Don't knee-jerk on me with this one, folks. It may require a little "outside the box."
In our most recent confrontation of Sherlock-person versus Moriarty-person, we saw something highly unusual: it was actually Watson who defeated greatest of all criminal masterminds. In considering this turn of events, I think it behooves us to look at an overall pattern in Watsons that goes back for decades.
Female Watsons are smarter Watsons.
Joanne Woodward as Dr. Mildred Watson.
Margaret Colin as Jane Watson.
Debrah Farentino as Amy Winslow.
Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson.
Not all geniuses, yes, but not a dummy in the bunch. And since everything is relative, factor in this: Male Sherlocks paired with these female Watsons also seem to be somewhat impaired: delusional, time-challenged, or with serious addiction issues going by the list above. In each case, we are deprived of a Sherlock Holmes who is fully at the top of his game, thus making Watson all the brighter by comparison.
While it has been suggested that the most recent pairing comes closest to an "equitable" Holmes/Watson partnership, male/female detective duos of equal brainpower have been around a long time. Nick and Nora Charles hold a special place in the firmament of detection, just as surely as Miss Marple, Sam Spade, and a handful of other non-Sherlock detectives do. Do we really need to balance the brainpower in the Holmes/Watson team?
And yet when Sherlock is male and Watson is female, writers seem almost driven to even things up, just to be courteous to the ladies. Having Sherlock Holmes be the true peak of detection that he is has to make someone look a little foolish, to look up to him a little bit in admiration, and as Watson is standing closest to ground zero, it inevitably has to be him (but never her) now and then. That's just the way the game is played. If we want the Nick and Nora game, well, there's Nick and Nora. Or Jonathan and Jennifer, if you're a TV lover.
There is a very sneaky sexism at work in the male-Holmes, female-Watson duo. Why not completely female-female? Or even more workable, female Holmes and a male Watson? Hell, Watson could be Nigel Bruce goofy again, and as a man partnered with a smarter woman, I think we'd totally let him get away with it. (But really, make Watson smart. Make Holmes just that much smarter. Of course, that takes a really smart writer.)
And while a true, genius of a female Sherlock Holmes would be ground-breaking and totally suited to our modern state, as opposed to Holmes's Victorian origin-point, let me take my suggestion on step further. I think we'll truly know we've succeeded in gender equality when Sherlock Holmes can be a brilliant man, Watson can be a slightly foolish woman, and we don't see anything wrong with that.
Male or female, bright or stupid, the key to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson will always be the differences between them and the friendship that ties those two unique beings together.
And that should be a lesson for us all, really. Accepting a partner without demanding they be at all like us? That's not stupid at all.
The ongoing investigation of Sherlock Holmes, reported from the Peoria, Illinois outpost of Baker Street's dirtiest half a dozen.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Hyperbolic headlines.
When I was a kid, back in history, I remember newspapers being rather unexciting things. Their headlines just presented the basic facts of the story that followed and didn't seem to work all that hard to draw you into the account that followed. They didn't have to, as you didn't have much else to do back then but read the story. Flash forward to today, the internet, and the short attention span. Suddenly we get headlines that aren't just designed to grab you, they're built to make you charge headlong into the words that follow, either with gleeful anticipation or fierce outrage.
Take, for example, this op-ed headline from Flavorwire: "Why Sherlock Holmes Superfans Are Wrong About 'Elementary.'" The piece is basically a non-Holmes fan explaining why Jonny Lee Miller seems like Sherlock Holmes to her, even though he doesn't to her friend, the actual Sherlock Holmes fan. The headline, however, pulls one in by declaring the "superfans" wrong as a class. Which leads us to a fun new game in our own little debates on the series (all voices to be read in a French accent, just for fun):
"No, my friend, your Sherlock Holmes collection has far more books than mine! You are the true Sherlockian superfan, and therefore wrong about Elementary!"
"Ah, but you blog non-stop, the real hallmark of a superfan! It is you who are wrong about Elementary!"
"No, no, you are speaking at the U of M conference in August! My meager status of 'fan' does not come close to your superior Sherlock Holmes knowledge! How sorry I am that your superfan status invalidates your opinions on televised entertainments."
"But just yesterday, you quickly corrected my hideous error in stating that Killer Evans appeared in 'The Three Gables!' Your mighty Sherlockian brain can only be that of a superfan, and thus sadly mistaken on all things transmitted via video!"
