A Case of Holmesophobia?
The chemistry between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Watson is no mystery, yet there seems to be no end to the outrage over the film's homosexual overtones
The chemistry between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Watson is no mystery, yet there seems to be no end to the outrage over the film's homosexual overtones
Ben Walters
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously had a soft spot for fairies. The same cannot, it seems, be said of the keepers of his literary flame – not, at least, of Andrea Plunket, who lays claim to the remaining US copyrights relating to Conan Doyle's most iconic creation.
According to IMDB, Plunket has reacted with fury to Robert Downey Jr's suggestion on The Late Show with David Letterman that Sherlock Holmes, whom he plays in Guy Ritchie's film, could be perceived as "a very butch homosexual". Introducing a clip in which Holmes lets off some steam bare-knuckle boxing after offending Watson, Downey also floated the possibility that Rachel McAdams's character, with whom the detective is apparently besotted, "could be a beard. Who knows?"
"I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey's black sense of humour," Plunket reportedly fumed in an interview with Total Film. "It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books."
It's hard to think of the last time so much befuddled, hateful knee-jerk reaction was funnelled into so few words. Oh, wait, no, it isn't – Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on Stephen Gately will be hard to top on that front for some time. Still, Plunket does awfully well, insisting that the idea of a beloved character being gay is not just a joke but a sick joke before offering a declaration of tolerance to stand alongside "I've nothing against black people" and "Don't get me wrong, I love women".
To an extent, it's silly even to take note of the outburst. If the movie's nine-figure takings do spur the production of a sequel, then it seems questionable that Plunket would have the power to nix it and even more questionable that it would include anything sufficiently offensive to her sensibilities for her to try. Certainly, the new movie makes Holmes and Watson's intimate bond plain, showing them squabbling over housework and making explicit the jealousy the former feels at the latter's engagement to a (barely-written) woman. The director has even stated that "these guys are sort of in love with each other." But this is fairly standard buddy-movie homosociability; the chances of Richie et al taking the couple's domestic partnership into explicitly romantic let alone sexual territory seem vanishingly small.
As a look at the Letterman clip makes clear, this whole kerfuffle is less about any serious engagement with the stories' homoerotic subtext than about Downey having a laugh at the expense of prurient attitudes to gay sex, including those of Letterman and his band leader, and generating some coverage for his movie at the same time. He pulled off the same trick nearly a year ago, during the film's production, when his tongue-in-cheek assertion that Holmes and Watson "wrestle a lot and share a bed" was quoted by the News of the World under the classy headline "Queerstalker".
Not that there isn't something to the idea of Holmes and Watson as a couple. As with any other number of crime-fighting duos, their bond has long been fertile territory for such speculation; indeed, in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the detective himself encourages rumours that he and Watson are lovers. Overall, of course, such intimations are best left sublimated. The most detailed excavation of the original stories can unearth a thousand proofs of the pair's intimate mutual attraction without any hint of fluids being exchanged.
The real inanity of Plunket's objection lies in its philistinic – and hilariously inconsistent – insistence on fidelity to a source text. If Plunket were sincere about the need to stay "true to the spirit of the books", she would be aghast at the introduction of a heterosexual love interest for Holmes; indeed, at the whole edifice of Richie's wham-bam steampunk spookfest.
If the film's depictions of Holmes engaging in underground boxing bouts, rescuing damsels from occult ceremonies through brute force and diving for cover from exploding warehouses are to get a pass – if, that is, it's fine for the physical prowess described by Conan Doyle to be ramped up a few notches – then why shouldn't a similar process of exaggerated extrapolation apply to the intimacy unquestionably enjoyed by the detective and his sidekick in the original stories? It's simply a case of deductive reasoning, observing small clues and imaginatively hypothesising what they might connote. To veto such investigation is not merely prejudiced but counter to the enquiring spirit of Conan Doyle's character; not just homophobic but Holmesophobic.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously had a soft spot for fairies. The same cannot, it seems, be said of the keepers of his literary flame – not, at least, of Andrea Plunket, who lays claim to the remaining US copyrights relating to Conan Doyle's most iconic creation.
According to IMDB, Plunket has reacted with fury to Robert Downey Jr's suggestion on The Late Show with David Letterman that Sherlock Holmes, whom he plays in Guy Ritchie's film, could be perceived as "a very butch homosexual". Introducing a clip in which Holmes lets off some steam bare-knuckle boxing after offending Watson, Downey also floated the possibility that Rachel McAdams's character, with whom the detective is apparently besotted, "could be a beard. Who knows?"
"I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey's black sense of humour," Plunket reportedly fumed in an interview with Total Film. "It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books."
It's hard to think of the last time so much befuddled, hateful knee-jerk reaction was funnelled into so few words. Oh, wait, no, it isn't – Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on Stephen Gately will be hard to top on that front for some time. Still, Plunket does awfully well, insisting that the idea of a beloved character being gay is not just a joke but a sick joke before offering a declaration of tolerance to stand alongside "I've nothing against black people" and "Don't get me wrong, I love women".
To an extent, it's silly even to take note of the outburst. If the movie's nine-figure takings do spur the production of a sequel, then it seems questionable that Plunket would have the power to nix it and even more questionable that it would include anything sufficiently offensive to her sensibilities for her to try. Certainly, the new movie makes Holmes and Watson's intimate bond plain, showing them squabbling over housework and making explicit the jealousy the former feels at the latter's engagement to a (barely-written) woman. The director has even stated that "these guys are sort of in love with each other." But this is fairly standard buddy-movie homosociability; the chances of Richie et al taking the couple's domestic partnership into explicitly romantic let alone sexual territory seem vanishingly small.
As a look at the Letterman clip makes clear, this whole kerfuffle is less about any serious engagement with the stories' homoerotic subtext than about Downey having a laugh at the expense of prurient attitudes to gay sex, including those of Letterman and his band leader, and generating some coverage for his movie at the same time. He pulled off the same trick nearly a year ago, during the film's production, when his tongue-in-cheek assertion that Holmes and Watson "wrestle a lot and share a bed" was quoted by the News of the World under the classy headline "Queerstalker".
Not that there isn't something to the idea of Holmes and Watson as a couple. As with any other number of crime-fighting duos, their bond has long been fertile territory for such speculation; indeed, in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the detective himself encourages rumours that he and Watson are lovers. Overall, of course, such intimations are best left sublimated. The most detailed excavation of the original stories can unearth a thousand proofs of the pair's intimate mutual attraction without any hint of fluids being exchanged.
The real inanity of Plunket's objection lies in its philistinic – and hilariously inconsistent – insistence on fidelity to a source text. If Plunket were sincere about the need to stay "true to the spirit of the books", she would be aghast at the introduction of a heterosexual love interest for Holmes; indeed, at the whole edifice of Richie's wham-bam steampunk spookfest.
If the film's depictions of Holmes engaging in underground boxing bouts, rescuing damsels from occult ceremonies through brute force and diving for cover from exploding warehouses are to get a pass – if, that is, it's fine for the physical prowess described by Conan Doyle to be ramped up a few notches – then why shouldn't a similar process of exaggerated extrapolation apply to the intimacy unquestionably enjoyed by the detective and his sidekick in the original stories? It's simply a case of deductive reasoning, observing small clues and imaginatively hypothesising what they might connote. To veto such investigation is not merely prejudiced but counter to the enquiring spirit of Conan Doyle's character; not just homophobic but Holmesophobic.
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