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22.
I obsess over little things.
OH MY GODPFJS I HAD TO WATCH THIS LIKE FIVE TIMES TO REALIZE IT WAS DOGS AND NOT JUST THE MOP BRUSHES COMING TO LIFE AND SCURRYING OFF
((I CAN’T STOP LAUGHING FUCK))
???? ARE WE ALL GOING TO IGNORE THE FACE THAT APPEARS IN THE WINDOW
By now, most of the Elementary fandom has probably already seen or been spoiled for the season finale double-whammy that was “The Woman/Heroine”. But just in case someone hasn’t, abandon ship now if you want to remain unspoiled, because this bit of rambling meta is going to lay out just how cleverly Elementary updated and made the one woman who bested Sherlock Holmes their own.
Short version: Warning, here there be spoilers.
So, just a quick refresher: In the original ACD canon, Irene Adler appears in one story, A “Scandal in Bohemia,” and is mentioned in others, as the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes and ran off to her own life and is never seen again. From Dr. Watson’s perspective, Holmes did not love Irene Adler, but that he did feel an immense respect for her.
In many of the adaptations since the original story was published, the role of Irene Adler as The Woman has been expanded, usually to that of criminal, and usually as a love interest for Holmes.
And for a while, it appeared Elementary not only went down the same path, but that she was also dead (which again, a nice nod to the original canon and ACD’s complete inability to remain internally consistent but that’s another point altogether), leading to cries of her being “fridged for Sherlock’s manpain”.
But lo and behold, not only do we find out in the season finale that Irene Adler is still alive, but that she isn’t in fact Irene Adler at all, but Moriarty herself. And this is a twist that, as far as I know, has not been played with in modern Holmes adaptations (though if it has happened in pastiches, someone please tell me).
And why not? It’s brilliant.
On Irene Adler as the Holmsian Love Interest… again.
One of the most problematic and most prevalent themes of the Adler-as-Love-Interest tropes is how despite she being the woman who beat him, that Holmes eventually returns to save her. The idea that Holmes has feelings for Adler because she’s beaten him is, I think, an acceptable read of canon. It’s clear that he has some strong regard for her, and whether it’s taking into account Watson as unreliable narrator or adaptation degeneration, the idea that Holmes felt something for Irene Norton nee Adler does not seem too much of a stretch.
(Why it always has to be love, well that’s another discussion entirely on the changing views of rationalism and love, one I’m nowhere near qualified to really expound on)
But the fact is that the return is always to the trope that Irene Adler, having beaten Sherlock Holmes, requires saving by him. And Elementary sidesteps this beautifully by having Irene Adler succeed in fooling Sherlock Holmes, and going on her merry way.
And this is the part where the idea gets a little complicated. Because by the end of the episode we realize Irene is and always has been Moriarty. So does Adler really beat Holmes? Or is it Moriarty who does. What does that mean for the Adler/Holmes narrative in the scope of A Scandal in Bohemia?
Trying to answer that question is where things get very interesting for me, and really brings to light for me how extremely clever the Elementary writers were. I think it’s very useful to distinguish between Moriarty and Irene Adler despite them being the same person, because the show itself takes such pains to set them apart. And for a good reason.
Things to note about Elementary’s Irene Adler: Much the same as “A Scandal In Bohemia“‘s Adler, she is content to have one encounter with Holmes and be gone on her merry way. Moriarty’s motivations for experimenting with Holmes, for observing him, are related to this fact, but the key is that the core of Irene Adler, the one who encounters Holmes, impresses him with her intellect (and in this case, intellect AND appreciation for art preservation), and then walks away from him with exactly what she wants, remains the same.
It gets a little more complicated, when we remember that Adler is, in fact, a construct of Moriarty’s. And how much could Moriarty be willing to walk away if the entire point of the exercise is to observe Holmes in his natural habitat?
But that too, is made clear in Moriarty’s reveal. Moriarty-as-Adler is still perfectly willing, perfectly capable of walking away from Holmes. Moriarty-as-Adler still wins by successfully fooling Holmes by faking her death.
It is Holmes who falls, who is deeply affected and deeply moved by his meeting with Adler. In the story, that deeply moved leads him to stop underestimating women, to give her the title of The Woman, the one that eclipses and predominates the entirety of her sex; in Elementary, Holmes ends up wiht a heroin addiction. But in both he is still deeply moved by having met her.
And Moriarty-as-Adler doesn’t need rescuing by Holmes. She isn’t saved, she doesn’t need to be. She walks away from Holmes with her agency and the very core of her being firmly intact.
Which is far truer to the text than would initially meets the eye with the red herrings of Dead Girlfriend and Bohemian Painter and The One that Got Away that had been thrown our way.