And on and on it goes, with only the most innocent of "crimes" Sherlockian left to opine.
Ah, but that's not my favorite headline.
The Guardian favors us with "Why Elementary is far more than a Sherlock Holmes pastiche."
More. . . than . . . a . . . Sherlock . . . Holmes . . . pastiche.
After a century of pastiches, stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and yet among the original sixty, this announcement of a saga rises above pastiche . . . well, that's . . . that's . . . well, that's worthy of several . . . ellipses of sheer amazement. The article itself seems to consider Elementary a major step for the advancement of women in our culture. But the concept the headline raises is something even more important: a work featuring a character called "Sherlock Holmes" which finally rises above mere pastiche.
Rising above pastiche, to the level of Canon? Would that mean we've come full circle, and the cycle of Sherlock can now be complete? Our is it something even more transcendent? Something which will attract the finest minds and, like a Zen koan, raise them to ultimate enlightenment as they fixate their meditations upon it over the course of a season.
That would explain a lot.
But the world of internet headlines must just be a bit more grand and glorious than the world upon which it reports. Of course, just in case I turn out to be a superfan, let me say this: I might be wrong.
Take, for example, this op-ed headline from Flavorwire: "Why Sherlock Holmes Superfans Are Wrong About 'Elementary.'" The piece is basically a non-Holmes fan explaining why Jonny Lee Miller seems like Sherlock Holmes to her, even though he doesn't to her friend, the actual Sherlock Holmes fan. The headline, however, pulls one in by declaring the "superfans" wrong as a class. Which leads us to a fun new game in our own little debates on the series (all voices to be read in a French accent, just for fun):
"No, my friend, your Sherlock Holmes collection has far more books than mine! You are the true Sherlockian superfan, and therefore wrong about Elementary!"
"Ah, but you blog non-stop, the real hallmark of a superfan! It is you who are wrong about Elementary!"
"No, no, you are speaking at the U of M conference in August! My meager status of 'fan' does not come close to your superior Sherlock Holmes knowledge! How sorry I am that your superfan status invalidates your opinions on televised entertainments."
"But just yesterday, you quickly corrected my hideous error in stating that Killer Evans appeared in 'The Three Gables!' Your mighty Sherlockian brain can only be that of a superfan, and thus sadly mistaken on all things transmitted via video!"
And on and on it goes, with only the most innocent of "crimes" Sherlockian left to opine.
Ah, but that's not my favorite headline.
The Guardian favors us with "Why Elementary is far more than a Sherlock Holmes pastiche."
More. . . than . . . a . . . Sherlock . . . Holmes . . . pastiche.
After a century of pastiches, stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and yet among the original sixty, this announcement of a saga rises above pastiche . . . well, that's . . . that's . . . well, that's worthy of several . . . ellipses of sheer amazement. The article itself seems to consider Elementary a major step for the advancement of women in our culture. But the concept the headline raises is something even more important: a work featuring a character called "Sherlock Holmes" which finally rises above mere pastiche.
Rising above pastiche, to the level of Canon? Would that mean we've come full circle, and the cycle of Sherlock can now be complete? Our is it something even more transcendent? Something which will attract the finest minds and, like a Zen koan, raise them to ultimate enlightenment as they fixate their meditations upon it over the course of a season.
That would explain a lot.
But the world of internet headlines must just be a bit more grand and glorious than the world upon which it reports. Of course, just in case I turn out to be a superfan, let me say this: I might be wrong.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Sherlock Holmes and idiots.
In a moment of outrage yesterday, ye olde deliverer of links to this blog's comment section, Silke Ketelsen was driven to cry out, "Surrounded by idiots everywhere." Now, for a moment in the comment moderation booth, Sherlock Peoria's moderation staff was taken aback by such language. Was she indeed insulting a city, a nation, the whole of planet Earth itself? (Well, I pretty much knew who she was insulting, but it set the Sherlockian ponder-machine in motion.)
I was reminded of many a time that I have had a similar moment, and my go-to line of movie dialogue from that classic film, Plan 9 from Outer Space: "Because all you of Earth are idiots!" The same character, Eros the alien, really ticks off an Earthman by carrying on that line of thought with, "You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"
Eros, otherworldly intelligence though he may be, is laughable in his frustrated insults, delivering just more bad dialogue in a movie full of bad dialogue.
But contrast Eros with a more down-to-Earth higher intelligence, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, of course, spends his days surrounded by lesser minds and a good part of his career is based around stepping in when Scotland Yard is feeling foolish and not up to a task. But when does Sherlock Holmes use the "i" word?
