It's official: Elementary has spoiled me for Sherlock BBC's casual racism.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Sherlock BBC's Christmas mini-sode, and for the ACD story “The Empty House.”
I saw the mini-sode teaser for Sherlock BBC's season 3.
In a word? Ugh.
The mini-sode is more proof, if I needed it, that Elementary actually gets how to do a truly modern version of Sherlock Holmes - as opposed to doing a Victorian Holmes in modern dress, which better describes BBC Sherlock.
I’m going to get a little literary here.
The problem with The Great Hiatus, as generations of Holmesian scholars have discussed, is that Sherlock Holmes’ account of his three-year absence is not very believable. For those who have not read “The Empty House,” Holmes tells Watson of all the fabulous places he traveled through the world after being believed dead at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland - Florence, Mecca, Tibet, Khartoum - sometimes disguised as a Norwegian explorer. This all sounds nice and exciting in a Phileas Fogg ripping-yarns way (“and then I bushwhacked down the Irriwady and fought the ruddy Punjabs”), but does not jibe with either Holmes’ pallor in “Empty House” (not the skin of someone who’s been traveling near the equator for months) nor with believability (non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca). One theory postulated by many Sherlockians was that Holmes was actually hiding in London all that time, from where he could do his brain-work to bring down Moriarty’s gang and keep an eye on his heartbroken friend. Over a century of speculations exist about what Holmes was really up to and where he might have been.
Unfortunately Steven Moffat, who definitely has a problem with racism - his “modern” Holmes has faced down the Yellow Peril (“Blind Banker”) and dressed like a scimitar-waving Lawrence of Arabia to rescue Irene Adler in some sinister Middle-Eastern locale (“Scandal in Belgravia”) - focuses on the “exotic travels abroad” hiatus story instead of coming up with another reason for Holmes’ disappearance.
So the first thing we see in the mini-sode is a montage that boils down to the Great White Detective benevolently lending his skills to bewildered and grateful brown foreigners. (Moffat finally remembers to throw in some bewildered white foreigners only after we’ve seen easily-bamboozled Nepalese monks and Indian police grovelling in submission to His Whiteness for saving them from their own stupidity.) The stories might as well be datelined Darkest Khartoum or the Exotic Orient.
Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock’s big schtick wherever he goes is to be the smartest man in the room, and to make sure everyone knows it - including the nearly-all-white Scotland Yard (the sole POC in the regular cast, Sgt. Sally Donovan, is treated abominably, but that’s a whole other rant). But this attitude has unfortunate implications when it’s combined with orientalism.
So what does all this have to do with Elementary, I hear you cry?
Elementary, like Sherlock, takes place in a modern big city (NYC in the United States rather than London, England). But unlike Sherlock, Elementary LOOKS like a modern big city. People of color, women, gay, straight, cis and *trans people of every ethnic background, age and social status call New York City their home. Alfredo Llamosa the sobriety sponsor, Detective Bell, and Ms Hudson are equally as well-drawn as Holmes and Watson in Elementary - and are as vital to Holmes’ well-being as a person as Holmes is vital to the success rate of Captain Gregson’s precinct as a detective. And of course none of these people are as vital to Holmes as his Watson - smart, brave, perceptive, contentious, angry, disgusted, compassionate, irreplaceable Watson, as memorable a screen Watson as any of the best predecessors - who just happens to be a woman, and who just happens to be an American of Chinese ancestry.
BBC Sherlock’s London is set in the same modern time, and like all modern big cities should be a mix of people in the same way. Instead the casting defaults to white, straight and male - except when the storyline calls for sinister Chinese gangsters, murderous Middle-Eastern terrorists, slut-shamed and belligerent police women, lovesick female coroners, or seductive dominatrices who conveniently stop being lesbian when they meet Sherlock. No one ever seems to be coincidentally Asian, or Pakistani, or black, or non-heterosexual, or female.
The proof lies in the mini-sode: Once the POC were dealt with in the first half, the real cast - you know, the White Males - went on with the important business of the storytelling.
