XistentialAngst's Blog, page 70
September 27, 2016
halalbarbie:
question: how would you deal with cyber attacks against the US government?
donald...
question: how would you deal with cyber attacks against the US government?
donald trump: i am so strongly against cyber. we came up with the internet. cyber is a big issue. we need to be SMART and QUICK. let me tell you. my son has a computer. he’s 10! he’s so good on that computer so good you wouldn’t believe it!
republicans:
Our Republican candidate, ladies and gentlemen.
delurkingdetective:
Mary Morstan’s Disguises
from the...
Mary Morstan’s Disguises
from the Metafictional Imagery series, part II: Disguises (click here to read them in order)
At last we come to Mary Morstan, the only character in BBC Sherlock whose identity we know only through disguises.
Mary has four kinds of ‘identities’ or ‘disguises’ used throughout the show. These identities are not always separate - in fact, they are often referenced in combinations, which makes for some beautiful imagery. I’ll go through Mary’s disguises in the order we’re introduced to them.
The first and most concrete of Mary’s identities is ‘Mary Morstan’ itself. As we learn in His Last Vow, ‘Mary Elizabeth Morstan’ is actually the name of a stillborn infant, but it’s unclear to us (and to John, and to Sherlock) what else beyond her name is a lie.
There are a few visual themes introduced with the ‘Mary’ identity. First, the ‘view from behind’. @quietlyprim points out in her video meta on The Empty Hearse that Mary is consistently introduced and viewed from the back, like a villain would be:
It is harder to recognize a person - to see their identity - from behind. Mary is incredibly skilled in disguise, she cannot and does not rely on ‘hiding her face’ to fool people. But this symbolism evokes that sense of hiding, and we’ll come back to it later.
The other recurring imagery introduced with the ‘Mary’ identity is the idea of ‘coming between John and Sherlock’, either by separating them visually or by obscuring Sherlock. It’s there, subtly, from the very beginning but is clearest in a scene from The Sign of Three:
Here Mary’s placement between Sherlock and John is a visual embodiment of the way she’s been manipulating them, in this scene and in the series as a whole: by making herself the ‘go between’ for Sherlock and John. They talk to each other through her now. The show is not subtle in calling this out as a bad thing, using the symbolism of devil horns:
We’ll see how negative this dynamic can get at the beginning of His Last Vow, when Sherlock and John are no longer talking to each other, only Mary: “Is it Sherlock Holmes you want? Because I’ve not seen him in ages.” // “It’s actually four pounds.” “Mary and I think seven.”
Let’s move on to Mary’s second identity, ‘The Bride’.
every single time it is alluded to that mary intended to kill sherlock vs sherlock saying “oh no man don’t worry she totally meant for me to live” because of reasons
1:
2:
3:
4:
Thank you for this. Lest we forget. If Sherlock had even FALLEN the wrong way he would have died.
September 26, 2016
Going out on a limb
I know we all most of us agree that in TBB Soo Lin is a Sherlock mirror. But has anyone taken a really hard close look at the story she tells about her life before?
SOO LIN: You saw the cipher. Then you know he is coming for me.
SHERLOCK: You’ve been clever to avoid him so far.
SOO LIN: I had to finish … to finish this work. It’s only a matter of time. I know he will find me.
SHERLOCK: Who is he? Have you met him before?
SOO LIN (nodding): When I was a girl, living back in China. I recognise his … ‘signature.’
SHERLOCK: The cipher.
SOO LIN: Only he would do this. Zhi Zhu.
JOHN: Zhi Zhu?
SHERLOCK: The Spider.
(Putting her right foot up on her opposite knee, Soo Lin unlaces her shoe and takes it off. On the underside of her heel is a black tattoo of a lotus flower inside a circle.)
SOO LIN: You know this mark?
SHERLOCK: Yes. It’s the mark of a Tong.
JOHN: Hmm?
SHERLOCK: Ancient crime syndicate based in China.
(John nods his understanding and turns back to Soo Lin.)
SOO LIN: Every foot soldier bears the mark; everyone who hauls for them.
JOHN: “Hauls”?
(She looks up at him. His eyes widen.)
JOHN: Y-you mean you were a smuggler?
(She lowers her gaze and puts her shoe back on.)