Well, two out of three times, he's using it about himself.
"I say, Watson," he whispers in The Valley of Fear, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?"
And then in "Stockbroker's Clerk," we find: "Idiot that I was! I thought so much of our visit that the paper never entered my head for an instant."
Nothing is more frustrating to the man of skill than his own mistakes. The one time Sherlock Holmes does use it to describe another, it's in a field he would naturally find less than reasonable: "what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol, and marry her at a register office!" (Describing young James McCarthy's romantic past in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery.")
As with most occasions when we use the word "idiot," Holmes is talking about someone whose mental state he cannot even comprehend: a young man, silly with love.
On none of these occasions is Holmes really trying to insult someone, as Eros the pompous alien is in Plan 9, and his use of the word isn't nearly as comical as a result. Which is why I like to turn to Plan 9 when I'm using the term out of frustration with others, as Silke did, just to give me a laugh. But when I'm talking about myself, of course, I'll take the more Holmesian route.
Because, hey, if we're going to be idiots, at least we can be idiots like Sherlock Holmes. All us of Earth tend to be that way.
I was reminded of many a time that I have had a similar moment, and my go-to line of movie dialogue from that classic film, Plan 9 from Outer Space: "Because all you of Earth are idiots!" The same character, Eros the alien, really ticks off an Earthman by carrying on that line of thought with, "You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!"
Eros, otherworldly intelligence though he may be, is laughable in his frustrated insults, delivering just more bad dialogue in a movie full of bad dialogue.
But contrast Eros with a more down-to-Earth higher intelligence, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, of course, spends his days surrounded by lesser minds and a good part of his career is based around stepping in when Scotland Yard is feeling foolish and not up to a task. But when does Sherlock Holmes use the "i" word?
Well, two out of three times, he's using it about himself.
"I say, Watson," he whispers in The Valley of Fear, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?"
And then in "Stockbroker's Clerk," we find: "Idiot that I was! I thought so much of our visit that the paper never entered my head for an instant."
Nothing is more frustrating to the man of skill than his own mistakes. The one time Sherlock Holmes does use it to describe another, it's in a field he would naturally find less than reasonable: "what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol, and marry her at a register office!" (Describing young James McCarthy's romantic past in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery.")
As with most occasions when we use the word "idiot," Holmes is talking about someone whose mental state he cannot even comprehend: a young man, silly with love.
On none of these occasions is Holmes really trying to insult someone, as Eros the pompous alien is in Plan 9, and his use of the word isn't nearly as comical as a result. Which is why I like to turn to Plan 9 when I'm using the term out of frustration with others, as Silke did, just to give me a laugh. But when I'm talking about myself, of course, I'll take the more Holmesian route.
Because, hey, if we're going to be idiots, at least we can be idiots like Sherlock Holmes. All us of Earth tend to be that way.
Monday, May 27, 2013
The smartest guy in the room.
"The first rule of magic. Always be the smartest guy in the room."
Jesse Eisenberg is uttering that phrase every few minutes in movie theaters across the country this weekend as his movie Now You See Me nears. And while I'd love to discuss how cool that movie is looking in its previews, that line above is what brings the discussion back to Sherlock Holmes.
The magic of Sherlock Holmes has always been that he's the smartest guy in the room.
Readers didn't flock to the original sixty stories for the tale of a recovering war veteran adjusting to urban life. None of us look to Holmes for an example of working well with the official police force. And that drug addict nonsense is sheer tabloid exploitation of a few stray lines.
Sherlock Holmes is an ideal of what the human brain is capable of, given the proper study and application. He's the high bar we set to try to clear, the Mount Everest that's there to scale. He's the spirit of the free-roaming intellect, ranging from field to field and never locking into a single point of view.
Sure, a top expert in a particular field will always display greater savvy in their chosen arena. But the smartest guy in the room? Always Sherlock Holmes.
A puffed up non-fan will often turn up to try to belittle the ideal, try to qualify him, or focus on a single perceived flaw and try to crack it open to discredit that title, but if he wasn't the smartest guy in the room, he just wouldn't be Sherlock Holmes.
And what would be the point of that?