Some people might consider it a bit of erasure, for Irene Adler as a character to be revealed as Moriarty in disguise, I actually really like the twist, for a simple reason:
Irene Adler was The Woman to Sherlock Holmes, the one woman who eclipsed and predominated the whole of her sex, the only one to gain the honourific of The Woman from Sherlock Holmes.
And Irene Adler doesn’t exist. Irene Adler as The Woman is a construct, a fantasy, and Elementary very simply puts that out there. That the person Holmes considered The Woman, the single one, the woman who is representative of women. That person doesn’t exist. No perfect woman exists. Not for Sherlock Holmes, not for any one.
When stripped of artifice and the Sherlockian trappings of intelligence and meetings of the mind, the courtship of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, and the revelation of Moriarty-as-Adler, speaks to something incredibly basic:
Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl turns out to be not as perfect as boy thinks. Boy is distraught. Boy (with help of Friend) Gets Over It.
It’s simple and it’s powerful and it is poignant. And it flies in the face of every single romantic comedy in the media. By breaking Irene Adler down into a fabrication, Elementary shows us how hollow the idea of The Woman, The Man, The Perfect Ideal of Your Choice, is.
And, you know what, that’s awesome.
On Irene Adler Being Beaten By Sherlock Holmes… Again
Some people have said that by making Moriarty Irene, that it again takes away Irene’s agency that she is not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes, but the woman beaten by Sherlock Holmes. And once again, this is the part where putting a distinction between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes is helpful. Irene Adler is a construct of Moriarty’s, and it was Moriarty who was defeated.
But not by Sherlock.
Moriarty was beaten by Joan Watson.
Let’s repeat that. Sherlock’s overdose was a ruse. Sherlock being in the hospital was bait for Moriarty, and it was Joan Watson who beat Moriarty, who diagnosed Moriarty and beat her.
Joan was right. Moriarty remains (as both herself and in the Irene Adler guise) the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes. And who in turn was beaten by another woman, by Joan Watson.
How is that not absolutely beautiful and a clever way of keeping the core of what made Irene Adler so deserving of respect for Holmes while still remaining true to the Moriarty narrative of Moriarty being beaten. And in this case, even as Moriarty loses (in this case to Joan), Holmes loses too. Instead of losing his life (as the original intent of ACD’s Final Problem), Holmes loses a bit of his own history, a part of himself that was both painful and formative and something that was good that he obviously treasured.
But having addressed “The Final Problem,” let’s circle back to “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Holmes loses to Adler in “Scandal” because he underestimates her because she’s a woman, because he found himself believing the cultural myth of that period, that woman are inherently inferior to men, that they can’t be as clever. And he loses, to his detriment.
On Elementary, it’s not Holmes’ misogyny and buying into the cultural myth that is his downfall. This time it’s Moriarty’s. Moriarty buys into our cultural myth. Moriarty is a woman, Moriarty is the one who should know better than Holmes that women are a force to be reckoned with. And yet Moriarty buys into internalized misogyny and underestimates Joan Watson.
Think about it for a minute. Internalized misogyny is not being perpetuated by the hero who is then rewarded. Internalized misogyny is being practiced and perpetuated by the antagonist and her downfall is directly related to her internalized misogyny. Her dismissal of other women, as seeing them as competition, mascot, as lesser directly relates to her losing.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
In the current media landscape, we are still regularly reinforced by the idea that women should be seen as competition, where we all buy into (to varying degrees) a social expectation that women are lesser desirable, are expected to be less interesting, less well written then men. We all buy into that to varying degrees. But suddenly we have Elementary, we have a show that not only updated a classic canon to the modern age by the inclusion of peoples of colour, but one that proceeds to update the myths and shatter the idea of people as paragons of their gender, that manages to make internalized misogyny a trait that doesn’t just exist but is actively negative.
How cool is that?
Now, if only we can stop with the Microsoft product placements.This is amazing
I love this commentary, though I’m not entirely sure about the part where Irene looked down on Watson for being a woman. I actually kind of felt like she looked down on Joan for simply not being Sherlock. Either way, fantastic analysis.
I actually loved this moment, because I didn’t see this as Steve being incompetent and completely unaware of what was going on. This, I felt, was Steve being extremely sassy. “It seems to run on some form of electricity,” he says, with a huff of a sigh and a smile. What he means is, “Of fucking course I don’t know what this shit means, I’ve never been exposed to this, are you serious right now” and that is not because he’s stupid or inept. Actually, Steve adapts very, very well and very quickly to new technology, evidenced in the Avengers with the ease and familiarity that he navigates his tablet with, but also in Captain America, where he takes everything Howard gives him (modified, highly advanced Hydra weapons) and uses them to full capacity.
It’s just that Steve’s never seen the inside of a control panel like this, so there’s no way in hell he’d know what to do with it, and he’s pointing that out to Tony with his dry sense of humor. And I think Tony gets it, because he doesn’t get angry or snark back at him; he returns with “Well, you’re not wrong” and a lopsided smile, which I read as his “duh, what was I thinking” moment.
