i got really distracted in places. unfortunately.
Apparently I'm not done talking about Sherlock yet, at least for today. This was inspired by magnetic_pole's thoughts on TRF and is mostly me thinking out loud, as it were.
Upon reading Maggie's very intelligent thoughts on what kind of a fall, exactly, this is for Sherlock, some of my theological training crept in. I don't think Moffat or Gattis (or Thompson, particularly, who wrote the episode) is particularly interested in theology, or religion, for that matter, but there are a few indicators of a "fall" story here, complete with biblical imagery. Not the least of these is the title of the episode, which doesn't have anything to do with an actual waterfall as in the ACD story (which, for purposes of situating myself clearly, I should state I haven't read). There is also the downright conspicuous use of an apple by Moriarty; the use of "Sinner Man" at a crucial point in the soundtrack; and two references to Sherlock being "on the side of the angels," both also by Moriarty, if I am remembering correctly.
As I said, I don't know if the powers that be are making a theological point, per se, but biblical imagery and Christian iconography are embedded well enough into 21st century English-speaking culture (and I should say Western culture, really) that use of them wouldn't necessarily be religious or be making a religious point as much as drawing from a well of shared imagery that would be easy for the audience to reference and take meaning from.
Also, better theologians than I have been working on issues of falls, evil, knowledge, sin and death for literally centuries. So what I may think or say is merely the tip of a huge iceberg. The iceberg of all icebergs, honestly.
That said, Maggie was wondering that if Sherlock really did make a fall, what was it and what was the point of it? This got me thinking about the classical biblical fall story and some of the theology that has come about since. If Sherlock's fall draws on biblical themes, it would resonate in several areas, including power, grace, separation, and knowledge.
I think in some ways it does. To simplify aspects of the biblical story, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden after being tempted to eat, and then eat, from what is known from the tree of knowledge. This knowledge is about many things, but mostly about what have come to be known as bad or evil things -- the knowledge of good and evil; of mortality and death; even the pain of childbirth comes only as punishment to Eve (thank you very much). In theological terms, sin has entered the world, "sin" being a very broad category that encompasses ideas including the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, and with us as human beings, and with the way we interact with each other and with the world. Sin is and of itself a HUGE theological category and issue that I couldn't even begin to explicate here. Theology has worked on it almost since time immemorial, from Paul onward.
Two of the main cultural icons of sin (and wow, that's a loaded phrase) are Augustine and Calvin. Sin is not my area of expertise (nor is systematic theology in general), but to put it very, very simply, sin is often understood culturally as a version of Augustine's "original sin." Here I'm more interested in the Calvinistic notion of sin being human pride. Again, I am not an expert on or even particularly a student of Calvin, but the general idea is that sin, as a category as a thing is that which separates us from God. Being in a state of sin is being in a state where we, for one reason or another, we are separate from God; where we do not feel God's presence or grace. This is more theologically complicated than a heaven/hell, you sin or you don't, you go to one or the other or you don't position. If the number one sin of humanity is pride, that means, essentially, that our own egos and arrogance keep us from being able to clearly see and be with God. We value our own thoughts, ideas, judgments, etc. more than we do being obedient to God, just as Adam and Eve valued their own impulse and decision to eat of the tree than God's warning to them.
Personally, I have a lot of issues with this; a great many of them are feminist in nature (sin is fraught ground for feminist theologians), not the least of which pride seems like a very unlikely sin for the part of the human race -- or for any human -- that has been oppressed or subjugated. Still, at least in the Protestant circles I travel in, sin as pride is still fairly widely regarded as true; it has deep, deep roots.
I also think a good argument could be made that for Sherlock, the "sin of pride" is pretty rampant. I think if Sherlock is going to fall from anything metaphorically, it is pride. The story's plot points to a certain fall from the public grace -- most publicly in the tabloids and in the public eye. Besides, if Sherlock is a fake, then he has the double sin of false pride. To put it bluntly, what kind of jackass not only regularly shows off, proves himself to be smarter than those around him, but really isn't because in fact he made it all up to begin with? (Putting aside the fact that you'd have to be pretty smart to pull all that off, as with Moriarty.)
