[identity profile] laurtew.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] our_bbcsherlock
Hey, everyone. Hope your week has been going well.

Our discussion from last week (well, okay, Monday really, but...) went very well. I had a great time and I adore seeing everyone else's point of view.

So, today we have a new topic. The most brilliant Scandalbaby sent me this:


The Link: http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/140592/Benedict-Cumberbatch-On-Sherlocks-Devastatingly-Cruel-Love-Life


Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock’s “Devastatingly Cruel” Love Life

The series three conclusion of Sherlock was full of surprises, with fans of the reclusive super sleuth, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, even treated to a bit of romance.
His Last Vow aired in the UK last month, and aside from the return of Moriarty and the secret identity of Mrs John Watson, viewers also saw Sherlock proposing to pretty bridesmaid from episode two, Janine.

Just when we thought the confirmed bachelor had gone and got himself a girl it turned out it was all a ruse to get close to new super villain Magnussen.
In a behind the scenes interview with Benedict and show creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss on the soon to be released DVD of the series, the trio explain the the decision to have Sherlock break a woman's heart.

"In the original story, he does become engaged to Milverton's maid," MTV News report Gatiss as explaining on the DVD. "Heartlessly, which is what Steven has extrapolated into this thing."

Gatiss and Moffat go on to laugh about how Watson's (Martin Freeman) reaction to Sherlock was spot on: "But you're behaving like a human being here!" Gatiss says, laughing.

"You think it's nice, he's become humanised," Moffat continues. "He knows how to do all that, but he exploits it to terrible ends."

"It's devastatingly cruel, what he does," Cumberbatch chimes in. "He inveigles his way back into her life and impresses her, and turns his ability on to a single focus."

At a Q&A ahead of the last episode last month, Moffat explained that such scenes, along with glimpses of the detective's parents, were all about humanising the character:

"The frightening thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he has all the impulses that other human beings have, he just suppresses them in order to be a better detective and it's in those moments that he doesn't successfully suppress it that he gets into trouble.

"He believes that emotion gets in the way of his brilliant brain. On the evidence of the show so far and on the original stories, he's completely right. When he gets emotional, he gets blinded, he doesn't stop Mary as a fraud like he should have had, as she points out in the episode, ages ago."

---------------

What is your favourite part of this? Do you agree with what they say about Sherlock and emotions?

Date: 2014-03-15 03:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] salustra.livejournal.com
I do agree, it's the same theory I've had. He suppresses emotion like he does the need to eat.

Date: 2014-03-15 04:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] salustra.livejournal.com
Sometimes. Sometimes it makes him overlook the obvious.

Date: 2014-03-16 01:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] salustra.livejournal.com
Well one example in A Study in Pink is him not realizing that, of course the woman still grieved over her daughter. And no, like the food long repression has lessened his capacity and need for it.

Date: 2014-03-15 10:21 pm (UTC)
fueschgast: Darcy watching a CRT TV that shows Pietro at Wanda's door. (FueschPuff)
From: [personal profile] fueschgast
I can't help but be grumpy at the "behaving like a human being" and "he's become humanised". It just kind of comes off as calling being asexual or aromantic not human. I thought I have a pretty open view on the show, that they could hsow me whatever and I would go with it. But actually in one respect I will cling to my headcanon, no matter what Mofftiss say: to me Sherlock is asexual and/or aromantic. I'm just getting a bit desperate for representation.

Date: 2014-03-17 12:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ariadnechan.livejournal.com
but for me in season three be in Sherlock pov, Sherlock is clearly "In Love with John" so if he is Asexual he is Romantic or maybe Demisexual.

we have to know more about the extreme he takes to repress his emotions and urges to know exactly what his sexuality is, but sure thing he is romantic!

Date: 2014-03-17 09:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ariadnechan.livejournal.com
Yeah I'm more inclined for demisexual too!

Date: 2014-03-17 03:04 pm (UTC)
fueschgast: Darcy watching a CRT TV that shows Pietro at Wanda's door. (FueschPuff)
From: [personal profile] fueschgast
But the quotes seem to be about Sherlock & Janine's relationship. Although sometimes interviews are edited in a deceiving way.

