Episode 2.1, "A Scandal In Belgravia"

[Arcadia]

Lying awake last night and suddenly thought of this scene. (and NO, I don't normally think about Sherlock when I'm trying to sleep, honest!)

 

Anyway, Irene says disguises are a self-portrait, then tells Sherlock "I think you’re damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power; yourself." What do you think, is she right about him?

 

You could take the damaged literally (the cut on his cheek) but I assume she means psychological/emotional damage. I sort of feel like he is but I don't know where the evidence is for that except that he doesn't act like "normal" people. Delusional? Dunno what to make of that yet. Believes he's a higher power? Yeah, I'd say so, but I get the feeling he has doubts about his worth, esp. after S3. Can you be a higher power and have "no utility" at the same time?

 

What do you all think?

 

And if disguise is a self-portrait, what are we to make of Irene's "battle dress"? She has nothing to hide? Ha. That she IS nothing? Hmmm, I don't see her as having self-esteem issues, but the outside world might regard her that way. She's all transport and no brain? Obviously not true. Hmmmm......

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I've always had a problem with that "damaged" label.  What does that even mean?  Everyone has baggage... emotional trauma of some sort...what makes one person's hangups any worse or debilitating then anyone elses. 

 

  But any way.....how does she think she can even really judge him. This is the first time they have even met...in the flesh....well...yes....hhmmm.  But again...any way...the only person she has been speaking to about Sherlock, that we know of, is Moriarty. So she may just be throwing Moriarty's words around....like him calling Mycroft and Sherlock, The Iceman and the Virgin. Not sure I would put much stock in those assessments either way.

[Arcadia]

What if it had been Sherlock saying the same thing about her? Would we dismiss his words because he'd only just met her? That's what Sherlock does .... draw conclusions from his observations. 

 

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I would still question the label of "damaged" I have yet to see it in any deductions he makes....or if it has come up I haven't noticed it.

[Arcadia]

Nice dodging of the question!

 

Maybe it's just the undertones that BC chooses to give him, and not anything in the scripts, but there's something about Sherlock that makes me think he's dealing with some pretty fundamental emotional pain. Or rather, not dealing with it, therefore it is never resolved. Maybe that's what I want to see, though, as an explanation for why he is the way he is. Anyway, that's what "damaged" means to me, for what it's worth; "not coping."

 

"Delusional"? Yeah, if he's deluding himself into thinking he IS coping, that would certainly fit.

 

"Believing in a higher power (himself)" --- yes, I'd say he does, but I also detect moments of self-doubt/self-loathing/low self-esteem. (In other words; being human!)

 

Of course, that's not the sum total of who he is, which is where Irene's analysis falls short. But then she was chiefly trying to chop him down to size; another reason I have a hard time liking her. There's moments when I do, but ultimately she spends her life diminishing other people; what's to like about that? (Of course, we could say the same about Sherlock, but I think his motives are different. She does it to dominate; Sherlock does it because he can't be bothered not too. Which, really, is pretty bad of him, glad he seems to be growing out of it.....)

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Sorry, I didn't think I was dodging the question at all.

 

 There is a good meta in these threads that deals with all this....and yes, he had become very good at coping....maybe not always in the healthiest of ways...but he has learned to cope with what ever had happened to make him such a loner. Yes, there is pain....he hides it so that he can function and that he does very well. He resorted to drugs once upon a time but he found other ways to distract himself and can do without them for long periods of time and he is very aware of the damage they can do to him....especially his brain work. So unlike many drug addicts he does not delude himself into thinking that he can control their affects on him. That shows that he has a healthy level of self preservation. He is not self destructive in that way.

 

He may not like himself very much at times, but there are other markers on how much he does care about himself and life. He carved out a niche for himself in life. He pulled himself out of a very emotionally charged and crippling experience that could have destroyed every shred of his self respect and became the world's only and very successful consulting detective. This is a very healthy thing to do. Something that hundreds of people in this world cannot seem to do. They give up....go on well fare. Not our Sherlock. He takes care of himself. His personal hygiene is of high quality. He may be a slob at times at home....but who isn't? He has the money to dress well and he does, even just to sit at the kitchen table to work on a forensic experiment.

 

Believes himself to be his own higher power?   How many of us think the same thing.  We are taught that our fate is in our own hands. That each person is their own higher power.   The Buddhists certainly believe this and has created a whole religion around it. There is a religious denomination or two in this country that teach that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. At least one teaches that when they go to heaven they will be given their own planet to rule as a god.

 

 I can't see any damaged human being here. Certainly not his spirit.  He's just another human being going through the life the best he can and being a whole lot more successful at it then a ship load of other people.

 

 

[jesskayding]

I don't know what you people are talking about. I love Irene. That woman is mostly fearless. And attractively dangerous. & her wardrobe is the bomb!

[Carol the Dabbler]

I don't know what you people are talking about. I love Irene. <snip> & her wardrobe is the bomb!

 

 

Are you referring to her Battle Dress? 

[jesskayding]

That, her white dress... & that gorgeous dress she wore when she was as Sherlocked. That fur coat. The scene with her & john in that construction site or abandoned parking garage.

 

Oh I failed to mention her walk in closet. There were some pretty swank pieces in there.

