i get, really i do get that the reason the sherlock fandom’s all up in arms over the ‘changes’ is because sir dickface moffat has incepted them into believing that aside from the ‘update’ his version is faithful in all ways to the holmes canon. i get that a lot of people have never read the originals, or have only done so through the lens of sherlock, after watching the series, and so placed moffat’s interpretation over the original text. i get it.
and i am all about the freedom to interpret texts. i’m an english major; i kinda have to be behind that. moffat can do whatever the fuck he wants in his interpretation. i liked some of it a lot, and i was made hurt and furious by other parts. what i don’t like, and what i in fact actively despise about moffat is his conviction that being a writer makes him, essentially, god. that’s not how it works. as a writer, you write the text, and then it goes off into the world, and people interpret it. you don’t get a say.
the thing is, though, is that sherlock is not some completely perfectly faithful rendition of the canon. if the fact that it’s set in modern london isn’t enough of a clue for you, there were plenty of things throughout the series that differed from the books (watson not married, sherlock despising mycroft, the cleanliness of this sherlock vs. the holmes that has various holes around the city and who regularly interacts with the underclasses, etc), that anyone who had come to conan doyle’s canon first and everything else second would have noticed immediately. i sure did, and for the most part i didn’t care, because it’s an adaptation and that happens.
the other thing is that elementary isn’t an adaptation of sherlock. sure, maybe that’s where the idea came from. but it’s not. it’s an adaptation of the arthur conan doyle holmes canon, and so when i see all these people saying things - based off a four minute clip - about google, or ‘hating when he’s right’, or tattoos, or joan turning away from the sight of a dead woman lying in a pool of her own blood, or whatever, and how that’s not right, that’s not how holmes and watson should act, i want to reach through my computer and shake them until their teeth rattle.
no. what you really mean is that’s not how sherlock and john act, because moffat has created an emotionally sterile interpretation of the text, where cool logic reigns supreme above all else. alright, fine, that’s his interpretation, whatever. but in the conan doyle canon, holmes did in fact, hate being right when it meant that someone was dead. he had emotions, he felt empathy towards people, and he certainly wouldn’t have celebrated there being a serial murderer on the loose. and watson was brave and strong and a crack shot, but he was also empathetic, and he probably would have been horrified by a dead woman.
sherlock is an adaptation. elementary is an adaptation. they are in dialogue with each other, of course, simply by drawing from the same source material. both have made changes. both are (will be) problematic in some ways. there is no such thing as a ‘proper’ or ‘better’ interpretation of a text. for fuck’s sake, people, you’re all in fandom, i shouldn’t have to spell this out to you.
so stop hating on something just because it’s a different interpretation than the one you like, and instead maybe try getting excited that there are people out there creating something from the source material you supposedly love so much. or, if sherlock is your be-all and end-all (why?), then you could try being excited that there’s a show coming out that will, if people like it, probably only draw attention to yours. or maybe even just try keeping your mouth shut instead of spewing vile hate all over the place and showing just how contemptible you are capable of being (sometimes i really do hate the internet, i am not even kidding.)
or, if you must argue against elementary, you could always take the novel approach of doing so in ways that aren’t elitist, culturally imperialist, racist, misogynist, or anything like that. point out, if you want, that just because joan’s a woman that doesn’t mean that she won’t be problematically written. but ‘they didn’t interpret the way i like!’ isn’t actually a valid argument. it’s honestly, a kinda stupid one.
and, i mean, i’d ask y’all to think before putting moffat up on that undeserved pedestal he’s worked his way onto, with his hipter-racism and misogyny, not to mention his frankly okay writing paired with a massive god complex, but somehow i don’t think you’re going to listen.
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