Subtext Interpretation... What Do You See?

[T.o.b.y]

That's interesting. And yes, I read all your posts Toby I think I'm probably blind though because I don't see the love story there even after reading your detailed explanation. But it's ok I think. Everyone sees what they want to see.

 

So you're telling me I wanted to see all that? Oh dear... I thought I was being like John with Irene: "How come I can see you and I don't even want to?"

[Janie]

 

 

That's interesting. And yes, I read all your posts Toby I think I'm probably blind though because I don't see the love story there even after reading your detailed explanation. But it's ok I think. Everyone sees what they want to see.

So you're telling me I wanted to see all that? Oh dear... I thought I was being like John with Irene: "How come I can see you and I don't even want to?"

Maybe I refuse to see it

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I read all the posts as well T.o.b.y and I am really impressed and I have to agree with you. The friendship is just so deep and true between these two men. Doyle did it beautifully and Mofftiss has followed suit. There is deep platonic love and caring and a soul bond that transcends time and distances. They might not see each other for weeks on end after Watson gets married and moves out of Baker Street when Sherlock Holmes comes around to haul Watson away from hearth and home it's like that time in between never existed. Even in canon Holmes got petulant if he thought Watson might refuse him. In one story Holmes shows up and asks Watson to go with him. Watson says something like"My practice..." and Holmes cuts in" "Well if you consider your practice more important. .." At which point Watson interrupts" I was going to say. .." and on it goes. Of course Watson dropped everything, got another doctor to fill in for him and once again it's Holmes and Watson once more on the case.

[Arcadia]

 

Wow, thank you, I didn't expect such a thorough response!!!  And yes, I read the whole thing with great interest.

 

Like Janie, I don't come to the same conclusions but at least I understand now what you're referring to. Some references I get, others are a complete surprise to me!  I'll have to watch with different eyes next time.

 

One more question ... do you think this is any different from what they were doing in the first two seasons? I actually thought they were playing with it more! But of course it would have been a budding romance at the time, whereas by now it would be one in flux.

 

I actually think there have been several depictions of close male friendships on TV, (see list I wrote in response to Caya) but I'd have to see them again to determine whether I think they use the same "narrative of romance" that you are referring to. The one that comes to mind the most is Starsky and Hutch, but being broadcast in the '70's I find it unlikely they were teasing the audience with hints of gay romance. Then again, I can remember at least one episode where it was patently clear that the two guys loved each other deeply, but as best friends, not romantically. So I really don't think it's as uncommon as you and Caya suggest. What's changed is our perception of what love between two men (or two women) can be, imo. Deep platonic friendships on TV used to be acceptable and believable; now everything's sexualized.

[T.o.b.y]

 

One more question ... do you think this is any different from what they were doing in the first two seasons? I actually thought they were playing with it more!

 

Mhm, I think it is different. I am currently watching series 1 again, and I get a totally different feeling from those episodes. Sure, there are the "people think they are a couple" jokes. But those are only funny as long as the idea that they really might be is utterly absurd. There is no Sherlock rushing around yelling "John!" and battling flames or death whatever is the enemy of the moment in series 1. There are no sad looks at empty chairs, no broken hearts and no inner voices. They're just flatmates, and they work together, and Sherlock is an impossible sociopath who drives John up the wall sometimes, but John puts up with that because Sherlock is also a great man and solving cases with him sure beats sitting around in a chair and cursing his leg.

 

In series 1, Sherlock is a very different person from the one we see in series 3. Can you imagine the younger version making that best man's speech? I can't for the life of me. Series 1 Sherlock didn't even acknowledge yet that he had the capacity for caring about anybody in any kind of way. It's a real revelation when Moriarty shows him his "heart" at the very end. Oh how I love that pool scene... I don't see any particular romance there. It's very cool, very subtle, and very powerful, but I wouldn't call it romantic.

 

In series 2, the focus is more on Sherlock and other people and influences, if you ask me, and John is just sort of there for the ride. It's Sherlock and sex (Irene), Sherlock and fear (Baskerville) and Sherlock and Moriarty (Reichenbach Fall). And the fact that Sherlock has friends, any kind of friends at all, is just being established. It's too early to work on what exactly those friendships are like, just the fact that he cares about people is newsworthy.

 

[Arcadia]

Okay, I see what you're getting at, b-b-b-b-but ... I'll have to think on it some more. Because I see the heart, but I don't see it broken. If anything, I see a heart being healed; until the moment he pulls the trigger. (Or maybe that was my heart breaking?) Still, what you say makes sense too, so ... I'll have to think on it some more!

