Here’s another question, why the hell would Culverton Smith show anyone the letter to begin with??? He could have just torn it up and Faith would have forgotten about it. It doesn’t make sense.
Moriarty was the person I thought of, too, @hufflepuffpentaholicinthebau. Especially given how the entirety of S4 was billed to be some sort of ‘showdown’ concerning him. I believe it was @loveismyrevolution that thought it was meant to be Mycroft? I’m still on the fence with just how ‘bad’ he might have been, but that is another possibility that I think might hold water.
Because your question, @sherlock-meta-collection is one that has bugged me as well. What exaclty was the point of ‘whomever’ it was giving the note to ‘Faith’? Culverton took the letter from the ‘real’ Faith (though, how do we know that really since TD12 compromises memory, and how did Sherlock know about that whole meeting? To recreate it on the street perfectly? Are we to infer ‘Faith’ described it in such detail?) So, Smith took the letter to keep his daughter from ‘remembering’ (almost a kindness, in his twisted way) But, then gave it to ‘fake Faith’ in order to have Sherlock come after him? WHY? And how did Smith and ‘fake Faith’ know each other in order to be of use to one another??
All this is to me is another case of Sherlock re-using events, playing them out over and over in his head because haven’t we had this sort of thing before?
HOLMES: One small detail doesn’t quite make sense to me, however. Why engage me to prevent a murder you intended to commit?
It never made sense that distraught Lady Carmichael went to Mycroft for help with her husband, who then sent her to Sherlock in order to prevent his murder by ‘the bride’ only to actually go through with it herself. It didn’t make sense because Lady Carmichael didn’t kill Sir Eustace.
So, why would we believe Smith had, in a roundabout way, asked Sherlock for help in ‘preventing’ more murders?
(Pre-warning, this got a bit longer than I had intended)
@monikakrasnorada I also think that most, if not all of S4 is taking place in Sherlock’s head/MP. Even before I heard about EMP, I always got the feeling that the note in TLD was somehow from Sherlock and the deductions he was supposedly making about Faith, he was actually making about himself:
SHERLOCK: Well, you’ve changed. You no longer top up your tan and your roots are showing. SHERLOCK: Letting yourself go?
Says the scruffy, unkempt Sherlock who is usually immaculately dressed and primped.
SHERLOCK: Oh, of course you don’t own a car. You don’t need one, do you, living in isolation, no human contact, no visitors.
Remember what John just told his therapist in the beginning of the episode?
JOHN: I haven’t seen him. No-one’s seen him. He’s locked himself away in his flat. God knows what he’s up to.
Then, Sherlock goes on to deduce:
SHERLOCK: Cost-cutting’s clearly a priority for you. Look at the size of your kitchen: teeny-tiny. (He walks past her towards the right-hand window then turns back to her.) Must be a bit annoying when you’re such a keen cook.
Says the man that, although his family seems to be wealthy, needs to have a flatmate for some reason, and so far as the small kitchen/keen cook goes, I’ll just submit these stills from later in the scene:
Then, later when Sherlock and Faith are sitting at the bus stop eating chips
SHERLOCK: You see the fold in the middle? For the first few months you kept this hidden, folded inside a book. (He looks at it closely. Beside him, Faith is eating from the carton of chips on her lap.) SHERLOCK: Must have been a tightly packed shelf, going by the severity of the crease. (Brief flashback to the folded piece of paper being put inside the pages of a book.) SHERLOCK: So obviously you were keeping it hidden from someone living in the same house at a level of intimacy where privacy could not be assumed. (As he speaks there’s a flashback of a hand putting the closed book back in its place on a shelf amongst many other books.) SHERLOCK: Conclusion: relationship.
This is referring to when John was living with Sherlock in 221B. So if the note is real, Sherlock kept it hidden away.
P.S. Does anyone else think that those hands look like they belong to Benedict Cumberbatch???
Also, that shadow sure as shit looks like Dr. John H Watson by the way, and I think others have addressed this fact, but I’m not sure who at the moment.
(More under the cut, this got reeeeeeeaaaaalllyy long)
So, there are some of the Sherlock
comparisons, but what about the note, what exactly is the note and what is it
trying to tell us? That’s where I’m having a difficult time. I have noticed
that there is a list/note theme in the show (others as well, I think there are
even meta’s, but I’ll have to check later). We have the conversation between
Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock in TSoT:
MRS HUDSON:
Your mother has a lot to answer for. (She takes the cup and saucer over to him.)
SHERLOCK: Mm, I know. I have a list. Mycroft
has a file.
And of course the many instances of list
conversations in TAB:
MYCROFT HOLMES:
You’re in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. Have you made a list?
HOLMES: Of what?
MYCROFT HOLMES: Everything.We will need a list.
And in the “real world” on the plane:
SHERLOCK: Maybe there are one or two things that I know that you
don’t. (He looks across to Mycroft, who returns his gaze.)
MYCROFT (pointedly): Oh, there are. (He
pauses for a moment.) Did you make a list? (Sherlock has looked away again and is chewing on a thumbnail. He
turns to look at his brother again.)
SHERLOCK: You’ve put on weight. That waistcoat’s clearly newer than the jacket
…
MYCROFT (angrily): Stop this. Just stop it.Did you make a list?
SHERLOCK: Of what?
MYCROFT: Everything, Sherlock. Everything you’ve taken.
…
MYCROFT (his face turned away): We have an agreement, my
brother and I, ever since that day. (Sherlock bites his lip. In a cutaway flashback, a much younger
Sherlock is lying on a mattress on a floor. Nearby, candles are burning in
bottles. Sherlock is writhing and grimacing under the influence of the drugs
he’s taken. Mycroft, apparently in his early/mid-twenties, is sitting on the
mattress near his brother’s feet and now reaches down to a piece of paper lying
next to Sherlock’s legs.)
MYCROFT (voiceover): Wherever I find him … (In the present, Sherlock closes his eyes.
In the past, Mycroft picks up the piece of paper and unfolds it to read it
while his young brother continues to writhe in agony.)
MYCROFT (voiceover): … whatever back alley or doss house … (In the present, Mycroft sinks back in his seat.)
MYCROFT: … there will always be a list.
I am not sure exactly what to make of it, but
it does seem to me that Faith’s note actually looks like a list. If you try to
imagine for a minute that you don’t know the story behind Faith’s note
It says:
Police Office
Judge
Broadcaster
Me
I need to kill
someone
Who?
That looks like a list of people that someone
needs to kill, and notice that ME is crossed out in blood, like the person has
chosen to kill themselves from the list.
I don’t have concrete conclusions, I just
wanted to put down all of my thoughts on Faith’s note. I will have to clean
this up later and make a proper meta out of it.
Ever since Sherlock series 4 came out, collectively we were like “what the HELL is this?!?! This doesn’t make any sense!” BUT after many months of tossing ideas around the fandom, we have made theories that could explain the weirdness, but nothing we can all agree on. Now, this meta here may be absolute garbage to you, but I believe, in my heart of hearts, I’ve solved it. Please read it in its entirety with an open mind before you reblog it just to tell me I suck.
Thanks in advance, you da best
Paige
Here’s the short version: Sherlock actually jumped at the end of The Reichenbach Fall, just as Doyle intended him to die. Gatiss and Moffat said they are correcting something in this adaptation that no one else has gotten right before. Many of us assumed the homosexual romance was the one thing they were changing, but we were punched in the face right after The Final Problem came out. Gatiss and Moffat are changing the sacrifice. Holmes was intended to die for his friends but Doyle needed more money and rewrote the series after “The Final Problem”. That turned Holmes’ sacrifice into a cruel joke against Watson. This is what BBC Sherlock is fixing, and we’re about to see it come to fruition.
