Number 091 Images of Holmes

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1 Media Studies Number 091 Sherlock Holmes This series uses familiar characters and updates the setting but this time moves Holmes and Watson to modern day New York. It is yet to be seen how successful the CBS version will be but both Hollywood and the BBC have created new versions of a much loved character and both versions have been positively received by fans and critics. Images of Holmes The aims of this Factsheet are to consider the Sherlock Holmes stories and characters and how they have recently been used in contemporary media texts, including: the influence of the character on modern crime genre texts the representation of the main characters and their narrative functions how the updating of the Victorian story can be related to contemporary issues and concerns Stories based on the character Sherlock Holmes have been part of film and television history for many decades. Crime fiction is a popular literary genre that is ideal for moving image storytelling as its narratives are apparently complex but are often revealed to be simple. Crime fictions are usually based on an enigma (the whodunit ). They provide audiences with heroes whose investigations become the quest of the narrative. The detective s unveiling of the murderer acts as a final resolution which conventionally ties up all loose ends and ensures justice is served. Recently, two high profile adaptations of Sherlock Holmes have been made. In 2009, Robert Downey Junior starred as Holmes with Jude Law as Watson in a big budget adventure movie Sherlock Holmes. A sequel was released in 2011 (Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows). The British director Guy Ritchie directed both films and they are fast paced adventures set in a fictional Victorian landscape. Downey s Holmes was brilliant but irreverent and displayed a mischievous wit. The BBC broadcast its new adaptation of Holmes, simply entitled Sherlock in A second series was broadcast in 2011 and the series broke from tradition by setting the stories in contemporary London and updated many of the Holmes conventions to fit in with changes in culture and technology. About to be broadcast is the American Network CBS s adaptation, Elementary (2012). From left to right: Basil in Holmes iconic deerstalker hat and Jeremy Brett who played Holmes in the 1980s. A modern Hollywood Holmes in Robert Downey Jnr and two contemporary TV versions played by Benedict Cumberbatch (in BBC s Sherlock ) and Johnny Lee Miller (in CBS s Elementary). ( / sherlock-holmes.html; sherlock-holmes/images/ /title/jeremy-brett-sherlock-holmes-photo) 1

2 The audience gratifications from this type of narrative are simple and yet deeply satisfying. Audiences may have been thrilled by murder, tension and suspense but they are ultimately reassured as evil is vanquished, good triumphs and crime is usually shown not to pay. Sherlock Holmes was a prototype for this type of detective. Activity Write a list of as many TV and/or film detectives you can think of. What characteristics do they all share? What methods do they use? What codes and conventions for the detective and the detective story can you identify? Write down what you know about Sherlock Holmes, his character and his methods. You will probably find that most TV detectives and policemen owe much to Sherlock Holmes in the way their characters have been created and how they solve crimes. Holmes Created by Arthur Conan-Doyle and first appearing in 1887, Holmes works as a consulting detective taking cases from his 221b Baker Street home that interest him. He often helps the police when they are struggling with a case. Holmes is a very modern Victorian who uses observation skills and his vast knowledge to help him find out about people and get to the truth behind events. He is insistent that logic and rationality can solve any mystery. He was often shown to be smarter than the police and more successful than the professionals. With his partner, Doctor Watson, Holmes investigated domestic murders, international conspiracies and aristocratic scandals only really being challenged when investigating crimes that were set up by his nemesis Professor Moriarty, a man as intelligent as Holmes but a criminal mastermind. Moriarty became Holmes mortal enemy. Irene Adler was also able to outsmart Holmes, something Holmes very much admired but, in the main, Holmes was alone in his rational genius. The character of Holmes and Conan Doyle s stories have influenced scores of crime writers. Numerous films and television shows have used them as a template for crime drama and the idea of a flawed yet heroic main character with a single minded desire to solve puzzles being assisted by a loyal sidekick may seem quite clichéd today. To avoid simple repetition some of these detectives have been relocated to new environments such as in the Fox TV series House ( ). House: a modern Sherlock Holmes House was one of the more successful US TV series of the past decade. Running for eight years it had an audience of 20 million a week at its peak and was the most watched TV programme in the world in It has made an international star out of Hugh Laurie, the English actor playing the American doctor Gregory House. House has a terrible bedside manner as he prefers the thrill of the puzzle of diagnosis to interacting with his patients. In diagnosing his patients he treats medicine like an intellectual game rather than the life and death situation it often is. Illnesses provide clues for House and his team and they try to identify a medical problem and find an effective treatment before their patient dies. Both Holmes and House become obsessed with the mystery during their investigations. They are compulsively drawn to finding solutions. House (like Holmes) is brilliant, a drug addict and someone who has poor social skills. House is manipulative and self-centred. He believes that every one lies and that humanity is ultimately self serving even if people attempt to hide this by being in relationships and acting altruistically. House plays with people s emotions to prove his own point of view and get what he wants and he alienates most of the people he interacts with. Both House and Holmes have loyal and long suffering friends / partners in Doctors Watson and Wilson and in a nod towards Holmes famous address, House s creators have him also living in an apartment numbered 221b. Watson Watson plays an important role both as a character in the stories and as part of the narrative structure. Watson accompanies Holmes on adventures and often plays a role in solving the mysteries. He is Holmes friend and is deeply loyal. He writes about Holmes cases in his diaries and so the stories are often told from his point of view. As such this makes him a vital part of the narrative structure of a Sherlock Holmes story. His point of view creates an everyman perspective so where Holmes deductions appear superhuman or where his lack of social graces becomes uncomfortable, Watson provides a viewpoint which frames the audience s perspective. Watson is in awe of Holmes genius and forgives his social mistakes. This allows the audience to maintain a sympathetic view of the sometimes rude, arrogant and often bizarrely behaved protagonist. This role has been updated in recent adaptations. In the recent film versions, Jude Law plays Watson as a typical superhero sidekick to a Holmes who thinks very tactically but practices his strategic and fighting skills in back-alley bare-knuckle fights. Law s Watson criticises Holmes for his self-centred behaviour but is loyal to him at all times even being persuaded to abandon his honeymoon to work on a case. Freeman s Watson in Sherlock is also highly critical of Sherlock s lack of tact but acts more as an apologist, attempting to reduce the damage Sherlock s unthinking ways often creates. The BBC version of Watson is less physical than the one in the film although in the first episode he is shown shooting a serial killer who is threatening Sherlock s life. 2

