoyment of the craziness of the Sherlock Holmes fandom. Especially during the last five years; you can see it when you read my Retyping the Speckled Band series of posts. I still analyze in all six posts, but my snark level is several notches higher in the end than it was at the very beginning.
My own writing has been influenced, strongly, by experiences with folks on the Internet. Much of my snarkiness can be directly traced to the day I started reading John Scalzi’s blog, and recently I’m pretty sure TVTropes and The Nostalgia Critic and friends have only made it worse. There are other influences as well; I don’t think I would have started down the road of snarkiness before John Scalzi, if I hadn’t read Warren Ellis.
So, fair warning: I will not be kind even to those I love in these re-reads/watches/listens. There will be snark. Mild snark, almost all of the time, but I swear to all the gods in the heavens and to all the demons in the hells, The Eligible Bachelor is going to get flayed open. Even though I love Brett and Hardwicke and generally love the Granada series. Woe.
But in the end, I love Holmes. I would date him if I could, even though I know it wouldn’t end well.5
