Mrs. Hudson
Hallo dear!
This is a very interesting and COMPLEX question, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m going to take a quite far away starting point in order to try and better explain myself…
I must, however, preliminary confess that I’ve not the presumption to have read…
Great original post. I think the issue of his sexuality is deliberately murky. Hallard didn’t say definitively that Sherlock is asexual. He said “as clearly as we can tell” that he identifies thus. Which presumably means that we can maybe infer or presume that simply from Sherlock’s attitude and what he says (eg “Not really my area”) but none of us really categorically know, do we?
Speculation might be fun, but I agree it’s ridiculous to start getting hysterical and screaming homophobia because someone doesn’t see it the same way.
“I am disappointed in everybody”, Or: No, My Expectations were Never that High
To start: I never thought John/Sherlock would become canon. No, really. I don’t think many people do. Lots of people want it to, but I think it’s generally accepted as a relative impossibility, no matter how much we want it.
What I am here to talk about it why that impossibility is so harmful, what that says about media today, and, of course, why I am disappointed in fucking everybody.
Also: this post contains minor spoilers and frank discussion of the appearance of a certain character, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, turn back now before you regret it.
“A promise made to you has been broken”???
What was this promise and when was it made, pray? I’ve seen a lot of stupid things written about this subject in the last couple of days, but this really has to be one of the stupidest.
My Two on the Current Woes of Fandom
I am trying to avoid the wank of fandom. However, things that are happening are coming across my field of vision and I can’t ignore it. The threats, insults and general bad will towards Ian and Amanda on Twitter needs to stop.
They’ve been accused of being homophobic?? How on earth does anyone justify that accusation?
Dear social justice Johnlock shippers,
Putting two men in an intimate friendship is not “queer-baiting”
Assuming that any two people in an intimate relationship want to fuck is kind of shitty and offensive
You are not being oppressed because the writers of a show based on a book series are…
My Two on the Current Woes of Fandom
I am trying to avoid the wank of fandom. However, things that are happening are coming across my field of vision and I can’t ignore it. The threats, insults and general bad will towards Ian and Amanda on Twitter needs to stop.
Brilliantly put.
Yes, I find I learn more and more about the subculture as time goes on! To be fair, I didn’t say anyone’s fantasies were wrong. People are very welcome to fantasise about whatever they like. No one is judging that - well not me anyway. I was querying the extent to which that fantasy, for some at least, seems to have developed into a belief, or in certain cases insistent demands, that it should become reality and appear in the show itself.“Sherlock” itself plays with the idea that society is so unused to any kind of male friendship or intimacy that those around Sherlock and John often assume their relationship can only be motivated by sexual attraction. As Amanda says, why can’t their love for each other be friendship? Why impose a gay dynamic on two characters who, as clearly as we can tell, identify respectively as heterosexual and asexual?Personally speaking, I’d love to see more well-rounded gay characters and well-written gay relationships depicted in drama, but that’s another story – and not this one, I’m afraid.As you say, it’s an interesting phenomenon.(x)
*points up*
THIS. Just… This.
Just a quick remark because I should be working right now:
Sounds nice and reasonable and everything, but there is a very obvious flaw in that argumentation: the bloody queerbaiting in the show.
Yay, let’s make all the gay jokes and then laugh about our audience’s emotions! Because Sherlock und John are - of course - so not queer for each other and that’s just a kink of modern society which misinterprets everything as sexual. Oh and by the way, according to Steven Moffat, Sherlock Holmes is not asexual because that’s such a boring lifestyle. (Naturally all good and interesting stories need that element of sexual tension and if they don’t have it, let’s make at least the absence of it an issue!)
Ugh.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t want to have smutty Johnlock on the show. I’m just a bit scared about the change in dynamics that - for example - a marriage could mean. Because I do like the interpretation of them in a “bosom friendship”, but there is hardly any room for serious commitment in the modern definition of (male) friendship. That’s why John keeps on dating random women, because being best friends with a bloke is never enough, it’s not a fulfilling way to spend your life - at least not for a heterosexual male. Which makes me very very sad.There is no queerbaiting in the show - neither Sherlock or John ever suggest they are interested (romantically or sexually) in each other - quite on the contrary, they deny it ever since ASiP. Yes, Sherlock is jealous of John’s girlfriends (because girlfriends get in the way when he wants to have adventures with John) and John often abandonds said girlfriends because of Sherlock (partly because he wants to watch over Sherlock, partly because adventure), they are devoted to each other absolutely, but that’s it. Also, both creators and actors have repeatedly denied any intentional gay innuendo. The “gay joke” was there only because people around Sherlock and John (and many viewers) assume that two not-so-young bachelors living together must be a couple (as Ian Hallard and many others said). However, each time this happens (and it wasn’t that often) we know it was just a misunderstanding. The fact that some people cannot wrap their heads around it is hardly creators’ fault.
It’s all in fandom’s head - or rather in the heads of all people who either automatically assume sex has to be behind everything, especially behind male friendships (“That’s so gay!” “TEH GAY in that show!” and similar cries after every intense look… if everybody was sexually attracted to someone just because he looks at him deeply or touches him, nobody would ever get any work done.), or earnestly desire it (for various reasons). That, however, cannot change reality.
Also, I hardly find John’s longing for sexual life sad. A normally sexually active person can hardly live on pure friendship, that’s a bit like feeding only on morning dew. Unless you have zero or very little interest in sex, spending your life with a friend and being intimate only with your hand rarely works - and it’s natural that way.
I understand your worries about the change of dynamics, but hopefully it does not happen - at least canonically it didn’t. Personally, I am also a bit miffed, because I wanted them to share the flat longer, especially after Sherlock returns, because I wanted John to have things in the same way they were before the Fall. But the wedding was suggested by the creators long before 2nd series aired (another proof they have been straight about johnlock non-existence ever since the beginning), so one could hardly hope things would turn out differently.
P.S. Despite Moffat’s clumsy comments, Sherlock Holmes have been canonically indifferent towards sex and from various character’s comments - Sherlock and Mycroft’s, especially - we know that BBC Sherlock feels the same. It’s hardly an issue, though, as the subject was touched only a few times.
P.P.S. All the BBC Sherlock characters who suggest that Sherlock and John are a couple do so in a very supportive way (Angelo is positively gleeful); if the creators of the show had a negative attitude towards homosexuality, we would see something quite different.
I feel like you simplified the matter a bit too much. Subtext is nothing that appears out of nowhere or which can be shrugged of as a pervy fangirl’s imagination or projection. It doesn’t really matter whether Sherlock and John deny their relationship or not - the writers deliberately use very specific tropes and narratives from a certain cultural framework to portray their relationship. You’re right, mostly other characters speculate about the nature of their relationship - but these speculations are mostly played for laughs, and that alone is something I seriously dislike.
Other people have eloquently commented on this issue, so I won’t repeat everything they said. But I think it’s a bit offensive to say that the accusal of queerbaiting is made up out of thin air when there is no appropiate representation of queerness in the show itself. Instead, it is full of not only some longer-than-necessary glares but also laced with innuendo. Unfortunately, the reality of many people is not reflected in the media at all, so can you blame them for reading something into a TV series when this subtext is more or less all that they have in respect of visibility and recognition? Still, the people involved in that show are running around and showing the imaginary “NO HOMO” sign whenever they’re asked, as if Johnlock was the oddest idea ever. Rude.
It’s just, to me people (and characters) are more than sex and romance. If we look at the canon again, the time of Watson’s marriage was relatively short. Mary Morstan was (at least in my opinion) hardly more than a useful plot device that became impractical after some time, so poor Mary had to die. After that John seemed to have made his inner peace with the bachelor status. What is a “normally sexually active person” anyway? Many people do not have sex for various reasons over longer periods of time and most of them seem to take it quite well. I think the lack of affection and general intimacy is something that people rather gravely suffer from and maybe Sherlock self-proclaimed (but not consistent) abstinence from those things is more “disturbing” to John than Sherlock’s apparent disinterest in sex. But we saw progress and development in this respect and I wish that Sherlock and John would pick up where they left off and explore this possibilty. When it comes to John, I’m not even sure if the girlfriend thing is something he really wants to or if it isn’t rather something he thinks he is supposed to have. It appears as if he is not putting that much effort in it, after all. If you think of his background (trust issues) it could well be just another point on the list of things in his life that he needs to “fix”, because it’s the most natural and normal thing to do for a man at his age.
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t include the marriage - it’s canon after all! - but hopefully it is not just a “convenient” action to avoid any exploration of alternative life plans or to wrap up their story in the smoothest (and most traditional) way.
Anyway, I’m probably far too exhausted to make any sense right now so maybe you better just ignore me…
Oh, there is queerbating in Sherlock. As stated above, there is a whole lot of innuendo and fan service. The thing about queerbating is that as soon as people start to complain about all the gay subtext, the creators are going to state that there is absolutely no gay in their show and that it was all in the fans´ heads. “You stupid little perverts, did you really think they were gay?” And that is exactly what happened with Sherlock.
“Gay jokes” were never funny and all the “I´m not gay”-business going on in Sherlock wasn´t either but it was written to make people laugh and all those characters thinking John and Sherlock were a couple were clearly written to make us wonder too. Even my mother, who never really cared for LGBT issues, asked me if Sherlock was gay. And at first I thought this was a very clever move because there have been decades of discussions about wether or not there is gay subtext in the actual Sherlock stories by Conan Doyle. But it got old very fast and ended up as yet another stupid joke. And the joke´s on the LGBT-people watching the show who were hoping for LGBT heroes and ended up with someone going: “No, they are not gay, you are stupid and abnormal, go away.”
The thing is: If you write a show you don´t want to lose your audience. And the audience is mostly cis and white and maybe even a bit homophobic. They do not want gay heroes, which is a shame. So when you write your show and you add some queerbating and suddenly the show gets popular the queer has to go if you want it to stay popular. So you go “There was never any subtext, they made it all up.” You keep most of your audience. Only the few LGBT viewers who you´ve just dissapointed will probably leave but they are a minority so they don´t matter, right? And this is what queerbating does and it happens over and over and over again.
And yes, John has many girlfriends but they were added at a time where the show was already really, really popular and I think that´s no coincidence. It´s just another way of saying: “See, John is not gay, you are stupid for thinking he is.” But it doesn´t erase the subtext that was there, it just tries to cover it up and make people believe it wasn´t there. And that sucks. So this is not about wether or not you want John and Sherlock to be in an actual relationship - I don´t want that either, it would not be canon at all. It is about how the creators of Sherlock just hit a whole group of fans in the face by making them feel stupid about wanting that subtext. Why did they have to make a statement at all if there never was this kind of subtext? Why not just leave it and let everyone think what they want? Because you don´t want your big normal cis audience suspecting any homosexual undertones because it might make them go away, that´s why. And that sucks.
John’s girlfriends were added “when the show was already popular”?? That’s really rewriting history. He had a girlfriend in the second episode…
This isn’t entirely true, is it? The number of photos from the event when people were asked not to is testimony to that.
Also, there were people waiting at stage door despite being asked not to.
And I’ve seen some video clips too - again when people were asked not to.
But I agree the atmosphere in the theatre was good and didn’t feel inappropriate. They were all in a good mood, I think, and good humoured too.