I think where that plot point falls short (no pun intended) is that Sherlock doesn't care about the public. It might mean less cases, but he didn't care about the fame to begin with and I don't think he'd much care to be disgraced in, of all things, The Sun. If they are really playing with "The Richard Brooks Fall" then Richard Brooks wouldn't have publicly had much of an impact.
Except, I am not sure the impact was supposed to be just public. As I said earlier, I think the Richard Brooks/Moriarty being found out scene and plot point there was really about trying to convince John, and it failed (because John Watson is AWESOME, by the way).
Where it didn't, or wouldn't have, failed is with the police department. Which, I admit, doesn't mean much except for two reasons: 1)Lestrade and 2) business. Without the public, there are no individuals coming for cases; without the police coming for cases, what work is there to do? I also think Lestrade counts for more than something in Sherlock's world, since he is of the three that Moriarty targets and that Sherlock admits.
No work? What would Sherlock do without work? If this isn't so much a fall from grace as a fall from pride, from arrogance, it does at least make sense that (all of his OWN AWESOMENESS set aside for a bit) that John is the one who couldn't be convinced. After all, they established early in the episode that John knows Sherlock through and through. He may know Sherlock has a lot of pride (let's give smart-arse a wide berth) but he knows that's not all of Sherlock, or even the beginning of him.
I think the crux of it, really, is that Sherlock himself has to fall from his own pride. That's not a new idea, either. If he's the hero of his own life, that is almost always a point on the hero's journey. Sherlock may have had farther to fall than most, but hubris has a long and storied history in literature at least all the way back to Oedipus.
The question is whether or not Sherlock did fall and let go of the sin of pride. I have a feeling we won't know a lot of the answer until the next series. And no one -- especially Sherlock Holmes -- lets go of pride completely (at least not without blinding oneself). Besides, the other side of sin is grace, and I would like to see a bit of a more graceful Sherlock. Though surely grace here mostly comes through John, who doesn't believe Sherlock is anything but what Sherlock really is. I just hope there is some grace for John himself, who truly got the short end of the stick, here.
A couple of other points. One is about the use of "Sinnerman." Following the lyrics, particularly the section they used, where the Lord tells him to go down to the devil, I would name Sherlock as the "sinnerman" in question. I think Moriarty is more in line with being the devil, at least if you go by the clip they used. This ties in to Moriarty with the apple, and his talk about angels (which I understand is an idiom).
Speaking of which. The thing is that cultural representations of angels and devils can be tricky, in large part because most representations we have are cultural. Quite a lot of what we commonly think about angels and devils is, to put it frankly, Milton, not the Bible. I don't have a lot of knowledge about angels, only as they appear in the Bible as part of the heavenly court. The devil actually doesn't make much of an appearance in the Bible; notably Satan appears tempting Jesus in the desert (but not in the garden before Jesus' arrest, thank you very much Mel Gibson). In the Hebrew Bible, Satan (or what we translate into Satan from the Hebrew) is most notably seen in Job, where he is also translated as The Adversary, a term that more accurately describes his role. He challenges God, and challenges God to test Job's faith, but the figure isn't evil incarnate.
That kind of a devil seems to represent who Moriarty is here, at least in part: the Adversary, the one who challenges Sherlock. I don't think that Sherlock is God here, far from it; in fact, it seems like a pretty god-less universe, metaphor-wise. But I think Moriarty is -- or should have been -- Sherlock's Adversary. An adversary who brings Sherlock out into the light and causes Sherlock to fall from his pride and become more empathic is someone who Moriarty could be -- or could have been.
Unfortunately, I hope this doesn't make John Watson Job. Which it might. The man who never lost his faith.
Argh. I have stopped and started this many times, and there are many distractions at the moment, so I am going to let it go for now. I still think there are things to say about sin and knowledge; separation and death; how the story would have been so much better served if the seasons were longer, or if at the very least they hadn't rushed Moriarty and Reichenbach into this series, saved it for the end of the next.