BBC Sherlock was always this way. The difference is that now that I’ve seen Elementary, I know they could do better if they tried. And they’re not even trying.
I saw the mini-sode teaser for Sherlock BBC's season 3.
In a word? Ugh.
The mini-sode is more proof, if I needed it, that Elementary actually gets how to do a truly modern version of Sherlock Holmes - as opposed to doing a Victorian Holmes in modern dress, which better describes BBC Sherlock.
I’m going to get a little literary here.
The problem with The Great Hiatus, as generations of Holmesian scholars have discussed, is that Sherlock Holmes’ account of his three-year absence is not very believable. For those who have not read “The Empty House,” Holmes tells Watson of all the fabulous places he traveled through the world after being believed dead at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland - Florence, Mecca, Tibet, Khartoum - sometimes disguised as a Norwegian explorer. This all sounds nice and exciting in a Phileas Fogg ripping-yarns way (“and then I bushwhacked down the Irriwady and fought the ruddy Punjabs”), but does not jibe with either Holmes’ pallor in “Empty House” (not the skin of someone who’s been traveling near the equator for months) nor with believability (non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca). One theory postulated by many Sherlockians was that Holmes was actually hiding in London all that time, from where he could do his brain-work to bring down Moriarty’s gang and keep an eye on his heartbroken friend. Over a century of speculations exist about what Holmes was really up to and where he might have been.
Unfortunately Steven Moffat, who definitely has a problem with racism - his “modern” Holmes has faced down the Yellow Peril (“Blind Banker”) and dressed like a scimitar-waving Lawrence of Arabia to rescue Irene Adler in some sinister Middle-Eastern locale (“Scandal in Belgravia”) - focuses on the “exotic travels abroad” hiatus story instead of coming up with another reason for Holmes’ disappearance.
So the first thing we see in the mini-sode is a montage that boils down to the Great White Detective benevolently lending his skills to bewildered and grateful brown foreigners. (Moffat finally remembers to throw in some bewildered white foreigners only after we’ve seen easily-bamboozled Nepalese monks and Indian police grovelling in submission to His Whiteness for saving them from their own stupidity.) The stories might as well be datelined Darkest Khartoum or the Exotic Orient.
Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock’s big schtick wherever he goes is to be the smartest man in the room, and to make sure everyone knows it - including the nearly-all-white Scotland Yard (the sole POC in the regular cast, Sgt. Sally Donovan, is treated abominably, but that’s a whole other rant). But this attitude has unfortunate implications when it’s combined with orientalism.
So what does all this have to do with Elementary, I hear you cry?
Elementary, like Sherlock, takes place in a modern big city (NYC in the United States rather than London, England). But unlike Sherlock, Elementary LOOKS like a modern big city. People of color, women, gay, straight, cis and *trans people of every ethnic background, age and social status call New York City their home. Alfredo Llamosa the sobriety sponsor, Detective Bell, and Ms Hudson are equally as well-drawn as Holmes and Watson in Elementary - and are as vital to Holmes’ well-being as a person as Holmes is vital to the success rate of Captain Gregson’s precinct as a detective. And of course none of these people are as vital to Holmes as his Watson - smart, brave, perceptive, contentious, angry, disgusted, compassionate, irreplaceable Watson, as memorable a screen Watson as any of the best predecessors - who just happens to be a woman, and who just happens to be an American of Chinese ancestry.
BBC Sherlock’s London is set in the same modern time, and like all modern big cities should be a mix of people in the same way. Instead the casting defaults to white, straight and male - except when the storyline calls for sinister Chinese gangsters, murderous Middle-Eastern terrorists, slut-shamed and belligerent police women, lovesick female coroners, or seductive dominatrices who conveniently stop being lesbian when they meet Sherlock. No one ever seems to be coincidentally Asian, or Pakistani, or black, or non-heterosexual, or female.
The proof lies in the mini-sode: Once the POC were dealt with in the first half, the real cast - you know, the White Males - went on with the important business of the storytelling.
BBC Sherlock was always this way. The difference is that now that I’ve seen Elementary, I know they could do better if they tried. And they’re not even trying.