Benedict Cumberbatch – Bitch Flicks

The Capaldi Conundrum: How We Attack the Female Gaze

In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

This guest post by Alyssa Franke appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Fangirls everywhere face a common frustration. Call it what you like, there’s a name for almost every fandom — Marvel has the Chrises Conundrum, Sherlockians have the Cumberbatch Conundrum, Whovians have the Capaldi Conundrum. In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

The female gaze is often assumed to be singularly focused on male objectification, to the exclusion of anything else. As a result, women are assumed to either be sexual beings who are present solely to gaze at male bodies, or intellectual beings capable of understanding and appreciating media. Unlike men, we are not allowed to be both at the same time.

Set aside, for the moment, the question about whether or not we can say that the female gaze really exists in franchises that are largely written, produced, and directed by men. At the very least, the creators of these franchises have attempted to appeal to what they believe is the female gaze — a presumed straight female audience — by objectifying their male leads.

Marvel hasn’t been shy about objectifying Chris Hemsworth’s body in his multiple on-screen appearances as Thor. His first solo movie featured several shirtless or partially clothed scenes, but by his second solo film we were upgraded to softly lit, lingering shots of Thor’s torso as he bathed. And Marvel didn’t tiptoe around the blatant objectification and who it was intended for. In a later scene, a woman deliberately falls onto Thor in a crowded subway car just to get a subtle feel of Thor’s chest. Thor is here for women to ogle, and he’s totally down for it.

The creators of Sherlock have also gleefully displayed Benedict Cumberbatch’s body for the enjoyment of his fangirls. Cumberbatch wasn’t deliberately objectified in the first season of Sherlock, though with his well-tailored suits and tight shirts, he certainly wasn’t being hidden away. But by the second season, he was being shamelessly objectified for the female audience. In a now infamous scene, Sherlock answers a summons to Buckingham Palace completely naked, wrapped only in a bed sheet. When he attempts to leave, his brother Mycroft steps on the edge of the sheet and pulls it down, giving women an eyeful of Cumberbatch’s torso and backside.

Doctor Who has been slightly more circumspect about appealing to the female gaze. Multiple female characters are shown gazing at or discussing the attractiveness of the various Doctors, but the men’s bodies themselves are rarely visually objectified for the viewer in the way female bodies are. Scenes with partial nudity are usually portrayed as slapstick or comedic scenes.

There are a few exceptions to this. In a special skit produced for a TV charity marathon, Matt Smith’s Doctor donates his wardrobe for charity. But he’s soon forced to hide behind his TARDIS as the viewers — presumably straight women — discover that pressing a button on their remotes will strip him of his clothing. The event is scripted and presented as a comedy, but women are actively shown objectifying Matt Smith’s body for their enjoyment. And in the first season of the new Doctor Who, Captain Jack, played by John Barrowman, has his clothes zapped away by two female-coded androids. Now naked in front of millions of television viewers, he flirtatiously tells the androids, “Ladies, your viewing figures just went up.”

Given the overall ratio of female objectification in media — and indeed, the ratio of female objectification in each of these franchises — the number of times men are objectified for a straight female audience is practically insignificant. But there’s an enormous disparity in the way male and female fans are treated when they react to this objectification.

Male fans can openly and loudly express their attraction to the female actors in a franchise without question. They can show their appreciation for moments where women are objectified without having their knowledge of a franchise questioned and tested. And their intellectual appreciation and understanding of a show is rarely challenged as a result. If anything, the recent surge of “sexposition” in high-brow TV shows seems to show that creators believe that appealing to the male gaze is necessary while delivering exposition and commentary.

Female fans do not have that same power, respect, or freedom.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, female fans are assumed to only watch the movies because of the attractiveness of the male actors. This attitude goes alongside a general suspicion that female fans of Marvel comics and the MCU are not “real” or “serious” fans, and female fans are often challenged to prove their knowledge of the extensive and convoluted history of those comic book characters.

Female fans of Sherlock have faced similar attitudes. The popular caricature of Sherlock’s fanbase, repeated ad nauseam on the internet and by the media, portrays the show’s fans as crazy Benedict Cumberbatch fangirls. And sure, many female fans do find Cumberbatch attractive. But he is not the sole reason that the vast majority of fans are watching Sherlock. Female fans are also watching for the witty writing, compelling mysteries, and the plethora of other amazingly talented actors called upon to play these classic roles.