Mostly, though, I love this John Watson so much.
Upon reading Maggie's very intelligent thoughts on what kind of a fall, exactly, this is for Sherlock, some of my theological training crept in. I don't think Moffat or Gattis (or Thompson, particularly, who wrote the episode) is particularly interested in theology, or religion, for that matter, but there are a few indicators of a "fall" story here, complete with biblical imagery. Not the least of these is the title of the episode, which doesn't have anything to do with an actual waterfall as in the ACD story (which, for purposes of situating myself clearly, I should state I haven't read). There is also the downright conspicuous use of an apple by Moriarty; the use of "Sinner Man" at a crucial point in the soundtrack; and two references to Sherlock being "on the side of the angels," both also by Moriarty, if I am remembering correctly.
As I said, I don't know if the powers that be are making a theological point, per se, but biblical imagery and Christian iconography are embedded well enough into 21st century English-speaking culture (and I should say Western culture, really) that use of them wouldn't necessarily be religious or be making a religious point as much as drawing from a well of shared imagery that would be easy for the audience to reference and take meaning from.
Also, better theologians than I have been working on issues of falls, evil, knowledge, sin and death for literally centuries. So what I may think or say is merely the tip of a huge iceberg. The iceberg of all icebergs, honestly.
That said, Maggie was wondering that if Sherlock really did make a fall, what was it and what was the point of it? This got me thinking about the classical biblical fall story and some of the theology that has come about since. If Sherlock's fall draws on biblical themes, it would resonate in several areas, including power, grace, separation, and knowledge.
I think in some ways it does. To simplify aspects of the biblical story, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden after being tempted to eat, and then eat, from what is known from the tree of knowledge. This knowledge is about many things, but mostly about what have come to be known as bad or evil things -- the knowledge of good and evil; of mortality and death; even the pain of childbirth comes only as punishment to Eve (thank you very much). In theological terms, sin has entered the world, "sin" being a very broad category that encompasses ideas including the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, and with us as human beings, and with the way we interact with each other and with the world. Sin is and of itself a HUGE theological category and issue that I couldn't even begin to explicate here. Theology has worked on it almost since time immemorial, from Paul onward.
Two of the main cultural icons of sin (and wow, that's a loaded phrase) are Augustine and Calvin. Sin is not my area of expertise (nor is systematic theology in general), but to put it very, very simply, sin is often understood culturally as a version of Augustine's "original sin." Here I'm more interested in the Calvinistic notion of sin being human pride. Again, I am not an expert on or even particularly a student of Calvin, but the general idea is that sin, as a category as a thing is that which separates us from God. Being in a state of sin is being in a state where we, for one reason or another, we are separate from God; where we do not feel God's presence or grace. This is more theologically complicated than a heaven/hell, you sin or you don't, you go to one or the other or you don't position. If the number one sin of humanity is pride, that means, essentially, that our own egos and arrogance keep us from being able to clearly see and be with God. We value our own thoughts, ideas, judgments, etc. more than we do being obedient to God, just as Adam and Eve valued their own impulse and decision to eat of the tree than God's warning to them.
Personally, I have a lot of issues with this; a great many of them are feminist in nature (sin is fraught ground for feminist theologians), not the least of which pride seems like a very unlikely sin for the part of the human race -- or for any human -- that has been oppressed or subjugated. Still, at least in the Protestant circles I travel in, sin as pride is still fairly widely regarded as true; it has deep, deep roots.
I also think a good argument could be made that for Sherlock, the "sin of pride" is pretty rampant. I think if Sherlock is going to fall from anything metaphorically, it is pride. The story's plot points to a certain fall from the public grace -- most publicly in the tabloids and in the public eye. Besides, if Sherlock is a fake, then he has the double sin of false pride. To put it bluntly, what kind of jackass not only regularly shows off, proves himself to be smarter than those around him, but really isn't because in fact he made it all up to begin with? (Putting aside the fact that you'd have to be pretty smart to pull all that off, as with Moriarty.)
