"As if men had the monopoly on murder": why Elementary is a feminist show

SPOILER WARNING: This post discusses the plot of Elementary episodes 22 (The Woman) and 23 (Heroine).

The fourth Great Sherlock Holmes Debate was this Saturday, and I was fortunate enough to participate yet again. Thanks so much to the organisers at MX Publishing for gathering together Holmesian experts from all around the world, it was fantastic to hear everyone's presentations and thoughts on various adaptations of our favourite detective.

The recording of the entire debate should be up online in a couple of weeks once everything is edited, so keep an eye out for that. There was a great presentation on the Warner Bros. Sherlock Holmes films by Mary Platt and an amazing contribution by Bonnie MacBird who told us all about BBC's Sherlock. Luke Kuhns talked about Holmes pastiches, and we also had the Holmesian legend Roger Johnson, author of The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany, deliver a presentation about Lenfilm's Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin as Russian Holmes and Watson. This is one of my personal favourites, so I was really glad to hear Roger talk about them. If you are so inclined, you can watch them all online here. The video quality isn't ideal, but it has English subtitles.

Natalie Dormer as Irene Adler in Elementary

My presentation was about Elementary, and although I only had about five minutes to try and explain why it was (or wasn't) a good contribution to the Holmesian legacy, I felt like it went pretty well and the feedback I received was all positive. In it I talked a little bit about how the show's announcement was met with astounding negativity and how it withstood all the criticism that was thrown at it and came out to be one of the most watched shows on CBS. I briefly touched upon the show's female characters and how I thought they were handled very well – I said that, in my opinion, Lucy Liu's portrayal of Watson was perhaps the closest to the original, Doyle's Watson, and I mentioned that Elementary's writers were mindful of having both their male and female characters multi-dimensional and complex, without resorting to tropes or the unfortunately popular virgin/whore dichotomy. I'd like to expand on this, primarily by talking about the most important woman in Sherlock's life: Irene Adler.

I have discussed the treatment of Irene Adler in a previous post, where I talked about her updated character as it was shown to us in the episode A Scandal in Belgravia in BBC's Sherlock. In this, her characterisation went from a point of strength to utter weakness, as the narrative displaced her from her strong, empowered queer identity and depowered her to suit itself and the character progression of its (presumably heterosexual) male characters. In essence, she had at least one foot in the refrigerator. (Here is a very good summation of the women in refrigerators trope.)

In Elementary, however, Irene Adler starts out in the deep, cold depths of the fridge, and then fights her way out. At first she is merely a mention, the beautiful dead girlfriend type who probably starred in most of Edgar Allan Poe's dreams and fantasies, the ethereal artist whose demise at the hands of the second most dangerous man in London drove the world's greatest detective to lose all semblance of control over his drug use. By now mostly everyone is familiar with the quote – to him, she was the Woman, the late Irene Adler. But is she? Adler is indeed, as Elementary shows us, one of dubious and questionable memory. She is not late at all: in fact, it turns out that she is Moriarty, Holmes's arch nemesis and the cause of most of his misfortune to date. The Woman and the Napoleon of Crime are thereby fused into one person. Which one of them beat Holmes, then? Canon tells us that they both did, at least for a time, and the same thing happens on Elementary. It's not done with the same drama that we saw in The Reichenbach Fall or read in The Final Problem, but then again the finale of the first season of Elementary wasn't meant as his plunge down a waterfall, simply a bump in the road, albeit a very significant one for Holmes.

Candis Cayne and Jonny Lee Miller
as Ms Hudson and Sherlock Holmes in Elementary

Adler's transformation teaches Holmes that there is no such thing as the Woman, because there is no such thing as a perfect representative of the female gender. There is no girl in the fridge, there isn't a virgin or whore because they are all people, and this is Elementary's greatest strength: people. Moriarty's characterisation isn't perfect and lacks some depth that other characters have, but this is to be expected since we have only seen her in one episode, while all the other characters got at least 23. Here's to hoping this won't be the end of Moriarty and she'll return in the second season.

Of course this isn't the only reason why I think that Elementary is a feminist show: there is Ms Hudson, a transgender character played by a transgender actress (Candis Cayne), who is treated with respect and not subjected to sexual violence, which is a rare occurrence when it comes to portrayals of transgender characters in mainstream media. However, perhaps the best example to support my argument here would be Joan Watson.

Lucy Liu as Joan Watson in Elementary

Some critics expressed certain misgivings about the fact that an actress was cast in the role of Watson rather than going for the traditional choice of a male lead, but I have already talked about this in a previous post. Suffice to say, none of their worries came true. Elementary did not take Holmes and Watson's friendship for granted, it built it from the ground up. Their relationship is one based on trust and respect, and the show goes to great lengths to make sure the audience sees how that trust and respect is gained. Joan was shown as an equal to Sherlock rather than just his sounding board: she listens to him and learns from him, but he also learns from her.

One of my main complaints about Sherlock is the fact that Watson is not someone who is independent to Holmes: he is second fiddle, an accessory, someone intelligent enough for Holmes to bounce his ideas off, only this and nothing more. He sometimes makes a heroic effort of biting back, but there is never the sense of an equal footing. He is always running to catch up. Joan Watson starts out as an employee with her own hopes, ambitions and demons, and she turns from an employee into a partner and a friend, a detective and a heroine. She is shown to be intelligent, hard-working, caring and entirely independent: she bludgeons criminals and breaks into cars, and she solves cases on her own. She helps Sherlock be a better person, as he himself tells her. Watson is not afraid to call anyone out on their nonsense, least of all Sherlock. When he suggest that she is in a bad mood because she's on her period and saying that he's worked out her schedule, she comments: "Couching it as a scientific observation totally negates the misogyny."