I know many theorists despise the homosexual reading of Holmes and Watson, while many people in general despise theorists on this site. That’s fine, I don’t care how people feel about gay theories and/or TJLC and its followers. But I’m here to tell you TJLC, at its core as a concept, was right. You may hate Moffat and Gatiss, you may think Sherlock is a piece of shit show, and that’s fine, you do you. But hear this one meta out, please. I think even the hardest skeptic can at least apprectiate the thought and logic behind this.
@the-7-percent-solution What about John’s blog? It mentions the wedding, and Sherlock and John talk to each other in the comments.
I feel it would very complicated to explain the whole S3 if it was EMP as well… for instance, why would Sherlock ‘dream’ about Magnussen?
But that “open your eyes” bit??… I haven’t gone back to the episode to hear it and I have chills down my spine already. They told us, but we didn’t listen??!….
I was thinking about that, too. Why does the blog update.
But Paige, You’re awesome and it’s an awesome theorie
The blog, in my opinion, should be looked at like the original Doyle canon. The canon had flaws – like Mrs Hudson changing names or the fact that there were two James Moriartys. The blog, like the originals, are mostly written by Watson. There is no reason to believe the blog is absolute truth. This unreliable narrator was rampant in the originals (if that’s what you’d use to explain the major inconsistencies), therefore why should we assume the blog to be an honest representation of what’s happened, when the original text is not? We already know the dates are occasionally messed up. It’s just as flawed as Doyle’s version. And that’s the whole point. You can read the blog as symbolic – which i think you should – meaning the cases are mostly 2-leveled metaphors. “Happily Ever After” and “The Geek Interpreter” take on a whole new meaning symbolically.
It’s just like in Doyle’s canon.
/Perhaps one day the real story may be told/
Also, @sherlocking-out-loud Magnussen is a representation of the media – can you IMAGINE what would happen if the media got news of Mary’s true identity? Can you imagine what would happen if the media knew of Sherlock Holmes’ homosexual secrets? This is why Magnussen, when threatened at gunpoint, told Mary “but what about your husband?” and the fact that her husband (John) is so English and honest. Magnussen, the blackmailer, knows a secret that will topple Mary’s life and make John leave. What this really is is the media getting ahold of the true homosexual love story, outing John, and knowing “it would break him”. John, who can’t handle others suspecting what he is to Sherlock. That flashdrive is everything she’s ever done – Magnussen getting ahold of that file is like the media seeing all the homosexual proof of the last 120 years.
Magnussen asks John if he’s read the flashdrive. John refused to look at all the proof of Sherlock’s gay love. Magnussen thinks that’s a pity – he thinks John could get off on that kind of stuff. You know, the wild assassin (gay) life he’s always been attracted to but told himself to stay away from.
Okay, so I understand why people think S4 sucks, and why TFP sucks in particular. I understand how people perceive John and Sherlock and Mary, and the issues people have with their characterization, ‘cause there’s plenty of posts about that. I suppose these are more analytical subjects. I understand why people are disappointed with the plot twists, or with Mary’s narration. I get there are many things that Sherlock fans wish would have happened differently, or just… not happened (say, the beating or Mary’s being rehabilitated by the narrative, etc).
What I’m not clear on, even all this time later, is what’s so *emotionally* painful specifically about TFP in particular (for TJLCers). It seems to go beyond a lack of explicitly canon Johnlock, though maybe I’m wrong. It seems people think TFP is somehow uniquely destructive of the queer reading in general (as well as plot continuity? I guess) in a way I’m not grasping intuitively, and that trumps the extensive levels of angst we’ve had in TST and TLD (not to mention Series 3). That’s what I’d like to have someone help me understand.
Like… TST was painful for me ‘cause Mary was there with them all the time and Sherlock seemed so oblivious to John’s discomfort, and Sherlock joked about how she’s a better partner than John, and then at the end, John told Sherlock to get lost. That’s not to mention Mary’s death scene and John’s growls and wails, which were painful to watch on several levels. John’s sudden rejection of Sherlock afterwards was naturally super painful, not to mention bewildering. Then TLD has John beat up a vulnerable and unresisting Sherlock, only to reject him yet *again* and return the cane as a symbol of how much he means it. TLD also had Sherlock POV angst big-time, with that awful scene where he remembers ASiP!John; then at the Thames with Eurus, he screams when she says ‘anyone’ and he remembers John’s rejection, and later where he says he doesn’t want to die. Then there’s that awful moment John tells Sherlock he only rescued him because of his inner Mary, and he pushes him at Irene with all sincerity, after bemoaning his own lost chances with Mary. Like… I’m traumatized even thinking of these things. The only happy or even private John and Sherlock moment in these two eps was the hug.
In terms of contrast, John and Sherlock get along for all of TFP, Sherlock calls John family and he smiles, they make plans together and basically act like a well-oiled machine. Yes, Sherlock still acts a bit ‘not good’, but again: this is normal for Sherlock, as opposed to walking on eggshells and *still* being brutally rejected, like in TLD. The worst thing I’ve seen people accuse Sherlock of is perhaps ignoring John’s ‘Vatican Cameos’ and/or prioritizing the case in a dangerous situation with Eurus, but that’s Sherlock being efficient and focused on the big picture or the plan, and he’s *always* been like that. Then we have an open ending where they solve cases and raise Rosie together, forever and ever. As opposed to the weirdness and unending emotional torture ever since TEH, it’s TFP that’s traumatized people the most? Why? Any insight appreciated.
I think there’s a different expectation of TFP because it’s the last episode of the series. There are things that people can see as transitory in episodes 1 and 2 of a series that seem a lot more final/shitty in the third episode. (Especially if this is possibly the last episode ever).
There was hype in the media surrounding the show and series 4 about it making history, etc. that set expectations high and so I think people feel a let down about the lack of that uhm climax?
I think there’s a tonal oddness about TFP that makes the whole universe feel like it’s not itself. I think that’s happened at other times but it’s felt by a lot of people more severely in TFP.
Re: the ending, the voiceover, I think for a lot of people, spoils whatever positive things appear onscreen. It creates, again, an odd tone that makes the ending not seem real, seem almost like a parody.
Overall, the plot, for me, was boring, it felt stilted. These set pieces where they go from one room to another just didn’t work for me. I didn’t feel like there was a real threat to them, I didn’t feel tension. Unlike Moriarty’s game in TGG, this game felt very low-stakes and just, fake.
Granted I didn’t love TST or TLD but I felt more invested, and I felt there was more suspense.
I think there’s tons of possible subtext for the idea that John and Sherlock became a couple at the end of TLD and are together in TFP (I first heard that from you, actually) but it just wasn’t what I wanted to see with regards to them being romantically involved. I thought that their romantic entanglement was becoming increasingly clear in the text by series 3 so to have it buried by the end of series 4, felt like an anti-climax.
I think from a Johnlock perspective it was pretty blah and from the perspective of the rest of the plot it felt pretty blah, too. I didn’t think there was enough realism or humanity to Eurus or to the Eurus plot to like grab onto, personally. I’ve felt more invested in like the old woman dying, and she’s a random person, than in what supposedly happened with the third Holmes sibling, unfortunately.
PS by, ‘a lot of people’, I mean me. This is just how I feel and I’m guessing others might feel this, too.
Thanks for this! This isn’t exactly an explanation for *trauma* (more feeling ‘blah’), but I imagine being disappointed or let down enough could itself be traumatizing? I have heard things about hating the voiceover, of course, it’s just… you know, like, of all the awful things that happened on the show (just in TLD and TST alone), that doesn’t really… rank in my mind? It’s not even, you know… angsty. Still, well, I get that it’s the last ep and that makes everything feel super important and final, I guess. So yeah, that helps.
