Holmes and Watson need new punctuation
Jan. 2nd, 2012 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerSaw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows tonight, and had much great fun. Is it just me, or have we seen a tendency in the last 5-10 years for sequels to actually be better than the first movie of a series? If so, I attribute it to these being planned as series from the start, rather than the sequel being tacked on after the first one does well, and also on the way a second movie doesn't have to spend all that tedious time setting up the characters and situation, but can just jump right into the story.
Anyway. That actually isn't what I want to talk about here. Instead, I want to talk about slash, and how utterly inadequate I find that word for describing the situation with Holmes and Watson in this movie.
(I'll try to keep this relatively spoiler-free, but I can't promise about the comments.)
See, here's the thing. To me -- and I know people use the term in different ways, so this is just my own usage -- slash is the process of taking the homoerotic subtext of a story and treating it as text. And one of the reasons I can't call AGoS slashy is because it isn't subtext. You simply cannot look at the interactions between Holmes and Watson in that film and think the story is not deliberately presenting you with two men who love each other very deeply, even if they can't quite unbend enough to express that affection in direct terms.
The other reason I don't want to call the film slashy is because, although you can find abundant bait there for imagining Holmes and Watson in a sexual relationship, I don't read them that way. Partly this is because I get frustrated sometimes at how the slash lens tends to filter out all other possibilities for male emotional intimacy; we can't let guys be friends or enemies even brothers without also sexualizing the relationship. That actually frustrates me sometimes, on par with my frustration over TV shows that like to use slashy subtext to engage the fans, but will never actually deliver on those wink-wink-nudge-nudge promises. (We can have slash, but almost never The Actual Gay.) Anyway, getting back to Holmes and Watson -- sure, there's certainly space there for reading it in that light. But I'm more interested in the story of two friends, because it's a kind of friendship I feel I don't see very often these days, where it isn't all macho fellow-soldier camaraderie, but something with real vulnerability on both sides.
I don't have a good term for what I see between them, in the first movie and especially the second. The closest I can come is a term my friends and I have used sometimes, "hetero lifemates," for two straight people of the same sex whose friendship is of the lifelong kind. But it doesn't quite hit the target I'm aiming at, maybe just because it's unwieldy. Neither Holmes nor Watson would ever say it openly -- let's face it; they're both late nineteenth-century men, and one of them is a rampaging narcissist -- but they care as deeply about each other as either of them (okay, Watson) is capable of caring about anyone of the opposite sex. I feel like I need to resort to Greek here, except I don't actually know which word I want. Agape? Philia? Eros? (Wikipedia claims that one doesn't have to be sexual. Actual Hellenists, please weigh in.)
Whatever you call it, I'm fascinated by the way the movie embraces it, and does so without totally sidelining Mary Morstan. She doesn't play a terribly prominent role, but they do make it clear that Watson isn't marrying her just because it's the sort of thing he's expected to do. She and Watson have their thing, and he and Holmes have their thing, and it's my sincere hope for all three characters that they manage to settle down into a dynamic that doesn't force Watson to choose between them. Mary's willingness to roll with various events suggests it may be possible.
I can't refer to the guys as Holmes/Watson, though. They need new punctuation, something other than a slash. Any suggestions? :-) And, more to the point -- what should we call this kind of thing, if it isn't slash?
Anyway. That actually isn't what I want to talk about here. Instead, I want to talk about slash, and how utterly inadequate I find that word for describing the situation with Holmes and Watson in this movie.
(I'll try to keep this relatively spoiler-free, but I can't promise about the comments.)
See, here's the thing. To me -- and I know people use the term in different ways, so this is just my own usage -- slash is the process of taking the homoerotic subtext of a story and treating it as text. And one of the reasons I can't call AGoS slashy is because it isn't subtext. You simply cannot look at the interactions between Holmes and Watson in that film and think the story is not deliberately presenting you with two men who love each other very deeply, even if they can't quite unbend enough to express that affection in direct terms.
The other reason I don't want to call the film slashy is because, although you can find abundant bait there for imagining Holmes and Watson in a sexual relationship, I don't read them that way. Partly this is because I get frustrated sometimes at how the slash lens tends to filter out all other possibilities for male emotional intimacy; we can't let guys be friends or enemies even brothers without also sexualizing the relationship. That actually frustrates me sometimes, on par with my frustration over TV shows that like to use slashy subtext to engage the fans, but will never actually deliver on those wink-wink-nudge-nudge promises. (We can have slash, but almost never The Actual Gay.) Anyway, getting back to Holmes and Watson -- sure, there's certainly space there for reading it in that light. But I'm more interested in the story of two friends, because it's a kind of friendship I feel I don't see very often these days, where it isn't all macho fellow-soldier camaraderie, but something with real vulnerability on both sides.
