Are you a Cumberbitch?

Alexandra Sokoloff



If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking
about.   If you don’t, you’ve somehow been missing out on the biggest
thing since Jesus.  I mean, you know, since the Beatles.



So (in honor of the last episode of Season 2 this week) I'd like to talk today about the new Sherlock Holmes.  Those of you who know can just scream and
faint in the background, there, while I fill the others in.  And for the
hopelessly straight men (you know who you are) you’re just going to have
to endure a little erotomania.



Once in a while there is in film or television or music what has become known in technology as a Black Swan. 
Something that defies all expectations at the same time meeting all
the expectations you never actually knew you had.  And that's a good
enough definition for the Masterpiece Mystery! TV series, Sherlock.























The series is brilliant – a redefining of Sherlock Holmes exactly as
he would present himself in modern London, complete with e mailing,
texting, GPS—and blogging by his faithful Boswell, John Watson, a
veteran doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan, just as the original
Watson was (I mean, when something is right, it’s right, right?).  And
Sherlock is as he is depicted, an unfettered and unrepentant
autistic-slash-high-functioning sociopath.



And a rock god.



An unfettered and unrepentant autistic-slash-high-functioning sociopath of a rock god.



The tagline for the show is “Smart is the new sexy.” And that pretty
much sums it up.  This is not just a modern imagining of one of the -
or is it THE? - world’s most popular and enduring detectives.  It’s a
sexual fantasy for smart people.  And may I say it’s about bloody time
we got one?



This is the unlikely catnip at the heart of this show:



 



A truly incredibly actor with the unlikely name of Benedict
Cumberbatch (who is now banking upwards of hundreds of thousands of
dollars, or at least tens of thousands, for every time he was ever
called Cumberbitch as a kid. It’s revenge of the geeks in spades).



You really need to see the real-time reactions of women, girls, men,
boys, dogs, horses to this actor to understand the physiological
phenomenon going on here.  There are fan groups that call themselves
Cumberbitches.  There are cat fights over him on Facebook (think
Dionysus, Maenads...) Mention his name or the word Sherlock to a girl
(or boy) of fifteen or a woman (or man) of fify and you will get the
same helpless, delirious giggling.  That’s actually part of the appeal,
the group experience, the knowing that you are not the only one
dissolving into goo over this man and this show. And if you are not a
fan, you might as well move to Antarctica, because you are going to be
seeing Cumberbatch in every movie that Hollywood can cram him into for
the next fifty years (fortunately, I think he’s beyond smart enough to
choose his roles and limit his exposure.)



I admit that I become flushed and breathless when he launches into
one of his twenty-pages-in-a-minute and-a-half-monologues about who ate
what pastry at which Tube stop after whichever assignation with
whatever coworker that is a trademark of the show.  But my actual
fantasies about Cumberbatch are not exactly sexual; they’re more about
going back to school in lighting design just to be able to properly
light the man’s face.  These are the cheekbones that launched a
thousand ships. He is literally golden-eyed.  And I say “man”, but one
of the guilty pleasures of the show is that this is a
thirty-five-year-old man who looks and acts like the world’s most
precocious fourteen-year-old; you feel as if you’re committing a felony
just watching it.



One of the delicious ironies of the show is that all of this extreme
sexual response from TV fans all over the world is occurring over a
character who is not only massively socially incompetent but patently
asexual.   The character is explicitly referred to as a virgin, although
the gay subtext is – not subtextual at all. This is a love story. But
still, clearly unconsummated. (Or is it? It's your fantasy, after
all...)



All this sexual confusion I think is one of the delights of the
show.  It is polymorphous perversity in the flesh. Well, in the flesh on
screen. The creators even make Doyle’s Irene Adler character a
dominatrix (not the world’s most convincing one, in my opinion, but
anything further I could say on the subject will only get me in trouble
so I’ll refrain) who is just as fritzed out by Sherlock the virgin as
he is by her.