I think it is just because people kept thinking it’d be fixed in the final episode – that everything painful and wrong in the previous episodes wouldn’t be real or would be explained somehow – and then it wasn’t.
That’s probably a lot of it, definitely: people not taking all that stuff at face value and thinking it’d be made better. I myself did think that. I didn’t think it wouldn’t be real (that’s just… not a thought I have… ever), but I suppose I did think it’d be fixed. And of course that didn’t happen. But… I mean… John and Sherlock were ok, so on some level I was cheered up. John was himself again, so was Sherlock. It was over. The first ep in two seasons that they were a team. Anyway, we didn’t get the ‘how’, but I was pleased. Plus I enjoyed the plot and was at the edge of my seat with intense tension throughout. In any case, obviously I’m the weird one here, haha.
I don’t think that feeling blah about something that you’ve been passionate about for years ends up being a blah feeling about TFP. I mean, I’m unlikely to get colourful here but I was most definitely crushed by the end of TFP. To feel like this historical climax was a bland let down, was nothing if not devastating. I would think that the fact that I’m answering this question would imply that I was very upset with the episode without having to reveal any personal details. Please don’t dismiss my response as one of someone who is indifferent to this show or to series 4.
I definitely didn’t feel like John or Sherlock were themselves again by the end. It felt like they were destroyed by the end and its, ‘who you are doesn’t really matter’, theme. If the end shows these characters and they don’t seem like themselves then the effect is devastating. If that’s not really them then who cares if they look happy or not? If the end seems fake and the drama felt superficial then it’s worse than if they’d left us with TLD and its problems as the ending. It feels like there’s no cliffhanger not because everything is okay in the end but rather because everything feels fake by the end which is deeply unsatisfying and upsetting.
I was replying to your previous post as you were writing this, @just-sort-of-happened–yes to all of this as well.
TFP had baggage. The problem was MORE than the episode itself. Namely the BFI incident where Moffatt bullied a young fan for asking a ‘relationship’ question and then went on to insist that John DID NOT move back to Baker Street. This incident went online immediately and there was a Twitter reaction from LGBTQ viewers which lasted for several days. People who hadn’t seen the episode were outraged by the online video of Moffatt, some vulnerable LGBTQ fans were in deep distress that the representation they had been hoping for had not only been denied but ridiculed. In the midst of all this we had TFP ep leak. So many people viewed it early, and went into denial. They simply refused to believe an ep so strange was real. The leak felt staged, managed by TPTB, as the tweets to not watch it from Sue brought attention to the fact it existed. When the ep did air, and it was indeed the same as the leaked ep,it was inferior to TLD, and for all the reasons @just-sort-of-happened pointed out. It was even rejected by general viewers and had just over 5 million viewers versus the 8-12 million of other episode.
TJLC community were very attuned to the BFI feedback, the Twitter reaction and the details of the leak. Many tjlcers were banking on a kiss/confirmation since SDCC, as Ben, in his exuberance at working with Martin, was hinting at it, and Amanda had blurted out how groundbreaking and history making the episode was. TFP was just not either of those things and if there was a kiss filmed then they pulled it. Emotions ran very high over all of this, and many leading tjlcers left the fandom in anger and sadness. Many went into the tin-foil-hat battalion and dove into the episodes looking for clues that it was all not real and a Lost Special or s5 will redeem this AU. All in all a huge emotional knock for TJLC. Plus the ‘hate’ and ridicule sent to tjlcers post season end was huge and we felt as if the creators had thrown us to the wolves and then blamed us for putting ourselves in a vulnerable position.
SO when you wonder why TJLC folks were experiencing an emotionally painful reaction to TFP, you have to see the big picture and not just the episode itself. It’s many things, plus the loss of a dream held since TSoT aired.
I think one of Mofftiss big problems is that they think the success of Sherlock is due to them. When actually the success of Sherlock is mostly due to Ben and Martin as Sherlock and John and their fantastic chemistry and great acting.
You separate John and Sherlock or have a chaperone there the whole time, as was done in S4, and their pretty lackluster writing really starts to shine through.
Another big problem they have is that they think Benedict and Martin are stars because of their writing. Impossible to say, of course, but they failed at repeating the star-making with Amanda and Sian. Even though they tried very hard.
POINT.
I think that given the divide in show quality, we also have to give a fair bit of credit to Paul McGuigan, especially for the consistencies of s1-2. It was s3 when they switched to the Doctor Who model of a different director for each ep—and directors who admittedly were out to put their own spin on things and top each other—that the show seemed to begin sinking under its own weight. What works for the “top this!” episodic style of Doctor Who, where the narrative has fluctuated and tied itself in knots regularly, is not what works for the relatively short arc the writers attempted with Sherlock BBC and its sequel, Mary BBC. Such consistency as the latter had does build on the work of the actors, but it’s clear that they were receiving different direction by then as well as being indulged more in their favorite “bits” (BC’s waiter in s3 and drugged Shakespeare in s4; MF’s asshole hair and demeanor that he’s been playing a lot recently in things like Startup or Civil War). The lack of cohesiveness may have been there from the beginning, but I don’t think that the writing alone held it in check until s3.
I don’t want to get involved in the drama but I just want to say that there were So Many Issues with s4 and 99% of them have nothing to do with johnlock, so please don’t reduce the entire argument to that just because you don’t ship it.
People have legitimate, reasonable issues with this series that merit discussion and to throw the “you just wanted them to be together” argument in our faces is to ignore all of that in favour of blind faith in the show.
One big reason why complaints by Johnlockers get reduced to their ship is because in all of their complaints about this season, not one of them is about the treatment of the women on the show. In my opinion, it delegitimizes your argument if you’ll complain about everything from Mycroft’s personality changes to the throwaway use of the Garrideb brothers but don’t mention anything about
Mary being killed for genuinely no reason other than to create tension between Sherlock and John
Not actually showing the grief over her death for anyone other than Sherlock and John (I know at the end of the day this show is about these two men but this was a great opportunity to show them that the world they live in doesn’t actually revolve around them by showing the grief of Molly Hooper or Mrs. Hudson.)
Having Mary, never once, mention her child in those stupid fucking DVDs. Everything about her character post-death was to bring Sherlock and John back to being bffs.
What was the point of having Rosie exist at all? Just to make Mary’s death sadder? John barely spent any time with that child and there wasn’t even the casual explanation of “It’s just too hard to look at her. I keep seeing Mary and remembering that I failed her….” blah blah blah psychology and grief.
Molly. Fucking. Hooper. Has done literally everything in the world for both Sherlock and John. Helped save Sherlock’s life. Has been there for him through multiple relapses where he puts his life (again, of the man she canonically loves) at stake for a game/case/experiment. But she’s always there. For John she’s also become a close enough friend to warrant being a godmother to his daughter, and probably is the one to babysit her the most while John does his brooding. And what is she reduced to? A very painful and humiliating scene that was almost a lot worse. Then utterly dismissive and outright shitty comments by Moffat about the emotional impact that scene had on that character.
There was no bridge between the ILY scene and the end of TFP when she prances into 221B, beaming?????
Mummy Holmes was in like two scenes and less than three lines to express the loss, confusion, anger, heartbreak, and betrayal over what happened with Eurus. It was most definitely not enough.
Two of the three villains this season were women.
No Sally. No Anthea. No Irene.
Just Mary (fridged) Molly (devastated) and Mrs. Hudson (practically a walking joke)
Frankly, if the complaints are longer than three paragraphs and don’t include even a mention about Mary or Molly, I straight up won’t read it. Because I feel like that was a major problem in s4. Not the biggest, by any stretch of the imagination, but they absolutely deserve to be acknowledged amongst the complaints.
