Unaware of the beautiful

This is beautiful. I love this!  (TGG)

(All quotes courtesy Ariane DeVere)

So we have this impressive sentence in the best man speech:

But if you looks closely, at least the middle part is complete bullshit. From series 1 on Sherlock has definitely known what he thinks is beautiful and has expressed it clearly. He is not unaware of the beautiful, never was. Of course his concept of beauty may vary between traditional (the stars, music) and unconventional (admiration for a clever case of art fraud) but he knows quite well what is beautiful. 

The famous TSOT quote has traditionally been applied to male beauty as a construct based on the image of Sherlock’s own father that is reflected in Victor and later in John. So may we infer from this that someone in his life told him about astronomical and musical beauty as well? Probably. 

And this made me think. If one part of the sentence is wrong, what about the others? 

Now virtue may seem an old-fashioned concept so maybe we should replace it with morals or ethics. Sherlock clearly knows right from wrong and good from evil and usually applies his considerable skills to support the former and fight the latter. When did he ever dismiss moral or ethical people or behaviour? Even when he dismisses the concept of caring, one second later he states that he wants to help people:

I never understood how anyone could see Sherlock as amoral or cold. He saves people. And if something keeps him from doing so, he chooses not to adhere to that behaviour. 

In short, Sherlock is not dismissive of the virtuous as long as you define those as people acting in a moral and ethical way and not as some hypocrites who just take on the semblance of virtue. 

Now for the last one - uncomprehending in the face of the happy.  

This is not something Sherlock talks about often but you cannot doubt that he wants to ensure John’s happiness (whatever that may be). And there are his words to Molly:

It does not matter that neither Mary nor Tom succeed in making people happy, what matters is that Sherlock thinks they do and that he understands happiness very well. At least in others. Sigh. 

So what is the conclusion? Sherlock either does not know himself (which I cannot really believe) or people have brainwashed him into thinking that he is dismissive, unaware and uncomprehending. Which with regard to Mycroft’s behaviour seems very plausible. And this is something he has to break free from, he has to liberate himself from this trap. Which, again, leads me to the idea that we are experiencing Sherlock’s self-experiment on how to break free of the limitations of 130 years. 

Tags under the cut

Weiterlesen

@lukessense wrote: 

@gosherlocked I think what’s really interesting about BBC Sherlock is that the character Sherlock is portrayed as if he inherited the misconceptions about the character Sherlock Holmes, like a childhood trauma. But Mofftiss try to show how Sherlock reclaims his own identity by confronting him with canon, storytellers and authors. Sherlock is growing out of the subtex and the narration through the eyes of others (destroying facades etc.). And as it turns out, Sherlock has always been the grown-up.

This is a brilliant idea - the collected misconceptions about SH as inherited childhood trauma. I really, really love this idea.

 @ebaeschnbliah

@gosherlocked yes I call it ‘trauma of the canon’, not because it was traumatic per se but it portrayed a fragmented, partly hidden Sherlock Holmes that the readership couldn’t quite grasp. And other adaptions never took the chance to openly show the whole Sherlock Holmes. But BBC Sherlock does something new. They let Sherlock reclaim his identity and lay all parts of it out in the open, culminating in the confrontation with Redbeard. To me Redbeard is like a summery of the need for a facade. A stand-in for Sherlock’s love for Watson that had to be hidden. The dog was transformed into a boy who looked back at Eurus and ran away with young Sherlock. Who couldn’t properly see (wore an eye-patch), just like the narration through the eyes of Dr. Watson was always partly blind. When Victor lost his eye-patch, he got thrown into the well of emotions, but Sherlock couldn’t save him as a child. In TFP Sherlock can finally save John (the storyteller who might be able to finally see as soon as we reach the next part of the story) and as it turns out, Sherlock was always the grown-up. Mycroft tried to condition Sherlock by mentioning Redbeard, but Sherlock began to realize that he is “not a child anymore”. He is the grown-up who is not afraid to embrace emotions. Everything else were just projections of the story and the storyteller, projected on Sherlock, but never the full picture. But as Sherlock says himself at the end of TFP: Mycroft was doing his best, trying to protect Sherlock. And I guess there was a time where the character Sherlock Holmes needed protection (via facades and subtext) but I think this time might be over now. I think Sherlock is ready to grow out of this narration of hidden identities etc., because he was always the grown-up anyway.

