Continuing with the Sherlock obsession...

Oct 07, 2010 13:01

I caught a glimpse of an interview with Cumberbatch wherein he comments on the "civility" of characters attitudes towards homosexuality.  Everyone of course has followed the links on the previous entry and watched this show by now right?  So you're all well aware that, far from civil, the homophobia in this series is rampant.  Even though Sherlock and John are (emphatically) not together, Mrs Hudson would be fine with it if they were.  Even though John is (emphatically) not gay, he's fine with it if Sherlock is.  Okay, yeah, we get it.  "I'm not gay!  But some of my best friends are..."  As homophobic as this attitude is, in a way, I appreciate and support what it's trying to do.

It has only been within the last decade that homosexuals have been represented as anything other than serial killers, manic depressives, or mincing sissies who are either harmlessly celibate or dead by the end, whether at the hands of the justice system, a manly vigilante, or by his own hand.  Not even "Milk" of critical acclaim, escapes this Hollywood procedure.  Of course, historically, Harvey's boyfriend did kill himself, his ex did die of AIDS, and Harvey himself was gunned down.  Events like this beg the question that if homosexuals hadn't been portrayed as expendable "others" in the media, would any of that have even happened?  Would Milk even have to have launched his crusade to gain political notoriety for homosexuals?  I think that to say no, it wouldn't have, is to grant the media an autonomy that it doesn't actually possess.

The media is a social machine that can only feed us what we've fed into it.  It reflects and informs opinions, but it doesn't create them.  That homosexuality was seen for years in dichotomous extremes of effeminate impotency and pathological derangement is a product of those facets of the demographic being most easily recognizable to the people in charge of observing society and reporting back: journalists and news reporters, members of the privileged majority who are spared the necessity of more closely examining a minor demographic - by no means an isolated event in human history.  As a result of this cursory assessment of homosexuals, people at home, doing little to no assessing of their own, absorbed these opinions on something that frankly had no impact on their day to day life, and a prejudice was born.

In light of this, the media, picking up on the efforts of gay rights activists, has actually progressed to the point of having likable characters, even protagonists and heroes like Holmes and Watson, be mistaken for homosexuals.  As recently as ten years ago this would have been impossible.  Under such a misapprehension the hero would have to have reasserted his masculinity by either physically or verbally attacking the hurler of so unjust an accusation, by making a disparaging remark towards an actual homosexual, or by demonstrating the effects of his masculine virility on a convenient female character.  Sherlock, our errant hero, does none of these things, and though John disputes the claims, he does so with only moderate intensity.  Though his emphatic "It's not a date!" reeks of homophobia in the media, it's merely a product of what is currently being fed into the media machine, and it's a considerable step up from having to engage in a James Bondian orgy to prove his superior masculinity.

I'm not saying it's all fine.  Moffat (by far the worst offender of the three writers of this show,) does need to be called out for parading his homophobic sensibility under the cloak of tolerance.  But I also believe he deserves a modicum of recognition for what he has done for the depiction of homosexuality in mainstream media.  The more Mrs. Hudson asserts, the more John allows that "it's all fine," the closer we get to the day when it actually is fine.  It's still a far cry from what Cumberbatch describes as "civilized," but it's an even further cry from Al Pacino's Steve Burns in the 1980 film Cruising, in which his character, a police officer on the heels of a homosexual serial killer, is ambiguously implied to have been corrupted by the "homosexual lifestyle," becoming a gay murderer himself.  It's an enormous step forward from Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill, skinning women to make a transexual "woman suit."  It's significantly more tolerant than 2003's Elephant which felt obliged to toss in a brief homosexual scene between the two Columbine killers directly prior to the massacre.

The more the media observes our attitudes, staunchly asserts "It's all fine," even if they backpedal one step for every two forward, the people sitting at home, absorbing opinions on something of no personal consequence, will eventually agree that it is fine.  Homosexuals, sensing an inch, will be more willing to demand a yard.  The media, being the social machine that it is, will pick up on this and feed it back to us.  It will still be a long while before it no longer matters where you put your dick, or whether or not you even have one, but as long as we're moving forward, hey. 
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