One of the fascinating things about the male side of Sherlockian culture (where I live -- I won't speak for the ladies), is that a goodly share of us are attracted to the Sherlock Holmes stories because we can relate to feeling like the smartest guy in the room on occasion. Whether we're right or whether we're wrong makes no difference, we can always find some evidence for our case. (Heck, every time I write this blog I'm the smartest guy in the room! Why? Because I'm the only one in the room! Explains some of the attitude, doesn't it?) The mix of intelligence, ego, and testosterone can become a less than charming mix sometimes as we get invested in our opinions and try to defend them with all the fervor of an attorney trying to save an innocent from the electric chair. But that's not why bright boys come to Sherlock Holmes fandom. They come because it's refreshing to see Holmes be so right that no one can argue with him, the lucky bastard.
Sherlock Holmes will always be smarter than any of us. We're only human. One reason for Holmes's place as master of detection is his great ability to take a different point of view as much as he needed to get to the heart of an issue, and to put himself in another man's place where necessary. And he can do that kind of thing more easily than the rest of us because he is an ideal, a legend, an avatar of intellect. And the true smartest guy in the room.
The first rule of magic? Let him be that guy.
Magic will follow.
Jesse Eisenberg is uttering that phrase every few minutes in movie theaters across the country this weekend as his movie Now You See Me nears. And while I'd love to discuss how cool that movie is looking in its previews, that line above is what brings the discussion back to Sherlock Holmes.
The magic of Sherlock Holmes has always been that he's the smartest guy in the room.
Readers didn't flock to the original sixty stories for the tale of a recovering war veteran adjusting to urban life. None of us look to Holmes for an example of working well with the official police force. And that drug addict nonsense is sheer tabloid exploitation of a few stray lines.
Sherlock Holmes is an ideal of what the human brain is capable of, given the proper study and application. He's the high bar we set to try to clear, the Mount Everest that's there to scale. He's the spirit of the free-roaming intellect, ranging from field to field and never locking into a single point of view.
Sure, a top expert in a particular field will always display greater savvy in their chosen arena. But the smartest guy in the room? Always Sherlock Holmes.
A puffed up non-fan will often turn up to try to belittle the ideal, try to qualify him, or focus on a single perceived flaw and try to crack it open to discredit that title, but if he wasn't the smartest guy in the room, he just wouldn't be Sherlock Holmes.
And what would be the point of that?
One of the fascinating things about the male side of Sherlockian culture (where I live -- I won't speak for the ladies), is that a goodly share of us are attracted to the Sherlock Holmes stories because we can relate to feeling like the smartest guy in the room on occasion. Whether we're right or whether we're wrong makes no difference, we can always find some evidence for our case. (Heck, every time I write this blog I'm the smartest guy in the room! Why? Because I'm the only one in the room! Explains some of the attitude, doesn't it?) The mix of intelligence, ego, and testosterone can become a less than charming mix sometimes as we get invested in our opinions and try to defend them with all the fervor of an attorney trying to save an innocent from the electric chair. But that's not why bright boys come to Sherlock Holmes fandom. They come because it's refreshing to see Holmes be so right that no one can argue with him, the lucky bastard.
Sherlock Holmes will always be smarter than any of us. We're only human. One reason for Holmes's place as master of detection is his great ability to take a different point of view as much as he needed to get to the heart of an issue, and to put himself in another man's place where necessary. And he can do that kind of thing more easily than the rest of us because he is an ideal, a legend, an avatar of intellect. And the true smartest guy in the room.
The first rule of magic? Let him be that guy.
Magic will follow.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
That Baker Street closet.
As I woke this morning, I was contemplating the changes modern tales have been making to Sherlock Holmes and how they reflect social change. Holmes was pretty sexist in the 1800s, and now Watson is a woman in the mainstream. Holmes was pretty racist in "Three Gables," and now we have the race-bent comic Watson and Holmes. The one boundary we still haven't fully crossed, however, is the one that has more solid Canonical footing than either of those others.
Dr. Watson wasn't a woman. We know that. Holmes and Watson weren't black. It's an interesting change to see them so, but still a change. But answer me this: do we know for a fact that Sherlock Holmes was not gay?
Yes, we've seen slash fiction, where everybody and their brother is having man-on-man sex and cuddles with each other. But when you shift the entire universe away from vagina-friendly, it takes away from a true exploration of what a gay Holmes was going through in Victorian England. Life is easy for him if his room-mate is gay, too.
But Watson married and moved out, and is obviously fond of the ladies in the original text. Sherlock Holmes, however, gets away with "women are never to be trusted" and never actually having a heterosexual relationship over the course of three decades, and mainstream Sherlockians have tended to leave that alone, or else shove him into an off-screen dalliance with Irene.
