Musings on A Study in Pink (2)

Part 2: ’You can’t have serial suicides’ – media, chain suicides, and social problems

TRIGGER WARNING: long discussions of suicide; image of a gun

Literally the whole of Part 2 is about suicide. If that is not what you want to read, close this tab and go look at some kittens. Take care of yourselves.

So here at the start of ASiP we have John Watson: recently invalided out of the army, the one place where he feels useful and respected. He is burdened by residual self-esteem and trust issues from his childhood. He is struggling – financially, mentally, physically – in a city that does not feel like home anymore. He has probably quite recently watched Sholto – the one he cares for, the one who has allowed him to embrace his sexuality to a fuller extent – fall from grace. In the news, people are committing suicides, albeit under suspicious circumstances.

What could possibly go wrong?

Keep reading

probably relevant to note that the one story Moriarty tells as The Storyteller is about Sir Boast-a-lot, whether his stories are “even true,” whether we “believe” Sir Boast-a-lot’s stories, or if he’s “just a big old liar who makes things up to make himself look good”. the whole Moriarty disinformation campaign sets up the post-S2 #ibelieveinsherlockholmes hashtag campaign, the fans/audience defending Sherlock’s genius and by extension defending John’s blog as being definitely true, the only true accounting of Sherlock’s genius as every other news source turns against him and calls him a liar/dupe. neat little S2-S4 symmetry/reversal when you compare it to what we’re arguing now!

aaahhhh, yes, ooh!, and by getting the audience to dig in our heels about the "accuracy" of john's blog, that distracts from the unreliability of his narration. Layered together with the blog giving a more "realistic" account of some of the more fantastical events shown on the screen.

cos just because something is a Primary Source, that doesn't mean it wasn't written with an agenda, a point of view, an unexamined bias, or limited knowledge of subject. especially a Primary Source which is itself a work of fiction.

ok, stopping before my brain turns inside out!

Sherlock and the media – ‘the full story’?

I’ve been thinking of writing this meta for a long time, but maybe now is as good a moment as ever? For the umpteenth time in the history of this show, a large part of the audience seems to pay more attention to what’s said in the media about it, than what’s said in the actual show. This show is screaming to us ‘don’t believe everything you hear from the media – it’s fairy tales!’ The show runners have told us repeatedly to not believe everything they say about the show, because they’re ‘lying liars who lie’. And yet… Same thing as always.

So let’s pay attention to the actual show instead. What is it with the media cover of Sherlock and John in this show – what role does it play? An essential role; in fact, I believe it’s one of the most important topics in BBC Sherlock. I’ll go through it episode for episode, so please bear with me.

Ariane De Vere’s transcripts are a veritable gold mine for this kind of research; all the spoken words are transcribed, but also what we see as text in the show, plus descriptions of the scenes. I can’t stress enough how useful this is.

I looked up all the times the words ‘press’, ‘paper’, ‘media’ and ‘journalist’ occurred in the dialogue or the descriptions, and the hits were so many that it almost got a bit worrisome. There are media references in every single episode except TFP – even in MHR - and in some of them media plays a central role.

Observations:

To begin with, John and Sherlock read newspapers a lot. This might give a touch of domesticity to the scenes at 221B, but maybe it could also mean something more deep and symbolic. Media is of course useful for Sherlock’s professional work, and we often see him studying newspaper clips as data collection for the cases. But in general, it’s not exactly a positive picture of the media that this show paints; all the contrary in fact.

Secondly, the whole show begins with a case that alerts the media. Apart from the scenes with John Watson’s solitary bedsit, the first thing we see in ASiP is a supposed suicide followed by the press. It escalates to a bigger police press conference when the number of similar ‘suicides’ grows to three. One of the journalists seems to be a bit sensationalist, since she’s immediately asking about serial killers and the public’s safety. Sherlock appears to have the phone numbers to all the attending journalists, since he repeatedly sends them the same text message, synchronized with Lestrade’s statements: “Wrong!” This indicates, to me, that the media isn’t getting the right picture of the events; thus, it’s not a reliable source.

This is a literal monster-post, so I’ll put most of it below the cut.

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wow, thank you so much for putting all of this together!! I 100% agree, the show (which is at least partly from Sherlock’s POV, possibly also partly from John’s, either way it works) is telling us not to trust what we read or hear in media. I took a lot of notes while reading this!

ASIP: why call it an “alarming” shade of pink, why not “bright” or “attractive”? Possibly as a warning about people in media? The screen cap you chose emphasizes the pink overlay on Sherlock’s face, wow.

TBB: Lukis’ diary is useful as a clue only because it’s actually truthful, in contrast with the many newspaper articles that are dismissed as “wrong”. But it’s also private, which seems to underscore the divide between what is written for personal reasons, and what is written for public consumption or sale.

TGG: again, the only useful info derived from media, is the truthful gossip on the fan websites. Fan websites, huh. I wonder what that could possibly be implying. ;)

ASIB: John’s blog becomes even more unreliable than he intended, as the counter becomes stuck. An impersonal function, which should be accurate, isn’t.

