Sherlock: Beautiful, isn’t it?
John: I thought you didn’t care about things like that.
Sherlock: Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.#basically the biggest metaphor in the entire show
this ^
The first time I saw this scene, it was another of those “goddamn this show is going to get under my skin in That Way" moments; because it’s almost delivered like Sherlock is intentionally making the observation aloud for John’s benefit.
It’s not the kind of brief thought you’d usually hear him bother to articulate. It’s out of character, and when John immediately picks up on that—Sherlock half-interrupts him with his ready rejoinder. Like he’s making a point.
It’s not a strong enough parallel to make me think he’s apologizing or correcting John’s earlier disgust with his lack of human sympathy (or his choice not to express or indulge in that sympathy)— at least, I don’t think the writers intended a parallel. But, as an au-loving fic-writer, I can’t help reading it as an attempt to explain something fundamental to Sherlock’s humanity; the brief, controlled admission, “I can be moved.”
No, I think that’s exactly what he’s saying there. Think about what you’d be thinking and trying to say with those words if you were in the same place. Someone says, “I thought you didn’t—" and you cut them off with, “That doesn’t mean…" You’re saying, “You’re mistaken. I’m correcting your faulty impression.“ You’re saying, “I knew you were going to say that and you’re wrong.”
Whether Sherlock opens the exchange with this intention or not, he does see it coming and he uses it to make a point. He can be moved. He appreciates beauty. His intellect contains more than logic.
As far as deliberately making that observation to John, it’s important that Sherlock even says any of this to him at all. How many other people does Sherlock even make an effort to accurately represent himself to? He doesn’t care what other people think unless it gets in his way. In some cases he deliberately distorts their opinions of him if it will get him what he wants. Except for John. Sherlock wants John to understand him.
Sherlock: Beautiful, isn’t it?
John: I thought you didn’t care about things like that.
Sherlock: Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.#basically the biggest metaphor in the entire show
this ^
The first time I saw this scene, it was another of those “goddamn this show is going to get under my skin in That Way" moments; because it’s almost delivered like Sherlock is intentionally making the observation aloud for John’s benefit.
It’s not the kind of brief thought you’d usually hear him bother to articulate. It’s out of character, and when John immediately picks up on that—Sherlock half-interrupts him with his ready rejoinder. Like he’s making a point.
It’s not a strong enough parallel to make me think he’s apologizing or correcting John’s earlier disgust with his lack of human sympathy (or his choice not to express or indulge in that sympathy)— at least, I don’t think the writers intended a parallel. But, as an au-loving fic-writer, I can’t help reading it as an attempt to explain something fundamental to Sherlock’s humanity; the brief, controlled admission, “I can be moved.”
No, I think that’s exactly what he’s saying there. Think about what you’d be thinking and trying to say with those words if you were in the same place. Someone says, “I thought you didn’t—" and you cut them off with, “That doesn’t mean…" You’re saying, “You’re mistaken. I’m correcting your faulty impression.“ You’re saying, “I knew you were going to say that and you’re wrong.”
Whether Sherlock opens the exchange with this intention or not, he does see it coming and he uses it to make a point. He can be moved. He appreciates beauty. His intellect contains more than logic.
As far as deliberately making that observation to John, it’s important that Sherlock even says any of this to him at all. How many other people does Sherlock even make an effort to accurately represent himself to? He doesn’t care what other people think unless it gets in his way. In some cases he deliberately distorts their opinions of him if it will get him what he wants. Except for John. Sherlock wants John to understand him.
LYDEN: You commissioned a dozen studies on women in media from the Annenberg School at USC. Some of the figures just really boggled the imagination when you think that women are half of all moviegoers. If we didn’t go to the movies, maybe this would make more sense. But we turn out in droves.
DAVIS: I know. It really does boggle the mind. In family films and kids television shows, for every one female character, there are three male characters. But lest people think that it’s all bad news, we were able to see an increase in the percentage of female characters in family films, such that if we add female characters at the rate we have been for the past 20 years, we will achieve parity in 700 years.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: And my institute, we have dedicated ourselves to cutting that in half. And we will not rest until it’s only 350 years.
LYDEN: Why is this the case?
DAVIS: My theory is that since all anybody has seen when they are growing up is this big imbalance that the movies that they’ve watched are about, let’s say, five-to-one as far as female presence is concerned. That’s what starts to look normal. And let’s think about in difference segments of society – 17 percent of cardiac surgeons are women, 17 percent of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice?
LYDEN: I wonder what the impact is of all of this lack of female representation.
DAVIS: We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17 percent women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.
LYDEN: Oh, my goodness.
DAVIS: So is it possible that 17 percent women has become so comfortable and so normal that that’s just sort of unconsciously expected?
LYDEN: Why else, Geena Davis, do these kinds of disparities matter?
DAVIS: What we’re in effect doing is training children to see that women and girls are less important than men and boys. We’re training them to perceive that women take up only 17 percent of the space in the world. And if you add on top of that that so many female characters are sexualized, even in things that are aimed at little kids, that’s having an enormous impact as well.