SOO LIN: I was fifteen. My parents were dead. I had no livelihood; no way of surviving day to day except to work for the bosses.
SHERLOCK: Who are they?
SOO LIN: They are called the Black Lotus. By the time I was sixteen, I was taking thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs across the border into Hong Kong. But I managed to leave that life behind me. I came to England.
(She smiles a little.)
SOO LIN: They gave me a job here. Everything was good; a new life.
SHERLOCK: Then he came looking for you.
SOO LIN: Yes.
(Upset, she swallows before continuing tearfully.)
SOO LIN: I had hoped after five years maybe they would have forgotten me, but they never really let you leave. A small community like ours – they are never very far away.
(She wipes tears from her face.)
SOO LIN: He came to my flat. He asked me to help him to track down something that was stolen.
JOHN: And you’ve no idea what it was?
SOO LIN: I refused to help.
JOHN (leaning forward): So you knew him well when you were living back in China?
(She nods.)
SOO LIN: Oh yes.
(She looks up at Sherlock.)
SOO LIN: He’s my brother.
(Elsewhere, the hands of what is presumably a woman wearing black nail varnish open a box and fold back the tissue paper covering the contents. The box contains sheets of black paper. The hands take out the top sheet and lay it on the table.)
SOO LIN: Two orphans. We had no choice. We could work for the Black Lotus, or starve on the streets like beggars.
(The hands have folded the sheet of paper a few times, pressing down to set the folds, and now open the sheet out flat again. They fold one of the corners up, then turn the paper around to start folding up the opposite corner.)
SOO LIN: My brother has become their puppet, in the power of the one they call Shan – the Black Lotus general.
(The hands continue folding the paper.)
SOO LIN: I turned my brother away. He said I had betrayed him. Next day I came to work and the cipher was waiting.
(The hands have nearly completed their work and the paper is now folded into an intricate shape.)
(In the museum, Sherlock lays the photographs on the table.)
SHERLOCK: Can you decipher these?
(Soo Lin leans forward and points to the mark beside Sir William’s portrait.)
SOO LIN: These are numbers.
SHERLOCK: Yes, I know.
SOO LIN (pointing to another photograph): Here: the line across the man’s eyes – it’s the Chinese number one.
SHERLOCK (pointing to the first photo): And this one is fifteen. But what’s the code?
SOO LIN: All the smugglers know it. It’s based upon a book ...
(Just then almost all the lights go out. Soo Lin looks up in dread. Sherlock straightens up and looks around sharply.)
SOO LIN (softly, her face full of terror): He’s here. Zhi Zhu. He has found me.
This sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?So, if Soo Lin’s ‘life story’ is a mirror for Mary’s, then who can we substitute for the Brother and Shan??? Who is she working for????
@tjlcisthenewsexy @isitandwonder @ebaeschnbliah @inevitably-johnlocked @sherlock-little-weed @stillgosherlocked @deducingbbcsherlock
I really think you’re onto something, and there’s a Mary layer in there. But this scene was already so complex, especially for me since I read an Irene layer in there, and now my brain is literally melting.
OMG @monikakrasnorada, this could really work. Perhaps we shouldn’t take characters as one-to-one mirrors for other characters, especially when looking at minor protagonists? Could their narrative function be to shed light on the main characters? Give us hints, clues…?
OK, Soo Lin’s brother is the Spider…
‘James Moriarty isn’t a man at all – he’s a spider…’ I’m not sure if Mary and the man we know as Moriarty are blood-relations but they still could have been in this together. The brides in the crypt were not related either but called Emilia Ricoletti their sister nonetheless.
But both Soo Lin and Zhi Zhu
were only puppets on a string
and have been working for someone else, someone influential and powerful, even called a General, which gives her an air of official authority. Who’s the equivalent to that in Sherlock’s world? His own brother Mycroft - which would be some kind of double mirroring for Soo Lin and Zhi Zhu.
In the end Shan get’s cought in her own web. She has failed and must succumb to the rules of her organisation. Does this foreshadow Mycroft’s fate as well?
I do like this. Soo Lin / Zhi Zhu (two orphans who got involved in a crime organization) = Mary / Jim Moriarty. Shan = Mycroft?
