[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTZYJDBbiIY?feature=oembed&w=500&h=374]
Elvis Costello, “Watching the Detectives,” from My Aim is True.
Writing up notes on how McGuigan’s camera techniques make us look and look and look at Sherlock (he’s the “object of the gaze”); this song has been in constant rotation.
“He gets so angry when the teardrops start / but he can’t be wounded ‘cause he’s got no heart…
We just like watching the detectives…”
‘Object of the gaze’ is a tricky phrase here, though, because while technically accurate, it usually connotes objectification, and Sherlock’s not being objectified. On the contrary, he’s given most of the agency in the story.
You know something I’d be really interested in seeing is how often we find ourselves watching Sherlock *from John’s POV.* Sherlock is obviously a (the) dominating force in the series (which after all is named Sherlock, so yeah), but I have this sense that he’s also framed as a dominating for the characters in the series—most notably, I think, John and Lestrade (interestingly, not Mrs. Hudson, who we repeatedly see carrying on her own affairs largely off-screen and only peeking in on Sherlock’s life periodically; she’s a part of his life, but not the center of it).
John in particular, of course, is running a blog where he’s ostensibly meant to talk about himself and he ends up talking mostly about Sherlock, and it’s not like I’m the first person to suggest that this is an indicator that Sherlock is the hero of John’s story. But I’m really interested to see whether this is a motif that’s carried through the blocking and cinematography, and if that is possibly why we as viewers (even viewers who have never heard of slashing) get such a powerful, subliminal sense of it.
One point toward that is that the other night, some of the folks in #innercircle who were watching the pilot commented on how much taller John is in relation to Sherlock there, whereas in ASiP, they ditched the idea of equalizing characters’ heights and apparently encouraged Sherlock to loom to his heart’s content. Which is particularly interesting in light of what you’ve already shown us about how McGuigan works the high/low camera angles.