{"id":234908,"date":"2013-12-31T15:43:55","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T15:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/12\/31\/visual-pleasure-and-narrative-sherlock-pt-2\/"},"modified":"2013-12-31T15:43:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T15:43:55","slug":"visual-pleasure-and-narrative-sherlock-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/12\/31\/visual-pleasure-and-narrative-sherlock-pt-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Sherlock pt. 2: Objectifying The Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

professorfangirl<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

(Pt. 1, Watching the Detective<\/a>)<\/p>\n

So if your detective\u2019s too pretty and all the girls & boys & others are looking at him a bit too much and a bit too wrong, then you gotta straighten things out. You better bring in a woman, sexualize the fuck out of her, and make clear that she\u2019s<\/em> the object of a desiring gaze that is obviously male\u2014a gaze that is, at least in part, Sherlock\u2019s. This gives the show a heterosexual object and tries to make Sherlock a heterosexual subject (that is, she\u2019s the object that\u2019s wanted, and he\u2019s the subject who wants). I say \u201ctries\u201d: Sherlock looks at Irene, naked and clothed, intimately and not, but I see no sign that he ever takes erotic pleasure in it. I know what a sexual gaze looks like (like other women, I have to<\/a>), and I see no sexuality here. For Sherlock, Irene is not the object of desire but the object of deduction: it\u2019s not pleasure he takes from the looking, it\u2019s knowledge. And of course knowledge is power. This is the project of \u201cA Scandal in Belgravia\u201d: to bring in Irene Adler, align her with Sherlock and his deductive power, and then disempower her by making her the erotic object and him the knowing subject. In other words, she\u2019s the source of visual pleasure, and he\u2019s the source of narrative power.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The episode identifies Sherlock with Irene with a long series of jump-cuts, camera angles, framing, and plot devices. These audacious mirrorings and doublings link them in a complex exchange of power and knowledge. They are paired, and at first Irene\u2019s on top, visually and in terms of her power to move the plot along by temporarily beating Sherlock at the information game. But in the end, he outsmarts her and wins. The upshot is fairly simple and very traditional: Irene = sexual female body, Sherlock = rational male mind, with sexuality less powerful than rationality. So much, so obvious. But the episode just works so damn hard to do this\u2014why? I think it\u2019s because to this point in the series, Sherlock, in his beauty, his visual centrality, and most of all in his relation to John, has presented an unusual model of masculinity, complicated and perhaps contradictory\u2014and ever so queer. This episode tries to straighten that out; in the end, however, it doesn\u2019t fully succeed.<\/p>\n

The first glimpse we have of Irene is her hand on her phone, where she keeps all that dangerous information, and then her neglig\u00e9ed ass walking toward a certain royal female person.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

So this is Irene\u2019s power at the start: information, and sexual agency. (To wit: information about sex.) In this she challenges Sherlock: in an early image we look at a photo of him in his fame and deductive power, and at her hand in its beauty and sensuality, covering up his face.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m going to get you,” that hand says. (Yep, it\u2019s a gorgeous object\u2014but note that hands are also symbols of selfhood and agency, for they are how we manipulate, use tools, and touch.)<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

professorfangirl: (Pt. 1, Watching the Detective) So if your detective\u2019s too pretty and all the girls & boys & others are looking at him a bit too much and a bit too wrong, then you gotta straighten things out. You better bring in a woman, sexualize the fuck out of her, and make clear that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Sherlock pt. 2: Objectifying The Woman”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[7422,6438,7262,5326,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}