Date: 2014-03-23 08:17 pm (UTC)
fueschgast: (Sherlock)
From: [personal profile] fueschgast
Argh, I find discussions difficult, because I have to put my thoughts into words, but I'm not good with words. I have a feeling we're totally not on the same page. I mean, I agree with "because of his emotional immaturity that no matter what his sexual orientation, he was blind as to the ramifications of what he did" and "'what the crap? I didn't really think he was into this kind of thing.'" But what I was trying to say is that they call Sherlock getting a girlfriend "human behavior", although there are people who are perfectly human, but don't have romatic/sexual relationsips or don't feel that kind of attraction.

Date: 2014-03-17 01:17 am (UTC)
ext_20969: (Default)
From: [identity profile] amyhit.livejournal.com
Ugh, Moftiss, I am 3000% DONE with you guys and your stunted, adolescent understanding of the interplay between intelligence and emotion. *flings up hands*

In reality, the absence of emotion is far more likely to impede Sherlock's intellectual and psychological functioning than its presence. It's called emotional intelligence for a reason: it's actually really important. And you could say that the text (apparently unwittingly) backs up that argument too. Why does Sherlock suffer so intensely from spells of boredom? Why does he require constant stimulation to stave off his impulsive, neurotic, and seemingly depressive moods? Why does he resort to hard drugs and other destructive behaviors in order to stave off these moods? Could it be because he suffers from a self-identity made precarious by its lack of emotional grounding? Hmm...

Sherlock suffers from boredom with the severity that a young child suffers from boredom, possibly because he's never progressed emotionally beyond the age of a young child. He hasn't developed the capacity to be secure in his self-identity without needing to elicit constant feedback from the world around him. He needs constant stimulation from the outside world ("I NEED a case!") because he can't turn inward for self-comfort and emotional self-sustainment*. Why can't he? Because there's very little in there. Little that he sees fit (or knows how) to acknowledge, foster, or make any use of, anyway. Not only has he spent his whole life rejecting emotion, he hasn't even accepted the idea that the value of a thing may, in some cases, be predicated simply by one's own emotional enjoyment of said thing. So he deletes what isn't useful, abstains from what isn't rational, rejects whatever is sentimental, and basically does everything he can to insure that his inner landscape is as BARREN AS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. And it's sad, IMO, because he absolutely believes this is what he needs to do, because The Work is all that matters...because Sherlock himself has unwittingly made it so that he doesn't have anything else to point to and say "That's important. I care about that. That matters."

Obviously this is just my reading of the character. And obviously it's all much more complicated than what can be summed up in a two-paragraph rant. But I stand by my rant.

I love Sherlock, and I love him in part because he is a deeply confused and stunted adult human being. But that the writers suggest he's not confused or stunted - that in fact his simplistic, backwards beliefs about human emotion are right - is something I find endlessly aggravating. Mainly because by understanding him in such simplistic terms, it means they then write him in simplistic terms, which makes it all so much less enjoyable.

Granted, I do think it's highly realistic that Sherlock would struggle with emotion. He's in his mid(?)-thirties, but has the emotional development of a child. If/when he does begin to experience some emotion (beyond whatever limited amount he already experiences) he's probably not going to know how to deal with it. Plus, his deeply ingrained automatic response is to see emotion as a repellent and hostile thing, which is likely to make dealing with his emotions all the more difficult for him, at least at first. But there's a big difference between saying "His inability to integrate his emotional intelligence with his intellectual intelligence is detrimental to his deductive abilities," which is true, and saying "His emotions blind him," as Moffat and Gatiss are saying.


**He needs constant stimulation from the outside world ("I NEED a case!") because he can't turn inward for self-comfort and emotional self-sustainment // Of course Sherlock is not completely unable to provide his own self-comfort and emotional sustainment. He is not a completely...hmm, shall we say "empty house," on the inside. He simply has a very limited range of ways at which he is practiced in doing so. He has his experiments, for example, which he is capable of producing for himself and by which he is capable of entertaining (and perhaps also comforting) himself. However, his experiments don't seem to be adequately sustaining for more than short periods of time between cases.
Edited Date: 2014-03-17 01:42 am (UTC)

Date: 2014-03-17 03:55 am (UTC)
ext_20969: (Default)
From: [identity profile] amyhit.livejournal.com
This makes a ton of sense.

I'm glad you think so. It's all so complicated and squishy, psychology, and I love it but I'm also painfully aware that you can argue it in so many different directions. So I often muse about Sherlock and then just never post the musings.

Do you think he is stunted because of something internal, like autism, or do you think it was a learned thing, such as from growing up being different and having no friends and a big brother who called him stupid and said the East Wind was coming for him?

My personal conviction is that Sherlock's "issues" generally defy diagnosis and that they are, to a large extent, learned - a product of nurture more than nature, though certainly nature plays a part as well.

