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blood_winged... I would have only been annoyed by it.
[...]
In the climactic scene of Conan Doyle's story, emotion initially leads her to betray herself, and – like all women – when confronted by danger, she protects the thing she cares about (which, according to Holmes, is invariably either babies or jewellery). However, after these events, having had time to reflect coolly, Adler realises she has given herself away and plans the escape by which she gets one over on Holmes.
However, even this ambiguous portrait of female power proved too much for Moffat to stomach. Granted, he allowed her to keep her smarts. But, at the same time, her acumen and agency were undermined every which way. Not-so-subtly channelling the spirit of the predatory femme fatal, Adler's power became, in Moffat's hands, less a matter of brains, and more a matter of knowing "what men like" and how to give it to them; of having them by the sexual short and curlies, or, perhaps more aptly, on a nice short leash. Her masterminding of a cunning criminal plan was, it was revealed late in the day, not her own doing, but dependent on the advice of Holmes's arch nemesis, James Moriarty. A move that, blogger Stavvers noted, neatly reduced her from "an active force to a passive pawn in Moriarty and Holmes's ongoing cock-duelling".
More troubling still, Moffat's Adler blatantly fails to outwit Holmes. Despite identifying as a lesbian, her scheme is ultimately undone by her great big girly crush on Sherlock, an irresistible brain-rot that leads her to trash the security she has fought for from the start of the show with a gesture about as sophisticated – or purposeful – as scrawling love hearts on an exercise book. As a result, Moffat sends Adler out into the world without the information she has always relied on for protection, having made herself entirely vulnerable for the love of a man. Lest we haven't got the point yet, Holmes hammers it home. "Sentiment," he tells us, "is a chemical defect found in the losing side."
And then there was the jaw-dropping finale, which somehow managed to smoosh together a double-bill of two of patriarchy's top-10 fantasies. All those troubled by female sexual power – or the persistent punctuation of orgasmic text alerts – were treated to the sight of the vamp laid low, down on her knees, about to have her block knocked off by a great big sword. And, at the same time, our hero miraculously appeared to save his damsel in distress. Medusa and Perseus, Rapunzel and her prince, all wrapped up in a potent little bundle. Symbolically speaking, it was really quite impressive. But for those of us crazies who like to think that women are, y'know, just regular human beings, it was, politically, really quite regressive.
Hmph. =-=
[...]
In the climactic scene of Conan Doyle's story, emotion initially leads her to betray herself, and – like all women – when confronted by danger, she protects the thing she cares about (which, according to Holmes, is invariably either babies or jewellery). However, after these events, having had time to reflect coolly, Adler realises she has given herself away and plans the escape by which she gets one over on Holmes.
However, even this ambiguous portrait of female power proved too much for Moffat to stomach. Granted, he allowed her to keep her smarts. But, at the same time, her acumen and agency were undermined every which way. Not-so-subtly channelling the spirit of the predatory femme fatal, Adler's power became, in Moffat's hands, less a matter of brains, and more a matter of knowing "what men like" and how to give it to them; of having them by the sexual short and curlies, or, perhaps more aptly, on a nice short leash. Her masterminding of a cunning criminal plan was, it was revealed late in the day, not her own doing, but dependent on the advice of Holmes's arch nemesis, James Moriarty. A move that, blogger Stavvers noted, neatly reduced her from "an active force to a passive pawn in Moriarty and Holmes's ongoing cock-duelling".
More troubling still, Moffat's Adler blatantly fails to outwit Holmes. Despite identifying as a lesbian, her scheme is ultimately undone by her great big girly crush on Sherlock, an irresistible brain-rot that leads her to trash the security she has fought for from the start of the show with a gesture about as sophisticated – or purposeful – as scrawling love hearts on an exercise book. As a result, Moffat sends Adler out into the world without the information she has always relied on for protection, having made herself entirely vulnerable for the love of a man. Lest we haven't got the point yet, Holmes hammers it home. "Sentiment," he tells us, "is a chemical defect found in the losing side."
And then there was the jaw-dropping finale, which somehow managed to smoosh together a double-bill of two of patriarchy's top-10 fantasies. All those troubled by female sexual power – or the persistent punctuation of orgasmic text alerts – were treated to the sight of the vamp laid low, down on her knees, about to have her block knocked off by a great big sword. And, at the same time, our hero miraculously appeared to save his damsel in distress. Medusa and Perseus, Rapunzel and her prince, all wrapped up in a potent little bundle. Symbolically speaking, it was really quite impressive. But for those of us crazies who like to think that women are, y'know, just regular human beings, it was, politically, really quite regressive.
Hmph. =-=
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 05:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 05:56 pm (UTC)I didn't need another fandom anyway. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 10:02 pm (UTC)I dislike modern interpretations of Sherlock for several reasons, but the two most important ones are the sexualisation of Sherlock himself, and the reduction of Irene Adler to merely a pawn in the hands of men.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 08:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 10:00 pm (UTC)For Conan Doyle to be able to write such a woman in an age where women had only just gained the right to vote and could still be legally raped by their husbands, and then for her to be reduced to a girl ruled by her emotions in an age where we're supposed to have a more equal society is just very, very sad to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-01-03 10:20 pm (UTC)"It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his."
Is it really that hard to write him accurately for the big screen, or have audiences become so jaded now that we simply HAVE to have RDJ practically naked before we'll go and see a film?