Irene Adler aka you're doing it wrong
Who wants to play a game? It’s called Who Would Make A Better Irene Adler Than Irene Adler?
I guess I have to confess the truth: I hate Irene Adler from Sherlock. There are many reasons to hate Irene Adler. Sexist depiction, canon derailment, getting in the way of the fan-preferred OTP…but these are not the reasons I hate Irene Adler. No, I despise Irene Adler for the very simple reason that not only is she a cliché, she is an uninteresting cliché. I was promised a “fearful, damanged” complex character and a story of "Sherlock and love" and instead what I got was Steven Moffat’s version of Bella Swan: a selfish, manipulative bitch who the audience is expected to care about and sympathize with despite having nearly no redeeming qualities, very little depth despite a lot of flash, nil motivation for anything that does not involve the hero’s genitals. Who in the end, earns the undying respect of the hero, as well as the closest thing to love he is able to feel, all because she was able to ask a criminal mastermind to outline her plan for her and then remorselessly used the information she had to work with terrorists and gleefully sell out her county. And yet at the end of the episode, I’m told to feel relieved that she survived to continue her self-absorbed existence. That this is a happy ending.
Bullshit. I refuse.
“But wait! It’s not meant to be a love story! It’s meant to be an intellectual meeting of minds. There’s nothing romantic about it at all.” Considering that they both seem to get a thrill out of challenging each other, I’m sure Moffat intends for this to be the closest either of them will get to “love”, even if his definition of love appears to consist mainly of sexual innuendoes and snappy dialogue.
If Irene Adler is the Steven Moffat’s Bella Swan, then that would make her “romance” with Sherlock the Twilight of the Sherlock universe: a dysfunctional tale of destructive, mutual obsession being sold as epic, all-consuming, and poignant. While a dark, dysfunctional relationship between two messed up people does sound fascinating, it doesn’t help that young lovers in question are both spoiled, insufferable adult-children who are quick to stake everything on an emotional infatuation with someone they barely know and that when paired together, instantly become unlikable narcissists Cranked Up To Eleven, whose biggest draw to each other is how similar they are, and everything else pales in comparison. Hell, Sherlock even goes into a stupor when he thinks Irene dies, she’s that goddamn incredible. New Moon, anyone? For Irene Adler, I suppose it’s the closest she’ll ever get to banging herself. Moffat would fancy Irene Adler as being a cutting edge character, a woman who is scandalous and beautiful, clever and morally ambiguous, a woman that would have audiences reeling because she is something new and exciting and never before seen. That’s all well and good.
Except for the fact that I have seen this woman before. Not only that, I’ve seen her done better.
So I propose a challenge. Who would make a better Irene Adler than Irene Adler? I have posted my candidates below.
Gaia (from Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, played by Jamie Murray): Like Irene Adler, she has unapologetically sexual appetites and very little scruples. She also makes no effort to hide the fact that she loves the good life and one of her goals in Gods of the Arena is to find a rich husband to replace her dead rich husband. Not the most noble of motivations, but it is difficult to hate Gaia if only because she so clearly enjoys her sensuality and the seduction game. She is bursting at the seams with a lust for life which is what makes her fate later on in the series so very grim. If she has any redeeming qualities, it is her devotion and loyalty to Batiatus and Lucretia as well as the hints that her livelihood really does depend on finding a rich husband. Unlike Irene Adler, she’s not a greedy for the sake of being greedy- she actually is in a state of financial desperation. She also looks like she would be way more fun to hang out, days of hedonistic bliss getting high and having threesomes. Irene Adler, on the other hand…well, I don’t know how she spends her days when she’s not recreationally disciplining her clients. Because I know absolutely nothing about her as a person.
