sagestreet:

I had promised @ebaeschnbliah to write this meta sometime before Christmas when we were chatting about a few more of the infamous rainbows we had discovered on the show. So here goes…

Is there a metaphor for the closet on the show that’s more excruciatingly painful to watch than the bonfire scene in TEH? I don’t think so.

Because that bonfire is a giant closet metaphor: The whole thing goes up in flames (=John’s in love), John is writhing in pain (=heartbreak) and yet he just can’t speak out, no matter how hard he tries.

It’s very painful to watch. 

And it’s more than just a metaphor for the closet; it’s a metaphor for what it’s like to FALL IN LOVE while you’re still in the closet.

Because being deeply in love while still trapped in the closet is absolutely horrible, and Gatiss knows exactly what he’s talking about in this episode here.

Wanna take a look at the bonfire (=closet) scene step by step? Come along.

The whole scene starts by giving us…the moon. The ‘moon’ is Mary, remember (x)?

The moon is watching the bonfire scene from above right from the start.

This tells us…

• a) textually: that there’s no doubt that Mary has known right from the start that John’s in that bonfire.
• b) subtextually: that Mary has known right from the start that John’s closeted (=in love with a man and not out about his same-sex feelings)!!!

The ‘moon’ (=Mary) is watching all of what’s going on. (And you will see in a minute that that moon shot is no coincidence and not just an establishing shot to tell us what time of day the scene is taking place at. The whole scene is perfectly framed between the moon at the beginning and the sun at the end. So, the moon here is definitely a metaphor, ie, subtext.)

Then we see John coming to. He is trapped (literally and subtextually). Because subtextually John is trapped in the closet now that he is about to marry a woman:

And surprise, surprise…John looks miserable about the whole situation he is trapped in.

How do we know, though, that this bonfire is supposed to be read as a metaphor for the closet? Well…I give you…THE RAINBOW!

So, a situation in which you’re trapped and that’s tagged with a rainbow for our subtextual-interpretation-convenience…Yep, that’s the closet.

Wanna see how horrible it is to be trapped in something like this. Here have a close-up of John trying to scream in horror.

Then we get a shot of Mary which again (visually) connects her to the moon (remember that this happens just a few seconds after the moon shot I showed you above): Over Mary’s right shoulder, there’s a light that’s perfectly round and has the size of the moon as if it were supposed to remind us of that celestial body.

I don’t want to repeat myself, but this tells us that Mary knows that the man she’s about to marry is in the closet.

(Also, note the black gloves that mark her out as a Sherlock!mirror, albeit a quite dark and distorted one. We will see Sherlock wear those same gloves just a few moments later in a rather prominent scene.)

Let’s skip the next part because I’m not too keen on Mary pretending to be innocent, Mrs Hudson pretending to like the idea that John has a female fiancée and Sherlock pretending that he isn’t totally freaking out about John being in danger.

Also, people have already written lots and lots of metas about the John/James distinction, so no need to go into that here.

Here comes the really horrifying part: John’s not only trapped in the closet; he’s trapped in the closet and IN LOVE! Remember how ‘fire’ is a metaphor for love on the show?

This ‘Guy Fawkes’ (who’s dressed exactly like John with his chequered shirt) is being set on fire:

And if ‘burning’ is a metaphor for being in love…look what kind of love John is experiencing right now. Look how huuuuge that fire (=love) is:

And the crowd (=the audience watching this TV show) doesn’t understand what’s going on and is cheering this ‘bonfire’ on. 

Yeah, man, just one episode later, the TV audience of this show absolutely did cheer for Mary and John’s wedding, not understanding John’s situation.

In the bonfire (=closet), right at the centre of the metaphorical ‘fire’, John is trying, he is trying so, so hard to speak out, to scream…but he can’t. Because when you’re trapped in a loveless straight relationship with a woman, while actually being in love (=ablaze) with your same-sex best friend, you just CAN’T SPEAK OUT.

Try as he might, he can’t make a move (both literally and figuratively with Sherlock):

John’s in pain (heartbreak), he’s paralyzed, and he’s trapped (in a loveless relationship). But no sound escapes his open mouth…

It’s excruciating to watch. And I betcha Gatiss knew exactly what he was writing about here. Because let me tell you that’s what being in love while also being paralyzed, scared and ‘mute’ in the closet feels like.

Remember that subtextually it’s no coincidence that this bonfire incident happens right after Sherlock returned to John in TEH:

The moment Sherlock returned, John was basically trapped in his loveless relationship with Mary (=the bonfire-closet) while at the same time absolutely burning up because of his love for Sherlock. 

Let’s get back to our bonfire. 

The only one who can save John Watson from the horrible pain (=heartbreak) of burning alive (=being in love while being trapped, paralyzed and mute in the closet)…the only one who can save John from that horrible fate is Sherlock. 

And Sherlock does. As others have pointed out long before me, the little-girl-Sherlock!mirror (with a hat similar to the train-guy!hat Sherlock wore earlier in this episode)…this Sherlock!mirror is the only one who can hear John’s muted screams in the bonfire (=closet). And she’s horrified by it.

And Sherlock (as Sherlock himself) is the one who can bodily drag John out of the bonfire (=closet). They will both get pretty singed doing that, though…because they’re both metaphorically ‘on fire’ for each other.:)

As I pointed out above, the two pairs of black gloves highlight the difference between Sherlock and his dark!mirror Mary in this shot: Sherlock’s gloved hands are tenderly cupping John’s face. Mary’s gloved hands seem to be holding John down (=Sherlock loves John; Mary is just controlling him).

And because John is Sherlock’s metaphorical ‘sun’ (while Mary, as shown above, is nothing but a cold moon watching on), John’s face here morphs into the sun shining above Baker Street (the metaphorical residence of Sherlock’s ‘soul’):

Aaaand…scene!

(There’s a little bonus scene under the cut…)

Keep reading