friendly reminders about bbc sherlock

Some friendly reminders about BBC's Sherlock. Submissions welcome!

[remindersaboutbbcsherlock]

friendly reminder that you are my new favorite blog of all times, and thank you SO MUCH for pointing out all those issues.

no problem!! thank you for your message!

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Friendly reminder that Sally Donovan is probably underpaid, overworked and stressed enough without Sherlock belittling her

[hellotailor]

The most common criticism of Moffat Women is that he creates female characters who exist purely to support a male hero. Or, more accurately, he creates interesting female characters who are later proven to exist only to support a male hero. In Doctor Who: River Song and Clara Oswald. In Sherlock: Irene Adler, Mary, Janine, and to a certain extent, Molly, who in this episode saw her engagement broken off (offscreen!) and her role reduced to that of a helpful assistant inside Sherlock’s Mind Palace.

On an individual basis, none the female characters in His Last Vow are enormously problematic. You can rationalise them. Sherlock’s mother gave up a career in mathematics to have children? Fine. Lots of people give up their careers to have kids. Mary used to be an assassin, and will do anything to keep her past a secret so John won’t leave her? Well, that’s kind of fucked up, but romantic in its own way. Janine is surprisingly unbothered by the fact that her boyfriend was using her to get into her boss’s office, and faked their entire relationship? Admirably pragmatic.

The problem only arises when you combine all of these together, especially when you have any awareness of the kind of things Steven Moffat has said about women and female characters in the past. Let’s look at Mary and Janine, the two women who went from being normal people to being cogs in the John-and-Sherlock storyline machine… — Sherlock: Female characters in “His Last Vow”

[robotbrothersid]

The problems not only arise when you add all these characters from this episode together, but media as a whole. Each of these examples (which are well broken down here), are themes and trends present en mass across our entire culture and media. For example, women are expected to give up their professions for children, men are never even asked about career choices in relation to their kids. This is something caused not just by external pressure, but has been internalised by women; they are taught from a young age that being a mother is one of their main purposes in life, one of their most important goals.

In His Last Vow, Mr. Holmes says in reference to his wife, “She gave it all up for children. I could never bear to argue with her. I’m a bit of a moron, me,” suggesting that Mrs. Holmes gave up her career to raise their kids of her own volition. This is a voluntary decision that many women have made, in stark contrast to the incredibly few men who have. This internalised patriarchal construct urges women to give up their own careers and goals to raise children, even if they were the more productive member of the marriage.

Having a female character give up a career of her own volition gives the writers a convenient excuse while still holding up patriarchal expectations of women in parenthood. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the urge to be an accessible and present parent in your childrens’ lives, but the scales are tipped way off for women making the bulk of those parental sacrifices, in real life, and in the media. Because media is a reflection of the culture, after all.

The problem isn’t that Mrs. Holmes gave up her career to raise her children, assuming that’s what she legitimately wanted. The problems is the frequency of this happening just with women in our culture and media, and the social influences that cause it so heavily a mother’s duty, not a father’s. This argument’s not about undermining the importance of a mother’s role, it’s about the imbalance of responsibility and expectations of mothers compared to fathers, women in compare to men.

There’s a lot that could be inferred that Mary’s going to do- or has already begun to do -the same thing, both in her marriage to John and as the mother of their child.

[wondersmith-and-sons]

based on: (x) (x) source: (x)

So, Elementary fandom has talked about gaslighting before, and how it is used in abusive relationships. We’ve seen Irene/Moriarty do this to Sherlock in Elementary, and the same pattern appears in the newly-aired Sherlock with Sherlock and John. This article defines how gaslighting takes several distinct forms most of which can been seen paralleled with Elementary and BBC Sherlock. (Also, if anyone with psychiatric background could weigh in on this, that’d be great.)

1-4: Compartmentalising: Irene fakes her own death, then makes a sudden reappearance a year later, after Sherlock has moved on and formed healthy relationships with other people (Elementary).

Sherlock fakes his own death, makes a sudden reappearance two years later after John has moved on and formed healthy relationships with people (BBC)

5&6 - Denial, Blaming/Deflection, Chronic Invalidation: Sherlock deduces that Irene is working for Moriarty (or at least, not held captive by him as she stated) and thinks she’s lying to him - he gets angry. Irene placates him, saying it’s because he is “seeing things that aren’t there”. (Elementary)

John’s angry at Sherlock for not contacting him for the last two years; Sherlock doesn’t apologise and dismisses John’s anger, explaining that it was because Sherlock didn’t trust him. (BBC)

7&8 Domination: Irene tries to make Sherlock take back his words - when he doesn’t, she replies with “You lied before! You don’t want to come with me, so you’re inventing an excuse not to!”. Then she walks out of Sherlock’s life and makes him think he’s cause of it because in her eyes, he is the just as bad as Moriarty. (Elementary)

John’s angry that Sherlock acts irresponsibly and the bomb is about to go off. Sherlock defuses the bomb in the tube train, but lets John believe that they’re both going to die. Sherlock fakes vulnerability, apologises to John and uses the now-or-never-scenario to make John accept his apology. (BBC)

9&10 Minimalisation: Irene waltzes back into Sherlock’s life, reveals her true identity, and calls Sherlock’s trauma at her death a game. “You’re a game I’ll win every time.” (Elementary)

Sherlock reveals that the bomb had an off switch, and laughs at John’s trauma and fear when he thinks he’s about to die. “Your face, your face! Totally had you!” (BBC)

The most important thing about this, though, is that Elementary portrays it as an abusive relationship and recognises that Moriarty/Sherlock is not in any way a healthy relationship. Meanwhile BBC Sherlock does the complete opposite, which is all kinds of fucked up.