Even within the larger Sherlock Holmes fan community, female fans tend to be dismissed based on the assumption that they are exclusively fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and are ignorant of the larger Holmes canon. This is often accompanied by the misogynistic assumption that they are only watching Sherlock to ogle Cumberbatch.

In one particularly notable incident, Phillip Shreffler, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society and former editor of the Baker Street Journal, wrote an article denouncing modern “fans” (a term he uses derisively) of Sherlock Holmes and praising instead the “elite devotees” who meet his accepted level of serious appreciation for the Sherlock Holmes canon. But his screed particularly targeted young female fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and he specifically singled out the Baker Street Babes podcast, which is composed entirely of women. Ironically, the Babes are devoted to discussing every incarnation of the Holmes story. It was Shreffler who assumed that young women would only be interested in Sherlock Holmes to watch Cumberbatch.

And then we have the Capaldi Conundrum. When it was announced that Peter Capaldi was being cast as the next Doctor, a particularly malicious glee began to seep through some parts of the Doctor Who fandom. At 55 years old, Peter Capaldi was breaking the trend of younger, more conventionally attractive men being cast as the Doctor. And some fans became to wonder if an older Doctor would “drive away” female fangirls.

To these fans, young female fans were interlopers in the Doctor Who fandom. They weren’t real or serious fans that were dedicated to the show or its history. They were just silly little fangirls sucked into watching the latest Doctors because the actors playing them were young and cute. They assumed Peter Capaldi’s casting as the Twelfth Doctor would drive fangirls away from where they didn’t belong. Accusations that female fans only watched Doctor Who to ogle its male actors appeared side-by-side with accusations that female fans weren’t “real” Doctor Who fans.

When most men try to imagine why women watch visual media — when they try to conceive of what the female gaze might be like — they tend to assume women are focused on viewing men as sexual objects. In its most benign form, this assumption results in male writers, directors, and producers creating scenes where men present themselves as passive sexual objects. For which we thank them.

But in it’s most misogynistic form, this assumption portrays the female gaze as something shallow and infantile. If a character is portrayed by an attractive actor, that must be the only reason why women like that character. If a franchise moves into a visual medium or is suddenly filled with attractive actors, that must be the only reason why women decide to become fans of that franchise. Within this mindset, women are assumed to have no interest in the story or its thematic elements. We are assumed to have no deeper intellectual appreciation for that franchise.

These dismissive attitudes put female fans in a bind. Because while we can and do have a deeper interest in and appreciation for a franchise beyond its male actors, many of us are interested in ogling hot guys.

I can be interested in Chris Evans’ ass and still want to examine the way the Captain America franchise examines the current American conflict over the lengths we should go to ensure security. I can watch the gif of a sheet being pulled off of Benedict Cumberbatch’s torso on repeat for hours and still examine the way Sherlock interprets the Holmes canon for a modern audience. And I can stare at gifs of David Tennant’s hair for days and still want to spend the next week marathoning episodes of Jon Pertwee’s and Peter Capaldi’s Doctors.

We need media that employs the female gaze — we need media that is written, directed, and produced by women for an audience of women. We need media that puts women at the center of the narrative and presents them as sexual beings rather than sexual objects. But more than that, we need to treat female viewers with the same respect we treat male viewers. We need to treat them as beings capable of intellectually and emotionally appreciating a piece of media while simultaneously being capable of appreciating Captain America’s ass.

God bless America.

Alyssa Franke is the author of Whovian Feminism, where she analyzes Doctor Who from a feminist perspective. You can find her on Twitter @WhovianFeminism.

‘The Imitation Game’ and ‘Citizenfour’: Secrets Then and Now

A stereotype in popular media about very smart people is that they must have some great deficiency in other areas of their lives–as if someone with extraordinary intelligence being able to make friends and get laid would be unfair to the rest of us. The only reason I can surmise for the positive reviews The Imitation Game, a highly fictionalized new film about gay, World War II codebreaker Alan Turing is that it confirms all the “normal” audience’s worst suspicions about “genius” and queer life, without offering any meaningful insight into either.

