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.