I just have a lot of feelings about Steve and his sass and his dry sense of humor, and now I will crawl away to have feelings elsewhere.
It’s kind of amusing how much I’m actually bristling at the idea of people thinking that Steve is dumb.
hmmaster replied to your post: alicelight replied to your post: here i am! what…
Please, dear Queen of the Brotp, explain what you would do with a JL movie! :)Oh my god - this is going to be long I warn you now.
Basically - forget the “traditional” trinity. Forget Batman, forget Superman, forget Wonder Woman - forget most of the “traditional” founding members. I mean, sure - they can be supporting characters - but go with an already established League, and have your main characters be not your normal titular characters of the DCU, but those characters that are trying to follow their legacies.
I mean, personally, I find myself always drawn to those types of characters: my favorite Green Arrow is Connor Hawke, favorite Batgirl is Cass Cain, favorite Flash - Wally West, favorite Robin - Tim Drake, etc, etc. I love the idea of a hero trying not only to follow in their predecessors footsteps, but also figuring out their own way to do so.
So really, this is the kind of ‘new trinity’ I would come up with: Donna Troy - who upon discovering that she is indeed not Wonder Woman’s sister, uses the hero gig to try and establish her own identity, rather than trying to follow in the steps of Wonder Woman as she was before. Connor Hawke - who travels to Star City after the death of his estranged father, the former Green Arrow, to take up the GA mantle, and, reinvent it, trying to prove himself better than Oliver Queen. And Wally West - who, after a little accident in the science lab while messing with his uncles notes, discovers his now-retired uncle was the former Flash, and gleefully tries to bring back his legacy.
(Ironically, they’re all characters that don’t exist in DC anymore.)
You could also have a Green Lantern, of course. Kyle Rayner, or a deaged John Stewart - the most recent in a long line of Earthen Green Lanterns, trying his hardest to live up to the Legacy his predecessors have left for him. Other characters I would try to fit in would be Zatanna, another example of someone trying to live up to a legacy; Oracle, someone who has passed on their legacy; and Cyborg, someone who never had a legacy or hero to look towards being.
And of course there would be other characters that will appear in each of the the core three’s centric movies, such as Linda Park, Eddie Fryers, Mia Dearden, etc.
BUT YEAH. That’s what I would do.
It’s even called Wonder Boys
| Song: Clint Eastwood |
| Artist: Trey Anastasio |
| Album: Traveler |
| Played: 81,020 times. |
u-ok:
Clint Eastwood (The Gorillaz cover)
This, people. This is what bad ass sounds like.
iS THIS EVEN REAL AM I ALIVE IM CRYING THIS IS OS GREA8T
Whaaaaaa this is just. great.
I was on Tang’s stream earlier and when the idea of swing-dancing karezi came up it was way too good to pass by
I had to! One day these two will be the death of me, I know it! >.<
For some reason I was able to work really fast, at least compared to my usual speed. I didn’t bother too much about detail but I wanted to capture the overall mood and atmosphere (and the Brienne-awesomeness…)! xD
- Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister from “Game of Thrones” -
deviantART: LINK
In La Femme à Paris the author Octave Uzanne dubbed a woman’s clothing ‘her offensive armour’ - but, in reality, fashion seldom offers protection from the violence of the modern world. The clothing adopted when a woman is at her most vulnerable to attack - the heels, furs and jewels of evening attire - actively works against the idea of self-preservation.
Nick Knight sought to challenge this: born from a desire to protect his own two teenage daughters and inspired by the ‘Slutwalk’ movement of women reclaiming the right to dress as they wish without being seen to invite attack, Knight decided to address the notion of self-defence through a fashion shoot. For this, he chose to collaborate with two much-celebrated and empowered female fashion figures - model Lara Stone, and stylist Carine Roitfeld - to redefine the notion of ‘Power Dressing’ for the twenty-first century.
Specially trained for this shoot in the techniques of Krav Maga, a self-defence system developed by the Israeli Defence Forces, Stone defends herself in a series of scenarios whilst modelling a selection of Spring/Summer 2012’s finest fashions, selected by Roitfeld and captured by Knight in stills for V magazine and on fashion film for SHOWstudio. These films serve two functions - showcasing next season’s key styles, and offering instruction to women, a high-fashion ‘how to’ of self-defence.
Pushing the boundaries of fashion editorial beyond aesthetic, and countering the ‘Brutal Chic’ of violent fashion imagery that dominated in the seventies, Knight, Roitfeld and Stone offer a true vision of ‘Power Dressing’ for a modern and truly powerful woman.Krav Maga - Knife Threat to Body: Prada - Lara Stone and Nick Knight.
Requested Hulk as Harry Potter
i will never NOT reblog this omg
THE SORTING HAT
