The origin of the image was a discussion with a smart Masters student about her dissertation project, in which she planned to look at various recent representations of Sherlock Holmes, from Guy Ritchie's films to the Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat adaptations for television. She was particularly interested in the role of the male gaze (as described by Laura Mulvey) in relation to the character of Irene Adler and her argument was partly inspired by a recent blog post on the topic.
I re-watched 'Scandal in Bohemia' (from the Gatiss/Moffat series) in preparation for our supervision: the episode was the source of controversy over whether Moffat's presentation of a modern Adler was sexist and my student took the line that the effects of the male gaze were sexist. I too find the sexual politics of the final moments of the episode disappointing, but feel that it is disappointing exactly because of the subtle and varied way the episode is about gazing, looking and reading. This runs from Adler's surveillance of Sherlock at the start of the episode, to the way in which Sherlock's powers of deduction are rendered as text superimposed upon our view of whatever object he is looking at. The ending is disappointing (Sherlock steps in to rescue a humbled and humiliated Adler from certain death) because it papers over previous qualms in the episode about whether Sherlock can actually read things accurately and whether his ability to read things is compromised by his lack of sexual articulacy (through his relationship with Adler) and his poor emotional skills (through his treatment of Molly).*
Right up to those last two minutes, it seemed to me a thoughtful episode, full of visual parallels and smart effects that examined men trying to exercise power through the way they look at things (if that's what the male gaze is) and the anxieties that perplex them as a result. Ho hum.
I left the picture languishing over the summer in the hope that I would think of something more witty to put in the text part of my drawing and because I was hoping that I would have time to improve on the 'Sidlock' image below - derived from Benedict Cumberbatch once pointing out his similarity to Sid from the Ice Age films.
This was an experiment with colouring a line drawing electronically with Sketch Book Pro. I need to work on how I capture the line drawing and then implement the colouring. Still, it shows what I had in mind...
*I should probably acknowledge that the havering over Sherlock's articulacy on sexual and emotional matters extends to his relationship with John Watson, but I gather the writers of fan fiction have it covered.