[Carol the Dabbler]

That old building where John met up with Irene was the Battersea Power Station (thus John's line about Mycroft's "power complex" is a pun, though not an in-universe one).  The station is also visible in the background in "Great Game," when John is inspecting the spot where Andrew West's body was found.

 

[T.o.b.y]

Right, so begins his plan to outwit Mycroft. With the use of a high end prostitute & Sherlock. Burn!

 

Is Irene really a prostitute? As far as I know (and that is not much), "recreational scolding" does not have to involve sex.

 

I do think it is implied that she makes pretty free use of her body, and I do not doubt that she would sleep with nearly anybody if it got her something she really wanted, be it information or power or things of material value. Maybe that makes a person a prostitute, anyway. I don't know.

[jesskayding]

Per the Urban dictionary: ( since this is after all, a modern depiction of Sherlock.)

 

1.prostitute

(n.) One who will perform sexual acts if payment can be arranged. (Payment does not have to be moeny.)

 

 

Mycroft did refer to Irene Adler as a "sex worker". She just clever enough to turn something, that's usually seen as degrading into something quite empowering. Got to give that woman her props! ^_^

[jesskayding]

Toby, did you mean to bring my quote over from a different topic? That was in His Death Wish.

[T.o.b.y]

I don't know whether Irene is really that "empowered". I wouldn't exactly hold her up to young girls as a feminist icon. But I love her. I need a few feminist icons in real life, but on a television show made for entertainment, I'm a lot more lenient. And I find female (and male!) characters much more interesting as flawed, problematic, struggling human beings than ideals of any kind.

 

   Toby, do you mean to bring my quote over from a different topic? That was in His Death Wish.

 

Mhm, sorry, hope you don't mind, I just thought it'd fit in here...

[jesskayding]

How did you do that?

[T.o.b.y]

How did you do that?

 

Do what? Take a quote from one topic to the next? It's magic...

 

No, seriously, I bet there's a more sophisticated way, but what I do is I click "quote" on the post I want to use, then I highlight the quote, press ctrl/X, go to the thread I want, choose the reply box there, press ctrl/V, and there's the quote. Then I reply to it, and that's that.

[Arcadia]

 

Right, so begins his plan to outwit Mycroft. With the use of a high end prostitute & Sherlock. Burn!

Is Irene really a prostitute? As far as I know (and that is not much), "recreational scolding" does not have to involve sex.

 

I do think it is implied that she makes pretty free use of her body, and I do not doubt that she would sleep with nearly anybody if it got her something she really wanted, be it information or power or things of material value. Maybe that makes a person a prostitute, anyway. I don't know.

 

I noted they were very careful not to use the word "prostitute." But I'm not sure "dominatrix for hire" is a step forward for womankind.

[Carol the Dabbler]

And apparently "recreational scolding" IS sex for some people.

 

[Arcadia]

Now I am completely out of my depth.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I can see where Carol is coming from....but to me "prostitute" like every other derogatory term was invented to put the guilt on women for men needing to go out and get their jollies off. It's all right for a man to sow their wild oats....but it's not alright for a woman to go out and do the same thing? I mean look at wild stag parties and other rites of passage that young men are almost expected to do.  Throwing money at the woman is supposed to make it alright? Somehow evens the score?

 

 I could never get my head around the double standard and hypocrisy of it all.

[jesskayding]

Hmmm. I believe that men who offer sexual pleasure for money are referred to as male prostitutes. No hypocrisy there.

 

However, there are double standards when it comes to promiscuous behaviors. Unfortunately women do bear more responsibility per if having sex with multiple men & you get pregnant... Who's the father? As a woman you have a lot of work to do. It's a cost to count when a woman sleeps with more than 1-3 partners @ a time.

 

By the way I'm not taking the side of society. I'm just saying that there is a much bigger price to pay as woman who decides to live that way.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

But a lot of women don't chose it. There is a very active trade in sex slavery. They are told that they will be given good paying jobs and well taken care of.  It's all a lie and many are beaten and or killed if they try to protest.  And in many cultures a child belonged to the mother....the father didn't matter so much. I know I was fed the lie that if I gave out they would love and take care of me forever.  Yeah, right. I'd seen what a lot of my girlfriends went through. I wasn't about to be suckered and I still got lied about. 

[jesskayding]

Oh. Sorry to hear you went thru that. It is true that men get praised for their sexual conquest. Also this could be a geographical thing. In some of the much bigger cities, men fall in love with strippers, Soooooo. I guess it really depends.

 

I live along the bible belt, so society still judge women & take men's side when it comes to that.

[Caya]

Might be a US/European thing too. It's pretty much taken for granted round here that teenagers/twens of both sexes will sleep around, being young and horny and all. We have stuff like the First Love ambulances, where teens can get anonymous medical testing and contraceptives and, if they somehow slept through it at school, sex ed as well.

 

I actually remember quarreling with my dad when turning 17 because he wanted me to start taking the pill and I was trying to get through his head that I didn't even have a boyfriend yet (I was a very late bloomer). From what I've heard of his own youth, he was probably disappointed in me .

[jesskayding]

Yeah, you Europeans seem to be buck wild!

 

Although in the movie 'Love Actually' gives this portrayal of American women being sex addicts.