one thing about Sherlock S4
Feb. 26th, 2017 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI just finished watching it yesterday, and there were some things I really liked, some things I thought were just strange, and one thing that irritated me enormously. Guess what I'm going to talk about?
Did Mycroft really have to be straight (or straight enough to decide he might take Lady Whatsername up on her offer, anyway)? A character with no canonical sexual history either in Doyle or in earlier seasons of Sherlock, a character whose revelation as gay would come as no shock to anyone in the audience, a character played by a gay actor, and Moffat decided it was necessary to make him straight. Gatiss presumably went along with it, although I think Moffat has the real decision-making power. I am frustrated, but not surprised, and in good measure frustrated with myself for hoping, even the tiniest bit, that a show run by Steven Moffat might ever make a major male character gay. (Then of course there's Irene Adler's continuing fixation on Sherlock--this would be Irene Adler the lesbian, remember?--and also the insistence that a relationship with Irene Adler is necessary for Sherlock to be a Real Boy and find happiness, but all this comes under one heading, namely Steven Moffat's Intolerable and Suffocating Heteronormativity.)
Of course, for my own purposes I've decided that Mycroft picks up that card because he's chosen to ignore the implications and take her invitation to go out for drinks literally; he's looking for someone to talk to and maybe be friends with, not for romance or sex with her. But I'm tired of having to do that.
/belated rant about something I should have known would happen, because Moffat
Did Mycroft really have to be straight (or straight enough to decide he might take Lady Whatsername up on her offer, anyway)? A character with no canonical sexual history either in Doyle or in earlier seasons of Sherlock, a character whose revelation as gay would come as no shock to anyone in the audience, a character played by a gay actor, and Moffat decided it was necessary to make him straight. Gatiss presumably went along with it, although I think Moffat has the real decision-making power. I am frustrated, but not surprised, and in good measure frustrated with myself for hoping, even the tiniest bit, that a show run by Steven Moffat might ever make a major male character gay. (Then of course there's Irene Adler's continuing fixation on Sherlock--this would be Irene Adler the lesbian, remember?--and also the insistence that a relationship with Irene Adler is necessary for Sherlock to be a Real Boy and find happiness, but all this comes under one heading, namely Steven Moffat's Intolerable and Suffocating Heteronormativity.)
Of course, for my own purposes I've decided that Mycroft picks up that card because he's chosen to ignore the implications and take her invitation to go out for drinks literally; he's looking for someone to talk to and maybe be friends with, not for romance or sex with her. But I'm tired of having to do that.
/belated rant about something I should have known would happen, because Moffat
no subject
Date: 2017-03-01 07:00 pm (UTC)YES THIS.
Like, I never ever thought they'd get John and Sherlock together in canon, and I accepted that the show had slightly disappeared up its own arse, and I knew that Moffat had a... complex relationship with fannish enthusiasm, but I genuinely thought, when the bit with Mycroft and the lady appeared, that the punchline would be 'oh Mycroft is gay'. Or EVEN 'Mycroft is gay and with Lestrade, because we do pay attention, and clearly neither actor would mind, and that would be something, and actually a twist, and reclaim something from all this, and demonstrate we are not totally incapable of having any gay character appear in person in this whatsoever'
But no. And indeed, because Moffat.
*heavy sighing*
Oh, by the way, the full transcribed testimonies of the Wolfenden report have been published, FYI - I haven't got yet, but I want to:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolfendens-Witnesses-Genders-Sexualities-History/dp/1137321482/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488394819&sr=8-1&keywords=wolfenden%27s+witnesses
no subject
Date: 2017-03-11 05:13 pm (UTC)Moffat really does have some weird thing about heterosexuality, doesn't he? Not just being straight himself, or being interested in depicting straight relationships, but putting this kind of mystical value on heterosexuality, especially as a sort of healing/moral improvement thing for men, while at the same time seeming to find women alien, incomprehensible, not quite human.
Ooh, I need that book! How wonderful that those testimonies are being published.
proving that it's never too late to comment
Date: 2019-12-21 09:47 pm (UTC)Why, Moffat, whyyyyyyy?