Sometimes I wish the mainstream film industry would stop making movies about queers. The rare times that a queer person is allowed to be the main character in one of its movies, as in this one, he (almost always a “he”), like the rare main character of color is usually unrealistically isolated from the community he comes from, a trope fostered from before Stonewall to the ’90s to now: we are oh-so-tragic and oh-so-alone. Because he has no peers to rely on, the main gay guy invariably confides in the straight guy (particularly ridiculous in The Imitation Game’s 1940s setting) just like in movies set in the Civil Rights-era South, Black people have all their deepest conversations–and bonds–with white people. When a film shows the rare group of people of color relying on each other, as in Selma, awards snub it and prominent white guys denounce it. When a film like the underrated Pride shows a group of queers working together, the blurb on the back of the DVD makes sure it doesn’t offend any “Christian values” by mentioning something as crass as LGBT identity.

“Homosexuals”–as they were known then–could be arrested during the time the film takes place (as Turing was after the war, one of the few parts of the film that isn’t doctored) and imprisoned both in England and elsewhere, but that didn’t stop them from existing or having sex with each other–and straight people knew them even if they didn’t acknowledge that they did. World War II was a vehicle for many queers from the US (and probably those in the UK too) to find each other, no longer isolated in their small hometowns. But even before the war, academia (where Turing came from) was, notoriously, also a refuge for gay men. The arts were another. Accounts from those who knew him say that Turing was quite open about his sexuality (instead of the anguished confessions we see here): and then, as now, straight people (and I’m presuming most of the people interviewed were straight) were always the last to know. Also unchanged in the intervening years: the rules for men in power or ones with powerful friends were different: actor John Gielgud was arrested in the same time period as Turing was for having sex with another man, but faced neither imprisonment nor the forced hormone treatment Turing accepted instead of a prison sentence.

Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and the guys

All the most interesting twists of the story are the ones the film avoids. As part of the huge wartime operation at Bletchley Park Turing had helped win the war against the Nazis (in fact his team’s decryption might have been the deciding factor) but he couldn’t tell anyone about it–nor could anyone else. Some powerful people did write letters of support for him during his trial, but they couldn’t say precisely why they were writing them. If his work during the war hadn’t been secret the charges against him probably would never have come to trial–or been made in the first place.

Instead, what passes for drama in this film are pedestrian scenes that are the invention of screenwriter Graham Moore. Even though there’s no historical evidence of any such incident we get more than one sequence in which Turing’s supervisors attempt to destroy his work. “You will never understand the importance of what I’m creating here,” Benedict Cumberbatch, as Turing, cries in the first film performance I’ve seen that is best encapsulated by the phrase “the gnashing of teeth.”

These scenes might be a reflection of the vanity of its hack filmmakers (writer Moore along with director Morten Tyldum). “I’m afraid these men would only slow me down,” the film’s Turing says about the team of other codebreakers. Not only does this film leave out all the other people (including some Polish cryptologists who made a valuable prototype) who helped Turing get to the point where he could successfully design and run Bombe (not “Christopher”: the name Turing gives his codebreaking computer in the film– after his first love!) but in the film he’s also perpetually misunderstood and under-appreciated by others the same way white, male writer and director “auteurs” seem to often feel they and their own work are, even as they dismiss (and underpay) the many other people who make their films possible and enjoyable. Maybe this parallel is the reason for the spate of “great man” films and the awards they always seem to collect this time of year.

The lone woman with a decent-sized part in the film is Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightley) Turing’s fellow cryptanalyst who becomes his friend and, for a time, is engaged to him. Unlike the ridiculous scene in the film when Turing breaks up with her, the real-life Clarke was reportedly “unfazed” when she found out her fiancé was queer, because in those days (as the film touches very briefly on) marriage was the only way for most young women to get away from the control of their parents.

And even though a big deal is made of Joan Clarke being one of the only woman cryptanalysts, like “Rosie The Riveter” stateside, 80 percent of Bletchley Park’s employees were women. The codebreakers were popularly known as “Dilly’s girls” after the (male) head of the operation, none of which is reflected in Game. Thanks for erasing the historical contributions of women again, mainstream film industry!

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CjKEFb-sM” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Another film about genius and secrets making the rounds of top ten lists and awards is Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour, the documentary about Edward Snowden, who acted as a whistleblower by releasing evidence of the US’s widespread and unconstitutional spying on its own citizens.

You’d never know from the many news accounts about Snowden that Poitras was the first person he made real contact with when he decided to go public. Poitras reads his first message aloud on the soundtrack, “Laura, at this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community. I hope that you understand that contacting you is extremely high-risk.”