[T.o.b.y]

 What's changed is our perception of what love between two men (or two women) can be, imo. Deep platonic friendships on TV used to be acceptable and believable; now everything's sexualized.

 

You know, the one element I really do not see, not in series 3 and certainly not before that, is sex or sexual longing. It's just not there in my eyes. But as I said (in unpardonable length), I've seen a lot of romance lately. And people (well, some people, most people, not all people) associate romance with sex. So I just don't blame anybody who thinks that could (or should) be an issue for the boys as well. It's not an entirely unreasonable conclusion, just not the one I've come to.

 

Deep platonic friendships, fine. I didn't use to watch much television, but I've read plenty of books, and I think I know what you mean. But I've never come across a friendship story that was told quite like this.

 

Okay, I see what you're getting at, b-b-b-b-but ... I'll have to think on it some more. Because I see the heart, but I don't see it broken. If anything, I see a heart being healed; until the moment he pulls the trigger. (Or maybe that was my heart breaking?) Still, what you say makes sense too, so ... I'll have to think on it some more!

 

Well, I probably shouldn't have used that expression (I was just thinking of that conversation with Mycroft in The Empty Hearse. Oh, and of Moriarty's voice inside the mind palace mentioning "pain, loss, heartbreak" to Sherlock in His Last Vow.) I heard a song the other day where one of the lines was "I can break you heart 'cause you need it / You'll have a better life when you've been through that". Maybe sometimes hearts have to break so they can heal. Personally, I wouldn't call Sherlock heartbroken exactly; I think that's going a bit too far. It just struck me that the dialogue in the series itself uses that expression (twice), and I filed that away with my overall "romance mode" impression. (What I think Moriarty means by "heartbreak" in that mind palace scene, by the way, is Mary's betrayal of Sherlock's friendship and trust in her. I don't see any reference to John there. But again, I totally understand alternative interpretations.)

[Arcadia]

Aha. We were wondering what The Final Problem was earlier and elsewhere ... maybe that's it. How to avoid pain, loss, heartbreak. Answer: death. Which Sherlock has toyed with more than once, imo. And finally rejected (or been saved from by John.)

 

Sorry, bit of a digression there .... and as always your insights are remarkable. Yet more for me to think about! I never made a connection between the two "broken heart" comments. Then again, the first time it was a dig at Mycroft, so I'm still not sure they go together. Hmmmmm.

[T.o.b.y]

I think the clue to Sherlock's side of the equation at least might be the quote "I consider myself married to my work". While I think he is capable of feeling a certain interest in pretty women and maybe would quite enjoy physical intimacy with Janine or Irene Adler or somebody like that, his work takes up the space in his heart that is usually reserved for true love and life-long commitment. And the thing is, John is a part of that work in a way nobody else is or probably can be. Watson muses about this in a paragraph from a late Dolye story ("The Creeping Man"):

 

"The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me—many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead—but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flamelike intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance."

 

Sherlock really isn't in love with John (I don't think), but John has become part and parcel of the love of Sherlock's life, the work he is married to, so no wonder there is a "more than friendship" layer somewhere and no wonder it's a bit of a big deal when John chooses to go in for family life with Mary.

 

There. I've made sense of The Sign of Three now, for my poor little brain at least.

[sfmpco]

Sherlock is married to his work but I also see that he is becoming "married" to his friendships, especially evident in S3 when he is more interested in working on the wedding planning than at looking at potential cases.  Now some would say he was just scared of the inevitable loss of John to marriage, and certainly Mary interprets him that way.  However, Sherlock seems genuinely so into the planning that he puts his marriage to his work aside.  

 

When he doesn't step aside on his own accord for the wedding photographer but has to be asked to step aside, to me it's almost as if he is a part of that marriage.  That's the new team and he hasn't quite let go or understood that there is a new, private "team" between John and Mary that he's actually not part of.  Yes, he sees John's empty chair in the flat but it takes a whole wedding and reception to really sink in that the dynamics have changed - and now will really change with a baby on the way.  He leaves early and alone, echoing Mrs. Hudson's speech from earlier about her best friend leaving the wedding early.  

 

Of couse, John and Mary are off on a honeymoon and he has no choice to but work on his cases alone, and he's got that whole thing started with Janine, he's dipping into drugs for one of the worst reasons ever, so he's sort of off balance and not really making the wisest decisions because he's lost John as his sounding board.  By the time John discovers that SH is also in the drug den, the wheels of motion in the Magnussen thing are already well in play... and apparently Mary has had enough of CAM on her end that she's ready to kill him that same night.