But there's more to it than the sex, I swear. This is a truly perfect
melding of an actor and a role.  Cumberbatch is a star, period - I
loved him as Stephen Hawking in Hawking, he conveyed not just
brilliance but a heartbreaking sweetness and innocence as the young
Hawking. But Sherlock is a career-defining role. It reminds me a bit of
Cary Grant, before and after Hitchcock got hold of him. Grant was
clearly one fine hunk of actor even in the fluffy romantic roles he did
early in his career, but it was the darkness and edge and ambiguity
that Hitchcock saw and encouraged (or should I say demanded?) in him
that made him an iconic, archetypal movie star. (Take a look at
Cumberbatch in Masterpiece's pre-Sherlock miniseries The Last Enemy.
There are hints of Sherlock, there, in the irritated monologue the
character finally explodes into on national television, the kind of
monologue that makes you say THERE.  Do THAT. Much more of THAT. 
Please forget the love plot and just let this guy talk, and visibly
think, on screen.)



Clearly creator/writers (of Dr. Who fame) Steven Moffat and Mark
Gatiss (who also wonderfully portrays Sherlock’s fussy and hovering
older brother Mycroft), have that masterful Hitchcockian understanding
of the material and their star. They saw it, and they gave him what he
needed.  It's filmmaking collaboration in its most perfected state, the
stuff that dreams (and smart people's sexual fantasies) are made on.



The writing is stellar, wicked and joyous and - I'll say it again,
unrepentant; I’ve had whole years of my life that haven’t given me as
much pleasure as the scene in which Sherlock compulsively corrects a
convict’s grammar.



And yes, there is a Team Watson, and I don’t at all mean to give
Martin Freeman short shrift; he is the perfect, earthy, touchingly
maternal counterpart to Sherlock (talk about catnip, I so LOVE that
adenoidal British voice), and I’m also thrilled to have Rupert Graves as
Detective Inspector Lestrade.  (Graves is a former punk rocker I’ve adored since he made his sizzling acting debut as little brother Freddy
in Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala’s swoony Room with a View).  I
wasn’t quite as thrilled with Andrew Scott as little-boy-psychopath
Moriarty in the first season, but he grew on me in season two; there was
just a certain way he bared his teeth that was endearing enough to
make me stop hating him for the two seconds required to commit to an
arch villain.



You’ll notice I’m not expounding on the plot lines (I’m too busy
designing lights over here....).  I confess, it’s been a long time since
I’ve read anything in the Sherlock canon, but the episodes are surprisingly true to the plot lines of the Sherlock stories I
remember from my childhood. The episodes are not strict
adaptations, but there are plenty of clever-to-brilliant references and
homages for those in the know. The plots work just fine, and there are
always wonderful setpieces (the Chinese circus setting in Episode 2(?)
is truly dazzling), but it’s the character interaction, chemistry, and
the dialogue that provide most of the breathtaking suspense. And to be
perfectly honest, I’d have to watch every episode again to be able to
focus on the plots because I simply DON'T CARE; I am way too busy being
dazzled by - other things (and remember, I TEACH structure,  I’m
telling you, this is how bad it is!).



As for social and cultural relevance, Sherlock makes Asperger’s both
normal and attractive, which in an age driven by minds like the late Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg makes the whole show not just
topical but inevitable. There is something uncannily true about the
series.  We KNOW this Sherlock; he is the natural, timeless, entirely
present-tense incarnation of an immortal character.



He is US.



So— those of you who don’t know Sherlock like I know Sherlock, go
treat yourself to a little Holmes crack, available on Netflix and Amazon
and iTunes.   I dare you not to get hooked.



And for all you Cumberbitches, pull up a chair, grab the riding crop,
slap on a couple of nicotine patches and let’s dish.  What is it about
this show?  What does it do for you?



And yes, let's hear about other perfect portrayals of classic characters, too.



- Alex



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Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award (horror) and Anthony Award (mystery) for Best First Novel.









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