I appreciate your point @mydarlingsarah (it won’t let me tag you, sry), but these are things that get discussed and complained about in the Johnlock fandom. These things have to be acknowledged, because this season was so misogynistic and still there are people telling me I should “stop whining about two fictional character not making out on screen”. Of course I’m dissapointed because I have been queerbaited, but what I find far more distressing is the answer of some people to my valid critique. As if we should accept everything TPTB do and support them no matter what just because we are in a fandom. There has to be critique! So I agree with all of your points of the horrible treatment of women in the show except for one: that we Johnlockers would get reduced to our ship because we wouldn’t voice that criticism. Many beside me did. And all too often there are responses we should stop whining. Sometimes remarks that we should accept that Sherl0lly is canon…? And while I accept other ships (I 100% think Sherlock is portrayed as a gay man, but they left it ambiguous, so think what you wanna think) I am shocked by the way a few Sherl0lly shippers ignore the bad treatment of Molly just to see their ship as canon. Don’t get me started on how the Mary’s story arc was reduced to… whatever the hell that was. I have voiced serious complaints about s4 besides the queerbaiting: – The horrible misogyny. My points were mostly about Mary and Molly but your arguments are very good. – The way they portrayed the violent outburst of John towards Sherlock. It was accepted because of Sherlock’s behaviour and never resolved. It showed that you should accept violence if you think you deserve it and that is such a horribly wrong and destructive message. Actually this was shown again by Sherlock forgiving Eurus. You do not have to accept and forgive the violence that was directed towards you to be conaidered “a good man”. It just made me sick. – The fact that they had explicitely queer villains without explicitely queer heros to balance it out. If just the bad people in your story are queer (oh btw, they actually connetcted Eurus’ queerness to rape.. nice touch) the message you send is pretty clear. – The way they portrayed mentall illness. Just what exactly did they want to show through Eurus? I don’t understand her character the slightest… what illness should she have to get mental superpowers? Why would she get imprisoned like a mad women in the victorian era? Sure, show mentally ill people as something dangerous and inhuman, what could possibly go wrong?
And still the only answer the BBC complaints team sent was about queerbaiting. It was terribly disrespectful. And still I see people being smug about this. And still I see people saying that the ones complaining are embarassing. That they’d put shame on fandom.
This is not a problem of Johnlockers not reacting to the misogyny. This is a problem of people reducing the criticism of Johnlockers to their dissapointment of being queerbaited.
This post (”What Moffat Doesn’t Understand About Grief”) fascinated me, because the author talks about Moffat’s fear of consequences–how he’ll introduce world-shattering grief, or sacrifice, or hurt, or change, in his Doctor Who characters’ lives, and then never follow up on it. There are no apparent consequences.
That’s exactly what makes BBC Sherlock feel so unresolved. We kept waiting for the consequences to come home, and they never did. There are huge things and subtler ones unaddressed, things that should have changed them in meaningful ways: Sherlock being tortured.
Mary shooting Sherlock. Sherlock nearly confessing his love on the tarmac. Sherlock overdosing on the plane, reading John’s blog. Mycroft begging John to take care of him. John attacking Sherlock after Mary’s death. John saying he wanted more than his marriage to Mary. John confronting Sherlock about his need for love. Mycroft lying to Sherlock about his sister.
The emotional stakes keep being upped, but there’s no closure. The things happen, there are tears or shouting, and then the story simply continues, without change, or growth, or discussion, or resolution. They end up in the exact same place as they began; 221B, two friends solving crimes and cleaning up after explosions, still more myth than men.
Emotional moments can’t be introduced just for the hell of it; they have to lead somewhere, mean something. Once I thought the authors had a plan. But now I think we’ll have to go on making our own meaning out of it all, through fanart and fic and meta and whatever means we have; for the sake of these characters’ sanity, and our own, and for some kind of truly happy ending.
All of this! As a writer, there are some WIPs that I’ve been refining for years because the emotional consequences must be dealt with and I didn’t want to go on as if nothing happened or slap-dash a cheap fix. We were told this season was about consequences, but was it, really?
This is a large part of what’s lead to Moffat’s wild popularity, I think. As a writer, he’s in the rather unusual and ambivalently enviable situation of his major weakness being a huge part of what draws readers (viewers) to his work, because it doesn’t become apparent until some time has passed that it is a weakness. It looks like a setup for a wonderful payoff… that doesn’t come.
I don’t think that anyone would claim that, as a writer, Moffat is very invested in *realism* – that much is true.
And yet, in a way… I think his approach as a writer is much truer to my experience of life than the above comments allow.
The emotional stakes keep being upped, but there’s no closure. The
things happen, there are tears or shouting, and then the story simply
continues, without change, or growth, or discussion, or resolution.
Closure isn’t something guaranteed by real life, nor is resolution. Nor even discussion, since a lot of real people in this world are not comfortable discussing heavy emotional topics.
These are things fanfic writers and readers love because they are emotionally satisfying, not because they are honest or true to our lived experience. The idea that everyone will sit down and talk out their problems, and speak openly about their true feelings, and have epiphanies, and at last become mature, healthy, actualized, emotionally honest people – this is a fantasy. It’s a fantasy that comes from self-help books, not fairytales, but it’s a fantasy nonetheless.
I think one of the funniest and yet truest moments in all of Sherlock is this exchange:
SHERLOCK:
Well, we’re in a good place. It’s, um … very affirming.
JOHN: You got that from a book.
SHERLOCK: Everyone got that from a book.
Here, Moffat is playing with this self-help fantasy – the idea that if you use the right words in the right order, that will somehow demonstrate proper emotional growth and maturity. When really it’s just using borrowed language to fulfill an appealing cliche.
We love this stuff in fanfic exactly *because* it rarely happens in real life. In real life, change happens, but it isn’t always change for the better. Growth happens, but not without a lot of backwards slippage into bad old habits, neuroses, and defense mechanisms.
One thing you can say about real life: things happen, the “story” continues, whether or not anyone has acheived closure or learned any valuable life lessons. We have no choice but to keep moving forward.
You all are perfectly entitled to see this narrative choice as a failure on Moffat’s part. Personally, I see it as an example of the way he consistently reaches for greater, larger truths about the human experience.
Ah, but while closure might not happen in reality,
consequences of some kind almost always do. Emotions do mean *something*, even
if it’s effed up and strangulated and comes out in involuntary behaviour while
never being spoken of. That was acknowledged to some extent in S1 and S1 – John
is clearly affected in some way by his war experience, whether you call it PTSD
or not – then largely abandoned in S3 and S4 – Sherlock seems to feel no
physical or psychological consequences of being tortured in Serbia.
It seems pretty unlikely that Moffat is entirely unable to
grasp the dynamics of emotional consequence, but judging strictly by the end result they aren’t his strong
point or his interest. Once the audience for Sherlock was built, he was free to
shelve that element entirely in favour of those that play to his strengths. The
resolution of the S1 climax at the start of S2 was unsatisfying but it existed;
by contrast the resolution of the S2 climax at the start of S3 was
non-existent. That’s a step change from a world where certain conventions are
regarded, if half-heartedly, to one where they are ignored.
In order to get something out of S3 and S4, I’ve taken to
regarding each episode as a self-contained AU – this seems to work pretty well,
and it does allow for that most positive of interpretations, the idea that each
episode contains its own set of truths. You do indeed get more emotional and
psychological truths per square inch if you freely contradict yourself, because
of the shifting and messy nature of those truths.
