Names Are Important: Introduction

heimishtheidealhusband:

Like, stupidly important. This show is a trashpile of metaphors, but some of them are more important – more central – than others. Way back in the day, I talked about primary evidence and secondary evidence, where we have metaphors that are the powerhouse of the subtextual narrative of the show, and the other stuff thrown in there more casually to back it up.

And names are a powerhouse. I’d even say the powerhouse.  You could strip everything else away, call everything else coincidence except for names and the murder/killing metaphors, and you would still have a fully fleshed out subtextual story arc. (The beautiful thing is that we don’t have to do that, but just the fact that we could says a lot.)

What I’m going to do is attempt to compile all the important narrative information about names into one series. I’ve talked about a lot of this before, as have others, but it’s always been thrown into other discussions and I think it deserves a centralized space. Over the course of the next several chapters, I’m going to look at names that show up repeatedly across the show, break down their metaphorical significance, and also talk about the narrative significance of “names” and “identity” as a more general concept and how these concepts might specifically tie in with the subtextual narrative arc in BBC Sherlock.