The film makes clear, hilariously, that when Snowden first tried to get in touch with Glenn Greenwald, who is usually given the credit for bringing Snowden’s story to the rest of the world, Greenwald couldn’t learn to use the encryption Snowden (who knew how volatile this information was) insisted on, so Snowden moved on to Poitras (who was well-versed in encryption after the government had seized footage from her previous documentaries, including one about the Iraq war). After a time Snowden suggesting that she bring in Greenwald–when presumably she could instruct him what he needed to do to get his encryption skills up to snuff.

Citizenfour, I had to keep reminding myself, shows us history in the making. We meet Snowden before his first media interview. We see him in the hotel room in Hong Kong where he was first holed up when the story broke. I had to keep telling myself what I was seeing was important because most of it is otherwise pretty dull.

We never find out much about Snowden beyond what we’ve seen in other media. He is a man who is preternaturally sure and calm about what he’s done, perhaps because, as an autodidact (he has a GED) at the top of a highly skilled field, he was able to think for himself on the implications of the work he was being asked to do.

We do see the travails of another whistleblower who went through more traditional channels and is still suffering blowback for it, to show us why Snowden released the info to the media directly. And we see Snowden upset at how the girlfriend he lived with and left behind in Hawaii is treated by the government in his absence. But as a friend remarked as we left the theater, “Watching Edward Snowden stare at his laptop isn’t very exciting.”

Although Snowden was sure he would be tried and imprisoned for his actions, saying in one of his preliminary messages to Poitras, “In the end if you publish the source material I will likely be immediately implicated,” he eventually saw that he could, with help, escape and chose to do so. But the scenes that should build up tension and our empathy for him (even those of us who admire his actions and sympathize with his plight) fall flat.

An exception is when we see Snowden’s face on video blown up to epic proportions in a main Hong Kong Square, just after his first big media interview, and then cut back to Snowden still in his hotel room, trying to change his appearance so he won’t be recognized (and abducted) on his way to the airport. Otherwise we don’t feel like we are in Snowden’s shoes in this film, even as we spend much of our time looking and listening to him. At the end we see Snowden has reunited with his girlfriend in Russia (where he has been trapped since the US government cancelled his passport–just before he could catch the second leg of his escape flight). We see them through a window, preparing dinner together, from a distance, an apt metaphor for how well we have come to know Snowden in this film ostensibly about him.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

“I Misbehave”: Lesbian Dominatrix Irene Adler, Sex Work and ‘Sherlock’

Season Two Episode One of ‘Sherlock,’ “A Scandal in Belgravia,” is adapted from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The storyline focuses on Irene Adler, portrayed brilliantly by the arresting Lara Pulver, who has incriminating photographs of a member of nobility that Sherlock must retrieve.

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Re-posted from 2013 Golden Globes Week: “I Misbehave”: A Character Analysis of Irene Adler from BBC’s Sherlock

Season Two Episode One of Sherlock, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” is adapted from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The storyline focuses on Irene Adler, portrayed brilliantly by the arresting Lara Pulver, who has incriminating photographs of a member of nobility that Sherlock must retrieve.

In the original version, Adler is an opera singer who had an ill-advised affair with the prince of Bohemia, and he discontinued the affair because he was to become king and thought she was beneath his station. Adler threatens to expose the photos if the now king announces his engagement to another woman. In the updated TV episode, Adler is a high-priced lesbian dominatrix who operates under the pseudonym “The Woman” and holds photos of a high-ranking female member of the British nobility.

Irene Adler: lesbian dominatrix and general BAMF

Confession: I love Irene Adler. She’s infamous for her sensuality, independence, intelligence, and her ability to manipulate. Throughout the episode, Adler and Sherlock match-up wits, and Adler proves to be the cleverer one right until the very end. Adler establishes herself as the quintessential femme fatale. When contrasted with the other female characters throughout the series, she is the only one who is given a strong representation. The coroner, Molly Hooper, is a doormat, waiting for Sherlock to notice her and her inexplicable affection for him. Mrs. Hudson is a doddering old lady whom Sherlock abuses but takes umbrage if others treat her in a similar fashion, in a way claiming her as his property to abuse or reward at his own whim. Finally, there’s the recurring character of Detective Sergeant Sally Donovan, a tough, but mistrustful police officer who always thinks the worst of Sherlock and is too simple-minded to follow his deductions.