I’m going to get hate for this

[magnoliapearl]

Sorry to break up the serious and totally awesome criticism but I can’t look at that gif of Sherlock taking off his glasses without thinking “…Gene Parmesan”

[secretalbatross]

GENE

[punkwarrenmoving]

let’s discuss something

queer jokes about straight characters are not queer representation 

calling a straight character gay for laughs and having them refuse it like crazy is not queer representation

jokes about queer identities made by cishet characters and writers are not in any way shape or form queer representation

they’re either queer baiting and/or fucking offensive

sTOP TALKING STOP WRITING JUST STOP NOW

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reminder that, despite the fact that sally donovan must have held just as much guilt about what happened to sherlock and must have felt equally responsible, anderson was the only one who was shown coping with that guilt and donovan was only mentioned once in the episode by lestrade. she didn't even appear on-screen

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reminder that, once again, every single implication of queerness about one of the main characters was treated as a joke

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friendly reminder that sally donovan is the only character of color who appears in more than one episode

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friendly reminder that she’s also completely demonized by the writers

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john watson shouts “I AM NOT GAY!!” the audience roars in laughter. another vulnerable group of people used as a joke. what ground-breaking writing. why include queer characters when you can just hint at them and make them vehemently defend their heterosexuality instead?

[raymukadas-deactivated20130720]

i can’t believe moffat said john and sherlock wouldn’t work romantically because “they’re not wired that way” and then wrote an episode where a lesbian falls in love with a man

your irene wasn’t wired in that way but you still made her fall in love with a man didn’t you you vile sexist homophobic piece of absolute shit

[fandomsandfeminism]

I identify with this post on a spiritual level. 

[martincrief-blog]

[celloplayingtimelady]

One day, John may just punch her.

I know I would if someone continually called my best friend “freak”

[thescienceofjohnlock]

This is why I dislike Donovan, it’s got nothing to do with her gender, colour or how well she does her job. It’s this.

[soldiersebastian]

Then I would hope you also dislike Sherlock because he deliberately tortures a man, drops another out of a window, laughs when investigating a crime about kidnapped children, makes general unkind and arsey comments to strangers and friends alike, scared the old lady at the Surrey boarding school, continually refers to Anderson as ‘idiot’, drugged his best friend and put him through a traumatic experience with little to no remorse, forces a man with PTSD (or whatever he had) to go to a triggering place and then does an Edmund and denies he’s seen the Hound, also getting excited after Henry almost kills himself because he enjoyed the case, commented on a woman’s sex life therefore attempting to shame her and embarrass her in front of her peers at her place of work, calls murder ‘Christmas’ and belittles everyone he ever interacts with.

Otherwise it would seem you are holding this female poc character to a different standard to the white male character, and being unnecessarily harsh on her for merely reacting to a person who demeans her and her colleagues often and doesn’t show much kindness. 

I also want to point out to the op that Sherlock calls Sally’s best friend/lover/colleague ‘idiot’ often. Think about that. Yet I don’t think Sally would descend to the level of violence. 

[trashdotcom-deactivated20131001]

reasons to not have a two-year hiatus for your tv show: fans will have a lot of time to realize the problematic things about the show and will be disillusioned when it finally airs again

[sevenpoints]

#and a better adaptation of your source material will emerge and take your fans

[enoughinthenarrative-remaking-d]

Can we talk about Irene Adler for a sec? I want to talk about Irene Adler for a sec.

As all my followers know very well, I am not a fan of Steven Moffat, and a major reason for that is his frankly insulting adaptation of Irene Adler.

I’m not going to start with that pile of bullshit, however. First I’m going to tell you about Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Irene Adler, forever known to history as The Woman and one of the few people — male or female — out there to put the great Sherlock Holmes in his place.

Putting the whole thing under a Read More because this is going to be long.

Read More

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friendly reminder that in the unaired pilot, sherlock was also drugged without his consent

and it was treated as a joke

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please continue to submit reminders!!! school has been getting to me recently so keeping up this blog all by myself has become difficult, and outside input would be greatly appreciated!!

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What's your main?

i’d rather not give that out publicly on this blog, but if you’re willing to come off anon i could give it to you privately!!

(just a warning, i don’t blog about sherlock very much anymore haha)

[remindersaboutbbcsherlock]

friendly reminder that john's ptsd (a very serious mental illness in real life) has been very minimally mentioned within the show