tfp, the ring, and the art of the false climax
(ETA: This post is causing trouble on mobile…sorry!? Many of the images are cut from mobile for some reason, and apparently it’s crashing the app. I’m wondering if it’s just too long. In any case, view on a computer for a more complete experience; reblog to avoid the inevitable Mofftiss curse. If I have time in the next little while, I’ll publish it in shorter segments.)
TFP had a number of different intertexts–mainly, specific movies–which it drew upon for its motifs, themes, moment-to-moment imagery, and plot points. As approximately a million people noticed in the TFP aftermath, many of the movies referenced in this episode are horror films. Predominant among them was The Ring.
(For the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film, rather than the Japanese source film Ringu / Ring, because the former is much better known in the West, and I think it’s more likely that it’s The Ring, and not Ringu, that Moffat is talking about in this interview, where he mentions watching it. However, since the broad strokes plot outline of both The Ring and Ringu are very similar / the same wrt the idea of the false climax, the argument I’m making holds either way.)
The Ring is well known for being a really beautifully done horror film. It looks incredible, for one thing–it’s visually gorgeous and thematically dense. But mostly, it does something with the concept of hauntings, ghostly origin stories, and the standard horror plot that, at the time of its release, was incredibly stunning and exciting.
In short, The Ring fakes out its audience by presenting a false climax that appears to resolve the story, in a way that is emotionally nice, if a little unsatisfying, before pulling the rug out from under its own plot.
Because The Ring is such a standout intertext for TFP, i.e., TFP not only draws on it, but resonates with it in multiple ways, via names, repeated motifs, the framing of certain shots, as well as relying on it for nearly its entire climax, I really think the story of s4 and the series as a whole is not over. Even if you think there aren’t any further episodes coming down the pipe, I’m hoping this discussion might help people understand why the story feels incomplete. (Because it is).
If you’ve been trying to sit with the idea that the Redbeard reveal / presentation of Eurus’ backstory / resolution of Sherlock’s story is real / supposed to be taken at face value, but that reading isn’t working for you, maybe this will help.
Basic premises: the reading I’m doing here is a mind bungalow reading. The rationale for The Ring as a major intertext of TFP is that John has been shot, and TFP is the content of his hallucination as he’s bleeding out, which offers an understanding of why it’s so bizarre and tonally shifted from everything else we’ve seen in Sherlock. This reading pulls on the newly revealed information, in TST, that John is a horror movie buff–enough so that he feels the need to correct Mary on the difference between The Omen and The Exorcist. John’s proclivity for horror films offers one justification for why they not only seem to inform TFP, but practically take it over.
I’m hoping to show, for people who aren’t familiar with The Ring, exactly how wildly it dominates TFP, and to talk about how we can use this fact to make some sense of the episode, and possibly the future of the show.
Ridiculous levels of detail under the cut:
areudirty
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
origamiaround
titsay
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