I don't have a good term for what I see between them, in the first movie and especially the second. The closest I can come is a term my friends and I have used sometimes, "hetero lifemates," for two straight people of the same sex whose friendship is of the lifelong kind. But it doesn't quite hit the target I'm aiming at, maybe just because it's unwieldy. Neither Holmes nor Watson would ever say it openly -- let's face it; they're both late nineteenth-century men, and one of them is a rampaging narcissist -- but they care as deeply about each other as either of them (okay, Watson) is capable of caring about anyone of the opposite sex. I feel like I need to resort to Greek here, except I don't actually know which word I want. Agape? Philia? Eros? (Wikipedia claims that one doesn't have to be sexual. Actual Hellenists, please weigh in.)
Whatever you call it, I'm fascinated by the way the movie embraces it, and does so without totally sidelining Mary Morstan. She doesn't play a terribly prominent role, but they do make it clear that Watson isn't marrying her just because it's the sort of thing he's expected to do. She and Watson have their thing, and he and Holmes have their thing, and it's my sincere hope for all three characters that they manage to settle down into a dynamic that doesn't force Watson to choose between them. Mary's willingness to roll with various events suggests it may be possible.
I can't refer to the guys as Holmes/Watson, though. They need new punctuation, something other than a slash. Any suggestions? :-) And, more to the point -- what should we call this kind of thing, if it isn't slash?
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 08:33 am (UTC)I don't have a good term for what I see between them
My mother would call them "dear friends". (She and I once had a spat because she referred to my girlfriend as my "dear friend", and when I protested that calling my partner my friend was closeting us, she retorted that it was one of the most intimate terms she knew, not to mention less childish than "girlfriend" and less sterile than "partner".)
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Date: 2012-01-02 08:44 am (UTC)(An ampersand is the likely choice for punctuation, yes. But I'm curious to see if any other good suggestions come up. <g>)
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Date: 2012-01-02 08:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 08:49 am (UTC)I think it would be very easy to read Downey's Holmes as asexual but not aromantic. He's capable of love -- for one person, anyway -- but never shows the slightest actual interest in sex that I can think of. As somebody who often finds the Hollywood obsession with sex tedious rather than interesting, I really like that.
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Date: 2012-01-02 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 10:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-02 10:21 am (UTC)Not having seen A Game of Shadows but having seen the first Sherlock film, my opinion is similar to the one I have about the BBC Sherlock because they both handle the Holmes and Watson relationship in similar ways: I find the intimacy intriguing, but the 'ship-teasing and general everything-but-the, no-actual-gay-allowed-here ethos is demeaning. It satisfies me in the sense that what I look for in media above all is an interesting relationship between characters, where interesting often also means unusual because the two are one and the same, and honestly half of what makes this particular relationship interesting and unusual is that it's intimacy without necessary sexuality—but the way that it fails to deliver, that we look for "the gay" in subtext that's got nothing sub about it but will never be text either because we just don't do that, that's icky; and creator and audience alike can both have a fetishized teasing thrill about it would the actual acceptance and normality that should be the nature of with homosexual relationships in popular media...
Where was I? That aspect infuriates me, it's demeaning, but it surprises me not in the least.
It's sort of the opposite of having a cake and eating it too, but I'll still see A Game of Shadows sometime soon.
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Date: 2012-01-02 10:32 am (UTC)(There is one scene in AGoS that's a bit more slash-bait than most, as it involves a half-naked Holmes and some wrestling. But in general, I really do feel like the focus is on the emotional connection between the two men, and the film doesn't try to deny or downplay that at all.)
But yes, as a general thing, I think our narrative media has fallen into an obnoxious pattern of fetishization without acceptance and normalization.
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Date: 2012-01-02 10:37 am (UTC)Gremlins 2
Addams Family Values
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Date: 2012-01-02 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 11:48 am (UTC)So much this. I am so very tired of "OMG, men showing affection/caring for one another - must be gay, so let's write slash for them!" I know why it exists, and I can't fault it at all because there aren't enough homosexual relationships shown in movies and television, but at the same time I find it so very aggravating.
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 12:17 pm (UTC)Yes, this. Thank you for this. I like seeing men as lovers (and wish we'd see more of those relationships on screen), but I do get frustrated at this filtering out of deep, non-sexual friendships. When I read some articles and blog posts on the Internet, I get the feeling that some people can't envision any other kind of deep commitment than a sexual partnership. And it's a shame, because there are so many ways to have relationships that don't involve sex.
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-02 01:40 pm (UTC)(As a Classical historian type, I'd incline to call Holmes and Watson ἐπιτήδειοι καὶ φίλοι, close friends and intimates. Philia is probably the closest Greek word for what they have: in addition to its more common friendly meanings, Liddell and Scott have a citation for it as "the natural force which unites discordant elements and movements, opp. νεῖκος, Emp.18, al., Isoc.15.268." Discordant elements and movements seem to encapsulate Holmes and Watson quite well, to my mind.)