TRF: that is such a sad point you make, that John being suddenly unhappy and blaming about the publicity, makes Sherlock think he’s bad for John, when he has so far been only good for him. :(

TEH: Sherlock’s resignation to the stoopid hat and the media, maybe he feels like he lost John anyway, despite his best efforts while away, so what’s the use of resisting? :(

TSOT: the media coverage of the “Waters Gang” is “wrong” again: I think it’s @finalproblem who wrote the detailed meta separating the clown-masked bank robbers from the “waters gang” shown in the papers.

 http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/90723197150/the-sign-of-three-plus-one 

HLV I wonder if the mismatches around Janine’s fake news articles, has something to do with what @green-violin-bow just recently pointed out about how ACD “Mary” DID simultaneously “save” and “kill” Sherlock Holmes, by straightwashing the characters (That’s a horrible oversimplification of one tiny part, and you need to read the whole actual meta if you haven’t yet, http://green-violin-bow.tumblr.com/post/171998128495 )

TAB: I think there’s an image in the opening sequence, of the Strand Magazine, the big lens, and Sherlock’s face/eye, which is then played out in that scene with the man selling copies and talking to John in the cab. The Strand has become the lens through which we see Holmes, while Holmes himself remains unseen within the cab. I think it was @just-sort-of-happened who wrote a meta about taxi cabs being a metaphor for relationships, but I can’t find it right now. So metaphorically, the real Holmes, in a relationship with Watson, is hidden, but in the Strand, is the version John writes for the public.

TFP, that’s another interesting mismatch observation, that there is no reportage of the explosion on Baker St, as there was in TGG. An accurate-enough report of the bomb across the street was what sent John rushing home from Sarah’s. That might be more about explosion subtext than media subtext, though. ;)

~The Multiverse & The Blind Banker~

Another Easter Egg.

Look familiar? “Iain M. Banks’ latest novel Transition…will jelly your brains in brilliant weirdness. Banks turns political world-building on its head in this exciting tale of an Earth-based multiverse in turmoil…”

“Set between the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 financial crisis, Transition centres on a shadowy organisation called “The Concern” (also known as “L'Expédience”), and how the workings of this organisation affect the lives of the novel’s multiple narrators and characters. Banks uses the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics theory to imagine “infinitudes” of parallel realities, between which The Concern’s agents—known as Transitionaries—can “flit”, intervening in events to produce what The Concern sees as beneficial outcomes for that world. Transitioning, or flitting, is only possible for people with a predisposed talent for such movement, who may only flit after ingesting a mysterious drug called “septus”.

Have they used multiverses in Sherlock? Yes, they have. From @waitingforgarridebs​  the-penultimate-problem-of-sherlock-holmes: ACD alive in  BBC Sherlock

Many-worlds interpretation Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual “world” (or “universe”). In layman’s terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes.

Of course, there would have to be mention of a Cat: The quantum-mechanical “Schrödinger’s cat” theorem according to the many-worlds interpretation. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point; the cat is both alive and dead, even before the box is opened, but the “alive” and “dead” cats are in different branches of the universe, both of which are equally real, but which do not interact with each other.

Why do this? I guess you could say they did try to give us a head’s up.

@monikakrasnorada @isitandwonder @may-shepard @tjlcisthenewsexy @gosherlocked @sherlock-overflow-error @shag-me-senseless-watson

I used to joke about Schrodinger’s Moriarty… Now we’ve got Schrodinger’s baby!

You make a deep point, though. They’ve shown us several times that what we believed was “real”–Reichenbach explanations, mind palace scenes, etc.–was not necessarily true in our universe, but it might be one of several equally likely possibilities. Plus, the plots of many episodes centered around a fundamental published lie that no one could prove true or false: lies about Sherlock in TRF, Magnussen’s blackmail. (I know there’s some great meta on this, but I can’t find it rn.)

They’re teaching us not to trust something just because it’s been published. Schrodinger’s baby indeed.

@asherlockstudy @keagan-ashleigh I think you may be interested in this as well.

Thank you for that. It took a minute to find but @the-7-percent-solution has a meta, the-important-difference-between-cats-and-dogs-in… awesome:

- “Sehkmet” Connie Prince’s cat in TGG was a red herring to us and John as the tetanus carrier. - Kitty Riley posed as a super fan to try to get the scoop on Sherlock in TRF. - The Lucky Cat was the name of the store that served as a cover for an international smuggling ring. - T. Thompson asked Sherlock for help through his website asking for “locating his missing cat” when in actuality there was no cat, that was just a ploy for something greater….All linked to lies and media.

I would add to that the alercation in the restaurant,TEH, when Sherlock says, ‘I was afraid you would let the cat out of the bag.’ Sure enough, it was in the papers, within days. 

Bringing this old gem back, which first taught me the importance of TBB & Sherlock’s books @darlingtonsubstitution

reblogging TBB meta during March.

Musings on A Study in Pink (2)

Part 2: ’You can’t have serial suicides’ – media, chain suicides, and social problems

TRIGGER WARNING: long discussions of suicide; image of a gun

Literally the whole of Part 2 is about suicide. If that is not what you want to read, close this tab and go look at some kittens. Take care of yourselves.

So here at the start of ASiP we have John Watson: recently invalided out of the army, the one place where he feels useful and respected. He is burdened by residual self-esteem and trust issues from his childhood. He is struggling – financially, mentally, physically – in a city that does not feel like home anymore. He has probably quite recently watched Sholto – the one he cares for, the one who has allowed him to embrace his sexuality to a fuller extent – fall from grace. In the news, people are committing suicides, albeit under suspicious circumstances.

What could possibly go wrong?

Keep reading

I did see this before, but I didn’t comment, this is taking the “murder disguised as suicide” to a whole nother level, wow.