Still, getting yourself into Moffat’s professional position
in highly commercial TV and then shifting your focus entirely to your own artistic
idiosyncrasies seems rather like reaching for your great truths from the top of
a stepladder while shouting ‘stepladders are for wimps!’
Ok, fair warning, I am about to wade into some stuff that I am not an expert in. So people should feel free to correct me.
First off: If you like stories without any closure, where questions are not answered (even if the characters clearly know the answers to those questions), then great. I’m glad you enjoyed S4.
But it is entirely predictable that it was unpopular, and it has nothing to do with fanfiction.
Closure is not something people only want in fanfic. In Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting by Robert McKee (often considered a Very Important Book when it comes to screenwriting), he identifies three types of plot: archplot, miniplot, and antiplot. He portrays them as three corners of a triangle. None of these are inherently good or bad, but he does note that the farther you get from archplot and closer to miniplot or antiplot, the less popular your story will be. People are drawn to archplot: clear cause and effect, external conflicts, linear time, consistent realities, a single, active protagonist, and… closed endings. Changing some of the variables moves you toward miniplot, changing others moves you toward antiplot.
Many successful movies move toward miniplot or antiplot by messing with one or two of these qualities. Some movies that are considered very high quality push hard in one of these directions – but these movies are generally not huge commercial successes.
Taking this frame and applying it to Sherlock, it’s easy to see why S4, and especially TFP, were very unpopular, even (maybe especially) with rabid fans of the show.
The first two seasons tended very strongly toward archplot. Timelines were messed with occasionally, but other than that, the show very clearly had a consistent reality where events were causal rather than coincidental (this is actually sort of the entire basis of Sherlock Holmes, or else his deductions don’t work); a single, active protagonist in Sherlock; external conflicts (cases to be solved); and closed endings. The few exceptions to this are the things that a lot of fans don’t like – for example, the pool scene being resolved by the coincidence of Moriarty receiving a phone call rather than by some active decision on the part of any of the characters.
S3 started to move away from the archplot, with many different decisions that work against each of these principles. Fans disagree about which of these decisions they like or dislike. Did you find the extremely nonlinear storytelling in TSoT fun, or confusing? Did you think that leaving the question of why they forgave Mary so easily open was a solid nod to realism, or sloppiness/inability to actually figure out an answer themselves? (Ha, guess which side I’m on.) Did you like that the conflicts became more internal, or do you miss the old school cases?
S4 (and TAB, but like honestly I barely remember what actually happened there so I’ma ignore it) basically threw everything about the archplot out the window (except, arguably, that Sherlock was still the single protagonist). And the thing about throwing everything out the window, all at once, especially in TFD, is that it didn’t even solidly go into the miniplot or the antiplot camp – it did it all. Which to many people made it seem like a mess of bad storytelling, rather than a calculated breaking of certain rules because they needed to be broken.
I think the thing that hit a lot of people the hardest was the move away from a consistent, causal reality. Sherlock Holmes has to have a consistent reality that obeys cause-and-effect in order to function as Sherlock Holmes. You throw in random factors that he couldn’t possibly have known about, memory-wiping, mind control, and things like that, and we’re not really telling a Sherlock Holmes story anymore.
But then when you couple that with open endings… Okay, open endings are realistic, but when suddenly nothing else in the show is realistic, even by its own universe’s standards, it’s extra-jarring and feels very out of place. There’s a reason open endings is over on the miniplot side and consistent realities is over on the anti-plot side: when you combine them, it feels less like they wanted to make it realistic and more like they went too far in making their universe inconsistent and just couldn’t resolve everything, or didn’t try hard enough at least.
Now I’m going to wander into my personal opinion, not anything McKee actually said… Personally, I think that the passive protagonist is the hardest of these non-archplot elements to pull off. It’s the one that’s most likely to kill your story all by itself, and the one you have to compensate for most carefully to make it work. It can certainly be done, and one well, but if you’re not careful you can have all the other elements of archplot and then have a passive protagonist drain all the life out of a story.
So in TFP, adding Sherlock’s passivity (he’s always reacting to what Eurus throws at him, rarely making his own decisions to move the plot along) to what is already a bit of a jumble of non-linear storytelling, inconsistent reality, lack of coherent cause-and-effect – it just makes the whole package harder to salvage for most viewers. Plus the conflicts are almost all internal. Yes, Eurus is an external opponent, but all the challenges she presents involve internal struggles. Which, honestly, absent all this other stuff could have been amazing! It’s possible that the sense of frustration and futility caused by combining this with the passive protagonist could have really been emotionally hard-hitting… if it weren’t combined with all of the above.
If all they’d done was leave lots of threads untied, lots of decisions unexplained, lots of plots hanging open, then (especially if they didn’t do it in a particularly methodical manner) people would probably still have a vague sense of dissatisfaction. When you combine with everything else, though, it starts to feel like they just got so distracted by their own cleverness that they forgot to tie things up, or didn’t even notice it was hanging open to begin with. (Especially given that in interviews before S4, they promised that lots of plot threads would be resolved. Were they lying, or did they actually think they did that?)
So basically: If you liked S4 and TFP in particular, good for you. It’s unconventional storytelling, that’s for sure, and I’m sure that alone attracts some people.
But it’s not at all surprising that it wasn’t popular. It’s not because we don’t like things that are “honest” or “true,” or because we read too much fanfic. It’s because they lured us in with episodes that were mostly structurally solid archplots (which, remember, archplot doesn’t mean trite or cliched – lots of really excellent writing is archplot), then threw literally all of it out the window this season. And it didn’t feel like they did it to be “honest” or for any other principled, sound storytelling reason. It felt like they did it because breaking rules is cool and clever, so they wanted to break all the rules just because they can.
Holy crap, the additions to this post are amazing.
What’s even worse about this unconventional storytelling–the unresolved, the open, the anti-plot–is the very *artificial* way in which the show ends: that voiceover and montage. It is jarring. And given to us by a character that doesn’t deserve it and removes us from the protagonists.
this is the rudest shit when are we going to tear them to the ground
THANK YOU I’m so pissed
this is an unacceptable way to respond to a complaint, it was unprofessional and rude and unempathetic and this show deserves to burn
I don’t see how it’s unprofessional and rude though? Just because you don’t like the response doesn’t mean it’s rude.
accusing a complainant of using a form letter is unprofessional. it takes fewer words to say that they received several complaints of the same nature, and moreover to assert that is spiteful and reflects an appalling lack of the qualities that should be sought for someone WORKING in customer complaints. “we do not accept the allegations” is also just…not how you should respond to a customer complaint. it’s important to validate the concern of someone who is dissatisfied with your product and if you can do nothing to solve the problem, to apologize. i’m a vocal complainer to companies that fuck up and this is the first time that i myself have been blamed for my grievances. even if they are my fault, you don’t write that in a letter responding to a complaint.
Them making a point how several of the responses seem to be along the same lines doesn’t sound rude to me. They made an observation. Is that an attack? Not really.
The allegations also, I’m guessing, is of queerbaiting. I haven’t watched the most recent season of Sherlock, since I’ve been busy with psychology work and my RP blogs, but I hadn’t gotten much in the vibe of “I wanna be with you” between John and Sherlock. So… the idea of it being queerbaiting to me is pretty farfetched reaching in my mind.
Also, they did say they’d register your complaint, meaning take it into account.
Overall, it doesn’t feel rude to me.
they absolutely did not have to accuse me of using a form letter. they could have left that out and the substance would have been the same, especially because i wrote my complaint myself. i guess subtext is up to interpretation but i’m not the only one who sees it and mark gatiss has admitted that he likes “playing” with “homoerotic” subtext. and if they knew that, they didn’t have to state outright that it was “never” there because it really, really was, and even the creators admit it.
