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language-escapes · 7 years

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*cracks knuckles* Okay, so we’re doing this.

Let’s talk about Sherlock North.

Sherlock North is a new Holmesian adaptation that was announced yesterday. It is described as a contemporary crime fiction series, taking place in Finland during Holmes’ Hiatus. While on the run, he ends up solving some cases in a small town with the help of someone named Johanna Watson.

In the space of twenty-four hours, the tag is FULL of people saying it’s going to be awful, that it’s homophobic and engaging in ‘het-swapping’, that Watson being a woman is boring and overdone, etcetera etcetera. The entire tag is full of this. Twenty-four hours old, not even close to being filmed or produced, and the tag is full of people decrying it as bad.

I mean, we know NOTHING about this adaptation. There’s a Holmes, there’s a Watson, takes place during the Hiatus, that’s it. Boom. What the hell is there to hate yet?

Those of us who are veteran Elementary fans are familiar with this, of course. We’ve lived through this before, and still live through it because people continually fail to understand that if you’re ragging on something, you should avoid landing it in the tag. But let’s go ahead and address some of the things people are saying about Sherlock North. Let’s take a look at the claims and see if they hold any water.

Because Watson is a woman, it means that Holmes/Watson won’t be a homosexual pairing; that’s homophobic.

Come here. Sit down. I’m going to hold your hand through this, because this is going to hurt.

Holmes and Watson aren’t a canon gay pairing.

I wanted to say it quickly, like ripping a bandaid off. It’s going to hurt, it’s going to sting, but it also needed to be done. The truth of the matter is that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, in the original canon, aren’t a homosexual pairing. Now, we can certainly talk about how we interpret the text (I am a lifelong Holmes/Watson shipper; I will go down with that ship), and subtext, and coding, and all of these things, but the fact of the matter is that, in canon, Holmes and Watson are never actually written as romantically together. Again, in terms of subtext and the way we interpret it? Absolutely, it is easy to see them as being in love and so married and all. But it isn’t canon. It’s all interpretation.

What this means is that making Watson a woman is not, in itself, homophobic. They are not ‘het-swapping’ because neither character was written as explicitly gay. It’s just not possible. No one is removing a real homosexual relationship from the story.

I know, it fucking sucks that it’s 2017 and we’ve never had a mainstream media Holmesian production with an explicitly queer Holmes or Watson, LET ALONE an explicitly queer Holmes and Watson that are in a relationship together. I know that a lot of the people in the Sherlock North tag right now are angry, betrayed, bitter BBClock fans who thought that their show would make the subtext text, only to find that that didn’t happen. And it sucks, I get that. But that doesn’t make a totally different show homophobic. And being hurt doesn’t excuse lashing out at a show and making unfounded accusations when, again, it was literally announced twenty-four hours ago and we know nothing about it.

If this is your argument against Sherlock North, how about you go watch some adaptations with queer characters? How about The Adventures of Jamie Watson (and Sherlock Holmes), which is on youtube? In that show Watson is bi, and Holmes is ace, and a number of the supporting cast also have LGBTQ identities. Or S-her-lock, which can also be found on youtube. Watson is trans and Holmes is an aro-ace. I can recommend both of those adaptations wholeheartedly.

Watson as a woman is boring; a woman as the sidekick and help-meet, how original.

That’s primarily a matter of opinion, and you’re welcome to it, but I have to say, I’m offended on canon Watson’s behalf. That’s all you think Watson is? A sidekick? A help-meet? I know Holmes calls him that in canon, but it’s also Holmes who claims that all emotion is useless and then tries not to cry when Watson gets shot. I wouldn’t think of him as a reliable narrator, is all I’m saying.

And Watson as a sidekick is… I mean, I guess technically Watson COULD fit into that role, but that rather diminishes what a good Watson is. A good Watson is brave, and loyal, and stubborn, prone to a temper at times, clever, a full partner in the investigations, compassionate and insightful, generous, self-sacrificing… what I’m saying here is, if you read the canon and just saw Watson as a sidekick, I suggest you go read it again. And bring along the lenses that help you interpret the text as queer, because those lenses will definitely help you remember that narrators are often unreliable.

Watson as a woman is overdone.

Let’s see, in terms of mainstream media adaptations, I know of FIVE where Watson is a woman while Holmes is a man. FIVE. They are:

They Might Be Giants (1971), with Joanne Woodward playing Mildred Watson; The Return of the World’s Greatest Detective (1976), with Jenny O’Hara playing Joan ‘Doc’ Watson; The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986), with Margaret Colin playing Jane Watson; 1994 Baker Street (1993), with Debrah Farentino playing Amy Winslow; and Elementary (2012-), with Lucy Liu playing Joan Watson.

Five women Watsons. If we expanded the selection to include women Watsons against women Holmeses in mainstream media… we have six. That sixth one is Russian, btw. Not sure how mainstream it actually is, given that it doesn’t even have a Western world release.

If that’s your idea of overdone, I hate to break it to you about men Watsons and men Holmeses…

They only ever make Watson a woman so that Holmes and Watson can be in a romantic relationship together without having to incorporate a gay romance- THAT’S homophobic!

See point one regarding the homophobia.

But in the adaptations where Watson is a woman, IS there always a romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson? Is this actually a thing? This is a rhetorical question, I know the answer- no, they’re not always a romantic item when Watson is a woman. In the most popular of the five adaptations above, They Might Be Giants, yes, Watson and Holmes are in a romantic relationship by the end. The film is a cult classic, so I can see why it has imprinted on everyone’s mind, and why the heterosexual-appearing (bisexuality is a thing! As is pansexuality! As is asexuality! Not all of these are visible from the outside!) relationship between a woman Watson and man Holmes is something everyone remembers.

