sagestreet:

Another piece of evidence that Sherlock’s past trauma has actually something to do with his dad is the scene with the two fishermen in TFP.

You know from my ‘Follow the dog’ meta (x) that I think Sherlock’s father is in the closet and was probably in love with his best friend who might or might not turn out to be the mysterious Uncle Rudy. (Or maybe Uncle Rudy and Daddy’s lover are two separate characters, and Uncle Rudy was in charge of getting rid of Daddy’s lover; I don’t know.) In any case, I believe that Sherlock’s trauma will turn out to be all about his dad being in love with a man.

So, here’s one more piece of evidence (apart from the tonne I have already amassed in the original ‘Follow the dog’ post):

In TFP, we are shown two fishermen who are caught in a storm. We know that ‘water’ is a metaphor for emotions, and in that scene, we get a huge body of ‘water’: the sea! And there is a storm brewing over these ‘waters’. 

To spell out what kind of emotional storm this is all about, the set designers put a tea pot right in the foreground of the opening shot of this scene (remember that ‘tea’ is a metaphor for homosexuality on this show):

So, in other words, we have two men (one old, one young) who are both caught in the same (!) emotional storm: Sherlock and his dad are both faced with the same emotional storm, ie, have the same kind of emotional problem

(=they both fall in love with men).

To make this mirroring easier to pick up on, the older fisherman even calls the younger one ‘son’ at one point, which, of course, in English, is just an affectionate way to address a man much younger than yourself, but word choice on this show is never a coincidence. The word ‘son’ here evokes the image of a father and his (actual) son being caught in the same storm. 

Well, and then there’s the fact that the younger fisherman is called Ben. The name Benjamin literally means (young/youngest) ‘son’…Sherlock!

The older fisherman (the metaphorical dad character) has got used to the storm (=has been in the closet for ages and has resigned himself to his fate). He is navigating it without ever leaving the cabin (=closet). 

Young Ben (=Sherlock) is still struggling, though. He is vomiting (=finds his situation disgusting). And he is literally oscillating between being inside the cabin (=closet) with his metaphorical dad, where they’re both safe from the storm but he himself gets nauseous, and outside the cabin (=the closet) where it’s dangerous but where there’s fresh air. As the conversation starts, he has just come in again, apparently undecided as to where he should be: inside the cabin (=closet) or out.

There’s also one tiny detail that could be significant: The costume designers couldn’t give us as many mirroring clues as they usually do because both men are wearing these yellow fishermen overalls over their clothes. And yet, there’s this teensy, tiny clue: 

The dish towel! It’s checkered. Like John’s clothes. Checkered things on this show always refer back to John. That’s why I think this checkered dish towel is not a coincidence. It’s nicely situated in the foreground in the above shot, too. And it’s hanging right next to the mirror image of the tea (!) pot. In other words, the checkered towel (=John) and the ‘tea’ (=gay love) are shown in close proximity to each other via an actual, real-life mirroring (!) effect.

And then, we get shot after shot of the young fisherman (=Sherlock) standing next to this towel+tea pot combo, talking about how he is literally sick (…of the whole situation he’s in):

Then both men hear the radio clearly enunciate the word ‘Sherrinford’. But the older man (=Sherlock’s dad) tells the younger one (=Sherlock) in no uncertain terms to ignore that message completely. Since ‘Sherrinford’ is basically Sherlock’s unconscious, this means that Sherlock’s dad tells Sherlock to ignore the call of his own unconscious. Wow!

“Sometimes when we’re out in these waters, we hear that message,” the older fisherman says (=sometimes when you’re faced with an emotional storm somewhere very far out on the emotional sea, ie, sometimes when you experience same-sex desire because you’ve just seen a handsome man, for example, sometimes when you’re so far out in these ‘waters’, you hear the call of your own unconscious). But the older man tells the younger one that it’s best to just ignore that call.

It’s the younger guy who keeps asking and prodding what ‘Sherrinford’ (=the unconscious) is. He (=Sherlock) is the one who doesn’t seem to want to ignore it. He has his hand on the door handle (of an actual closet!) as if he’s about to pull the closet door open any minute now:

It’s the older guy who seems to be hiding so deep in the closet that he wants to ignore ‘Sherrinford’.

And yet…The older guy (=Sherlock’s dad) seems to know deep down that being in the closet isn’t good for you because, as the young man (=Sherlock) tells him that he’s feeling sick, the older one wistfully replies, “Better out than in.” 