I do not see them as accusing you specifically of having done a form letter with your message. But yes, that part could have been left about, you are correct.
Maybe they are unaware of him having said that? I’ve never heard of anything along those lines being said that anyone enjoys doing. So, this could be ignorance on their part, if it was really said. Could you provide a link to where this had been said?
Where had the creators also admitted to having put subtext for a relationship between Sherlock and John? If you can, could you provide a link to where this has been stated?
i’m on mobile but you can check out @skulls-and-tea and there is also a youtube series explaining it in detail.
@thetakubooty they also sent this exact same response to people who did not complain about Johnlock. They sent it to people complaining about media coverage, representation of women, queer coding villains and even bad ACD references. Rude or not it’s just horrible PR response
Ok, story time:
I work for a game company. Because I am bilingual I sit in on interviews and I screen applications – even when they are not for the art department (which is where I work).
We were hiring a community manager / customer service person once, and one of the tests was “How would you reply to [this complaint]?”
One of the answers was something to the effect of “Dear [user], I see you didn’t like [thing], but we here at [place] liked it very much. We can’t please everyone, but we try to do our best”
This person was screened out of our recruitment in a second, because that was already considered too rude. Not necessarily because of the content, but because of the phrasing. Customer service NEEDS to use diplomatic phrasings.
If the BBC response was an application to Customer Service, it wouldn’t even be looked at. It is attrociously written. And they do know how to write answers, because Gareth-the-CS-guy answered in a way that you would expect.
My guess is: this was not written by a CS person. This was written by the production or with the influence of the production. If this was a CS person, they’d be fired.
Here’s my big write-up on what I think is going on if EMP theory (extended mind palace theory) is correct. I’m not totally sold on it, but I’m even less sold on every other theory I’ve heard, so I’m going to just make the most solid case I can.
Feel free to raise objections, ask questions, contribute additional evidence, or point me toward metas you’ve already written on points I bring up. Please note that I really suck at keeping up with responses and such, though, so anyone who reads this should also trawl the notes.
If EMP theory is real it is integral to the Johnlock reveal, so they would not reveal it in a screening. Same goes for things like Mary being alive, Moriarty possibly being alive, Rosie never having been born; those are all contingent on EMP theory. Any fake version of TFP would have to keep Mary and Moriarty dead, Rosie alive, etc.
I saw the Russian screener and it only makes me feel that EMP theory is more likely.
There was nothing in the version of TFP that was screened that explains any of the weirdness in T6T or TLD via any other competing theory. So you either have to believe that they’ll never explain it at all, or they’re going to reveal some explanation only when it officially airs on Sunday – in which case you may as well consider EMP theory.
If they’re not doing EMP theory, I feel they would have had to have filmed a lot more extra footage to explain things via a different theory, but who knows. The Russian screener contained a lot of scenes that would be great prior to an EMP reveal.
Table of Contents
Background on EMP Theory
Why Our Dads Would Totally Do EMP Even If You Wouldn’t
“Miss me?” is a mind palace invention, right? It appears for the first time at the end of HLV. I wonder if that’s a bleed through from the real world as well – from John, perhaps.
FANTASTIC THOUGHT!!!
Things kind of suck around here so while I am tinhatting for a fourth episode, I’m not really in the mood to write extensive meta. I’ll just get my thoughts down real quick. Everything flows from what I’ve written before so I don’t expect this bit to be compelling or make much sense if you didn’t read the rest of it.
If there’s a fourth episode, I still stand by everything I’ve said in this EMP meta. I think TFP works fairly well as an EMP episode up until Sherlock embraces Euros.
There’s lots of tells in the episode that Sherlock is unconscious and needs to wake up:
– the little girl from ASiB and the airplane scenario similar to ASiB, plus reusing the airplane concept from TAB, are cues from Sherlock’s subconscious telling him to wake up
– so is the use of Moriarty saying “welcome to the final problem” because Moriarty told Sherlock the final problem is “stayin’ alive”
– the insane drama of the whole thing
– the nonsense and plot holes are realistic for someone who has been drugged and dying for a while now
Furthermore, if I’m right the episode is about Sherlock healing and integrating a lost part of himself he imagined as Euros. Dunno if the resolution will keep the exact same Victor Trevor reveal, but because of that “if dog can’t swim, neighbor is the killer” thing from T6T, it seems more likely to me that the following happened:
Sherlock doesn’t have a secret sister. A neighbor killed Victor Trevor and it traumatized him. (I think he probably did tell himself he had a dog that got put down instead because the mirroring between Sherlock and Henry in THoB was pretty hammered in.) Sherlock seems to blame himself for deaths that aren’t his fault, like Mary’s, so that probably started with Victor Trevor. That’s why he gets freaked out by the thought of people dying on his watch and why he is obsessed with catching criminals. He has deep fears of intimacy because as the saying goes, it’s a “fearful thing to love what death can touch.”
Euros is like the part of Sherlock that tries to drive all emotion away but can’t. A big part of Sherlock realizes how that leads to nothing but being a sociopath and his brain is just proving it to him. He doesn’t want to be a sociopath, he doesn’t even want to be the one flying above everyone else. Deep down, Sherlock has always wanted someone to play with. His brain connects John to the last person who was willing to play with him: Victor Trevor.
In TAB, Moriarty told Sherlock it’s the landing that kills you, and Sherlock reiterated that to John. Meaning: falling in love doesn’t have to be terrible, it’s all about whether you land safely. Mycroft in TFP tried to convince Sherlock and John that the safest thing was to crash the plane, which is of course what Sherlock would imagine Mycroft would say, but Sherlock decides he’ll help Euros land it safely. Sherlock has overcome his issues and is ready to come back to life.
Immediately after Sherlock embraces Euros, he asks her to help him save John. This is because of the parallel to What Dreams May Come I’ve been repeating: John is suicidal because Sherlock won’t come out of his coma, and part of Sherlock knows that and is struggling to regain consciousness.
Sherlock imagines John is down a well and can only be saved by Sherlock coming to terms with his fear of intimacy; he literally tells John that figuring out what happened to Redbeard is *how* he will find John. John feeling suicidal is also why he imagines an “I love you” coffin whose description fits John, and why Sherlock’s brain flips out and bashes it to bits.
There’s other clues that Sherlock is stuck in his head, like Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.” It’s about a man who wants to come out of the closet because he’s fallen in love, and it works nicely as a parallel to Sherlock wanting to come out of his coma. The song cuts off at “I’ve fallen in l–.”
And Moriarty is peppered everywhere because of “the final problem” of staying alive, because Sherlock still recognizes the connection between Moriarty and Mary shooting Sherlock, because Sherlock remembers Carl Powers drowning (not sure that Victor Trevor actually drowned), and because Sherlock doesn’t want to be a sociopath like Moriarty and by connecting him to Euros his brain is making the connection that the show has always made: that Sherlock can either choose to embrace a lack of sentiment like Moriarty, or to embrace sentiment like John.
I also feel like S4 is in line with Sherlock’s mind beginning to realize that Mycroft has to have some connection to Moriarty and Mary, he just can’t come up with anything that makes total sense yet because it’s all been a drugged, dying dream.
Other clues this is in Sherlock’s head: he gets to introduce himself as a pirate, the absurd gravestone cipher that he solves in less than a minute involves a string of numbers like the Bond Air numbers, iirc Mycroft says the patience grenade has a 007 in its name, Sherlock probably knows Wilde if he knows Shakespeare and gay Victorian history (and especially if Mycroft really did perform in the play) but it’s a little stranger for John to know it, Sherlock would imagine John and Mycroft reacting as underwhelmingly as they did to Sherlock deciding to kill himself, etc.
