Yes, BUT... (Canon and Sherlock S3)

[neadods]

So I'm finally catching up on tumblr, and The Science of Johnlock has a post complaining that Moffat has taken two stories where the woman took decisive plot-resolving action - Scandal in Bohemia; The Worst Man in London (nee Charles Augustus Milverton) - and in the remake given the plot-resolving actions to Sherlock, complete with him saving the woman in question's life in some form or another.

The word misogynistic got used. A lot.

YES, Moff/tiss changed the plotlines and put the hero in the center of them. BUT - no, I don't see this as a burning need on Moffat's part to strip agency away from women in general, which seems to be the charge laid against him.

So I have a few questions:

Why is it a crime that Moffat changes the stories of the women involved, but nobody screams "misandry" when he changes the stories of the men involved? In canon Jeff Hope was supposed to be a tragic hero, not John's target practice dummy; Mycroft and Sherlock were not at open war; Holmes never told a police constable that he "lowered the IQ of the entire block," and Moriarty wasn't phoning in his plans from low orbit around Mars -- so where's the ZOMG, Moffat hates men!!!!!111eleventy1! ?

(I have seen Moffat's interview where he protests that he doesn't see Irene, who solves her problems with a hasty marriage and a night flight, as a particularly strong woman. I don't agree with his interpretation, but it can be argued as valid from the text. With that viewpoint, I can see why he handled Irene the way he did.)

How does "Moffat strips women of agency" fit in with Mary and Molly? Mary may be Moffat's favorite "badass international woman of mystery" cliche, but "badass international woman of mystery" is hardly the description of someone who is helpless, hapless, or lacking agency. If someone's going to keep defaulting to a female trope, I'd personally prefer it be Jane Bond.

As the complaint is that Moffat isn't treating women like they were treated in canon, do let us look back at canon for a moment. Mary? In canon? More sweet than proactive, mostly honored in the breech (as in "love ya Mary, but I'm going to go have epic bromance with no notice again, tell my patients to go next door m'kay?") and then finally stuffed into the ice house (there being no refrigerators back then.)

The specific anti-Mary argument appears to be that she didn't shoot CAM. Which is explained in text - John would be a suspect, therefore, Mary spared John. It's the same reason that Sherlock waited until Mycroft and the police were Right. There. before he pulled the trigger of John's gun -- so that the one truly innocent person in all of this would not be suspected.

And then there's Molly. Molly who doesn't appear in canon. Molly who isn't a badass, but who is an *achievable* role model in the real world. Molly who went from quietly sucking up Sherlock's flatly abusive treatment of her in S1 to slapping him silly in S3 and forcing him to apologize. That's not agency?

I haven't even gotten to Mom Holmes yet...

Comments

[zinelady.livejournal.com]

And you could argue that Sherlock did tell the girl whose stepfather was pretending to be her fiance the truth rather than refusing to tell her like ACD in a Case of Idenity. If you want to talk about the word misogynistic, you don't need to go much further than ACD's Sherlock Holmes.

“And Miss Sutherland?”
“If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old
Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and
danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as
much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the
world.”

[neadods.livejournal.com]

If you want to talk about the word misogynistic, you don't need to go much further than ACD's Sherlock Holmes.

In that story, incredibly true. But over the whole canon... not so much. This is the guy who looks the other way when abusive husbands & blackmailers get murdered, who stands up for working women on their own in Victorian society, protects a woman inadvertently caught in bigamy, and even agitates in favor of divorce. That story, stomach-turning as the ending is, is an anomaly.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

nobody screams "misandry" when he changes the stories of the men involved?

Because misandry isn't real and for all it's faults the Sherlock fandom has yet to be infected with the MRA whiners who insist it is?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

My point remains; he is blamed for changing the stories of women in Sherlock's favor and nobody even seems to notice that the same thing happens to the men. The double standard there is not Moffet's.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Also, he changes the story of Janine, to being someone who gets fame, fortune, out of working for possibly the creepiest boss in the history of creepy bosses and a cottage on the Sussex Downs AND who gets to tell him that she'd have played along anyway and they could have been friends. As opposed to being a housemaid whom Holmes airily assumes will be OK and proposed to by a plumber the moment his back is turned, despite the fact that a broken engagement at the time was sufficiently serious for a girl's reputation that she could actually get damages for breach of promise.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I liked Janine a great deal as a character, and think that she and "Sherl" could have been excellent friends; they were certainly hitting it off at the wedding, and on her part it certainly wasn't lust for him.

Although I wonder about someone who was so under CAM's thumb that she'd work for him and let him flick her eye... but so free of him that before his death she can sell juicy scandal to another newspaper and retire without worrying about him.

[shaggydogstail.livejournal.com]

Except for the tiny detail that Sherlock is himself a man, written by men, so any advantage he gets over male characters is simply a redistribution of the pies between Team Men on the say-so of men. Open to criticism, sure*, but none of it gender-based. Favouring Sherlock over female charcter, otoh, means passing advantage between male and female characters; obviously, this can be sexism.**

* _{F'rinstance: the "you lower the IQ of the whole street" comment may well be beloved snark of some fans, but plenty of people find it the sort of overt obnoxiousness that puts them off Sherlock, Anderson's S3 breakdown is hardly popular, and Moriarty remains pretty divisive. "The showrunners are too in love with the main character" is actually a pretty common criticism of Sherlock.}

** _{Obviously there is still room for debate. I have zero fucks to give about Sherlock shooting Milverton because he desperately wanted murdering and Sherlock was most likely to get away with it. But "what about the menz!" is not and never will be a decent rebuttal to accusations of sexism.}

[forked.livejournal.com]

Yep- this.

I don't really disagree with the overall point, but this bit kind of distracted me from everything else. With male characters, if Sherlock steals their thunder- the story is still driven by a man. How could that remotely be used to support a charge of "misandry"?

The key driver of the story was a man. NOW the key driver of the story is ... still a man.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was the strongest point; the stronger point is that Mary and Molly both retain and display agency. But on taking canonically male characters and reassigning their impressive actions to women, it's worth noting that by way of a passing joke Moriarty's masterwork "Dynamics of an Asteroid" has been repurposed and written by Sherlock's mother.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Mary doesn't shoot CAM in the original, either; the Lindsay Duncan character does. Who is also a strong woman who stands up to a blackmailer, at the cost of her husband's suicide, in this version.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I very much want to read the newspaper article about Smallwood's suicide. Did he kill himself because Lady Smallwood stood up to CAM and he published? Did he kill himself just at the threat of CAM publishing and ruining his reputation? Or did he kill himself to protect his wife from being sleazed over by CAM again?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Another woman whose story Moffat changes. Stapleton in Hounds. Not an abused wife/reluctant henchperson/honey-trap. Single mother, professional scientist, assists them in resolving the crime.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Good point. I'll also argue that instead of dying of a broken heart in a flashback somewhere in Utah, the woman in STUDY was, if still dead, brought onstage and deliberately left plenty of clues to point the finger at her own murderer.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

"She's more intelligent than the lot of you, and she's dead."