Giulia Farnese, the Borgias (Lotte Vanderbeek): You want scandalous? Irene Adler was a dominatrix in the 21st century who spanked Royals. Guilia Farnese seduced the goddamn Pope! And not only seduced him, but openly flaunts her relationship with him in God-fearing Rome. Through it all, she remains enigmatic enough to be intriguing yet through her interactions with other characters, she retains a sense of realism and is so oddly that it’s difficult to dismiss off hand as a power-hungry harlot. Despite the fact that she is rarely anything other than sultry and stoic, she does care about her lover and his family, especially with Lucrezia, even if the audience is left wondering to how far that affection extends. That’s part of her intrigue- she keeps you wondering but not frustrated. And unlike other mistresses, Giulia Farnese is the last word when it comes to class. She actually makes the effort to befriend her love rivals such as the Pope’s former long term mistress, who previously called her a whore or an upstart crossdresser who catches the pope’s eye, a method that is both shrewd and speaks of her preference for female solidarity rather than petty rivalry. For in her words: “We hate each other. But we should not…for we shall all be replaced one day.” The scene that actually cemented my love for her was when she was speaking with the Sforzas and has just discovered that, despite Lucrezia marrying into their family, they were perfectly willing to abandon the Borgias in their time of need. Lotte Vanderbeek expression was a perfect blend of “Fuck you, dickholes” and “OMG, gonna vom,” and did it barely shifting a facial muscle. Then she proceeds to pack up her pseudo-stepdaughter and get the hell out of dodge. That takes way more skill smug smirking and dropping trow.
Anne Boleyn, the Tudors (Natalie Dormer): Gorgeous, intelligent, fiery and ultimately too clever by half, her beauty and wit took her to pinnacles of power but doomed by her own passion. Anne Boleyn, like Irene Adler and Giulia Farnese, is no stranger when it comes to seducing royals but just like the canon Irene Adler, her royal romance actually serves as a deconstruction of what happens when you dally with the crown and the consequences that follows. Now Moffat apparently changed Irene Adler’s backstory in an effort to make her more interesting to modern viewers, hence the dominatrix. In reality, I just don’t think he had the chops to write a character driven storyline without reducing it to some over the top gimmick to make up for the lack of genuine emotion. “A beautiful, bold, intelligent woman falling in love with a man above her station and then suffering the consequences of it. Naw, that’s too dull. Let’s make her a sex worker and then throw in a convoluted plot revolving around terrorists and cell phones. Let’s also make her sell out her country and work with the main bad guy, just to make her extra despicable.”
Anne Boleyn from the Tudors is an example of how you can make a good story with a rather obvious but universal concept: the story of love gone horribly wrong. Which also happens to be the backstory to Scandal in Bohemia. There is a reason why it was so popular amongst canon. Simple but brilliant. People can relate and sympathize with love, especially when it’s unrequited or when it fades. I don’t know many others who can sympathize with a physically and emotionally abusive sex worker- terrorist. Sometimes less is more. I like stories that make me feel something. My favorite moment in all the Sherlock Holmes stories weren’t any of the mysteries but when Watson got shot and Sherlock Holmes proved that he had a heart. I love stories with heart. Scandal in Belgravia had a lot of things, that eventually proved to be its detriment, but heart was not one of them. Scandal in Bohemia was the tale of a woman triumphing and finding love on her own terms. It could very well have been Anne Boleyn’s story if history didn’t deem otherwise.
Anne Boleyn was a woman undone by love, just like Irene Adler (allegedly) was. But in Anne’s case, her downfall is noble and tragic. Irene was just too arrogant and dumb to pick four random numbers for her smartphone. If the Tudors could pull it off, why shouldn’t Moffat’s Sherlock? No gimmicks, no tangled plotlines. Just a story of a girl who fell in love and paid the price. Anne Boleyn and Irene Adler are both toted as women ahead of their time who end up losing everything because of love (in Irene’s case, still doubtful) and ambition. Difference is, I actually felt for Anne. Irene, I was more like: “PLEASE TELL ME SHE DIES THIS TIME. AW SHIT, SHE’S STILL ALIVE.”
Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones (Lena Headey): I won’t say much about this character because I still sort of want to poke her eyes with a fork. She’s just an awful person and she deserves every bit of karma she has coming to her. Despite that, she still managed to win some of my sympathy in “The Wolf and The Lion” during her conversation with her husband. So instead I’ll ask this question: What does it say about Moffat’s characterization of females that I feel more for a woman who throws children out of towers than I do for any of his women?
