This is completely brilliant and absolutely true in every way. It's everything that disgusts me about this series and every series. And yet despite knowing that, despite having known it from the start, despite being a Jewish feminist lesbian and a rather ardent independent liberal, I'm entranced by this show and its cast. Completely entranced, and the spell has continued for months. I think some part of the answer to my continued enjoyment of Sherlock comes in three chunks.
I think the first chunk of it is because the whole thing is such a trainwreck — such a bleak, fucked landscape of the world we live in. The world is fucked, these characters are fucked, and the characters and the world are stuck on a repeating loop, forever destroying one another. Sherlock is a product of his environment; the environment is a product of men like Sherlock. In a way it's almost a dystopia, grey and violent and everything going wrong at once. And everyone loves a good trainwreck. Everyone loves a good dystopia. Watching makes you sick, but you can't look away. On its own, this wouldn't be enough to keep my attention, though, which leads to
The second chunk of it, which is the last line of your critique: The master of the universe loves and suffers like the rest of us. I suppose I was led into this perfect trap by the writers of the show, but it's a hard one to escape: much like the love of death and destruction, the deep longing to see a merge of god and human seems inescapable. Watching Sherlock in those final scenes is like watching a stone be infused with blood. Similar moments in other TV series and films, featuring both male and female characters, have always fascinated me completely.
The final chunk is a sort of combination of the first two, and resides in the realm of fandom. Needless to say, the realm of fandom itself has plenty of its own problems, some of which have been brought up in this post's previous comments (most notably, the ever-complicated question of why nearly all women in fandom tend to express themselves through male characters, and why any of us relate so closely to them in the first place). But placing those problems aside for the time being, I've found many of the authors in the Sherlock fandom to be some of the most intelligent and insightful authors I've seen in a long time. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of horrible tropes and potholes of ignorance to be found, but more than anything else, the incredible re-tellings and re-toolings of this story are what's continued to fascinate me. With certain backgrounds stitched in, readings of certain characters can become entirely different. The terrible, wrong ugliness and the discovery of love can be combined in a safe space where one doesn't insult the other.
But am I insulting myself by looking to alternate constructions of this story in order to satisfy my fantasy, when the story itself was so clearly insulting me in the first place? I guess I'm the dumped girlfriend who's still in love after getting smacked around, so I find a rebound who looks just like my ex but treats me like a princess. And now I'm trying to justify why this is perfectly healthy to my friends (AKA you).
Honestly I am nearly asleep on my keyboard right now but I found this post through irisbleufic and it hit me really strongly, I just had to reply and it turned into all this rambling bullshit. To summarize: you are right about everything, in every way. I agree with you completely and always have, and I feel this way deeply about many other shows I watch. And yet here I am, a looney dyke who just wants to see Sherlock find a best friend he loves. I tried to explain it, to myself and to you. It took a long time and I don't think it worked very well. I'm gonna go to sleep now.
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zvi and
this is a long and possibly useless comment, and was written while 80% asleep.
Date: 2011-05-20 08:03 am (UTC)I think the first chunk of it is because the whole thing is such a trainwreck — such a bleak, fucked landscape of the world we live in. The world is fucked, these characters are fucked, and the characters and the world are stuck on a repeating loop, forever destroying one another. Sherlock is a product of his environment; the environment is a product of men like Sherlock. In a way it's almost a dystopia, grey and violent and everything going wrong at once. And everyone loves a good trainwreck. Everyone loves a good dystopia. Watching makes you sick, but you can't look away. On its own, this wouldn't be enough to keep my attention, though, which leads to
The second chunk of it, which is the last line of your critique: The master of the universe loves and suffers like the rest of us. I suppose I was led into this perfect trap by the writers of the show, but it's a hard one to escape: much like the love of death and destruction, the deep longing to see a merge of god and human seems inescapable. Watching Sherlock in those final scenes is like watching a stone be infused with blood. Similar moments in other TV series and films, featuring both male and female characters, have always fascinated me completely.
The final chunk is a sort of combination of the first two, and resides in the realm of fandom. Needless to say, the realm of fandom itself has plenty of its own problems, some of which have been brought up in this post's previous comments (most notably, the ever-complicated question of why nearly all women in fandom tend to express themselves through male characters, and why any of us relate so closely to them in the first place). But placing those problems aside for the time being, I've found many of the authors in the Sherlock fandom to be some of the most intelligent and insightful authors I've seen in a long time. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of horrible tropes and potholes of ignorance to be found, but more than anything else, the incredible re-tellings and re-toolings of this story are what's continued to fascinate me. With certain backgrounds stitched in, readings of certain characters can become entirely different. The terrible, wrong ugliness and the discovery of love can be combined in a safe space where one doesn't insult the other.
But am I insulting myself by looking to alternate constructions of this story in order to satisfy my fantasy, when the story itself was so clearly insulting me in the first place? I guess I'm the dumped girlfriend who's still in love after getting smacked around, so I find a rebound who looks just like my ex but treats me like a princess. And now I'm trying to justify why this is perfectly healthy to my friends (AKA you).
Honestly I am nearly asleep on my keyboard right now but I found this post through