Though Sherlock doesn’t know it, Adler is well-prepared for their first encounter when Sherlock shows up on her doorstep impersonating a mugged clergyman. In parody of his earlier nude appearance at Buckingham Palace, Adler presents herself to Sherlock in her “battle dress,” i.e. completely naked. This proves to be a cunning ploy because Sherlock can deduce little about her character without the aid of clues from her clothing. Not only that, but Adler maneuvers Sherlock to help her ward off some C.I.A agents by using her measurements as the code to open her booby trapped (har, har) safe. Adler then drugs and beats Sherlock until he relinquishes her camera phone, which contains a host of incriminating evidence that she claims she needs for protection. She ends their memorable first encounter by saying, “It’s been a pleasure. Don’t spoil it. This is how I want you to remember me. The woman who beat you.”

Illustration by Hilbrand Bos

Minus all the sexy dominatrix stuff, this is where the original Holmes story ends. Irene Adler disappears, retaining her protective evidence, and Sherlock must forevermore admire and be galled by The Woman who beat him. The BBC episode, however, takes creative license to continue the story, having Adler fake her own death only to show up six months later demanding Sherlock give back the camera phone that she’d sent to him presumably on the eve of her death. For six months, Sherlock has done his version of mourning, as only an admittedly high-functioning sociopath can (becoming withdrawn, composing mournful violin music, smoking, etc.). Does he mourn, we wonder, the death of a woman for whom he’d grown to care, or does he regret the loose end, the loss of a chance to ever reclaim his victory and trounced ego from such a superior opponent?

Before her faked death, Adler sent frequent flirtatious texts to Sherlock, with the refrain, “Let’s have dinner.” Sherlock responded to none of her messages, lending increased weight to the significance of their relationship. Upon her resurrection, Adler confesses that despite the fact that she’s a lesbian, she has feelings for Sherlock. Her feelings, in a way, mirror those of Watson, a self-proclaimed straight man who clearly has a deep emotional attachment to Sherlock. Sherlock then forms the apex of a peculiar love triangle at once sexual and cerebral.

“Brainy is the new sexy.” – Irene Adler

Adler tricks Sherlock into decoding sensitive information on her camera phone. After breaking the code in four seconds that a cryptographer struggled with and eventually gave up on, Adler feeds Sherlock’s ego.

Irene Adler: “I would have you, right here on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice.”

Sherlock Holmes: “I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.”

Irene Adler: “Twice.”

She then follows up on all her sexual attentions toward Sherlock by sending the decrypted code to a terrorist cell. She reveals to Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes that she’d played them both and consulted with Sherlock’s arch enemy Jim Moriarty to do so. It turns out, she was playing a deep game, exerting endless patience in her long con with blackmail as her goal all along. She demands such a sizeable sum for the code to her valuable camera phone that it would “blow a hole in the wealth of the nation.”

At this point, Irene Adler has won. She’s literally and figuratively beaten Sherlock Holmes repeatedly at his games of deduction and intrigue. She’s planned for and obviated every contingency. Adler is the only woman to arouse Sherlock’s sexual and intellectual interest all because she proved to be better than him. Adler masterfully manipulates the emotions of a man who cannot understand how and why people feel, a man who seems incapable of anything but his own selfish pursuits. Her problematic confessions of interest in Sherlock despite her sexual orientation are negated in light of her schemes.

Unfortunately, this is where it all goes to shit.

Just as Mycroft is giving his begrudging praise of Adler’s plot (“the dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees”), Sherlock reveals that he took Adler’s pulse and observed her dilated pupils when interacting with him. He deduces her base sentiment has influenced her into making the passcode more than random, into making it, instead, “the key to her heart.”

Sherlocked…get it? Get it? Snore.

With that simple, inane phrase, Adler is undone. Sherlock has broken into her hard drive and her heart. Depicting a lesbian character truly falling in love with a man is a complete invalidation of her sexual identity. Not only that, but it has larger implications that are damaging and regressive. It advances the notion that lesbians are a myth, that all women can fall in love with men if given the right circumstances.

Having a female opponent who is more cunning than Sherlock ultimately lose due to her emotions also implies that women are incapable of keeping their emotions in check. Sherlock insists that her “sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side.” While he can detach from his emotions, she cannot, and thus he will always be better than her at the so-called game. Not only that, but this emotion versus reason dichotomy further reinforces the destructive gender binary that assigns certain traits to men and others to women, giving privilege to those assigned to men. Even Adler’s seductiveness, her cunning, her manipulation of the Holmes brothers, these characteristics are coded as female. Adler even enlists the aid of the male Jim Moriarty with the implicit reasoning that he is smarter, slicker, and more capable of handling the Holmes brothers.