Vesper Lynd, Casino Royale (Eva Green): Eva Green is gorgeous. The most gorgeous woman I have ever seen. For that alone, I would want her to be my Irene Adler. And Vesper Lynd, like Irene Adler, is able to size up James Bond with a glance, which she does with caustic wit and only because he put her on the defensive. She’s alluring, she’s clever, she’s prickly, she’s sarcastic, she refuses to put up with Bond’s shit- but there’s always the sense that she respects Bond and is concerned for his well being, the way any decent human being would be. Irene Adler beats, drugs, emotionally fucks with Sherlock Holmes and that is treated as female empowerment rather than straight up abuse. If that’s love, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan are a fairy tale come true.
The one thing that Irene and Vesper have in common is that by the end of the movie/episode, it is revealed that they have both been secretly committing treason. But in Vesper’s case, there was a personal reason for betraying her country and that was the desire to save someone she loved. Irene? She claims it was because she needed protection. OK, that’s good, even though I’m not completely sure why she couldn’t have just gone to either Sherlock or Mycroft and said, “Help me, there are people who want to kill me. Also I will blackmail the shit out of you.” It seems like a more straightforward tactic. “Oh, but Irene’s a sociopath and making a game out of it is way more fun.” In that case, she must not have wanted to live that badly and she sold out her country for shits and giggles and the hope of getting laid. Because that’s what it felt like to me. I never got the sense that she was in fear for her life, especially when she was happily spanking royals rather than going on the lam like a smart person. The only reason I knew she was in fear for her life was when she “lost” the game. And even then, it felt more like she was sad that she lost and Sherlock’s loins were forever closed off to her. Because, hey, if my life was in danger, I would not be treating it like a game; I would be treating it as a life or death situation because it fucking is.
Oh and you know what else Vesper Lynd has that Irene doesn’t? Depth. Character growth. Vesper Lynd is shown to feel guilt, despair, anger, passion, whether it’s weeping over helping Bond kill a man or repressing a guilty secret. Irene seems to have three modes: over the top seductive, driven by lust, or annoyingly smug. The only time she expressed any other emotion was towards the end and I’d be crying too if I was about to get my head chopped off. Throughout Casino Royale, Vesper is shown to be simultaneously driven and torn apart by love and duty. By the end, she is no longer just the Love Interest, she takes back the agency that was stolen from her and does the right thing even at the expense of her life.
Irene, we are told, falls for Sherlock or whatever passes for love in the Sherlock verse. She doesn’t learn anything through her encounters with Sherlock except how not to pick a password. She is still the same manipulative, clichéd femme fatale she was at the beginning of the episode, only now she’s a manipulative femme fatale and terrorist and she would have betrayed him whether she loved him or not or whether he loved her or not. Too bad because that “love” for Sherlock was the only discernible motivation she had throughout the entire episode and the most it motivates her to do is do her damndest to pry off Sherlock’s metaphorical chastity belt change her password for one of the most moronic plot turns ever. The “love story” is no more than an excuse to have Sherlock lord his intellectual superiority over Irene and girly feelings in general. Moral of the story: Emotions are stupid. Or Irene is stupid. Pick a better password than your crush’s name. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Am I being too harsh on Irene Adler. Probably. I do hate her a lot after all. So for all Irene lovers, please feel free to dismiss this as the fevered ramblings of a hater. When I see a character being praised as clever when the most I can muster for her is a “meh” it just grates. “But she really did care about him, trufax!! And he really does care about her.” Well, I don’t care. I don’t care because I don’t care about Irene Adler. There is nothing substantial there for me to care about.
One more thing. When Irene is about to get executed, she uses her last text to say farewell to a guy she may have liked but whom she really spent half a year being a cocktease towards. Vesper? Uses her last text to help bring down the bad guys responsible for driving her to treason and suicide. Even beyond the grave, Vesper still manages to kick bad guy ass. Suck on that, Adler.
In conclusion: All of / most of the above applies to River Song.
Also in conclusion: can someone please show Steven Moffat an episode of Game of Thrones or Spartacus or anything else that has well written female characters.
To quote Daniel Tosh: "Don't blame your failures on haters. If everyone thinks you suck, they're not haters. They're right."