If they decide to do something Clue-like, I’m guessing they rewind back to the point where Sherlock embraces Euros or maybe just before to a slightly different Victor Trevor memory where Sherlock remembers that it’s a neighbor who did it.
I really don’t think Euros ever existed.
YES! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love all of the meta about what John’s going through if this is his dying dream, but the evidence from the rest of the series just doesn’t support that conclusion. This episode is about how Sherlock is finally choosing love over pure reason.
Yeah, I gave some thought to the possibility that TFP is John’s dream instead but too many things are just about impossible:
John can’t just know what his chair looked like in Sherlock’s mind. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Shelock’s.
– John has never heard Moriarty utter the words “the final problem” to Sherlock. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– John can’t remember stuff like the waterfall scene from Sherlock’s mind in TAB. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– The only time John has ever heard “Redbeard” was when CAM said it aloud at 221b. For John to make the leap to Redbeard being a childhood dog and not a pirate or a code is one thing. It’s another thing that John would somehow envision the exact same Redbeard that we saw in Sherlock’s mind palace. Then it just gets absurd to imagine John realizing that Redbeard is a psychological cover for a childhood best friend. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– I find it unlikely John would imagine all the lines and deductions in TFP. We know that Sherlock’s mind is capable of that from TAB, however.
– I don’t think John would imagine himself reacting so blandly to Sherlock going to shoot himself in the head.
– It makes a lot more sense to me that Sherlock would imagine his own childhood than John would imagine Sherlock’s childhood.
– The episode isn’t pointless if it’s in Sherlock’s head because Sherlock works through some old memories related to his fear of intimacy. If the episode was in John’s head, then Sherlock didn’t work through those things and John didn’t learn anything real about Sherlock, so what’s the point?
– What Dreams May Come explains why there’s so much suicide talk in TLD, why Sherlock makes a connection between John and suicide, why Sherlock feels like he needs to save John, why Sherlock feels like he has to go to hell to save John, why Sherlock is saying he doesn’t want to die while lying in a hospital bed, etc. There are too many elements borrowed from WDMC to make me think that’s not intentional. The evidence is even stronger than The Princess Bride (I wrote that meta too) so I’m surprised people take TPB parallels as gospel and are now willing to accept dream episodes, but don’t think the WDMC parallels are meaningful? People agree T6T and TLD make no sense but somehow want to hang on to bits of them? It’s cool and all, I just don’t understand it. It’s very clear to me at least, with the whole concept of John’s blog being ripped from the movie, that they were planning on WDMC from the first episode.
– If TFP was in John’s head then Euros is real, which just seems outrageously stupid to me. imo there’s no way Euros is real; her behavior even before TFP is nonsensical – actually literally logically impossible – and the idea that Sherlock would forget an entire sibling and his whole family would conspire to keep him from remembering her is ridiculous.
– If T6T and TLD aren’t also EMP like I’ve argued, then John’s character makes little sense anymore. His MP character makes sense if it’s Sherlock torturing himself in his head though. (Also, though my personal wishes have no bearing on what they’re choosing to
do, I can in no way get behind their relationship if John actually beat Sherlock like that.) And again, that would be consistent with WDMC.
– There’s no way TLD can be real for all the reasons I discussed in its EMP entry; even Euros being a super genius can’t make her invisible to CCTV, Wiggins, and Mrs. Hudson. Most damningly, Sherlock could only know Mary was telling him to wear the hat if she’s a figment of Sherlock’s imagination instead of John’s. If TLD isn’t real then TFP isn’t either, and it’s way more likely those things are both in Sherlock’s head since there’s continuity between them.
– Occam’s Razor. I think it’s way more likely that the whole series is in Sherlock’s mind given the mounds of evidence than it’s a combination of like, John having a dream plus unreliable narrator and alibi theory, some parts are true and some aren’t, etc. It’s pretty easy to wake Sherlock up at a hospital and have people get that nothing actually happened since Mary shot him; it would take a lot of explanation to explain how one episode was a dream, but the ones before that were only partly true in a few ways, and then they have to reveal why they didn’t just show things as they actually happened, etc. With EMP it makes sense that things weren’t shown in a realistic way because they’re all made up and happening in Sherlock’s head as he imagines them, but I haven’t really heard a compelling explanation for anything else.
It just seems more likely to me that nothing in this series makes sense and all the promo material uses imagery from WDMC and everything revolves around Sherlock’s memories because Sherlock has been trying to come out of a coma in an homage to one of the most romantic stories one of their favorite authors wrote, than it seems likely that Sherlock really does have a crazy secret sister and John is somehow privy to imagery from Sherlock’s Victorian mind palace and things Moriarty never said in front of him, etc. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
As some of you know, I’m a filmmaker, and I teach film
production at the university level. One of the things that I instill in
beginning filmmakers is the intentional fallacy.
“What is ‘intentional
fallacy’?
Broadly, it is the idea that the
meaning of a work does not originate with the author’s intention. Authors
are unreliable beings; what they say their work means may not be what it means
at all, and in any case there can be a huge discrepancy between intention and
end result.”
The only thing that viewers should take into account when interpreting or critiquing a film or tv series is WHAT’S ON THE
SCREEN.
Even if the
author’s intent were the correct tool to use to analyze Sherlock, who is the author of a film? In films, the “auteur” is
universally the director. In TV, the answer isn’t so straightforward.
In the days when the auteur theory held total sway, an
argument could be made that the showrunners of Sherlock are auteurs.
But the auteur theory is not universally accepted.
Why? Filmmaking
is a collaborative process. One person, even two people aren’t responsible for
Sherlock.
Stop and think about how many creative people’s decisions
make it to the screen. David Arnold, Michael Price, Paul McGuigan, Arwel Wyn
Jones, Steve Lawes, Charlie Phillips, Sarah Arthur, Martin Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch – what are their intentions? Do
they match Moffat’s and Gatiss’s? How would anyone even know?
In every film analysis course I’ve ever taken a close reading,
not the author’s intent, is how you find out what a work of fiction is about.
TJLC is the name for our (compelling and valid) close reading
of the show.
I’m not going to go into what TJLC is here. Instead, I’m
going to link to Rebekah’s excellent TJLCE series @quietlyprim and Loudest Subtext in
Television’s Meta series:
When they said, “That’s not the story we’re telling”, they’re
simply wrong. Even if it wasn’t the story they intended to tell, it IS the
story they’re telling.
Because that’s what we see when we watch it.
TJLC isn’t even one person’s close reading, which would be
valid as well. TJLC is a collaborative, growing reading of literally hundreds
of fans. And, to be perfectly clear, hundreds of scholars.
That’s what we perceive when we watch what’s actually made it
to the screen on Sherlock.
That’s real. And that’s a valid scholarly interpretation of this piece of art.
@artfulkindoforder I have a question, and please know this is a legitimate question. I’m not trying to be argumentative.
I’m not a filmmaker, or a teacher of film. I’m just a consumer and lover of media, with a side interest in analysing literature, and a writing hobbiest. I’m also someone who sees a very specific story unfolding in Sherlock, a story that has been unfolding from almost the very first moment of the very first episode.
I’ve seen the same story since 2011, long before I was in this fandom, or had heard a thing about TJLC or M-Theory, or anything of the kind. And I say that only to suggest that I think the story being told is very clear, and very plain to anyone who is actively involved in watching. It doesn’t require mass analysis of subtext, or reading hours of meta to see (even though those sorts of things are very valid, and fun, and certainly add a valuable depth of understanding). It’s very plain. It’s the story of Sherlock Holmes evolving from a great man to a good one, and the catalyst of that change is his love for John Watson, and the love, support, comfort, and inspiration he draws from that relationship.
