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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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For example, the bulk of the female Sherlock fandom, which you mention, is essentially yaoi shipping of Holmes and Watson in a gay relationship. It’s not about deduction or criminology or the mysteries themselves.

Wellllll.... yes and no. Slash fiction is a huge part of any fandom (I contend, with little to no evidence to back me up). But women are interested in the mysteries, too. But yeah, women are interested in the relationships in that world, between all the characters. Whatever happened to Aggie, Milverton's maid? Was she used and abandoned by Holmes? (I say 'no' but others say 'yes' and write those stories).

I read a lot of Holmes pastiche fiction, professionally published as well as fanfiction. And I do judge it in part on how they handle the characterisation, that's true. There's one pro/semi-pro author who drives me nuts with the way he (and it is a male writer) handles the British class system, attempts to write dialect, and general plotting, but I stick with his novellas because he gets the characters right. Some media (and the Holmes and Watson stories have been adapted for radio and movies and TV multiple times as well as in print) have given us comic Holmes, comic Watson, Watson who is too much of a doormat, Holmes who is too much of a jerk, Watson who is resentful of Holmes (pre- and post-Reichenbach Watson is a study in character development), a sentimental Holmes, and so on. We've even had "Watson was really a woman" as part of the Game, by Rex Stout who seems to have loved messing with the Sherlockians as part of good-natured joshing:

And right at the very start, on page 9 of "A Study in Scarlet," I found this:

    • .it was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning.

I was indescribably shocked. How had so patent a clue escaped so many millions of readers through the years? That was, that could only be, a woman speaking of a man. Read it over. The true authentic speech of a wife telling of her husband's-- but wait. I was not indulging in idle speculation, but seeking evidence to establish a fact. It was unquestionably a woman speaking of a man, yes, but whether a wife of a husband, or a mistress of a lover, . . . I admit I blushed. I blushed for Sherlock Holmes, and I closed the book.

And it's male writers and male directors who do this! I think BBC Sherlock was a wasted opportunity because Gatiss and Moffat didn't understand the characters and rode off on hobbyhorses (including what they probably thought was fanservice). I pretty much stopped watching after the first season (a whopping three episodes) due to "The Blind Banker" because while I'm not remotely progressive, that was so stuffed to the gills with Orientalist clichés it was dreadful. I could never get into Elementary because it was way too Americanised and updated, and oddly enough though it was all over Tumblr and other social media during its run, I haven't seen a single reference to it since. So maybe it strayed too far from the established canon to be remembered after it made its splash.

I'm one of the few (women as well) who don't think Holmes and Irene Adler were a romantic pairing. Holmes was not in love with Irene, Irene was not in love with Holmes, Geoffrey Norton was not an abusive husband. But male writers and male adapters for movies and TV give us the romantic pairing, presumably on the grounds that "you need a love story" and that they can't think what to do with a main female character if she's not in love with the main male character. Rex Stout mischievously hinted that Nero Wolfe was the love-child of Holmes and Irene, but that isn't meant to be taken seriously (we've also had novels about Mycroft Watson, one series co-written by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, yes that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Mrs Hudson and others all doing their own crime-solving. I'm only going to mention the abominable Mary Russell novels here once, to say that I wish she had gone over Reichenbach Falls in her cradle rather than growing up to be the pest she is).

So yes, while I'll give ground on "women like the stories for the relationships", I contend that is not all we like them for. I haven't clocked up 35 volumes of David Marcum's anthology series just because I'm breathlessly waiting for the moment Holmes and Watson hold hands (Sir Arthur already gave us the hand-holding, anyway) 😁

From "Charles Augustus Milverton":

An instant afterwards he had closed the door behind us, and we had become felons in the eyes of the law. The thick, warm air of the conservatory and the rich, choking fragrance of exotic plants took us by the throat. He seized my hand in the darkness and led me swiftly past banks of shrubs which brushed against our faces. Holmes had remarkable powers, carefully cultivated, of seeing in the dark. Still holding my hand in one of his he opened a door, and I was vaguely conscious that we had entered a large room in which a cigar had been smoked not long before.

...I felt Holmes’s hand steal into mine and give me a reassuring shake, as if to say that the situation was within his powers and that he was easy in his mind. I was not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it.

From "The Empty House":

Holmes’s cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forwards down a long hall, until I dimly saw the murky fanlight over the door. Here Holmes turned suddenly to the right, and we found ourselves in a large, square, empty room, heavily shadowed in the corners, but faintly lit in the centre from the lights of the street beyond. There was no lamp near and the window was thick with dust, so that we could only just discern each other’s figures within. My companion put his hand upon my shoulder and his lips close to my ear. “Do you know where we are?” he whispered.

...Again in the utter silence I heard that thin, sibilant note which spoke of intense suppressed excitement. An instant later he pulled me back into the blackest corner of the room, and I felt his warning hand upon my lips. The fingers which clutched me were quivering. Never had I known my friend more moved, and yet the dark street still stretched lonely and motionless before us

I'm one of the few (women as well) who don't think Holmes and Irene Adler were a romantic pairing. Holmes was not in love with Irene, Irene was not in love with Holmes, Geoffrey Norton was not an abusive husband.

I’m baffled that this is a rare take. Thinking about it, I also really disliked how the BBC show treated Adler…

Thinking about it, I also really disliked how the BBC show treated Adler

Oh, don't get me started on that one! Moffat and Gatiss are clueless, and I was really disappointed with Mark Gatiss because I liked his work on "League of Gentlemen" but clearly he wasn't the main inspiration there if I go by his subsequent solo work. I don't know which of them I should blame more for reducing Irene to literally sex on legs, or mangling the handling of Sherlock's sexuality (or lack of same; I've often felt that there's at least as good an argument that canon Holmes is asexual as any other orientation) and just the whole ugly mess that is insulting to the original characters.

I hope I wasn’t suggesting that women like Sherlock Holmes for the relationships, women do after all like crime fiction (almost all fiction except hard science fiction and some forms of fantasy, really) more than men. I was trying to say that I don’t think women reading more stories about men than men read about women necessarily tells us anything more than that they do so.

The big gap is that most modern literary fiction is written by women and is by far a women-dominated form of creative expression, but few men read it. Men used to read books, but as visual media became cheaper, more plentiful and more widely available they have gravitated more to television, movies and games, while women enjoy those things but have remained readers, too.

Oh, a recommendation for a Holmes move - Without A Clue. From the late 80s, a comedy take, but it redeems itself in the ending. Funny, clever and even touching in parts.

Novel writing and women - that's a large subject to tackle. While most were and are written by men, and men are the main characters, novel writing became female-identified during the 19th century and women readers as the audience for many novels. Women were able (sometimes had to) earn money by writing. And in general I think it's broadly true that women who read/consume media become familiar with how men write men, as well as women, but men don't read/consume media that is specifically for women in the same way, so they don't become familiar with how women write men and women.

There is some mockery of how (some) men write women characters, and mostly it's around physical/sexual elements. Male writers seem to think women are obsessed with their breasts as much as men are obsessed with women's breasts 😁

I'm sure there are comparable examples of women writing men badly, but I find the failure mode (particularly in young writers, particularly in fanfic writers) is writing men as if they're women (often young women). I have often read dialogue where I go "that is not how two men would speak to one another". I don't think I've read women writing men as worrying over is their penis perky enough, though!

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