Yeah, the subtext here is quite clear: Better out than in!

It’s just that it’s apparently too late for the older man (=Sherlock’s dad) to heed his own advice.

But then the fact that Sherlock’s dad is probably not happy with his situation was already established in my ‘Follow the dog’ meta: Sherlock’s dad was said to be allergic to dogs (‘dog’=homosexuality metaphor). Note that it’s not that Sherlock’s dad hated dogs. For all we know, he loved dogs. But he had an allergy, aka an internal condition (=internalised homophobia) that made it impossible for him to have a dog (=be in an openly gay relationship).

So, this conflicted attitude the older fisherman is displaying by, on the one hand, saying, “Better out than in,” and, on the other, hiding in the cabin and ignoring the call of ‘Sherrinford’ seems consistent with a character who is torn between what he wants and what he thinks he has to do, deeply conflicted about his own same-sex desires.

And then there’s, of course, the fact that, in this TFP scene, they are both presented as fishermen. And we have already seen how an unemployed fisherman in THoB was a metaphor for homosexuality (here).

The TFP scene ends with both fishermen being forced out of their cabin (=closet) by pirate!Sherlock, ie, Sherlock in the incarnation of his childhood dreams. 

Sherlock has reverted back to who he wanted to be as a child (ha!) and forced both his metaphorical dad and himself to literally ‘come out’. As he does this, he’s holding steadfastly on to the radio mast that is transmitting the weather news from ‘Sherrinford’ (=his own unconscious). He doesn’t want to ignore it any longer.

And let’s not forget that Sherlock forces himself to come out of the cabin (=closet) with the help of John wielding his gun (=penis).:) Sorry, not sorry.:P But that’s Mofftiss for you. With Mofftiss, a dick joke is never very far away. John’s penis is the thing that forces Sherlock to sail towards ‘Sherrinford’ (=confront his unconscious).

And how does the whole ordeal end for the two fishermen (=Sherlock and his dad)?

Whether they want it or not, they’re both dragged to ‘Sherrinford’ island (=to confront the unconscious). And once there, they’re tied to each other: One cannot solve his problem without the other. The two problems are literally entangled with each other, which again tells us that Sherlock being closeted (at least for now) and his father being in the closet (since…forever) are two things that are inextricably bound to each other. To resolve one situation, the other has to be resolved too.

Oh, by the way, the older fisherman is double coded and can be read as a mirror for Sherlock himself too, as is evident from the cheekbones, the eye colour, the hat that Sherlock will wear himself just minutes later and the black ‘popped’ collar visible underneath his yellow overall.

This was probably done to tell us loudly and clearly that Sherlock himself has, at least, the potential to end up like his dad: closeted and sad. 

Unless Sherlock does something about it right now…like break into his own unconscious (‘Sherrinford’) and confront what’s in there.

After all, the old fisherman is called Vince. And the name Vincent means ‘Conqueror’, the ‘Victorious one’. 

Sherlock has the potential to score a victory here. But he has to face up to the battle with his (inner) dragon. He has to confront his own unconscious.

The double coding makes this scene so, so brilliant. Because you can basically read the old fisherman as an AU!version of old, closeted Sherlock and young-fisherman-Ben as that other inner aspect of Sherlock that’s sick of it all and just wants to ‘come out’. A conversation, a conflict, between two voices inside Sherlock’s head. 

(It’s at least possible that this scene is even triple coded: You could read the old fisherman as a closeted Sherlock and the young fisherman as John who’s struggling to come out. In this case, pirate!Sherlock and John-with-his-*cough*-‘gun’ would be forcing themselves (!) out of the cabin, aka the closet. They would be forcing themselves to confront the unconscious, aka go to ‘Sherrinford’, where the two of them, Sherlock and John would be shown bound together by fate. Because John and Sherlock have always been bound together. What happens to one of them is inextricably linked to what happens to the other one.)

That double coding (and possible triple coding) is what makes this whole fishermen scene so fascinating. 

It was intentionally written so that we would understand that, whichever way we turn this puzzle, it’s all about the issue of coming out; it’s just that the characters change with our shifting point of view.

Edit: Also, look at the mirror image of the tea pot above. There are three mirror images of the tea pot. It’s mirrored three (!) times. Triple coding it is, then.

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