3 Images of Watson Watson Holmes trusty sidekick, biographer and often a hero in his (or her) own right. ( ) Both modern texts play on the idea of the Holmes and Watson pairing being a homosexual relationship. The films focus on the pairing as a bromance and make humorous references to sexuality in a number of visual jokes. Watson s marriage and the knowing way the gay jokes are used act to minimise this reading. The BBC production chose to take the idea that people might think Holmes and Watson are gay by showing each character assuming the other is homosexual. This assumption about two men living and working together is made by several characters the couple encounter. Sherlock is characteristically disinterested and, at first, Watson attempts to correct the misinterpretations. He appears to give up on this as the series progresses but is shown to be sensitive to misinterpretations of his sexuality particularly when he is described in the press as a confirmed bachelor (Season 2 Episode 3). CBS s version of Sherlock (Elementary) has not been broadcast at the time of writing but much has been made about the fact that their version of Watson is a woman (Joan instead of John). This has caused a lot of online discussion and is being criticised heavily by some, more so than CBS s modern setting and more than Holmes being relocated to New York for this new retelling. This Watson is portrayed as Holmes protector as she provides post-rehab support as well as helping on cases. Making Watson a woman could be seen to be a reflection on the fact that the character s gender is irrelevant to the stories. However, some fans have feared that this will bring a sexual tension into the stories that could detract from the conventional dynamic of the relationship. Whether a bromance, or a potential love interest, Watson is an important part of the narrative structure. He is a binary opposite to Holmes in many ways: he offers a more emotional, human engagement with the characters and the situations. He is used to ask questions and to explain things to help move the story on or keep the audience in the loop. He is as stupid as we are when compared to Holmes but is accepted as part of Holmes inner circle, bringing the audience in with him. 3