I found myself thinking his childhood must have been a nightmare, not fitting in, being teased. I would think he'd avoid other children and pull into himself and there he still is.

Yes, I absolutely agree. I've never fully fleshed out my personal headcanon of Sherlock's childhood experience (plenty of ideas, none of them certain), but I definitely imagine Sherlock's childhood being full of chronic distress, probably stemming from neglect, rejection, and hostility. I mean, ultimately if a six year old (just to name a random age) suffers acute distress over a long enough period of time, he'll learn - as thought it were an absolute fact - that the intelligent thing to do is to simply not care. And if the distress is acute enough, he'll learn that the necessary thing to do is to not care. Which, it seems to me, is essentially what happened to Sherlock. Instead of developing more complex, robust attachments and internalizing the emotional processes he'd need in order to self-comfort and emotionally self-sustain, as most healthy young children begin to do at a certain age, Sherlock was learning to do the opposite: pulling into himself, as you said.

It bears saying that whatever my headcanon is for Sherlock's childhood, my headcanon for the Holmes parents is entirely different from what we're shown in S3.

But, I think embracing them gives him a wider view of things for his cases, beyond motivators for crimes. I think it also makes him a better person, such as him understanding that it is more important to save a life than to solve a crime.

Agreed. I think that learning to integrate his emotions could be a long, gradual, and in some cases painful process for Sherlock, but I absolutely believe that he would benefit from it in the end, in many ways. I had hoped the writers may have similar opinions on the matter, but it appears not.

ETA: And, er, thank you for the compliments before. I forgot to say.
Edited Date: 2014-03-17 04:34 am (UTC)

Date: 2014-03-18 11:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] k-for-kerfuffle.livejournal.com
I have to admit to enjoying the S1/S2 more rational and less emotional Sherlock far more than his S3 presentation. I hope he'll come to terms with his emotional side soon, so that he hasn't to repress it all the time, but can somehow integrate this part of himself and return to being more about ratio with the emotions not being actually absent but taking a backseat. I don't enjoy emo-characters. Being ruled by emotions is nothing that I find in any way, shape or form admirable. Every animal has emotions. Those are not what divide us from the animal kingdom. It's our ability to think and be rational that does.

Date: 2014-03-21 11:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] k-for-kerfuffle.livejournal.com
Yes to the 'going overboard' bit. I felt so uncomfortable watching him like that. Especially as I never doubted he *had' emotions in S1/2. I liked catching the tiny glimpses of them we could see.

And I sure *hope* things will be more balanced in S4, but no way to know for sure, right? To be perfectly honest, I rather enjoyed John being the adoring satellite and Sherlock keeping him enthralled, but at a distance. That's the way it should be for me. I pretty much feel he should be forever admired, adored, but unattainable.

As for John knowing Sherlock was going to his death, I don't think so. Otherwise he wouldn't have asked what would happen after the six months undercover job.

Date: 2014-03-21 05:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angelachristian.livejournal.com
I thought Sherlock was autistic and therefore unable to understand people's emotions and not having a theory of mind.

Date: 2014-03-23 12:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] angelachristian.livejournal.com
You expressed it much better than I did with my short "he doesn't understand emotions" -statement.
More precisely he doesn't understand the impact of his words on people and that his behaviour is perceived as rude/mean/aggressiv and unsuitable.

I watch "The Big Bang Theroy" as well and would call Sheldon autistic and use the same "he doesn't understand emotions" -phrase when he tells somebody something mean without noticing at all. In that case, I would compare him and Sherlock to people with touret syndrom , who aren't to blame for their rudness/mean behaviour , because it's part of a disease/disability and not their intention to be mean.

But can't autism be heritable , so that siblings can have it , too ? Like in cases of other mental diseases ?
Then this has nothing to do with the behaviour of the parents. I don't know S3, yet, but Mycroft might have bullied him, because he noticed, that Sherlock was the brighter one of the two and he felt jealous ?
I don't understand that East-Wind-Expression, I'm not a native speaker of English.

But Sherlock is called a "sociopath" in the pilot, which is a clinical diagnosis that indeed means "lack of empathy" and "lack of sense of morality" and goes far beyond the idea of autism. It means he really can't feel it, not just not notice social norms.

Profile

our_bbcsherlock: (Default)
Our BBC Sherlock

July 2021

S M T W T F S
    123
4 5678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 11th, 2025 10:12 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios