I claim that a “scary” character who seeks to destroy due to sadism is different from Jim. Destruction is repetitive. It works by repeating the same criminal acts over and over again. The criminal acts only become bigger, badder, and with more pain for more people. This is an annihilating and destructive villain like the Joker in Nolan’s film. If people view Jim’s villainy as being a villainy of this sort then his suicide also gets viewed as just a final repetition, the ultimate crime that one can commit in that one’s intent to annihilate and destroy is finally turned inward in a final act demonstrative of apathy and complete lack of fucks: suicide.
I claim that such an interpretation ignores a very important aspect of Jim’s character. Jim, like Sherlock, deplored repetition. Jim wanted to make new things for Sherlock, and Sherlock wanted new things. Although destruction and annihilation didn’t bother Jim (“That’s what people do!”), it also wasn’t his main motivation. (“Why are you doing this?” “I love to watch you dance.”) Jim’s identity as a consulting-criminal to Sherlock’s consulting-detective, as a villain to Sherlock’s hero, is demonstrative of a much more affirming motivation. Not a sadistic motivation to destroy and annihilate out of hatred.
His character wasn’t about destruction. It was about Sherlock. It was about what they shared and built together, a shared life that began when Carl Powers died. Both had knowledge no one else in the world had: knowledge that the secret to the death was connected to the missing shoes. Jim’s motivation was also about another thing he and Sherlock shared together: the Final Problem.
Jim’s suicide wasn’t an ultimate act of negation or annihilation, a big “I give no fucks” moment. Jim might view humanity as tawdry, but his feelings for Sherlock were sincere. The moment before his suicide was a sincere moment where he thanked Sherlock and shook his hand because he could die knowing that he wasn’t alone, that his life hadn’t been completely empty, that he had actually made meaningful contact with someone. He was so angry that Sherlock initially seemed to be losing “the game” so badly. Jim didn’t want to just “beat Sherlock” because it wasn’t about “beating Sherlock.” If Jim did beat Sherlock then it’d just make Sherlock one of many easy victories, and Jim’s whole life would then have been completely empty. Jim didn’t want to “win the game.” He wanted to know that he wasn’t alone.
He didn’t want to live because he saw life as boring, meaningless, stale. There’s a lot of factors that can contribute to that outlook. It shouldn’t just be reduced to him being “so inhuman.” Lots of humans feel that way for all sorts of different reasons. Spiders don’t feel that way. Neither do monsters, which don’t exist except in fairy tales.
Reducing Jim’s outlook to simple sadism and desire for destruction simplifies and ignores other aspects of his character. It reads his identity as “consulting criminal” as being about a desire to create repetitive acts of destruction, which Jim found boring. He didn’t find it boring because he was that apathetic but because he was much more interested in Sherlock who, like Jim, craves new, and interesting, and creative things. Reading Jim as sadistic or completely soulless implies that his affection for Sherlock was faked or tied in with “beating Sherlock” and being an “ultimate baddie” when it demonstrably wasn’t. That was the point of the roof scene.
Jim was as human a human as Sherlock or Mycroft. That being said, he certainly does kill and express coldness and contempt towards humanity, like Sherlock and Mycroft do. He’s the only one punished and dehumanized, though. Of course. He is, after all, a villain. However, his actions can be challenged without dehumanizing him. Sherlock and Mycroft’s actions, notably, never even get challenged despite being very, very similar to Jim’s. Sherlock and Mycroft’s actions are portrayed as though they aren’t even meant to be noticed or questioned. Pretty terrifying stuff, indeed.
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snowghoul
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