< ---- Lego Sherlock
[quote name='NBooth' date='17 January 2012 - 09:07 PM' timestamp='1326845254' post='265484']
Sherlock Holmes is very much in the zeitgeist right now with Guy Ritchie’s movie franchise starring Robert Downey Jr. and BBC’s hit series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which was just renewed for third season.[/quote]
[/quote]
Speaking of zeitgeist - I do enjoy the show
House most precisely at that level at which it is a Holmes adaptation. When it comes to thinking of Holmes in "contemporary" terms, I think the
House writers frequently nail it with his character. I suppose the catch is that House indulges in far more melodrama than Doyle (even given Holmes' critique of Watson's "romanticizings"). I particularly like the way Houses' "method" is a real world expression of a barely concealed psychosis that otherwise manifests as a sort of hunger eating away at him when he doesn't have a case to deal with. The drugs, the off-kilter relationships, the way House intentionally uses social awkwardness and division to elicit information or ideas that would otherwise not exist - this is all pure Sherlock.
House is also a good example of what Booth described in his wonderful recent essay as really [url="http://theotherjournal.com/filmwell/2012/03/26/the-absent-clue-summary-and-expectations/"]paying attention to things[/url]. The minutiae of a sick body a mere hop, skip, and jump from Sherlock's scope of observation.
House is also a good example of the paradox that appears immediately in
Study in Scarlet about Sherlock's lack of knowledge about our solar system, to which he responds by explaining that the orbit of the earth is irrelevant to his field of knowledge. In an era so interested in
paradigms, the
shifting of paradigms, and
enlightnment, Holmes (Doyle?) rejects the idea that paradigms can be meaningful channels through which we direct our attention to people. They are lenses that distort - even if
true. I am not quite sure what is important to Holmes/House, but it isn't science
qua science. This is all pretty subversive stuff.
I am rambling, but all this Sherlock talk coupled with Booth's essays has me musing.
I suppose even the most recent Holmes' continued use of London's homeless and indigent instead of a smartphone is a bit of a dig at social media.
Edited by M. Leary, 13 April 2012 - 01:37 PM.