(Eros is one-sided desire, the impossible unrequited longing (as James Davidson has put it, eros is the arrow straining for its mark and never quite reaching it, because when it attains its goal, it ceases to be eros); and agape really only gains a popular currency with the onset of Christianity. Agape is interesting, because it seems (tho' I am not a philologist or even a specialist in Greek language and lit) to imply regard, fondness and affection that's not necessarily between equals, since it crops up with husbands for wives, parents for children, gods for mortals, and leaders for followers - but this is an impression that I've acquired: a specialist might have a different one.)
(You might say I have something of a eros for Greek language matters.)
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:08 pm (UTC)Thanks for the clarification of the Greek! Philia does seem a good match. I had thought agape was between equals, whereas philia was between (for example) parents and children -- but that's probably because filia is Latin for "daughter." Anyway, I may try using that in the future, so that I have a simple noun to sub in for "the strong [slash] element" or whatever.
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Date: 2012-01-03 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-01-02 03:35 pm (UTC)But then come all the people who look at Frodo and Sam and immediately turn their singular relationship into a gay love story. Or Aragorn and Legolas, Legolas and Gimli, etc. I understand that sometimes it's just fun to fantasize about things. But there are times when it feels like a cop-out to go directly to the slash, like somehow, addressing the real nature of the relationships is too difficult or even uncomfortable, so people head for the easier path of sexytimes.
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Date: 2012-01-02 04:07 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what you would call them, exactly.... I think the most media is willing to do is suggest that a pair in this situation is "like family" (I.E. bleeping Supernatural, who insists on saying flat-out "yup, they're totally into each other, but we're not going there, sorry") but that doesn't work precisely, and neither does my mind's helpful suggestions of "brothers-in-arms," though I think that's probably closest to what I want to say. I think that a female pair would similarly be called "sisters," but it would almost work better, since sisters are seen as being allowed to be closer than brothers are; sisters remain close as they move on in life, brothers drift apart. Not that this is always, or even usually, the case, but that's certainly the popular perception and has a lot of back-up in literature and pop culture. A relationship that is "brotherly" has also been sexualized more than one that is "sisterly."
I think at this point I, too, am feeling the urge to resort to either Greek or Japanese. In Japan, though, I think the relationship would still be called brotherly. We need more words to use for close, same-sex relationships between heterosexual people, but I think that references to family are all that's easy to find.
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Date: 2012-01-02 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 06:13 pm (UTC)It would be impossible, in a mainstream Hollywood movie, for, say, Holmes and Watson or Professor X and Magneto to be openly stated to be gay, or to kiss, or to discuss dating each other. In a movie in which a man and a woman are close friends but not sexually involved, we assume that they were intended by the filmmakers to be just friends. But we can't assume that in a movie about two men (or the extremely rare instances of a movie about two women.)
Intended gayness must be filmically indicated similarly to intended close platonic friendship, because the alternative is essentially banned. Hence, it becomes very difficult to tell whether a relationship is supposed to be gay or not.
I too am a fan of actual friendship stories. It's comparatively rare to see them - between men in fic, and between women in anything.
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:16 pm (UTC)As I said above to Aliette, it does occur to me that this isn't solely a homosexual issue, though. You get a lot of people who see an emotionally close male-female relationship and immediately leap to shipping them. (See also: "men and women can't be friends." To which I say, FEH.) We seem inclined, as a society, to read sex into everything, given half a pretext for doing so.
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Date: 2012-01-02 07:44 pm (UTC)I think this is what annoys me so much about slash in general. Not every relationship out there is going to be sexual in nature, and dammit, if there is going to be romance, etc, I want to see it actually played out.
I loved the relationship between Holmes and Watson here--it rang very true to the hetero-lifemate relationship. I was initially afraid they'd make Watson 'choose' between Mary and Holmes, but they juggled it perfectly--I especially loved that Mary completely understood that in marrying Watson, she was getting Holmes as part of the deal and that, in parallel Holmes recognized her importance to Watson. I couldn't read any sexual interest into Watson's feelings for Holmes, but Holmes I could see as being attracted to anyone able to keep up with him, regardless of gender.
But, yeah, we need punctuation for denoting bromance vs slash (maybe a % since it has a '/' in it?)
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Date: 2012-01-03 07:14 am (UTC)I'm not a fan of the word "bromance" either, though. Not sure why. It just rubs me the wrong way.
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Date: 2012-01-02 10:22 pm (UTC)(SPOILER: I had a really hard time getting into this movie because of what they did to Irene; i'm interested in your read on that and how that affects--or doesn't--Holmes and Watson's relationship. But i honestly liked MI:4 much better, despite my loathing of Tom Cruise.)
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Date: 2012-01-03 07:16 am (UTC)(SPOILER: I'm . . . undecided about the Irene thing, mostly because I'm unconvinced it's quite what it appeared to be. At least, I think there's room there for them to spin different answers, depending on what they decide to do. If it's straight-up what it looks like, then I'm annoyed, because it comes across as "we never quite figured out what to do with this character, so.")
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Date: 2012-01-05 06:17 pm (UTC)Thanks for writing this. :) Once again homophobia leads to sexism and stops men from fully enjoying their emotional selves and lives.
Amen!