Just because Soo Lin was sympathetic doesn’t mean Mary has to be. After all, Soo Lin ran away from her life of crime and tended to teapots at a museum. Mary maybe too also tried to legitimately run away from a life of crime (that remains to be seen) yet she went after Magnussen and shot Sherlock. Not so sympathetic.
The telegram about her family at the wedding from CAM – could have been referring to the crime organization? Also the people who would ‘want to hurt Mary’.
I didn’t get the feeling Magnussen was close enough to Mary to be the ‘other orphan’, however you want to parse out the names. I got the feeling she was more just another potential blackmail resource to him (a ‘pressure point’ to get to Mycroft) rather than having a specific relationship with her. But I dunno.
Definitely something here though!
johnnlocked:
watsonsdick:
AU -...
The Lying (or Singing) Detective
Just an idea. There is a 1986 UK show with Michael Gambon and a 1993 US film remake with Robert Downey Jr.
The story is about a seriously ill detective lying in hospital and imagining wild stories in his mind. There are different time levels, mix-ups of real and fictitious characters and so on. Just one quote from Wikipedia: “The three worlds of the hospital, the noir thriller, and wartime England often merge in Marlow’s mind, resulting in a fourth layer, in which character interactions that would otherwise be impossible (e.g. fictional characters interacting with non-fictional characters) occur.”
So could S4E2 be a nod to Canon and the show/film?
@ebaeschnbliah, @isitandwonder, @the-7-percent-solution, @monikakrasnorada, @longsnowsmoon5, @the-seventh-stranger, @xistentialangst, @sherlock-little-weed
Oh, that sounds like a very interesting connection @stillgosherlocked . Twisting the word ’lying’ from ‘telling lies’ to ‘lying in bed’ would be right the thing for TPTB to do. Hiding things again in plain sight? Or behind the double meaning of words? Clever!
And regarding ’hiding’ things: I did a bit of reasurch last night about the word ‘thatch’. I wonder if this could be also a bit of a ‘twisted’ thing.
The origin of thatch: before 900; (v.) Middle English thacchen, variant (with a from thak > dial. thack) of thecchen, Old English theccan to cover, hide; cognate with Dutch dekken (see deck ), German decken, Old Norse thekja; (noun) Middle English thacche, variant (with ch from the v.) of thak (X)
German - decken: to cover up … also in the sense of hiding or guarding or not speaking about something. And with that the old question rises again - is it a bluff or a double bluff or a triple bluff? :)))
@isitandwonder @monikakrasnorada @tjlcisthenewsexy @the-7-percent-solution @the-seventh-stranger @longsnowsmoon5 @mollydobby @sherlock-little-weed
I just remembered Moffat and Gatiss talking about how they would like a Rathbone 1940s style remake for Sherlock at SDCC re: film noir…
The Singing Detective is one of my favourite plays ever written. I am therefore immediately on board with a Sherlock/Singing Detective cross over. In spite of the blurring of realities in TSD, we have many flashbacks to his childhood. The Forest of Dean where we probably inadvertently witnessed sex which disturbed him, taking a shit on his teachers desk… Strange things like this which give us clues on how to understand Marlow. Also Marlow is a notorious arse hole, rude, unfeeling and often quite cruel. At least this is what we are led to believe early on. As the story progresses and we learn more about his life and his personality, you kind of warm to him and start to feel sorry for him.
And! Of course… One of the best blurring of reality is when it becomes unclear whether a significant woman in Marlow’s life is a spy…
And all of this is taking place whilst he is in a hospital bed! I need to reread/rewatch it as it has been a few years, but there are definitely loads of parallels.
In fact Dennis Potter who wrote The Singing Detective wrote a whole load of excellent plays and I would hedge my bets that both Moffat and Gatiss are fans. There genuinely might be something huge to run with here.
@justanotherone16: And I just remembered the song they use in the film (not sure about the TV show): “How much is that doggy in the window?” that has a special meaning for Dark (aka Marlow). Redbeard, anyone?
Here is also quite an interesting article about the RDJ version: X. Quote: “The Singing Detective, Dan Dark (Robert Downey, Jr.) cannot escape his trap – not at first anyway – because the trap is essentially himself.”
Oh! Would love this use of the word lying! And @ebaeschnbliah, interesting! Thank you for the tag, @gosherlocked :)
This gets better and better!
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