At least that’s how I read it at the moment :)

@ebaeschnbliah

Yes, @lukessense  @gosherlocked  I think the idea of Sherlock Holmes portrayed as a fragmented character is also supported by the family pictures on the walls of the grey chamber in Sherrinford/Musgrave. Apparently someone has torn them appart and then randomly put together again. Did this happen with each new adaptation? Sherlock is not familiar with the concept of happy families, he says in TST. I wonder if ‘family’ in this story means all the different aspects, the collected facets, of Sherlock’s personality. What I really like about Sherlock BBC is that this time Sherlock has been given the opportunity to investigate his own case, to deduce his own personality and because of this, to rewrite his own story. This time he is the storyteller of his own story. Over the course of the last years I’ve come to read this adaptation that way … the evolution of Sherlock Holmes. And I guess this evolution happens inside his mind. The audience is able to look inside the brain of the legendary detective and can observe how it works. I wouldn’t be much surprised if this adaptation is a sort of slow motion record of Sherlock’s thinking process. His brain is terribly fast after all. Who knows … maybe that what we see in four series actually happens in the timespan of just four minutes …  :))))

rb for discussion

Why the dog keeps barking during the ‘Bruce-Partington case’ – A memory stick meta

First fresh meta in a long time (ie, not from the dark swirling vortex of my draft folder), so I apologise for any typos and lack of eloquence.

A few days ago, @ebaeschnbliah discovered three mysterious dog barking sound bites in TGG, and I promised to write up my theory about them. (You can read about @ebaeschnbliah‘s discovery here: x). Meanwhile @ebaeschnbliah proved to be quicker than I ever could and wrote a post of her own about this (x). So, please don’t be disappointed if the following text, at least in part, repeats some of her points. I promise only some of our observations will overlap and, more importantly, our conclusions will be different.

Okay, settle in, fill your tea cups, grab your reading glasses and let me tell you a story…

The Bruce-Partington case foreshadows s5 like nothing else! 

And here’s why…

Remember that we’ve all pretty much collectively agreed that the 5 pips in TGG foreshadow the five seasons of BBC ‘Sherlock’? Many people had written metas about this over the years. (You can read my take on this theory here: x).

This is why we have to examine the fifth pip, the Bruce-Partington case, more closely than anything else if we want to make solid predictions about s5.

The Bruce-Partington case is what it has all been about.

The Bruce-Partington case=s5!

Ergo, the Bruce-Partington case should contain everything we need to know about s5: What will eventually happen. How Sherlock and John will get together. What actually happened to Sherlock in his past to impede his sexual/romantic growth into a happy, openly gay man. All of this should be coded in the Bruce-Partington case.

As it happens the Bruce-Partington case is one of the most complex ones on the show: This case isn’t just subtextually coded. It is double-coded. I would even argue that there’s some evidence that it is triple-coded!

How so? 

Well, first of all, let me give you my two main premises, so as to make this easier to understand:

1. Premise number one: Dogs = homosexuality

2. Premise number two: memory sticks = Sherlock’s “lost” memory (about his traumatic past and subsequently repressed gay identity)

Aaaaand finally, in s4, it is recovered…

(There’s more under the cut…)