But in the other four? One can maybe argue sexual chemistry in some of them (it would take some arguing, though; it’s more subtext than text), but there is no actual romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson. So if the creators of these productions made Watson a woman in order to have a romantic relationship with Holmes without queerness, they did a horrible job of it, because they forgot to actually include the romantic relationship.

(Fuck, those of us who watch Elementary just want Holmes and Watson to fucking HUG.)

Making Watson a woman isn’t progressive, it’s regressive; even if you get rid of the romantic relationship stuff, they often remove Watson’s key characteristics, like Watson being a doctor, or Watson being in the military.

Every single woman Watson is a doctor of some form. Some of them aren’t practicing doctors, it’s true; neither was canon Watson when we first meet him, and in the stories he doesn’t actually start practicing medicine again until after he marries Mary Morstan, which happened in ~1887/1888 (don’t get any Holmesian started about dates…). 1888 was a full seven years after he met Holmes. So even canon Watson, while having a medical degree, was not a doctor when we first meet him.

As for the military stuff… look. In the first place, in the US military, women couldn’t serve in combat until 2013. For the UK, restrictions on women in combat weren’t lifted until 2016 (though they could serve as combat medics and join other, technically non-combat groups). But in the second place, and more importantly, our canon Watson served in the imperialist, colonialist British military in the Victorian era, a deeply awful time when the military engaged in genocides. England is somewhat ashamed of that heritage, at least on some level (not on enough levels, of course, and not enough to get them to knock it off even now, but that’s neither here nor there). Why the fuck would we want Watson serving an imperialistic goal, especially if a show doesn’t have the time or resources or, hell, interest to unpack what all of that means? Very few shows can engage well in the complexities of military service, even ones ostensibly centered around them (*squints at NCIS*). Frankly, I’d rather my Watson not serve in the military this time around if it means not having to deal with showrunners struggling and failing to make sense of the military mindset.

(ETA: Winslow was with the Red Cross during the Panama invasion. Thanks @sanguinarysanguinity!)

(Disclaimer: my entire family is military; believe me when I say this shit is complex, and needs a lot of energy devoted to it to do it right.)

The name fucking sucks.

Well. I won’t argue with you there.

(Anybody know if this is just a translation of what the name is??? Because then I understand why it’s so bad. Is it just a working title?)

The sum up

Take a look at all of those complaints I listed. These are the complaints I saw over and over and over again when I went through the Sherlock North tag today. Are you sensing a theme here? Is there something in common with all of these arguments?

I want an explicitly queer Holmesian adaptation as much as the next H/W shipper. I dream of it. If someone gave me money to make my own adaptation, hells to the yeah would make them queer and in love.

But that doesn’t actually seem to be anyone’s main problem, to be honest. The main problem people seem to have is that Watson is a woman.

Someone can argue till they’re blue in the fact that the reason they’re upset about a woman Watson is because they want a gay Holmes and Watson relationship, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t have that relationship in any media, at all, and yet people still watch that media anyway. And you can certainly be sad about the potential for a gay relationship being gone. I do get that, and respect that.

(Sidebar: in the world of things I find hilarious is the fact that, in this adaptation, Holmes and Watson COULD BE a gay couple! They could be happily married! Because John Watson could be back in London, sad because his husband was killed by Moriarty because THIS TAKES PLACE DURING THE HIATUS. Johanna might be a totally separate character! Or Johanna IS our Watson, and Holmes didn’t know Watson before the Hiatus in this adaptation. You know why that’s a possibility? BECAUSE WE KNOW EXACTLY THREE THINGS ABOUT THIS ADAPTATION.)

But the hate? That’s some bullshit right there.

If your issue is that Sherlock North is yet another adaptation where Holmes and Watson won’t be a gay couple, I do understand that disappointment. I would also like to point out that just because Holmes and Watson won’t be a gay couple in Sherlock North doesn’t preclude queerness, so you will want to rephrase that argument. Watson could be a lesbian. Holmes could be ace. One or both could be bisexual. Remember that queerness is this whole big range of things. We don’t know enough about this production yet to say one way or another. Just remember that two white dudes touching isn’t the only way to be queer, and that disappointment over the lack of white dudes touching shouldn’t lead to woman-bashing.

And if a woman Watson is your issue you don’t need to worry. There are literally hundreds of other mainstream media adaptations with man Watsons. In some of them, there are barely any women at all! You can avoid women to your heart’s content.

Ultimately, most of the arguments against Sherlock North are just ridiculous. It may suck. It may be brilliant. But it doesn’t have a cast, or a production crew, or any fucking funding yet, so we literally know not a single thing other than a general, broad concept. So take a deep breath and step back. Go hate women elsewhere.

(You know what I would like to see? Some of this same outrage if Sherlock North ends up being a predominately white cast. But if it has a white cast, suddenly we’ll hear all about how Scandanavia is just so white, it only makes sense for the cast to be white… and if folks got upset about race problems, they’d need to examine their own favourite Holmesian adaptations more critically, and we all know that ain’t gonna happen. *sips tea*)

#sherlock north #sherlock holmes #my writing #jesus christ it's 2011 all over again #and elementary has just been announced #it's not actually like flashbacks because those are a thing #but damn people #learn something #i'm going to end up a fan of this thing #not on its own merits #but out of solidarity #can everyone please just fucking breathe jesus fucking christ #come at me bro #(i am perfectly willing to talk with anyone about this #antagonistic or otherwise #i don't play)#meta

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