4 Adapting Sherlock Holmes Some Theory and some Definitions To be dehistoricised is to have lost a knowledge of and a true connection to the past. Dehistoricisation is an outcome of (amongst other things) the way that modern culture bases its knowledge and understanding on media representations. Representations are constructed, subjective views and so any knowledge based on representations will inevitably be skewed at best, often it will be simply wrong. Baudrillard argued that the mass produced representations by the mass media not only lack aura but mask, pervert, and dissolve reality creating a simulacra. A simulacra is a representation that has meaning in itself rather than in the images or ideas it references. Simulacra, according to Baudrillard create a liquidation of all referentials. Put simply, the reliance on media representations as a basis for our knowledge means our culture is losing touch with history. It is argued that this means people often don t understand how our culture came to be the way it is because they understand things largely via the knowledge provided by media representations. Sherlock: History and Context Perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of the BBC s recent version of Sherlock Holmes is they have decided to relocate the stories from their Victorian origins to the present day. Unlike Holmes in the Guy Ritchie films which used a steampunk aesthetic to update Holmes but maintain the original historical setting, Sherlock is a contemporary character and the original stories have been updated to include contemporary themes and issues. One story is based on the threat posed by the existence of camera phone photographs featuring a young royal in a compromising position, presumably a potential tabloid scandal. Another story deals with experiments in genetic engineering and all the episodes feature new media as both a tool and a hindrance to the investigations Sherlock undertakes. Sherlock communicates via text and we are shown how texts are used to provide information, misinformation and attempt to manipulate Sherlock during an investigation. The internet is used by Watson to retell the tales of Sherlock s investigations and through social networking, Sherlock becomes a minor celebrity. Watson s blog, however, is more popular that Sherlock s as Watson seems to understand how to entertain Sherlock s fanbase and the blog becomes part of the story, as does Sherlock s celebrity status. The characters use other modern technologies and Sherlock is no longer an expert on everything but is happy to look things up on the internet on his laptop and his mobile phone. The programme uses on-screen text to show the audience the contents of texts as well as text and image montages to demonstrate Sherlock s analytical method. In addition, unusual camera angles, lighting effects, camera movements and transitions are used to create an extremely modern style of presentation. In many ways the costume, props and locations are timeless but the BBC has foregrounded the contemporary nature of the programme in its media language choices and the plots it presents. The contemporary nature of Sherlock could at first glance be accused of being part of a general dehistoricised perspective that is said to be the nature of modern life. It is argued that the modern age has lost touch with its history and is only really interested in the modern rather than the narratives of the past. The Victorian origins of story are lost as is the way Sherlock traditionally represented a particularly Victorian attitude to science and knowledge, based on rationality and logic. Instead the BBC s Sherlock is a modern man whose knowledge and understanding of people is based on psychology, which Conan Doyle s Sherlock rarely used, as well as science and observation. The original Sherlock was a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge whereas the modern one is ridiculed for not knowing the basics, such as the fact that the earth goes around the sun. Previous versions of Sherlock Holmes have created a fictional Victorian world which reflected the producing context rather than communicating any truths about the original era. In fact, representations of Sherlock can be seen to have contributed to a particular myth about Victorian England based on foggy, gas-lit streets populated by consulting detectives, Dickensian orphans, eerie hansom cabs and Jack the Ripper. This idea of Victorian London owes little to any historical truths but is part of the construction of the Gothic imagery that is so valuable when telling horrific or suspenseful stories. These ideas of the Victorian could be described as simulacra as the representations of Victorian Gothic are more familiar and, therefore, more real for the audience than historical fact. The contemporary representation of Sherlock may not be true to its source material but could be argued to be closer to a contemporary reality than the Victorian set versions. Gothic London Despite this, the modern Sherlock has been described as being like a superhero (The Telegraph: 20/07/10). Downey Jnr s version is a great fighter and is shown leaping from great heights and walking out of exploding buildings. The film creates quite a typical everyman action hero out of Sherlock Holmes who is often depicted as being sweaty and grubby. Cumberbatch plays a more superhero-like Holmes; he computes like a computer, he is not (often) distracted by human emotions such as sentiment, love or fear and is socially distant and often isolated. Sherlock describes his brain as a hard drive emphasising his machine-like, superhuman qualities and when he is shown to be weak it is when he misinterprets emotion or finds himself unable to deal with his own feelings. His overcoat has even been cut to billow like a superhero s cape and the deerstalker hat has been used to create a brand identity for Holmes within his fictional world. wednesdays-window.html 4

5 Activity Consider the examples given and add your own observations about how the BBC s Sherlock modernised aspects of the Sherlock Holmes stories and characters? Conventionally... Sherlock Holmes is known largely by his surname Watson writes a diary about Holmes cases Information often arrives at 221b via hand delivered notes Holmes is a smoker and a cocaine user Contemporary Issues in the stories: European politics The British Empire Problems with servants Modern scientific advances Now... Sherlock Holmes is more informally known as Sherlock Watson writes a blog about Sherlock s cases Sherlock receives a lot of texts containing information Sherlock is giving up smoking using nicotine patches Contemporary Issues in the stories: Royals as celebrities The effect of fame Terrorism Cybercrime Conclusion Modern adaptations of classic stories and tried and tested characters can be good investments for institutions and Sherlock Holmes remains popular with modern audiences. The modern versions show that Holmes, a character now nearly 125 years old, can be manipulated to suit the target audience or the type of story being told. Crime dramas create many narrative pleasures and it seems that we still like our brilliant but flawed detective heroes. Acknowledgements: This Media Studies Factsheet was researched and written by Steph Hendry Curriculum Press. Bank House, 105 King Street, Wellington, TF1 1NU. Media Factsheets may be copied free of charge by teaching staff or students, provided that their school is a registered subscriber. No part of these Factsheets may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any other form or by any other means, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISSN