I’m having real trouble conceptualising the motivations of a blackmailer who isn’t blackmailing for money—because he already has all he needs—but the ability to press buttons. I’m sure I’ll get over it, but right now it’s a stumbling block.
I honestly think it’s more about power and access than money – and the ability to have more power and access.His particular brand of media can make or break public policy, shape public opinion, and drive political will. He has money through his media companies, and he has power over those who could throttle those companies. It’s all sort of interrelated – money, power, and high levels of access. Remember – his goal is Mycroft, the most powerful man in the British government and who, at this moment, just sort of lets CAM do whatever he wants. To get Mycroft, he started at Mary, who is John’s pressure point, John is Sherlock’s pressure point, and Sherlock in turn is Mycroft’s pressure point.
I hated CAM’s guts but it was rather masterfully played.
God, yes. And in the larger picture: what’s the ultimate currency in a detective story? Knowledge. What does the detective seek, with all the fervor of love? Knowledge. That’s what CAM has, right there in his head, a vault of knowledge, not a mind palace but a treasure-house. It’s what makes him Sherlock’s perverted double, for Sherlock loves the knowledge itself, not what he could buy with it. And when Sherlock shoots him in the head, he may well be destroying that part of himself that values knowledge over love. That’s his trajectory this season, right? Not just to know, but to love.
I’ve read the responses, and I’ve thought about it. But my question still hasn’t really been answered—not in a real, substantive, practical way. So I’m just going to talk this out and hope it gets clearer.
I think CAM’s motivations are twofold.
1: He’s basically a rapist. He loves exerting power over people—especially people who are powerful to begin with—by proving that he can degrade them at will.
2: I think he does get things from them. He doesn’t seem to need money (why would he? He’s a corporate giant), but he does get leverage, contacts, connections, information.
You know, thinking about it, CAM seems to play the game an awful lot like some of the skeevier American lobbying groups. I mean, you think companies like Monsanto or Pfizer aren’t out there doing exactly the same thing? They throw money at their targets, and political promises and threats, and political threats, and basically bribe and intimidate until they get politicians to do what they want.
Which would explain why Mycroft doesn’t find him all that harmful, really. (Until he crosses Mycroft personally, that is.)
It’s worth considering that CAM’s clearly been on the scene for quite some time. Mycroft hasn’t considered him the kind of iconoclastic threat that needs to be dealt with—nothing like Moriarty. CAM clearly has no intentions of overthrowing governments. Hell, for all we know, he’s just as willing to exert his leverage for the greater benefit of the nation, when it suits him or somebody offers him the right incentive. (“I want to get this health care reform law passed. If you help, I’ll tell you all about Lord Honkingpants’ sordid fascination with llamas.”) He’s just a horrible slimy creep in the way he does business.
The reality is that Sherlock hates his guts (I mean, understandably; he’s awful), and that’s what really kicks this off. Sherlock picks this fight. Understandably so, because eugh, what a cockroach, but he’s still the one who starts it. And as a result, CAM becomes an immediate threat to our favorite characters (and to decency and hearths the world over, apparently) but he’s not a threat to the world at large.
(Was CAM even actually after Mycroft? Did he think of that as a goal he might be able to reach before Sherlock offered it to him? Or was his stunt with John just testing the waters to ensure that he had leverage over Sherlock in case Sherlock ever headed in his direction?)
3: I think we’re taking Sherlock’s word for it that CAM goes around blackmailing everybody in the western world. I mean, obviously he doesn’t actually do that. The man would have no time for anything in his life. It’s enough that he could probably find a way to get to almost anybody, if he wanted to. Which I think was more Sherlock’s point. And I think CAM probably honestly doesn’t care about the ‘little people.’ There are billions of people whom he doesn’t even know exist in the world. If one of them turns out—like John—to butt up against somebody CAM actually finds significant, then he might bother to go hunt up information and figure out how to get them under his thumb, but realistically he’s a billionaire who owns a media empire. The middle/lower class majority he could basically just crush if he really wanted. He doesn’t need any special kind of leverage for that.
They kind of messed up with the “go big or go home” approach when it came to CAM. He’s so effectively awful that he doesn’t need to be anything more than a skeevy rich bastard with a good memory for child pornography, and you still have a visceral sense of how the world would be a better place without him.
It’s funny you bring up that Sherlock is the one who finally sets this thing afire; I had just been writing about that last night. It’s Sherlock who decides to upset the balance. He’s the one who has decided, finally, to take up Lady Honeybadger’s case (okay, fine, her name is Smallwood) because he’s finally disgusted enough to do it. (And there’s an argument to be made that this is when he puts himself in John’s path in order to “recruit him” to the cause.). I wonder what Sherlock’s tipping point was. And I wonder what happened, exactly, to make CAM suddenly decide test Sherlock and get information on him. His return, I presume. (Otherwise it’s just too coincidental.) Did he not have any information on him before the two years he was gone? Or is he sussing out whether his pressure point has changed over the past two years? Interesting questions..
Anyway, the rapist angle was so obvious in the episode, down to the language and the bodily fluids and the ownership and power, yes. And clearly there are other benefits besides money (I tried to state that in my response, but maybe I failed), but really what I was concerned with was what happens when the line isn’t obvious between the small fish and the chess piece CAM wants moved. As I said…somewhere…(sorry, I’ve sort of lost track at this point) writing financial leverage is easy. Writing a Rube Goldberg of control is somewhat more complicated.
I think you’re probably right, though, the more I think about it: CAM probably doesn’t bother with the control of large masses of little fish, except as they’re schooling. It’s probably enough for him to know he could.
Maz and I did come up with an interesting angle, though, in the course of talking through a specific problem to solve in my narrative: if ownership is something CAM is interested in, and he already has loads and loads of cash, why not some sort of reverse blackmail scenario? CAM pays you enough to be quite comfortable, on a regular enough basis that you become used to it—ooh, or perhaps he uses your need for money to pay medical bills or something—as leverage to allow him the latitude to do whatever he damn well pleases with you? It’s not far off from your Monsanto argument, but on a smaller scale, and it might explain how he keeps in check those who work for him. Have enough to take care of your sick grandmother, but it means you have to keep quiet about the secrets you find out about and hand him wetnaps when he pisses in the corner?
Just thinking out loud…
Hahahah, he wouldn’t be the only employer to argue, “For what I pay you, I own you.” But you know, the hell of it is that I bet he’s actually a pretty good boss. A guy who sees the world in terms of leverage is bound to have a pretty keen sense of his own vulnerabilities. It’d be really good business sense for him to be like, “Hi, gun-thug, I see your mother is struggling with very expensive chemo treatments. Not only will I employ you with a generous salary and benefits, but I will also foot the bill for her treatments. Just don’t you go around asking too many questions, are we good?”
Hell, that’s how I’d hire my personal employees if I were a billionaire media mogul, and I’m not even a creep.
A Rube Goldberg blackmail chain gets pretty ridiculous pretty quickly. My bet is that he builds those mostly on the fly. Or…not on the fly exactly, but when he knows who his target is, he starts doing his research—follows the links in the chain back till he finds the right sequence of levers. It’d be ludicrous to believe that he truly has all of Google in his head. That’s literally just not possible. Humans have limits on their ability to store and access information, even with awesome memory techniques. But he does have it on his computer, and for a lot of people it doesn’t take a whole lot more than that (but if it does, he can always get a news reporter to go out and collect information for a ‘human interest piece’ or something).
He looks all-knowing and all-powerful to us because we’re seeing him through the eyes of the people he’s tangling with. And when he knows you might be coming, I’ll bet he truly is an almost impervious monster. But he was always playing with dynamite, because there are two situations in which a man like him would have no defense. 1: someone who, like Sherlock, is willing to throw it all away so long as it means they can get a shot at him and 2: someone who, as in the original story, he just never expected it of (which is dumb, because if you make a living of putting peoples’ backs to the wall, sooner or later you’re going to find the one who fights like a cornered wolverine).
So it was always really just a matter of time before somebody got to him.
And she is totally Lady Honeybadger.