I figure different things resonate about the Sherlock Holmes archetype to different people; he has been around long enough and in enough different incarnations (from Conan Doyle's original vision down to Hugh Laurie's Dr. House and further) that I think he qualifies as a cultural archetype more like Batman than a character with a singular, solid canon personality with exact details. It's amazing how much of a phenomenon Sherlock Holmes is and how much he means as a character to a lot of people -- I can only really speak to my own interpretation, which I'm as attached to as anyone would be, but I definitely wouldn't claim it was the only one. What I meant to say was more that I think that if "canon"-snobs are particular about their Holmes being heartless, I don't think that was Conan Doyle's intent (if they are very fixed on Conan Doyle's intent), given he was a Victorian/Edwardian pulp writer in the age when heroes were much more popular than antiheroes; I think it's pretty clear he intended his first Holmes to be just and heroic. It took a lot of evolution to get to House MD. Anyway. Pop culture criticism hat off now.
The third episode was fantastic dramatically -- I loved Moriarty's acting and how creepy his getting people to read things was, and I think it was definitely the best one for Sherlock's characterization -- but man, I am more than slightly tired of femme/flamboyant/queer-sexually-menacing villains as a Hollywood standby to make a man seem evil. Disney does it. TV does it. Everything frigging does it. It's like "how do we give cheap cultural cues for viewers to dislike and distrust a male character? Make him GAY." Even the Master from the Ten run of Doctor Who plays on this a little -- and I love him, mind you, but I don't think the average straight male fanboy is supposed to. So yeah, I think I liked The Great Game but I was tired of its implications. Plus Steven Moffat is a giant misogynist (and proudly so, in interviews) so I wouldn't be surprised if he were also homophobic.
As for Captain America... uh, putting aside the whole notion of Captain America and my opinion that the idea of a virtuous PG-13-rated superhero named "Captain America" should have been retired thirty years ago in disgrace, and the questionable taste of bowdlerizing WWII for a superhero movie, the whole thing could have been written directly from TVTropes. Rel commented that there was probably not a single line that came out of Hugo Weaving's mouth that had not been said in a different movie at some point. I agree with her.
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sforzinda
no subject
Date: 2011-07-25 12:29 am (UTC)The third episode was fantastic dramatically -- I loved Moriarty's acting and how creepy his getting people to read things was, and I think it was definitely the best one for Sherlock's characterization -- but man, I am more than slightly tired of femme/flamboyant/queer-sexually-menacing villains as a Hollywood standby to make a man seem evil. Disney does it. TV does it. Everything frigging does it. It's like "how do we give cheap cultural cues for viewers to dislike and distrust a male character? Make him GAY." Even the Master from the Ten run of Doctor Who plays on this a little -- and I love him, mind you, but I don't think the average straight male fanboy is supposed to. So yeah, I think I liked The Great Game but I was tired of its implications. Plus Steven Moffat is a giant misogynist (and proudly so, in interviews) so I wouldn't be surprised if he were also homophobic.
As for Captain America... uh, putting aside the whole notion of Captain America and my opinion that the idea of a virtuous PG-13-rated superhero named "Captain America" should have been retired thirty years ago in disgrace, and the questionable taste of bowdlerizing WWII for a superhero movie, the whole thing could have been written directly from TVTropes. Rel commented that there was probably not a single line that came out of Hugo Weaving's mouth that had not been said in a different movie at some point. I agree with her.