Keep reading

Ah @sagestreet, and you didn’t even want to write this meta! Fortunately then you did it because as usual you dug deeper, you’re a bit the archaeologist of this fandom, all excavations and pieces of art ;-P All always super interesting. The memory stick thing is always very sensible when read this way. And as I already mentioned it is interesting that these memory sticks are never actually read by anyone. The first is drowned by Moriarty, the second is burned. But perhaps we can find differences between them. The first contains secret plans (if I can, I will focus on the contents of these plans, are missile plans … among all the available weapons, if the gun already seems to have a phallic connotation, I do not even want to dwell on what looks like a missile ) which as you say brilliantly can refer to Sherlock’s homosexual memory. I must say that I am not entirely convinced of the motivations of Moriarty. Always read as homophobia, correctly in my opinion, contains in itself however the pure and simple suffix homo. It is homophobia as long as it is not accepted. It is homophobia as long as it is not free (i want to be free, i want to be …. god). He takes the memory of Sherlock, who already knows, because it is that who created him, and throws it away just because he already owns it. He makes it go back where it was, drowned deep, like it happened at Carl Powers … now here I’m shooting blind, so of pure instinct. If I think better about it, maybe it does not hold water. But Carl Powers was drowned because he laughed at Moriarty. Because he laughed about the homosexual side of Sherlock. And Moriarty / Sherlock drowned him, which is similar to holding in a well, which makes a lot of thinking about the removal. And it is since then that Moriarty has become bad, from homosexual to homophobia. And now he threatens to blow up, burn John, but Sherlock is not ready, his memory is buried, the bomb is taken from John and Sherlock’s sexuality, Irene, draws attention to herself. It is something that must be resolved first. A before and after. The same scene re-reads as prediction tells, as you and @ebaeschnbliah said, a story with a different outcome. The second stick has a different content, contains AGRA that I had already thought (X)could be a representation of Sherlock. A more recent memory, a memory that refers to John, to the love that Sherlock feels for him and to the things what he has done for him. In fact, someone reads that key, Sherlock does it, it is John who refuses to do it, who does not want to see all that is evident. He throws it into the fire, but it stubbornly reappears. The attempt to deny, the memory stick, is hidden in the bust of the Tacher, an irreproachable and homophobic facade, but this ends up shattering. At that point it is likely that John has read it, it is never said, but it is he who suggests to us a locator, so it is likely that he has deepened his knowledge. And the further heteronormative facade that tries to take possession of information, to hide the evidence, is hunted down. I apologize for all this digression, maybe a little shaky on the memory stick. As far as your Bruce-Partington case analysis is concerned, it’s so beautiful! On the second level, the reading of Mycrof as a thief of Sherlock’s homosexual identity, in order to protect him, caring is not an advantage, alone protects me …. it’s clear (the mirror Mycroft / Joe through the outfit is rather cheeky). I would read Mycroft as the rational part of Sherlock who does everything to protect himself, but also to see him as Author is very interesting. And above all, what I love in your meta is how, despite the subtext is laid bare, you can also keep the focus on potential literal development. There are so many possible levels of reading that I continue to think that it is also possible one in which John and Sherlock replace Joe and Westie. You can see it here too, these three screencaps are in sequence.

The first and third are mirrored, in the middle we have the double mirror, John, the military bag at his feet, the bicycle chain, and Mycroft.

The atmosphere, very similar to the stag nigth (we never see Lucy) and the alcoholic inebriation. But while in this case the murder happens, let’s say that finally they end up in bed, in the stag night they are interrupted by a nurse …. But of course with the third one you’ve made sparks. The trio Mummy, Dad and Rudy is perfect. And also the fact that once he’s killed (fucked) Westie is put on a train is interesting. 

A train that had taken a certain direction but then because of an exchange causes the body to fall … the father had decided to choose Rudy but then something made him change his mind and this led to a bad end? ( here death = death).

As always you can stimulate the small gray cells … even if in my comment I fear mine have more than anything else danced samba ….

@possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @sagestreet @devoursjohnlock @gosherlocked @sagestreet

Thank you, @raggedyblue. I’m glad you liked it.

I love your observation with the train. It makes so much sense:

A guy’s life is supposed to go one way (one endless track disappearing in the metaphorical distance, ie, future), but then there’s a point and he’s suddenly, unexpectedly thrown off course. That makes all the sense in the world.

Incidentally, this could also mean that trains might play an important part in s5. Real trains that stand for metaphorical trains, obviously. Since the Bruce-Partington case foreshadows s5, this seems more than just a bit likely.