Irene Adler. "The" woman. She who beat Holmes. In the very story, Watson specifically writes: "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler," and he couldn't say it any plainer than that. And yet we still want to make Irene the detective's beard.
I don't give Elementary a lot of credit here, but I will give it this. It has managed a whole season with a male Holmes and a female Watson without even hinting that they have to have a romantic relationship. And to me, Sherlock Holmes coming out of the closet could only be done faithfully if his relationship with a male Watson sticks to that same disciplined approach.
"Faithfully" is the key word here. It's easy to twist Holmes into being a vampire or a wizard or a what-have-you if you completely leave the Canon behind. You can be as true to the original sixty stories as can be and still have Sherlock Holmes be a carefully closeted gay man. It's not so unrealistic to even see that as the reason Watson seems to be in and out of Baker Street so much. Yes, he actually married and moved out one of those times, but perhaps his first departure was an impulsive move after being initially shocked to find his fellow lodger's tastes didn't match his own. (The horrified Watson of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes comes quickly to mind. That movie danced on the line of a gay Holmes, but inevitably came back to him just liking "bad" women.)
It's interesting to look back and see how easily old school Sherlockians have playfully questioned Holmes or Watson's gender without ever giving serious study to the elephant in the room. Those were different times back then, of course, so you can't really blame them. A culture that didn't accept letting women into a certain major dinner until the 1990s wasn't going to . . . hey, wait a minute . . . (Okay, not going there.)
In any case, now that we're seeing explorations of Holmes and Watson in ways Victorian London would never have permitted in their original incarnation, perhaps it's time we truly explore a Sherlock Holmes that could have existed, that maybe even did exist, for all of the mainstream blinders in that direction.
"You say we go round the sun," Holmes once said. "If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work."
And neither would Holmes actually having been Canonically gay. Let that phrase roll around in your head for a minute: Canonically gay. That way all along.
The times, they are a'changing, but we still have a ways to go. The day we see a mainstream Sherlock Holmes who truly doesn't favor the ladies, as we know he didn't, perhaps we'll know we're finally there.
Dr. Watson wasn't a woman. We know that. Holmes and Watson weren't black. It's an interesting change to see them so, but still a change. But answer me this: do we know for a fact that Sherlock Holmes was not gay?
Yes, we've seen slash fiction, where everybody and their brother is having man-on-man sex and cuddles with each other. But when you shift the entire universe away from vagina-friendly, it takes away from a true exploration of what a gay Holmes was going through in Victorian England. Life is easy for him if his room-mate is gay, too.
But Watson married and moved out, and is obviously fond of the ladies in the original text. Sherlock Holmes, however, gets away with "women are never to be trusted" and never actually having a heterosexual relationship over the course of three decades, and mainstream Sherlockians have tended to leave that alone, or else shove him into an off-screen dalliance with Irene.
Irene Adler. "The" woman. She who beat Holmes. In the very story, Watson specifically writes: "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler," and he couldn't say it any plainer than that. And yet we still want to make Irene the detective's beard.
I don't give Elementary a lot of credit here, but I will give it this. It has managed a whole season with a male Holmes and a female Watson without even hinting that they have to have a romantic relationship. And to me, Sherlock Holmes coming out of the closet could only be done faithfully if his relationship with a male Watson sticks to that same disciplined approach.
"Faithfully" is the key word here. It's easy to twist Holmes into being a vampire or a wizard or a what-have-you if you completely leave the Canon behind. You can be as true to the original sixty stories as can be and still have Sherlock Holmes be a carefully closeted gay man. It's not so unrealistic to even see that as the reason Watson seems to be in and out of Baker Street so much. Yes, he actually married and moved out one of those times, but perhaps his first departure was an impulsive move after being initially shocked to find his fellow lodger's tastes didn't match his own. (The horrified Watson of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes comes quickly to mind. That movie danced on the line of a gay Holmes, but inevitably came back to him just liking "bad" women.)
It's interesting to look back and see how easily old school Sherlockians have playfully questioned Holmes or Watson's gender without ever giving serious study to the elephant in the room. Those were different times back then, of course, so you can't really blame them. A culture that didn't accept letting women into a certain major dinner until the 1990s wasn't going to . . . hey, wait a minute . . . (Okay, not going there.)