Irene Adler must make her way in the world as a sex worker who deals in secrets. (Remind you of Miss Scarlet from Clue at all?) Capitalizing on sex and thriving on the power dynamics inherent in sex (especially heterosexual sex, in which we know Adler engages) are attributes generally assigned to women even though they are fabrications. Having to engage in sexual activity for money does not give women power. It, instead, forces women to exploit themselves and conform to a regulated form of femininity as well as other people’s sexual desires and fantasies (regardless of what the woman herself wants, likes, or doesn’t like). Considering the appalling number of rapes each year, each day, each hour, we also know that power dynamics (from a hetero standpoint) don’t truly favor women. Though the episode doesn’t get into it, presumably Adler is finally cashing in on all her secrets in order to make a better life for herself, a life in which she does not have to sell her body to survive.

When Sherlock outwits Adler, he forces the dominatrix to beg for her life, which is worth little without her secrets. Though he feigns indifference, he ends up finding her after she’s gone into hiding and been captured by terrorists in Karachi. He then saves her from a beheading and falsifies her death in a completely untraceable way.

It’s poignant that Sherlock holds the sword over Adler’s neck, choosing whether she lives or dies.

At the end of the episode, Sherlock stands before a window chuckling to himself about how handily he settled the whole scandal with The Woman. He doesn’t only best her at their game of wit, but he debases and de-claws her. Divesting her of all her power, all her secrets, Irene Adler is completely at his mercy and must be rescued like a damsel in distress or, worse, like a naughty little girl who’s gotten in over her head and must be dug out by her patriarch.

Despite the frequent declaration that “things are better for women now,” it’s hard to ignore that a story written in 1891 created a larger space for a woman to be strong, smart, and to escape. It’s also hard to ignore that Sherlock doesn’t just outwit Adler, he systematically dismantles all her power and only then does he graciously allow her to live. We can wish the last ten minutes of the episode had been cut, allowing for an ending in keeping with the original story, an ending that empowered a woman as one of Sherlock’s most formidable foes. A potentially more fruitful wish would be that Irene Adler returns in future seasons, stronger and more prepared to play the game against Sherlock Holmes, a game we can only hope she will win the next time around.

———-

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Asexuality and Queerphobia in ‘Sherlock’

Sherlock is a fantastic show. As you can probably guess, it’s inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but imagined in modern-day London. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is arrogantly cerebral and painfully introverted, finding a perfect foil in the loyal and more rational ex-military doctor John Watson (Martin Freeman). Together, they form your classic unlikely pair that brings out all the best in each other, intensified by the adrenaline rush of high-stakes crime solving. The jokes are witty, the pacing is breakneck, and the emotion is genuine.

Sherlock promotional still. — *Sherlock* promotional still.

Written by Erin Tatum.

Sherlock is a fantastic show. As you can probably guess, it’s inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but imagined in modern-day London. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock is arrogantly cerebral and painfully introverted, finding a perfect foil in the loyal and more rational ex-military doctor John Watson (Martin Freeman). Together, they form your classic unlikely pair that brings out all the best in each other, intensified by the adrenaline rush of high-stakes crime solving. The jokes are witty, the pacing is breakneck, and the emotion is genuine.

One of the main appeals of the show is the allegedly overt homoeroticism between Sherlock and John. It’s been television standard for a while now to feature bromances that play to the audience with tongue-in-cheek gay subtext. However, showrunners Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat delight in turning every episode into a perpetual game of gay chicken. The driving force behind the development of Sherlock and John’s relationship seems to be “let’s see how gay make them before we’re obligated to establish legitimate sexual tension.” They live together, work together, and regularly admit to their love and infatuation with each other. Almost every other character will either tease John about his implied crush or outright assume that they are a couple.

Sherlock and John hold hands while escaping.

That feels pretty progressive, right? There’s been a recent onslaught of praise for bromances as essentially the only vehicle for mainstream acceptance of queer subtext, as if male emotional expression in itself is queer. If the “Johnlock” dynamic were allowed to persist on its own, I might be willing to begrudgingly stomach yet another instance of subtextual breadcrumbs being hailed as a watershed moment for queer inclusion. The problem is that any potential for alternative readings of their relationship is deliberately and painstakingly squelched by John’s constant and resentful vocalization of his heterosexuality.