When it comes to Moriarty…yeah, you’re right!

@ebaeschnbliah has been telling me, for months, that he represents more than just homophobia. I’ve just been too stubborn to understand what she was telling me.:) 

But she (and you) are right. Moriarty wants the explosion to happen, wants to blow them both up, ie, Moriarty is Love, too. Explosive love. He’s also referred to as the crack in the lens, the speck in the ointment or whatever in TAB. This happens after they have already established that this is the definition of love in the same episode. Yes, I think @ebaeschnbliah and you are both right: Moriarty is Love.

But he is Love and something else too. Moriarty is Homophobia and Love at the same time.

That’s seems to be THE one problem Sherlock has: the two concepts have become the same thing to him, they have melded into one. Internalised homophobia and Love are represented by the same inner persona, which is massively, massively unhealthy, of course.

If we come back to the reading that Moriarty is something like Sherlock’s Freudian ‘Id’ (with Mycroft being Sherlock’s ‘Super-Ego’), a reading people have proposed ages ago, then it all becomes very clear: The Freudian ‘Id’ is the inner space where all drives and desires reside, without the slightest bit of moral connotation. I.e. Sherlock can’t distinguish between healthy drives and destructive drives. They are the same to him. 

To Sherlock, Love=gay sex=suicide are the same thing.

Sherlock’s great task over the course of these five seasons is to differentiate these things. Homophobia has to be defeated, yes, and Love has to be embraced, but first he has to understand where one begins and the other one ends. That seems to be his problem. 

And I maintain that to separate these two into different concepts he has to examine what happened to his dad. (Which is my favourite theory right now.:))

Psychoanalytic reading is always very interesting and I think the show draws fully from it. However, in the allegorical carnival they created I think Sherlock’s ID is clearly played by Eurus (X). And of course, Moriarty has a close relationship with this part of Sherlock’s psyche. The iD is the place where things were removed (X), and Sherlock removed  his being gay when he decided that caring was not an advantage, that love is a crack on the lens. He removed Moriarty in the bottom of a padded cell. But when John appears in his life ID (Eurus) and Moriarty started to work together. To be free, revive the past to dissolve the knots.

@sagestreet @possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @sherlockshadow @sarahthecoat

Exactly  @raggedyblue  It’s all about choices and consequences and what might happen if one alters the ‘one fixed point in a changing world’. When the friend becomes the lover …. and the passions grenade finally explodes …. 

Sex is action - it can be locked in by force and supressed … and Sherlock tries to be very thorough when he secures Mr.Sex in the padded cell with chain and collar, like a dangerous hound.

Love is emotion - it is impossible to lock in such an indomitable and powerful force of nature … and Sherlock fears it from the beginning, that  “love is a much more vicious motivator”, equipped with velvet paws and deadly claws.  :)))

@sagestreet @possiblyimbiassed @gosherlocked

MMHMM!

This is Sherlock speaking … at the beginning of the trailer … trembling with emotion. Not Mycroft. It is Sherlock who calls for outside help. 

Additionally it is a slightly altered canon reference to The Final Problem …. an excerpt from Holmes’ last note to Dr. Watson before he engages in the final confrontation with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls 

Related post by @green-violin-bow  here         Trailer

@gosherlocked @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @sarahthecoat @sherlockshadow @sagestreet @loveismyrevolution @waitedforgarridebs @devoursjohnlock @sherlock-overflow-error @spenglernot

hmm.

Given that the canon note was addressed to John Watson, is there perhaps potential for us (the players) to ‘be’ John?

After all, in the show, he is ‘people’. He is ‘London’. He’s the narrator - the eyes and ears of the reader.

And he always comes when Sherlock calls.

There’s “many a crisis” in canon; these are not consistently relevant as far as I can tell, and the best of them have already been built into Sherlock except for the one you’ve spotted, @ebaeschnbliah​. There are two others that I think deserve a mention because together, these are all Fall-related.