As the show has progressed I’ve seen this love grow, I’ve seen it evolve into something romantic, I’ve seen Sherlock express real, true signs of attraction. I’ve seen John experience (and at times fight) these same feelings in return.
However, the writers/show creators have stated (quite passionately, and with great conviction, on two separate occasions) that a romantic relationship between these two men never has been their intention and never will be the outcome of the series. To me that statement is sort of unfathomable, because there are huge chunks of the narrative that seemingly make no sense once you remove this central love relationship, and there are details added into episodes like TSoT, HLV and TAB that would be pointless if they were not meant to indicate that Sherlock and John’s love is (or is shifting into) something romantic and sexual in nature.
So, here’s my question. If a romantic, committed relationship between John and Sherlock is not the story the writers/show runners think they are telling, but everything in their narrative seems to indicate that they are, and huge swaths of their audience are reading it that way, where does that leave the audience where the series conclusion is concerned?
The writers are still the writers. The show runners are still the show runners. In the end they ultimately decide where they want their characters to end up. So even if the johnlock reading is the only one that is narratively consistent, even if, say, 99.9% of their audience agreed that the johnlock reading is the only one that is narratively consistent, in the end the writers will still do with their characters what they want to do with them, yes?
So are you saying that they are wrong in the sense that they don’t get to tell their audience what the story is they are telling, because art finds it’s meaning in the eye of the beholder? And if so, if they are wrong, but they still decide to end the series without these two men romantically involved where does that leave the audience. When the writers and show runners get to decide how a story ends, who really is the ultimate authority?
Thanks, @sussexbound, for this amazing reply. Just so that you know, I’m kind of keeping my personal opinions (and I have a lot of them) out of this post and any replies I post to it. Anything I post here will be a “theory and criticism” explanation.
First of all, I’d highlight something you said: “I’ve seen the same story since 2011, long before I was in this
fandom….It’s very
plain. It’s the story of Sherlock Holmes evolving from a great man to a
good one, and the catalyst of that change is his love for John Watson,
and the love, support, comfort, and inspiration he draws from that
relationship. As the show has progressed I’ve seen this love grow, I’ve seen it
evolve into something romantic, I’ve seen Sherlock express real, true
signs of attraction. I’ve seen John experience (and at times fight)
these same feelings in return.”
This is your interpretation, and it’s more valid than the author’s intentions any day.
Imagine it’s 200 years from now. Imagine that this show has become almost myth, but nothing about the creators remains. And, since we’re imagining, imagine that all that exists in this future is the show as of today: Series 1-3 and The Abominable Bride.
I honestly think that in the future, people will wonder why ANYONE thought that the story of Sherlock wasn’t John and Sherlock being in love. I think that it’s obvious now, and in a
(hopefully)
post-
compulsory heterosexuality
world it will be even more obvious.
That being said, the writers are still the writers. There are two points I’d like to make here: Firstly, the show is a collaboration. They may try to exercise control, but in a collaborative medium, there’s only so much control they have.
Here’s an example:
Remember the scene where Janine comes out of Sherlock’s bedroom and John is crazy jealous? On the DVD commentary for that scene, Moffat and Gatiss talk about how they had to re-film that scene because “Martin made John look jealous”.
Well, we’ve all seen the “fixed” version: and you know what? Martin still makes John look jealous.
Secondly, we still don’t know that this show won’t be a failure. I really hate to say this. It’s not my personal opinion. But TJLC aside, many critically-acclaimed shows have failed. Let’s take Lost. I happen to like Lost, and I liked and “got” the finale. The survivors weren’t dead the whole time, but a muddled season 6 subplot made a majority of the audience think they were.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter how many times Damon Lindelof tells the audience what the ending was supposed to mean. The show didn’t get that across to most of its viewers. And it was the show’s responsibility.
A lot of people hate the whole run of Lost now because they think the creators ruined what they set up throughout the entire series. That interpretation is valid. I think the show was still good except for sections that were less competent. My interpretation is valid.
That’s all I’m trying to get across by telling you all about the Intentional Fallacy. I’ll end this with the quote that you ended your reply with, because the fandom asking these questions and coming to their own answers is actually my only purpose here:
“So are you saying that they are wrong in the sense that they don’t get
to tell their audience what the story is they are telling, because art
finds it’s meaning in the eye of the beholder? And if so, if they are
wrong, but they still decide to end the series without these two men
romantically involved where does that leave the audience. When the
writers and show runners get to decide how a story ends, who really is
the ultimate authority?”
@artfulkindoforder, thanks for your reply. I think I’m clearer on where you’re coming from now.
BRILLIANT discussion!
Very very interesting read here. Love this:
“When they said, “That’s not the story we’re telling”, they’re simply wrong. Even if it wasn’t the story they intended to tell, it IS the story they’re telling.” @ebaeschnbliah@isitandwonder
I’m (and tens of thousands of pre-modernists are) in the
position @artfulkindoforder describes: hundreds of years away from the “origins”
of our objects of study, immersed in studying yet detached from intimately knowing the socio-cultural
context in which they emerged, and often dealing with 100% anonymous authors.
Even in those texts or images or buildings (no more than 35%?) when we know who
our authors were, we don’t usually have their commentary to guide us in
understanding “what they intended.” Even when we have that commentary (and that’s
no more than 2%? of the time), that commentary is of very limited utility. It’s like
composers’ notes jotted in a musical score: they don’t exhaust the
interpretative possibilities of the composition, not by a long shot.
And I certainly do argue that we can’t mechanically apply
modern interpretative categories to pre-modern texts, or cultural productions
of any kind. HOWEVER, we also can’t hold our own time, questions, judgment,
opinions, interpretations, hostage to the decrees of authors–because every
cultural manifestation exceeds the semiotic input and intentions of its
creator/s.
Finally, I agree that the romantic attachment between John
and Sherlock, and the growth arc for Sherlock and the healing arc for John, is
the story they’ve been showing the whole time. I thought so from the first
episode of season 1, despite having no prior investment in such a romantic
attachment between Conan Doyle’s original Holmes and Watson or in any other adaptation.
The showrunners have been showing it. They can say it’s not they story they’ve
been telling, but hoo-boy, have they been showing it.
This is such a good conversation. So very good. There are lots of notes that are very worth perusing too though not all in agreement.
This is precisely why I posted the video of Arnold and Price from post s2 the other day.
They literally make this same argument and one I could not make anything like as well as the OP does: to do their job they can’t write a score for what is in the auteur’s head (writer or director). They score what is shown on screen and bring their music to bear on the narrative. Literally the same argument is how they do the work. Author intention dies the moment someone else is handed the text.
If it didn’t we could make no interpretation of 99.9999% of art in human history. We could only say, “no idea what it means. Only the artist knows.” Trust me. As an artist, I can testify that assumption is pure BS.
This talks about Sherlock specifically but it applies to all works, really. Sorry it’s really long but the conversation is awesome and does a good job answering questions people may have.
This is a quote from the director of American Beauty:
SAM MENDES The movie you see is not the movie I thought I was shooting. I thought I was making a much more whimsical, comic story, kaleidoscopic, almost like a Coen brothers movie. And what I found in the cutting room was a much more emotional, haunting animal than I had imagined.
The author matters too, but once a work is created, they become a reader too. Their interpretation matters less than what is presented in the work itself. And what is presented is applicable and interpretable from whatever lens you can apply. x
I taught film theory and criticism for a couple of years and this was one of the hardest and most interesting concepts to discuss with my students. It was one of the first things we talked about, always. It is so important.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 