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Requested by anonymous

Amy Santiago, ladies and gentlemen.

I’ve started thinking about male characters. Sort of.

I’ve been thinking about how some characters—ones who are almost archetypes—get distorted once they reach the pop culture canon. Right now the ones I’m thinking of are Sherlock Holmes and Captain Kirk.

Sherlock started as a guy with an incredible mind who didn’t know how to person very well but still cared very deeply about the disadvantaged and unprotected elements of society. He’s become a selfish manchild. There are variations of him—RDJ’s thrill seeker, House’s misanthrope, BC’s self-described sociopath—but it has no basis in the original. So why did we decide this was better? Why did we decide that a genius is above the rules of polite social interaction? What purpose does it serve?

Something similar has happened with Jim Kirk. I mean, watch the original show if you disagree. He’s intensely loyal, a creative thinker, a bright guy. He literally picks flowers on more than one planet. He’s read Milton. There’s basically no quicker way to anger him than to treat one of the women in his crew as second-class. He’s willing to show mercy to an opponent he’s defeated. But what’s his reputation in pop culture? A womanizer—which is just a different kind of selfish manchild.

I’m not saying that good stories can’t be told with these archetypes. I’m just saying that they don’t really resemble the original. Copy after copy gets less and less nuanced, till the original is completely foreign to these new versions even when they bear the same name.

And they’ve become so prevalent that there’s nothing interesting left in them.

Elementary though

Notably, Jonny Lee Miller went and read the books specifically to find aspects of the character that had gotten lost as the adaptations drifted away from the source. There was a deliberate attempt to bring back the character’s compassion.

I vastly prefer Elementary, but I think the difference between him and the others* is that they’re… ‘fun’. Simplified. Flashy. Easy to jump onto the ride with and follow along going wow, this guy is so cool. 

Until you realise that’s all he does, go round the town at high speed in a stolen car he can’t drive properly, knocking people over (but it’s okay because the chase is important or the race or whatever) and then he just starts over from the beginning again. They’re a series of interactions that are individually fun one-upping moments, little flashy moments of heroism that are mainly about the Rule of Cool. There’s no real character development, unless it’s to set them up for even more Coolness. They make my teeth hurt. Any depth that’s created is either built up solely to make them look more impressive (either by default, or by overcoming their Tragic Failings) or can be tossed out at any moment.

Elementary’s Sherlock is uncomfortable, a person with actual problems (not just So Tragically Cool Bad Boy Pain), and he actually grows and changes as a person. He’s the guy who doesn’t engage in a cool but stupid race, but has memorised all the public transit routes and quietly spends four hours taking different buses to get to the right place at the right time (and then maybe hijacks the last bus because he has to, but it’s not the first thing he tries). 

He’s awkward, which means that sometimes he’s awkward for the viewer to watch. He’s also often a jerk, and that’s never glossed over to make you like him more. People react to his arrogance and he feels actual consequences for it, he’s not immune through the power of Plot or Wouldn’t This One Liner Be Cool Even If It Should Technically Blow Up His Working Relationship With That Person. In Elementary, it does blow up the relationship and he has to make painful apologies and accept that he is disliked for valid reasons. He’s… genuine? His plot armour only extends to continuing to be him, not continuing to be The Hero.

(*Note: I think House vacillates between Elementary-style and the others, depending on the season and how long/short a view you take of his character).

REBLOGGING WITH ADDITIONAL COMMENT because my brain finished processing a thing:

I’ve been trying to figure out whether the ‘Entitled White Hetero Male’ aspect is why they make my teeth hurt or why I consider their characters to be shallow and I realised that duh, aside from it being a common archetype (which is fine, lost of characters are, it’s the details of their identity that make them unique), it’s that they lean really heavily on the tiresome old (and sadly accurate) assumption that audiences will work overtime to find something to identify with in this specific type of character, whether it’s seeing oneself as them or *gag* sexual interest [insert that godawful quote from Moffat about all the fangirls being interested in Sherlock/DrWho I’ve actually forgotten which purely because they’re just like, so, into him] and nothing else. But that people won’t/can’t/shouldn’t do that same projecting with another kind of character, because people are trained to identify with/care about/invest in figuring out the deep emotional story of Boring Privileged White Guys.

Whereas if you swapped a different type of ethnicity/gender/diverseness into that role, it would become interesting if only because the suspension of disbelief that they could get away with this stuff without coming into conflict with literally the entire cultural/authority framework of the world around them would need addressing and add an enormous amount of depth to their character. Or their characters would require fleshing out a bit more because people wouldn’t automatically fill in the blanks, because people aren’t used to projecting onto anyone but Rich/Entitled White Guys. 

Elementary’s Sherlock doesn’t require/expect you to figure out for yourself why you should care about him. He provides his own details, he doesn’t just step into the role of White Guy You Need To Emphasise With. He does come into conflict, but his conflicts aren’t about making him look cool, they’re real conflicts that are consistent with his character. That’s the difference.

(Also when Elementary’s Sherlock hijacks that bus? He probably gets punched in the face. People are never overawed by his clear Main Characterness).

1.13 | 2.01

Should I pick a girl as a gesture towards women’s equality, or is that pandering? Or do I think it’s pandering because of my limited male point of view? I’m vexed, Uzo, vexed!

“The show must go wrong!”

Lee Jordan’s commentary appreciation post

Kurt Hummel through the seasons → Episode 1