In any case, now that we're seeing explorations of Holmes and Watson in ways Victorian London would never have permitted in their original incarnation, perhaps it's time we truly explore a Sherlock Holmes that could have existed, that maybe even did exist, for all of the mainstream blinders in that direction.
"You say we go round the sun," Holmes once said. "If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work."
And neither would Holmes actually having been Canonically gay. Let that phrase roll around in your head for a minute: Canonically gay. That way all along.
The times, they are a'changing, but we still have a ways to go. The day we see a mainstream Sherlock Holmes who truly doesn't favor the ladies, as we know he didn't, perhaps we'll know we're finally there.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Questioning your Sherlock Holmes fan bits.
A little while ago, the Welcome Holmes discussion group bandied about the question, "What kind of Sherlockian are you?" It's an innocent little question, but the sort that could be answered casually or with all the contemplation of something a Vorlon would ask a captain of Babylon 5.
What kind of Sherlockian are you?
Well, that's for you to decide, and I'd encourage you not to be easily labeled. But I am a bit curious about a few of your tastes as they apply to this ongoing blog endeavor. While the numbers of readers of this page massively outnumbers the rare comment-writers that come here, it seems like a single reader who makes a comment can influence what gets written in Sherlock Peoria a disproportionate amount, and that hardly seems fair. So I'd like to hear from you, but if you're at all like me, getting involved in the comments section of any web page is just something you like to stay away from. The answer?
Fortunately for us all, the internet gives us a lot of venues for anonymously finding out what people think, so I've constructed a little survey to give everyone a shot at the direction this blog heads this summer. It's easy, multiple choice for the most part (with one final vote that should provide at least one interesting blog all its own), and won't take more than a minute or so. Ten questions in all.
And if you live in the U.S., you've probably got a three day weekend to kill anyway, so have at it!
Here's the survey!
What kind of Sherlockian are you?
Well, that's for you to decide, and I'd encourage you not to be easily labeled. But I am a bit curious about a few of your tastes as they apply to this ongoing blog endeavor. While the numbers of readers of this page massively outnumbers the rare comment-writers that come here, it seems like a single reader who makes a comment can influence what gets written in Sherlock Peoria a disproportionate amount, and that hardly seems fair. So I'd like to hear from you, but if you're at all like me, getting involved in the comments section of any web page is just something you like to stay away from. The answer?
Fortunately for us all, the internet gives us a lot of venues for anonymously finding out what people think, so I've constructed a little survey to give everyone a shot at the direction this blog heads this summer. It's easy, multiple choice for the most part (with one final vote that should provide at least one interesting blog all its own), and won't take more than a minute or so. Ten questions in all.
And if you live in the U.S., you've probably got a three day weekend to kill anyway, so have at it!
Here's the survey!
Friday, May 24, 2013
On belonging to clubs, 2013.
"And still, poor soul, I had this morbid hankering for inventing clubs."
I remember a day when I, like Christopher Morley, had such a hankering, and I'm sure many a Sherlockian of seasons past has felt that way as well. The swell of Sherlockiana in the late seventies and early eighties were a boom time for club-starters and reinvigorators alike. Many of those societies have fallen away since then, but some still hold on to proud records of decade after decade of existence.
So now that we stand in the midst of one of the greatest high tides of Sherlock fancy in our history, I find myself occasionally wondering: Where are the clubs?
Sure, the old guard is still out there. But new fans like to start new clubs, even in cities that have established groups. And perhaps I'm out of touch . . . well, yes, I am rather out of touch . . . but I still think the internet would have showed some sort of clubbishness on the rise. Sure, you can cite the Baker Street Babes, but they're a podcast cast when you come right down to it. And they're kind of unique.
Now, as I'm gaining a reputation for being the anti-everything Sherlockian with this blog, I have to phrase this carefully so as not to seem to be coming out against clubs. But here's the thing . . . could we be entering an era where the club no longer serves the purpose it once did?
Clubs were always connecting points, places we'd go to meet other Sherlockians. Now, thanks to the internet, you can find other Sherlockians in your area and arrange a meet-up without having name nor banner to fly overhead. Networks of friends can be built to your individual tastes on the web, and your Sherlockian pals can be completely different form those of the Sherlockian who lives next door. Geography no longer limits us.
And while clubs have historically served as great organizers of larger events, this year's 221B Con rose up without involving any local scion. It's not the first Sherlockian event to come about in such a way, but as the first Sherlockian con of size, it's worth noting.