 

When SH discovers Mary with CAM, his image of her is shattered, which shatters the image he had of a happy wedding and couple.  Even that is now gone from him, and he puts his own life in danger to try to repair the damage to get this festering lie out in the open.  But John and Mary don't make up for months - probably close to six months.  Sherlock isn't even privy to the make-up unless John told him in the helicopter ride to Appledor.  He's trying to put back together what once was between the three of them, even if what once was is damaged, because it will never go back to the way it was, not exactly.  But I do think that John and Mary have become his family, and he wants desperately to preserve that, even betraying his own blood brother to do it.  Of course, he thinks his ill-thought out plan will frame Magnussen, but he's been long out-played by then.  

 

Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side.  He was losing, and his sentiment towards John and Mary was winning... which caused him to make the terrible and only choice he had to stop the progression of blackmail in Mary's life as well as take a little revenge for how CAM flicked John.  Also, SH was not interested in ever being owned by CAM.  Had to stop that too.  

 

Gatiss and Moffit have said that they are allowing him to be come more human, but only by slight degrees because he will never be one of us.  However, the more human he becomes, the less he seems to be married to his work.  For a man who has an international reputation and whose email is bursting all the time, he would rather Youtube serviettes and hang with his friends.  Friendship is becoming more valuable to him, and that is edging out some of the "married to the work" ethic.

 

Except for deep friendship, I don't "ship" Johnlock.  John is not gay, not even a hint of it, never has been a hint of it, never was written that way, never will be written that way except in fanfic.  Sherlock is asexual but leans to hetero.  And Gatiss and Moffit as well as both Freeman and Cumberbatch have said it's all hetero.  To me, that is the end of the discussion on the sexuality of the characters of SHERLOCK.

[sfmpco]

There were" body snatchers" in Victorian England as well. raiding grave yards, hospitals, and the dark back streets of London to garner their wares to sell to medical students and teaching hospitals. Below is a link to the most famous....eeerrr...well....more like infamous pair.

 

 

 

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_and_Hare_murders

 

Yes, there's actually a Timothy Dalton film called "The Doctor and the Devils" about just such lurid enterprises.  

[Arcadia]

Sherlock is married to his work but I also see that he is becoming "married" to his friendships,...........

If Moftiss really wanted to break MY heart, Sherlock would learn from his "mistake" and return to the colder, more self-contained man he was before. I've felt all along that he will end up largely isolated, mostly because of that confounded "canon." But I keep hoping I'm wrong, because ... well, y'know, sentiment.

[Caya]

Except for deep friendship, I don't "ship" Johnlock.  John is not gay, not even a hint of it, never has been a hint of it, never was written that way, never will be written that way except in fanfic.  Sherlock is asexual but leans to hetero.  And Gatiss and Moffit as well as both Freeman and Cumberbatch have said it's all hetero.  To me, that is the end of the discussion on the sexuality of the characters of SHERLOCK.

 

Which of course is your personal prerogative . I'm not a Johnlocker either, but I can see where they're coming from. After all, it's not nearly as cut and dried as you apparently believe, not even for Gatiss and Moffat. To quote Caitlin Moran:

 

It’s interesting that – given this level of obsession with Holmes – Gatiss and Moffat found one aspect of their Holmes wholly mysterious until very late in the process.

“We didn’t know if he was gay or not until the [first] series had actually finished, did we?” Gatiss muses. “We kind of had to… work it out. It wasn’t obvious.” You don’t say.

 

And it's not as if Stephen Moffat hasn't written characters with fluid sexualities in other series:

 

 

(source - this is about the Doctor)

 

No, I don't think we'll see any Johnlock on the screen ... but I've certainly been surprised by this series before (not always in a good way, I might add). And the debate about the precise nature of Holmes's and Watson's relationship is far older than Sherlock, without any definite answers so far, besides. I rather doubt our little board will be able to make any outstanding contribution to it.

 

eta: As for "everybody having said it's all hetero", I just remembered this interview: Sherlock is the 'gayest story in the history of television', says Martin Freeman.

[sfmpco]

Well, if Martin said that in every interview, that would be one thing, but that he spouts off being his usual smart ass self, I don't count him seriously.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Also, that article doesn't give the context for that remark.  I suspect he meant it figuratively, but I'd have to see the context.