I think where that plot point falls short (no pun intended) is that Sherlock doesn't care about the public. It might mean less cases, but he didn't care about the fame to begin with and I don't think he'd much care to be disgraced in, of all things, The Sun. If they are really playing with "The Richard Brooks Fall" then Richard Brooks wouldn't have publicly had much of an impact.
Except, I am not sure the impact was supposed to be just public. As I said earlier, I think the Richard Brooks/Moriarty being found out scene and plot point there was really about trying to convince John, and it failed (because John Watson is AWESOME, by the way).
Where it didn't, or wouldn't have, failed is with the police department. Which, I admit, doesn't mean much except for two reasons: 1)Lestrade and 2) business. Without the public, there are no individuals coming for cases; without the police coming for cases, what work is there to do? I also think Lestrade counts for more than something in Sherlock's world, since he is of the three that Moriarty targets and that Sherlock admits.
No work? What would Sherlock do without work? If this isn't so much a fall from grace as a fall from pride, from arrogance, it does at least make sense that (all of his OWN AWESOMENESS set aside for a bit) that John is the one who couldn't be convinced. After all, they established early in the episode that John knows Sherlock through and through. He may know Sherlock has a lot of pride (let's give smart-arse a wide berth) but he knows that's not all of Sherlock, or even the beginning of him.
I think the crux of it, really, is that Sherlock himself has to fall from his own pride. That's not a new idea, either. If he's the hero of his own life, that is almost always a point on the hero's journey. Sherlock may have had farther to fall than most, but hubris has a long and storied history in literature at least all the way back to Oedipus.
The question is whether or not Sherlock did fall and let go of the sin of pride. I have a feeling we won't know a lot of the answer until the next series. And no one -- especially Sherlock Holmes -- lets go of pride completely (at least not without blinding oneself). Besides, the other side of sin is grace, and I would like to see a bit of a more graceful Sherlock. Though surely grace here mostly comes through John, who doesn't believe Sherlock is anything but what Sherlock really is. I just hope there is some grace for John himself, who truly got the short end of the stick, here.
A couple of other points. One is about the use of "Sinnerman." Following the lyrics, particularly the section they used, where the Lord tells him to go down to the devil, I would name Sherlock as the "sinnerman" in question. I think Moriarty is more in line with being the devil, at least if you go by the clip they used. This ties in to Moriarty with the apple, and his talk about angels (which I understand is an idiom).
Speaking of which. The thing is that cultural representations of angels and devils can be tricky, in large part because most representations we have are cultural. Quite a lot of what we commonly think about angels and devils is, to put it frankly, Milton, not the Bible. I don't have a lot of knowledge about angels, only as they appear in the Bible as part of the heavenly court. The devil actually doesn't make much of an appearance in the Bible; notably Satan appears tempting Jesus in the desert (but not in the garden before Jesus' arrest, thank you very much Mel Gibson). In the Hebrew Bible, Satan (or what we translate into Satan from the Hebrew) is most notably seen in Job, where he is also translated as The Adversary, a term that more accurately describes his role. He challenges God, and challenges God to test Job's faith, but the figure isn't evil incarnate.
That kind of a devil seems to represent who Moriarty is here, at least in part: the Adversary, the one who challenges Sherlock. I don't think that Sherlock is God here, far from it; in fact, it seems like a pretty god-less universe, metaphor-wise. But I think Moriarty is -- or should have been -- Sherlock's Adversary. An adversary who brings Sherlock out into the light and causes Sherlock to fall from his pride and become more empathic is someone who Moriarty could be -- or could have been.
Unfortunately, I hope this doesn't make John Watson Job. Which it might. The man who never lost his faith.
Argh. I have stopped and started this many times, and there are many distractions at the moment, so I am going to let it go for now. I still think there are things to say about sin and knowledge; separation and death; how the story would have been so much better served if the seasons were longer, or if at the very least they hadn't rushed Moriarty and Reichenbach into this series, saved it for the end of the next.
Mostly, though, I love this John Watson so much.