There's a reason the second part of the Elementary finale is called Heroine. It's not just Sherlock, it is also Watson who wins in the end, and her victory is not just over Moriarty, but also over misogyny. In a scene, Moriarty and Watson meet in a crowed restaurant, and Moriarty says this: "As far as I can determine, you're a sort of... mascot. You were his sober companion, a professional angel to perch on his shoulder, fend off his many demons, but now... now I don't know what you are. Do you want to sleep with him?" To this, Watson replies with: "I thought you told him that you were just like him. That you saw the same things that he did." Moriarty succumbs to internalised misogyny and she underestimates Joan Watson just as some of the previously mentioned critics of the show underestimated Joan Watson, and Moriarty fails because of that.

Elementary punishes misogynists and rewards those who fight misogyny, and in this current media climate of racism and sexism, where characters are whitewashed (spoilers for Star Trek: Into Darkness at the link) and female characters perpetually get naked for the enjoyment of the audience and nothing more, seeing someone like Joan Watson and Ms Hudson is a refreshing and welcome change, and I for one eagerly await the second season of Elementary. 

Changing Sherlock: CBS go 'Elementary'

There has been heated discussion about the decision of the American commercial television network CBS to pick up Elementary, a show that is very much reminiscent of BBC's Sherlock: we have Holmes and Watson, and they are in the twenty-first century. Steven Moffat has been heard to complain about CBS's decision to produce a show so similar to Sherlock. Originally, the Sherlock production team was approached by CBS with a request to remake Sherlock for the American market, but they were turned down. According to Steven Moffat, despite being rejected, CBS 'decided to make [a show about Holmes in the twenty-first century] anyway'. While it is understandable that the writer of a show about Holmes in the twenty-first century would feel a certain amount of indignation and protectiveness over their idea getting picked up by a different network, the fact remains that the base for the script of Elementary was written in 2000, and that Sherlock owes its popularity not only to its good writing, but the fact that it rode in on the coattails of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes film, showing impeccable timing.

After various promo pictures of Watson and Holmes floating around the internet, last night CBS released a preview video for Elementary, starring Lucy Liu as Joan Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes. In an interview with The Insider, Steven Moffat was quoted to say: "[Mark Gatiss and I] welcome it, but don't damage the brand."

Speaking of the Holmes brand being damaged, it should be taken into account that Holmes fought against Dracula, the forces of Cthulhu, robotic dinosaurs created by his fictional older brother, went against another fictional older brother alongside the Doctor, and that he was also a dog and a mouse. None of these adaptations have damaged the brand, and it is presumptuous to assume that future pastiches will: with adaptations, there is no should or ought to, and the fact that the writers can play around with the original characters is exactly what makes adapting (and fan fiction) so appealing.

In the same interview, Moffat also added: "[Elementary have] got three big changes: it's Sherlock Holmes in America, it's Sherlock Holmes updated and it's Sherlock Holmes with a female Watson. I wonder if he's Sherlock Holmes in any sense other than he's called Sherlock Holmes", which echoes the concerns of many fans of BBC's Sherlock.

First of all, concerning setting the series in America: although it is true that London is basically a character in its own right in the canonical stories, during Victorian times Britain was the biggest empire of the world, and London was just as, if not even more, culturally and racially diverse than it is now. Sherlock Holmes is far from being exclusively the domain of the middle-class heteronormative white male. Holmes and Watson have dealt with Americans, Indians, the Chinese, Italians, Australians, and countless other ethnicities which I am probably forgetting. If you want a culture clash, you need not look further than nineteenth century Britain. Some of the stories which have Holmes deal with a foreign presence are: The Sign of Four, Valley of Fear, The Yellow Face, The Five Orange Pips, The Greek Interpreter, The Illustrious Client, and others. Displacing Holmes in America would in no way diminish the quality or the authenticity of the characters, or make him less of a Holmes.

Elementary promo picture

As to putting Holmes in the twenty-first century, he has already been introduced to the twenty-second century. Everyone was sceptical about Sherlock originally, and the decision of the creators to place the detective in modern day London, and yet it proved to be a brilliant move, winning the show several prestigious TV awards.

Complaining about Watson being turned into a woman of colour, as many fans of Sherlock have done, is another issue. Conan Doyle wrote Holmes and Watson as men because it was the natural thing: women didn't serve as officers in the army, and they were not doctors in Victorian times. It would be very difficult for a woman to have independent means enough to be a consulting detective and to live on her own, unless she was a widow or she was protected (both financially and in other ways) by an older, male relative like a father, grandfather or uncle. Doyle was twenty-seven when he wrote the first Holmes story, and he wasn't progressive in his writing and perception of women until later in life. Also, platonic male friendship of the kind that Holmes and Watson had was held in high esteem in Victorian society: men loved to read about it, and it gave them something to aspire to in their own relationships.

Those are all the social implications of gender and the perception of masculinity in Victorian society. However, if we strip the friendship between Holmes and Watson down to its bare bones, there is nothing gender-dependant about their friendship that immediately jumps out. They respected and loved each other because of their intellect, bravery, and quick-wittedness. These traits are not bound exclusively to the male gender, or a male friendship. Writing a female Watson is a double edged sword, and personally I have to say that I am worried: not because it is a female Watson, but rather because how she, and her relationship with Holmes, will be portrayed.

Finally, the only thing left to say about Elementary is that it should be given a chance. It is a very risky venture and it has equal chances to success or fail, but we won't know whether it's done the former or the latter until the first episode airs on CBS this autumn.