Here’s one from The Naval Treaty, with its knife’s-edge, life-or-death decision point:

… which I’ve felt for a while might be influencing the red/blue intervals that recur in Sherlock.

The other is this all-the-world’s-a-stage scene from The Six Napoleons:

This is arguably Sherlock’s “black pearl of the Borgias” moment with Ajay at a another pool, in The Six Thatchers.

“Before the police come in and spoil things, why don’t we just enjoy the moment?” Where, in the absence of John and the police to enjoy the performance, we’re the audience.

Ah …. ‘so many a crisis’ in canon … that’s an ineresting addition @devoursjohnlock  Especially the connection to red and blue and the Borgia Pearl. 

And once again there’s a different meaning of a word … of crisis. Thanks for pointing this out @gosherlocked (X). The creators love their little word games so much. 

Similar thought regarding John=People @green-violin-bow (X). Summoning People could mean summoning John … asking John for help. Considering that the ‘crisis’ note in the original story is written BEFORE the fall, this would take the story of Sherlock BBC also back BEFORE Bart’s roof. Could be interesting. :)

Also, I love the idea of the audience being summoned to save Sherlock, @loveismyrevolution (X) 

Interesting references indeed, @ebaeschnbliah, @loveismyrevolution and @devoursjohnlock ! Hmm. In canon Holmes reveals the missing Pearl by dramatically smashing a bust of Napoleon, but in the BBC show he’s mistaken; out comes a memory stick (= a bunch of important but repressed memories?) and he could only get to it by smashing a bust of Thatcher (= symbol of institutionalized homophobia?). I believe that these metaphores are staged in his Mind Theatre.

As for the red/blue intervals in the pool scene in TGG/ASiB: Moriarty throws the memory stick into the water (water=blue) and says he’ll burn Sherlock’s heart out (fire=red). Sherlock’s and John’s imminent death is interrupted by ‘Staying Alive’ playing on Moriarty’s phone and he says “sorry - wrong time to die” (Merchant meating Death in Bagdad but postponing it to Samara?). Possible meaning, considering @devoursjohnlock ’s canon ref: If you repress your memories all is well. But Moriarty (=Homophobia) is threatening to set your heart on fire, which might kill you eventually.

In TRF Moriarty also plays ‘Staying alive’, and warns Sherlock about the Final Problem and the Fall. So yes; I think the problem is very much related to the Fall.

So - on a meta level - just out of the top of my head: If Sherlock is in crisis and The Final Problem is [Sherlock] staying alive, and we’re supposed to solve it; what does it take for the great original character of Sherlock Holmes to ‘stay alive’ (= not succumb to the stereotype with the deerstalker but without Sentiment, who is frozen in time since canon and since S4)? What does it take for Sherlock to survive his comatose state in S4? Well, my bet is overcome Homophobia. Embrace his memories (canon Holmes, who he really is) and basically tell John that he loves him (mirror Molly in TFP).

Also, a bit out of the blue: ‘congenial’ in @ebaeschnbliah ’s canon ref makes me think of Billy Wiggins when he claims to have bad luck and mentions the word 'congenital’ twice to Sherlock in TLD. It has a different meaning but sounds pretty similar to me.

@gosherlocked

I have this personal head canon for which Doyle began to write about Holmes and Watson as personal divertissement, a personal vent, a game to share with those who, like him, had certain ideas and inclinations. Let’s say it was his A03 space…

Then the political and social climate has changed for the worse. We also add that the official excuse could be  valid, that is, Doyle wanting to be taken into consideration also for all his other writings, extremely varied, and some fruit of great efforts. Ultimately, writing about Holmes was no fun anymore … (and recently we heard the same words come out of the mouth of the man who plays Watson, namely, of Doyle’s alter ego).

The time was ripe for FINA. Holmes had to die and what was conducting to his end could not be a trivial projectile. The one who is defeating him could not be a common villain. It had to be Moriarty and it made sense to be a fall.

In FINA, a frightened Holmes comes from Watson and as a first gesture closes all the shutters. He admits that he is not a nervous person, but what happens inside the room is better not seen from the outside

“ it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you “

and the danger that must be faced is not a GHOST “It is not an airy nothing, you see,” it is something tangible and real.