Sherlock’s sexuality appears to be a source of fascination for John from the get-go. He professes to being open-minded, curiously interpreting Sherlock’s lack of social awareness to a carefully constructed veil over his personal life and somehow extrapolating that back out to internalized homophobia. John insists that he’s perfectly fine with Sherlock having either a girlfriend or boyfriend. All self-loathing queers need to snap out of their funk is lukewarm tolerance from straight people! Undeterred by Sherlock’s indifferent denial of a relationship with anyone, John conducts similar interrogations of Sherlock’s other friends, but fails to draw any concrete conclusions on Sherlock’s romantic history or orientation.

For someone who considers themselves to be so liberal towards others, John certainly has a lot of anxiety about his own sexuality. He reacts to every playful insinuation or misguided perception of his relationship with Sherlock with weary and sometimes angry defiance. When (spoiler alert) John informs their elderly roommate Mrs. Hudson that he’s met someone, she excitedly asks if it’s a man or woman, acting surprised when he informs her that he’s engaged to a woman. Growing impatient with her goodnatured skepticism, John irritably shouts, “I am not gay!” Insert laugh track here. This is why I can’t get behind any endorsement of bromance as the best mainstream queer tofu. Fuck the people who worship countless heterosexual male friendships as groundbreaking because they include a few zany domestic scenarios and the occasional double entendre. John’s sexuality is used and abused as the butt of the joke and he’s not even gay, which is somehow almost more insulting than if he were actually gay. The implication is that each reference to homoeroticism chips away at his manhood and slowly unravels his self-assurance, suggesting that no matter how progressive you claim to be in the abstract, to be queer is to be always anticipating humiliation. Moffat and Gatiss, we are well aware John is straight. Making him squirm for shits and giggles is unnecessary and juvenile. If you coyly stigmatize and degrade an identity to obsessively remind the audience everything that your characters are not, you wind up being just as exclusionary and discriminatory as shows that steer clear of queer subtext altogether.

highfunctioningsociapath — Sherlock deftly deflects mental health stigma.

Of course, any discussion of queer baiting draws focus from the other elephant (not?) in the room: Sherlock’s probable asexuality. Sherlock himself proclaims that he is a “high functioning sociopath,” but his difficulty grasping social cues as well as his astronomical intelligence also parallel the traits of Asperger’s. John in particular links this supposed diagnosis to his peculiar absence of romantic interest. When John investigates the matter with Sherlock’s friends, he isn’t trying to determine if Sherlock has a preference for men or women, he’s trying to suss out whether or not Sherlock has the capacity to feel at all. I should acknowledge that the narrative has never concretely established Sherlock actually having a mental disability. Nonetheless, the message that disability and asexuality are linked is unfortunate in a number of ways.

This aspect of the show creates an ideological war within me. On one hand, the tired and apparently benign stereotype that disabled people fundamentally lack any sort of sexual impulses makes me want to rip my face off and feed it to hyenas. On the other hand, asexuality is a completely legitimate orientation that should be respected and the fact that Sherlock may or may not have Asperger’s is entirely coincidental. Don’t think too hard about it though! The fact that that Sherlock doesn’t want to get laid only comes into play to underscore his characterization as a freaky weirdo with adorably oblivious, borderline misanthropic tendencies. Sherlock’s asexuality ironically leaves open a wider array of pansexual opportunities in the minds of many viewers. By the laws of television, the absence of something (especially sex-related) must be alluding to the presence of something. His romantic apathy is so uniform and universal that you can make an argument to pair him with just about anyone. It’s nearly impossible in modern society to fathom anyone being completely devoid of sexual desire. Consequently, a lot of viewers choose to simply attribute this potential lack to Sherlock’s extreme social awkwardness. He may want someone, but his chronic inability to feel empathy could obscure what’s going on behind the mask.

Sherlock kisses his friend Molly after realizing she has feelings for him. — Sherlock kisses his friend Molly on the cheek after realizing she has feelings for him.

