I’ve finally come to accept that I don’t like S2 Sherlock very much.
S1 Sherlock was kind of a selfish, self-centered ass, but then he was largely alone, so sure. S2 Sherlock, though, has actually degenerated. Sure, he does occasionally think of other people, now, but he’s also become a casually abusive fucker who thinks nothing of testing nerve gas on his friend (at least John calls him on that one), and in Scandal commits what twigs to me as something akin to adultery.
(Blah blah talk-pants click my name if you want to see the rest.)
As always, PA says what I was thinking.
(TW: pedantry)
I find conversations like this understandable, reasonable, and sound, but also frustrating, because Sherlock is not a person. He’s a representation. He’s a character in a fiction, and as such he presents not a documentary account of a real person, but a set of ideas and aesthetic choices made in the service of a narrative, not a life. If this was the biography or news account of a real person, I’d be the first to say “what a prick! keep that guy away from me.” But as a character who represents larger ideas, he fascinates me. It’s understandable, maybe inevitable, that we’ll make moral judgments about him, but I think it’s important to go on from there to thematic judgments. I don’t care for his morals so much as his meanings. Not just “is he a dick or not?” but “what does his dickishness mean?” I think that if we stop at calling him an asshole or an angel or an Aspie we’re missing the symbolic structure of deeper meanings in the work.
For instance, Sherlock’s actions in ASiB are at times reprehensible, but the visual and symbolic structure of the film uses those actions to raise some really interesting questions about masculinity, sexuality, gender politics, and power. Specifically, the relationship between Sherlock and Irene is not just about what happens plot-wise, whether she betrays him or he saves her, etc. It’s also about an ongoing pattern of camera angles, visual framing, and deft editing that creates visual parallels and contradictions between them. These in turn imply a new model of masculinity with a different relationship to desire. If we stay on the literal level of plot and psychology, we miss this figurative level of theme and ideology.
Crap. Puked up another lecture. Sorry.
tl;dr: yep, PA, you’re absolutely right. He’s a dick. And I think dicks are soooo interesting…
Now, Prof, where did I say he wasn’t interesting? ^_^ To be clear, I make the same distinction you do: liking a character as a person has nothing to do with liking the character as a fictional construct. Yes, I was addressing the issue of Sherlock as a person. But as a fictional character, I adore Sherlock as a dick. I LOVE that the writers were brave enough to make the choice to make him a sometimes unpleasant, unlikable person. Stories would be boring if everyone were always nice.
But since you brought it up, you’re exactly right: he ISN’T a real person, and that’s my whole point. If he were a real person, the complex give-and-take of his strengths and flaws would be a given—as it is for every real person—and I would respond to him as a human being who is capable of and has committed both great good and harm.
As he is a character, however, you’re also right that I have to take the framework into account. And what I take exception to is not being handed a dick as a main character, but with being asked to approve of his behavior—which is something a lot of fanfic and sometimes the show itself seem guilty of, to me. Am I supposed to find the vicious games that Sherlock and Irene play with each other romantic? Am I meant to think that everything he does in TRF is cool and badass? I feel rather like I am (though of course TRF won’t resolve completely until S3), which is very uncomfortable for me.
This is the insidious thing about stories: what’s infectious about them is not what happens in the story, or what the characters do or even what they believe in, but what the story asks you to approve of. Approval is a form of complicity; if I’m being asked to buy into Scandal as having a happy ending for anybody besides Sherlock, then I am being asked to buy into a lot of not entirely savory beliefs about what constitutes a ‘real’ relationship and a healthy romance along the way.
To demonstrate my point, in contrast to Scandal or Fall, I have no problems with Hound. Despite Sherlock’s stunt with testing an unfamiliar and potentially weaponized hallucinogen on John, we’re very clear that this is nothing we should find charming or funny when at the end, John not only calls him on it (“The drug wasn’t in the sugar, you were wrong”), but Sherlock reluctantly agrees with him—a clear flag from the story that no, Sherlock didn’t have it as under control as he thought and no, we’re not supposed to think it was cute or okay.