We're not the only clubland affected by the modern day, which you may hear of if you talk to any Elks, Jaycees, Odd Fellows, Eagles, Moose, Kiwanis, etc., etc. Service clubs that were once key parts of local communities have felt a shift of late, and even though Sherlockian societies would seem to be an entirely different animal, history brings change to everything at some point.
I'm certain existing groups will carry their banners on into the future. Retro-chic clubs will inevitably form now and again. But what used to be the standard way of doing things might be changing. Will we one day come to look at the 1980s as the era not just more Sherlockian newsletters and journals than any other, but a rare peak of the traditional Sherlockian society as well?
I suspect that we're just going through a major shift of the way we interact as we merge with our new technologies, and that on the other side some charming soul get a hankering to gather some folks together for lunch just like Morley once did (poor soul), and the cycle of new groups will begin again. Despite the listserver groups, I don't feel like the internet has yet produced a true, fully-functioning web based society that takes advantage of all that our advances in tech have to offer (unless the Babes actually are the new model). And I definitely don't think we've all adjusted to seeing as much of each other as the web makes it possible to do. (That, perhaps, is a blog for another time.)
The Sherlockian community is stronger than ever, despite my perception of a blip in the new club radar. And most of our surprises lately have been happy ones. The new kids on the block have come up with some impressive stuff so far, though. I can't wait to see what they'll surprise me with next. Will it be a new model of club? We shall see.
I remember a day when I, like Christopher Morley, had such a hankering, and I'm sure many a Sherlockian of seasons past has felt that way as well. The swell of Sherlockiana in the late seventies and early eighties were a boom time for club-starters and reinvigorators alike. Many of those societies have fallen away since then, but some still hold on to proud records of decade after decade of existence.
So now that we stand in the midst of one of the greatest high tides of Sherlock fancy in our history, I find myself occasionally wondering: Where are the clubs?
Sure, the old guard is still out there. But new fans like to start new clubs, even in cities that have established groups. And perhaps I'm out of touch . . . well, yes, I am rather out of touch . . . but I still think the internet would have showed some sort of clubbishness on the rise. Sure, you can cite the Baker Street Babes, but they're a podcast cast when you come right down to it. And they're kind of unique.
Now, as I'm gaining a reputation for being the anti-everything Sherlockian with this blog, I have to phrase this carefully so as not to seem to be coming out against clubs. But here's the thing . . . could we be entering an era where the club no longer serves the purpose it once did?
Clubs were always connecting points, places we'd go to meet other Sherlockians. Now, thanks to the internet, you can find other Sherlockians in your area and arrange a meet-up without having name nor banner to fly overhead. Networks of friends can be built to your individual tastes on the web, and your Sherlockian pals can be completely different form those of the Sherlockian who lives next door. Geography no longer limits us.
And while clubs have historically served as great organizers of larger events, this year's 221B Con rose up without involving any local scion. It's not the first Sherlockian event to come about in such a way, but as the first Sherlockian con of size, it's worth noting.
We're not the only clubland affected by the modern day, which you may hear of if you talk to any Elks, Jaycees, Odd Fellows, Eagles, Moose, Kiwanis, etc., etc. Service clubs that were once key parts of local communities have felt a shift of late, and even though Sherlockian societies would seem to be an entirely different animal, history brings change to everything at some point.
I'm certain existing groups will carry their banners on into the future. Retro-chic clubs will inevitably form now and again. But what used to be the standard way of doing things might be changing. Will we one day come to look at the 1980s as the era not just more Sherlockian newsletters and journals than any other, but a rare peak of the traditional Sherlockian society as well?
I suspect that we're just going through a major shift of the way we interact as we merge with our new technologies, and that on the other side some charming soul get a hankering to gather some folks together for lunch just like Morley once did (poor soul), and the cycle of new groups will begin again. Despite the listserver groups, I don't feel like the internet has yet produced a true, fully-functioning web based society that takes advantage of all that our advances in tech have to offer (unless the Babes actually are the new model). And I definitely don't think we've all adjusted to seeing as much of each other as the web makes it possible to do. (That, perhaps, is a blog for another time.)
The Sherlockian community is stronger than ever, despite my perception of a blip in the new club radar. And most of our surprises lately have been happy ones. The new kids on the block have come up with some impressive stuff so far, though. I can't wait to see what they'll surprise me with next. Will it be a new model of club? We shall see.
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