{"id":191,"date":"2016-02-24T16:05:49","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T16:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=191"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:05:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T22:05:56","slug":"191","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2016\/02\/24\/191\/","title":{"rendered":"Elementary vs. Arthur Conan Doyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

As classic as reading Sherlock Holmes<\/em> has become, it has also become tradition to recreate the story, and bring the beloved detective to light again. Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey, Jr., Ian McKellan, Benedict Cumberbatch, and many, many more have taken on the role to bring the story into more modern context. As of late, the trend has been to bring Holmes\u00a0and his trusted partner, Watson, out of the Victorian context, and into the modern era, as this can be seen with both the series Sherlock<\/i>, and Elementary.<\/i><\/p>\n

Elementary<\/em> even takes Holmes one step further out of his original context, by bringing the stories across the pond, and having them centered in New York City. With that, and the racebending and genderbending of Watson, I tend to see\u00a0Elementary<\/em> and the original\u00a0Sherlock Holmes<\/em> stories as being inherently different. She is brought in as a mostly different character– a woman having seen the worst as a resident surgeon, and having left practice after a fatal mistake, is\u00a0now acting as a sober companion. This is extremely different from the Watson of the stories, an army surgeon looking for someone to share a flat with after coming home from deployment. The terms of their living arrangement is totally changed: instead of Watson looking for a flat to share, Joan is hired to live with Holmes as a sober companion.\u00a0The point of view changes entirely, from the enamored view of Watson in the short stories, to the outside view, following the story of Holmes as he interacts with Joan.<\/p>\n

Changing Watson’s character as they did, Elementary<\/i>\u00a0starts to try and reflect a more modern and diverse world. Creating Joan as a woman who not only speaks and thinks for herself, but exists as an individual outside of Holmes, starts to chip away at some of the sexism and misogyny of the original text. Even Irene Adler, who was only ever a character through Holmes, takes on her own agency. Instead of an opera singer who blackmails German royalty, she is an art dealer turned master forger, who refuses Holmes advances to start. She created her own terms to start the relationship and, in the end, creates her own terms to end it, as well.<\/p>\n

Despite losing this smitten narrative from Watson, and the Victorian context, these two story lines are inevitably similar, as they have to be. Holmes is still and addict, to both substances, and solving crimes at whatever the cost. One can see in plenty of episodes Holmes insatiable curiosity, in how he continues to try and figure out Joan, and how he continues, in his boredom, to experiment on his pet tortoise, Clyde. Joan Watson is still the grounding factor, ever intwined in Holmes’ life, fascinated by how he works. She even goes forward, as the Conan Doyle version of Watson did, to work her own cases as a private detective. The two different versions of the classic criminal mystery stories, as told and solved by Watson and Holmes, stay essentially the same. But, through the modernisation of the roles of Joan Watson and Irene Adler, and the change in time and place, the underlying narratives are thoroughly different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As classic as reading Sherlock Holmes has become, it has also become tradition to recreate the story, and bring the beloved detective to light again. Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, Robert Downey, Jr., Ian McKellan, Benedict Cumberbatch, and many, many more have taken on the role to bring the story into more modern context. As of … Continue reading Elementary vs. Arthur Conan Doyle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3045,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}