 

[Caya]

Fine, have another - Martin Freeman: Sherlock and Watson are a love story. Too tired to google for more tonight, so I hope that will suffice for the [citation needed] requirement.

 

Look, I'm not saying that as soon as Mrs Hudson has taken that herbal soother of hers and sleeps soundly, the two of them are at it like crazy chipmunks. I'm just saying that the matter is certainly open to many different kinds of interpretation. Which is one of the things I like about Sherlock. It's all good .

[Arcadia]

In the same article he also says they're metrosexual, so ... no help there either.

[Bendydoodle Cantaloupe]

Just because you're metro don't mean you're also hetero. Screw concrete definitions.

[Arcadia]

Precisely. There is no concrete answer, imo, until they give us one. And even then someone will argue about it!

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Which again is more then all good. It's what makes our collective Sherlock obsession go round and it is indeed all good.

[T.o.b.y]

 

It’s interesting that – given this level of obsession with Holmes – Gatiss and Moffat found one aspect of their Holmes wholly mysterious until very late in the process.

“We didn’t know if he was gay or not until the [first] series had actually finished, did we?” Gatiss muses. “We kind of had to… work it out. It wasn’t obvious.” You don’t say.

 

 

I wonder what conclusion they reached. Because I have to say, it's still not more obvious than during series 1. Of course, in A Scandal in Belgravia, there's this thing with Irene and "he does know where to look", which I always sort of thought was Sherlock speak for "he's attracted to women, after all" (btw, I love the indirectness of a lot of the dialogue. Like "lets have dinner" is Irene code for "lets have sex".) But as Irene herself kindly pointed out, she proves nothing either way. Not for John, not for Sherlock, not for anybody.

 

Sherlock has always "known where to look", by the way. I mean, right in the first episode, we learn that he has quite an opinion on Molly's mouth. Just the fact that he's decided Molly isn't particularly attractive means he's got some idea of what would be, right? It never occurred to me that there was anything to be "worked out" during the early episodes.

 

Of course, at Angelo's, he rejects what he misunderstands briefly as advances on John's part not on the grounds that he's not gay, but that he is married to his work. I think the latter is just so much more important from Sherlock's point of view than any preference, which for him would only be theoretical in nature, anyway. I think Sherlock decided very early on to stay away from sex, so what does it matter whom he would sleep with if he did sleep with anybody? The question is just not relevant for him. I think it's filed away with the solar system in some mind palace trash bin.

[Arcadia]

I wondered the same thing! I guess they're reserving the right to change their minds.

 

He's rather aware of Janine at the reception, too, I would say. But if Sherlock's cut himself off from sexual attraction and feelings in general, he may not be sure himself what "orientation" he is. Or care. He just doesn't go there.

[T.o.b.y]

But if Sherlock's cut himself off from sexual attraction and feelings in general, he may not be sure himself what "orientation" he is. Or care. He just doesn't go there.

 

Right, that's what I like to believe, at least. Though I do think Sherlock is asexual the same way he's a sociopath: by choice rather than by nature.

 

By the way, it just occurred to me that while I always thought Sherlock didn't give two straws for what anyone though about him and John, that is not quite true. He may not correct Angelo or Mrs Hudson the way John does, and he's certainly not prone to yelling "I'm not gay" at anyone who will listen, but when Kitty Riley threatens to put him down for a "no" on the question whether their relationship is "just platonic", he gets even more fed up with her than he was before, and he quite snaps at Henry Knight when he says "well, look at you and John".

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh -- you think that's what Henry was getting at?  That never occurred to me.  (Both of the inn owners had already assumed they were a couple, which kinda seems like enough innuendo for one episode.)  You may be right, but I'd always interpreted Henry's remark as saying even though Sherlock and John are quite different people, they can still be good friends, just as his dad had been good friends with "Uncle Bob," despite their differing outlooks.

 

Unless you're thinking that Mr. Knight Senior and Bob Frankland were more than friends? 

 

 

Added:  Of course, Sherlock may have been sufficiently sensitized by all the prior "couple" innuendo that he assumed that's what Henry meant, even if Henry didn't.  But I've assumed he was merely irked at the apparent implication that he wasn't exactly "normal" like John.

 

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 

But I've assumed he was merely irked at the apparent implication that he wasn't exactly "normal" like John.

 

 

  That was the connotation that I got. That in Henry's mind his father was very normal. A very nice guy while "Uncle Bob" might have been nice, in his own way, but to Henry he still appeared to be very strange, not quite right something about him did not sit well with Henry and he feels the same kind of strangeness about Sherlock?