#his face is doing a thing right after he stops talking like a grimace? #idk it’s killing me
#this is why i’m so invested in this sherlock #because he’s allowed to be human #he’s fucked up and layered and real #he’s not just some impressively perfect robot who’s always right #he connects to and cares about the victims #and that’s why i love him so much
Being more empathetic/emotional is not the same as being more human. There are people who, due to disorders/illnesses/disabilities/et cetera/ lack empathy or don’t display emotions very well. How do you think it affects the aforementioned people when you equate bieng more empathetic/caring/emotional do being human.
Look, the stupidest thing about the Sherlock/Elementary fansquabbling is that it just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE to compare two DIFFERENT stories. Once you take a story from its original medium—book to film, film to non-commercial series, non-commercial to commercial—it’s just going to be a different story. Different does NOT have to be better or worse. The BBC series is about a cold, detached man becoming more human by learning to sacrifice his pride and safety and happiness for others. To say he’s not a good character because he’s cold and detached is stupid because that’s the fucking point. That’s what he needs to grow out of. The American version is—perhaps, we can’t really say yet—about someone learning to take responsibility for the effects of his actions. (At least, that’s what the focus on his addiction hints at.) Why is one of these a better story? I may like one better, it may do more artistic and personal work for me, I may identify with the characters more. But when we start trying to justify our preferences in moral terms, we end up saying offensive things.
To head off a potential misunderstanding I can see brewing here, while Prof is totally right about there being no need to pick one over the other when it comes to BBC vs. Elementary Sherlocks (the more Sherlocks, the better, I say!), I think catdemon’s point was actually more about ableism, and how judging a person’s humanity based on their capability to clearly emote dehumanizes people with autism, Asperger’s and other conditions.
That said, calling BBC’s Sherlock cold and ‘inhuman’ comes from a place where he can choose to care, and chooses not to care instead. He’s never struck me as being anywhere on the autism spectrum. My read is that he doesn’t want to invest himself in people or care what happens to them, which is a whole different realm from being able to connect and empathize with them easily.
(Although my read is also that he has never truly NOT cared about people. He just tries really hard to ignore it most of the time.)