And the first resolution that Holmes takes is to leave the Country for to the Continent, so as to escape this enemy. And finally the fearful enemy is officially introduced into history. It is someone whose actions are seen, but whose existence is unknown. “The man pervades London,” would seem a forerunner of love that dare no speak its name) A man with “hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind” “some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law”.

The first meeting between Holmes and Moriarty seems to come out from the screenplay of a bad b-movie soft porn. (and Moffits have played a lot with this). “ You have less frontal development that I should have expected, “said he, at last. 'It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded in the pocket of one’s dressing-gown.’.

Moriarty knows that because of him Holmes only has one option “You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,” he said, swaying his face about. 'You really must, you know.’ This is not a question of vague danger but of inevitable annihilation. But Holmes is willing to sacrifice himself to eliminate even Moriarty from the scene, “in the interests of the public.”

Moriarty in BBC Sherlock represents homosexuality, still declined in homophobia, because still forced in its role of villain. But even in the Canon, I believe that at the level of the subtext can be seen in the same way, They should not astonish the grotesque sides of Moriarty’s description and his role as antagonist (and in a rather long series of stories in which quite likely villains appear, with clear motivations and realistic potentialities, this obscure and megalomaniac genius of crime stands out for absurdity). In fact, we know well what the queer subtext was and where homosexuality was usually hidden. Always in the monster, in the evil, in the different. Dracula, Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, Frankenstein. The hidden homosexuality in the stories of Holmes and Watson was also the cause of their necessary end. Because simply escaping to the Continent was not enough. “One would think that we were the criminals”, says Watson before leaving, because now the danger of being discovered loomed and clouded even the happiest moments (like the honeymoon in Switzerland), “walk where we would, we could not walk ourselves clear of the danger which was dogging our footsteps ”.

The inevitable end, the one that leaves Watson (alias Doyle) alive and safe, sees instead Holmes and Moriarty, the stories and homosexuality hidden in it, falling into the tumultuous turmoil of deep waters.

So yes, I definitely think we can be frozen to the Final Problem at a meta level. When homophobia had determined the end of the adventures of the two men and before the economic needs (and quiet living?) Had brought them back to life (we might all just be human., even you Doyle). What may happen now, at different times, is that the rebirth of Holmes corresponds to the liberation of Moriarty.

@gosherlocked​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @possiblyimbiassed​ @sarahthecoat​ @sherlockshadow​ @devoursjohnlock​ @green-violin-bow​

what an interesting way of looking at it! I think one of the most inspired aspects of bbc sherlock, is using moriarty in this way, to represent BOTH homosexuality (like a typical queer gothic), AND homophobia, at the same time. It turns the character from a one-story villain, whose "arch nemesis” status we have to take on faith, into a truly integral character, rich in symbolism and potential. This reminds me of what “expect the unexpected” in the run up to s4 made me think, that at some point sherlock would have to team up with jim to overcome a final obstacle. It would symbolize sherlock integrating his whole self, and the change in society, from homosexuality being illegal, to being accepted (more widely, and not illegal, at least in sherlock’s england) “the liberation of moriarty” has the potential to be a deeply satisfying “rug pull”, no idea if they’ll do it although one can imagine.

@heimishtheidealhusband @asherlockstudy

Absolutely, @raggedyblue  Jim calls himself ‘Mr.Sex’ in TRF. On a metaphorical level, what else could he represent if not Sherlock’s sexuality. Just like Irene. They act as a pair. They represent Sherlock’s male and female side of his own sexuality. And both - Irene and Jim - are gay. If this happens inside Sherlock’s head, then this is Sherlock’s opinion on the matter. Opinions thogh, can change.

Keep reading

In a way, the "rescue irene" scene at the end of ASIB indicates accepting her/that aspect of himself. Has someone already written about parallels between ASIB and TFP? Both trick and test sherlock, both in the end are saved by him, both represent aspects of himself.