To be fair, Sherlock does not deny accusations of loneliness and has rare moments with women that could be interpreted as ambiguously romantic. I don’t care who Sherlock ends up with or if he ends up with anyone at all. The point is that I wish that it would be portrayed as acceptable for Sherlock to be asexual even if that’s not the case. He doesn’t want to pursue anyone, so why should we perceive his choice as repressive denial? This assumed cat and mouse mysteriousness conveniently also influences viewers to judge femininity and female characters on their ability to properly facilitate traditional masculinity within Sherlock, ergo sexual activity. Sherlock doesn’t need to wait around for whoever is judged as sufficiently Manic Pixie Dream Girl enough to awaken his libido. His friendship with John illustrates that Sherlock can still be a compelling character with emotions and compassion and meaningful relationships without having a love interest. He doesn’t need to have a partner to satisfy cliché character development and growth arcs. He is fine on his own, especially if he wants to be that way.

The writers have recently thrown the audience a few bones since we apparently can’t have a male lead without a few panty-dropping moments. (Spoiler alert) Much of the comedy during this series three premiere stems from the wild speculation as to how Sherlock faked his own suicide. One theory features Sherlock sharing a dramatic kiss with Molly, a lab assistant whose unrequited crush on Sherlock is regularly presented as pathetic and delusional. The other theory shows Sherlock sharing a giggle with his arch nemesis Jim Mortiary before suddenly leaning in for a kiss. It’s no accident that both accounts are initially established as actual events, revealed as fantasy sequences only when an outside character interjects and abruptly shatters the illusion.The person who proposes the homoerotic Sherlock/Mortiary hypothesis is a Gothic teenage girl addicted to social media, in a not-so-subtle lampoon of the yaoi fangirl stereotype. (A ballsy move in light of the predominantly female Johnlock fanbase.)

Sherlock and Moriarty have a moment...at least according to some. — Sherlock and Moriarty have a moment…at least according to some.

Needless to say, the episode was fantastic. I always enjoy when creators are able to poke fun at their own material. However, as far as the messages it sends, I’m reluctant to fully embrace it. I’m a sucker for shows that boldly go meta, but the undertones of those silly fantasies are hard to ignore. The fact that Sherlock kisses people in both sequences feels too deliberate. It’s as if Sherlock’s capacity for intimacy is meant to be the moment where the audience recognizes this chain of events as absurdly implausible. But why? If we’re all supposed to be secretly rooting for Sherlock to blossom into a Lothario, why does it feel so laughably ridiculous? Further, gleefully dangling wish fulfillment to tease the question of Sherlock’s orientation mocks the perceived inadequacy of and frustration with its absence. Fueling the widespread conviction that Sherlock has to be lusting after someone deep down contributes to continued asexual erasure.

There are many great things about Sherlock. It’s far and away one of the strongest television series in recent years. Ultimately, that doesn’t make the show immune to valid social critique. For a franchise that capitalizes on and even structures itself around queerness, Sherlock is pretty damn queerphobic. To laud subtext as representation is lazy, but more importantly, a show that regularly invokes queerness as mean-spirited comedy shouldn’t be considered a milestone because it perpetuates discrimination and pats itself on the back to boot. Giving a minority a thumbs-up while winking at the status quo is just two-faced demographic pandering. If there’s a case that Sherlock needs to solve, it’s why we continue to confuse vaguely defined tolerence with progressivism.

2013 Golden Globes Week: "I Misbehave": A Character Analysis of Irene Adler from BBC’s Sherlock

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

Spoilers ahead

Benedict Cumberbatch is up for another Golden Globe for his leading role on the BBC’s hit show Sherlock. Season Two Episode One “A Scandal in Belgravia” is adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia.” The storyline focuses on Irene Adler, portrayed brilliantly by the arresting Lara Pulver, who has incriminating photographs of a member of nobility that Sherlock must retrieve.

Irene Adler: lesbian dominatrix and general BAMF

Illustration by Hilbrand Bos

“Brainy is the new sexy.” – Irene Adler

Irene Adler: “I would have you, right here on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice.”

Sherlock Holmes: “I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.”

Irene Adler: “Twice.”

Unfortunately, this is where it all goes to shit.

Sherlocked…get it? Get it? Snore.

It’s poignant that Sherlock holds the sword over Adler’s neck, choosing whether she lives or dies.

At the end of the episode, Sherlock stands before a window chuckling to himself about how handily he settled the whole scandal with The Woman. He doesn’t only best her at their game of wit, but he debases and de-claws her. Divesting her of all her power, all her secrets, Irene Adler is completely at his mercy and must to be rescued like a damsel in distress or, worse, like a naughty little girl who’s gotten in over her head and must be dug out by her patriarch.

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