on Elementary
Because I’ve got two hours to kill at Chicago o’hare and I’m mad. Please note if I’m responding to opinions posited by people I know and like, I disagree with you on this but I like you and mean no ill will if that means anything at all.
so CBS are making their own Sherlock series, Elementary. BBC Sherlock fans are mad about this?? Why, because it’s American-made? Nonsense, the US makes a lot of great tv. True, CBS isn’t the network I would choose but frankly neither is the BBC (there’s a lot of really shitty stuff on there). I guess they’re mad because it would be set in the US? Which is almost as preposterous a change to the Sherlock mythos as setting it in the modern day (or casting Robert Downey jr as basically himself). As the show has yet to air we can’t really judge the quality of it, or how reverently it will treat the material (which only a few weeks ago seemed to be a preposterous notion that only the most homophobic of bigots would dare to care about).
the big thing that’s making me mad is the reaction to the casting of Lucy Liu as Watson. They same fandom that is always wailing about how white and male the Sherlock cast is, is now flipping a table over casting a woman of color in a famous and respected role that has been exclusively portrayed by white men in all incarnations past. W o w. The reasoning? Because it’s “erasing the queer subtext of Holmes and watson.” which honestly is just saying “well now it’s not cute white boys who sometimes stand with their faces close like they’re about to kiss but never ever do.”
Well I have good news for y’all fandom: if you see a queer subtext in holmes (which I would disagree with except to call him kinda asexual, but that’s neither here nor there), guess what: other people’s interpretations of a public domain work do not effect the source material! portraying Holmes and Watson as canonically gay or straight on CBS or BBC or your tumblr ask blog or anything does not change what Holmes is and how he was written. You can either take comfort in that, or accept that if you get to claim your headcanon as just as valid as the original work, than so does CBS. Nobody gets to claim that character because (perhaps regrettably) he’s everybody’s.
I doubt Elementary will be any good but I’m pretty excited to see how Lucy Liu plays the character. It probably won’t be, but it could be really interesting, and good for her for taking on such a great role that has previously been thought of as closed to women.
(did y’all get upset whenever House was into a lady? Y’all know he’s Holmes too right? Somehow his tumblr popularity seems unaffected by such blatant erasure)
