An update from my Italian grandparents -- two people who gave me kindness when I needed it most.
Two years ago, I sat in the Ristorante La Giostra in Florence, Italy. Apart from the single candles that sat on every table, the only light in the room was an omniscient golden glow that descended from Christmas lights strung along the walls and wrapped itself around everyone and everything in the dining room. I sat alone.
Florence was everything I wanted in a city. It was beautiful, diverse and busy--but not so busy that I felt overwhelmed. There was balance, just like the proportions of the Renaissance statues to be found all over the city.
Sitting alone in this luxurious restaurant, the walls near its door covered in snapshots of the celebrities who had previously dined there, it struck me how out of balance I was in this perfectly-balanced city. I wasn't sharing this experience with anyone. Not the city, not the sights, not this meal of goat chops and parmesan-crusted zucchini. It was just me, in my khaki pants and blue shirt. I usually took delight in the freedom of traveling alone. But that night, surrounded by candles and laughter, served by a head waiter descended from the Hapsburg line, a beautiful young woman of my own age dining with her mother at the next table, I was struck by the ridiculousness of my being in La Giostra without a companion. For a brief moment, I saw myself walking with that young woman, laughing and discussing art and history and dreams as we passed the Ponte Vecchio on a walk along the Arno. But my reverie was just a reverie, and I was snapped back to life with the arrival of the secondo.
I enjoyed the food. I paid my bill, complimented the staff and emerged from the restaurant feeling melancholy. I had done what I wanted to do: I was in Italy. I had gotten what I wanted in Florence: a meal at the best restaurant in town. Every day was a learning experience as I moved in and out of museums, churches and palaces. But it was a quiet trip. I would go most of each day without talking much. And that night, it became a fact to me that travel was not always best when the traveler was alone with his thoughts. I might be a modern Hemingway in my own mind, sitting on riverbanks and hilltops inscribing a leather-bound notebook with thoughts and impressions, but to whose benefit was my facade of quiet mystery? I shook my head as I walked and vowed never to eat at La Giostra again unless it was a shared experience.
The melancholy of that night abated, but that moment of clarity was like a bite of Eden's apple--there was no undoing it.
Two weeks later, I was on a train. I had left the Hotel Bonconte that morning singing beneath the weight of my backpack and camera bag because I was on my way to Venice. Venice was the city of dreams. La Bella Venezia, floating like a ghost city in the early morning mists of the Adriatic. The city of Marco Polo, and my final destination in Europe.
I boarded the train with my customary haste, barely clambering into a trailing car before the final bell sounded and the doors hissed shut. I walked the length of the car and settled into the first compartment I found which was unoccupied. It was a weekday, and it took a while to find a space with no commuters reading novels or talking on their phones on the way to work.
It was a pleasant morning outside. I had a pleasant view of the Adriatic shoreline for the first leg of the trip. The rocking of the train and the serene blue of the water relaxed me, and I settled into the well-worn seat to write in my journal. I would enjoy Venice greatly, but I was still alone, and the knowledge that I would be in a guest house with internet that evening gave me the comforting knowledge that I would be able to video chat with my family.
But, in the space of a moment, I wasn't alone any more.
The train had just stopped in Faenza. Some people got aboard, others got off. Two of the people who had just boarded, an older couple, smiled at me through the clear plastic compartment door and entered. I smiled back and they sat down. The old man was bright-eyed, sanguine and cheerful. His wife was missing teeth and bore an inscrutably mischievous expression that hinted both a quiet demeanor and the threat of sharp wit.
The man leaned forward in his seat. His English was serviceable, if spoken with a concentrated effort. "You American?"
"Yes," I said.
He smiled broadly and leaned back in his seat. "Ah! And what do you think of Mr. Obama?"
And thus I met Renato.
Renato and his wife, Lina, lived in Faenza, and he was more than happy to hear my benign opinion of President Obama, and to eagerly tell me about himself and his family in return, as well as to give me a crash course in some basic Italian to prove to me that it was not a hard language to learn. A retired train conductor, Renato and his wife were traveling the train on his lifetime pass, which he told me was one of the perks of twenty years of unbroken work in the industry. They were on the way to Bologna to eat lunch at the Bologna Centrale station cafe, apparently a favorite spot among train personnel for a well-prepared and inexpensive lunch. Would I like to eat with them?
Renato asked me this question in a way that seemed impossibly friendly for someone he had just met. I was instantly wary of some surreptitious scheme that would see me jumped by a confederate at the station and relieved of my cash, camera and passport. But I had an hour to kill before my connecting train to Venice would arrive, and Italian trains on this side of the country were usually late by as much as an hour, so I agreed.
Lunch turned out to be delightful. For the first time, as an American traveling abroad, I was made to feel like a novelty instead of a commodity, and it was both pleasant and humorous. Entering the restaurant, Renato jovially called out to people he knew, greeting them in Italian before gesturing to me and saying "Americano!" I felt like a bullfrog brought home by a young boy with a proud herald of "look what I found!"
We ate and talked, and I asked Renato and Lina to sign an empty page in my journal, as a way of remembering them. Renato went the extra mile by adding their address below. The two of them, with Renato doing most of the talking, were a sweet relief to me on my quiet trip across Italy. After three weeks of entering and exiting places of interest with no more impact than the ghost of an enemy of the Medici, I found myself with a pair of surrogate Italian grandparents; two older companions who were eager to give of their time and share a meal with a traveler who was much lonelier than even he realized at the time. "Hemingway-esque sojourn" be damned, I had finally established a relationship, and it was grand.
After our meal of lasagna and salad, Renato graciously escorted me to the platform for my next train. He consulted every timetable twice to make sure that I made I was on the right line to go on to Venice. I bade him and Lina goodbye a little after noon as they boarded their own train back to Faenza, and I sat on a bench on the platform to continue my journey.
The journal in which Renato and Lina’s names and address were written went on with me to Venice, two trips to India and a college tour of great American cities from Charleston to New York. I never wrote to them. I always meant to. In fact, the memory of them only grew fonder in my mind as I grew older and saw what a blessing our time was together. When swapping travel stories with people, I would always smile and reference my “Italian grandparents in Faenza.” But work, college and several moves always distracted me from writing to them, or anyone else.
Two years later, this year, I heard from my father that there had been a damaging earthquake near Bologna. My first thought was of Renato and Lina. By this time, my own grandparents had all passed away after long illnesses, and I was and am extremely sensitive to the plight of older people under adverse conditions. The idea that they might have been injured in an earthquake sickened me, and I felt guilty for not having ever written to them.
That night, I opened a page of stationary and wrote a letter to them. I pulled my travel journal off of its revered place on my bookshelf and thumbed through it until I found their address, still barely legible in Renato’s unique handwriting. I copied it down as best as I could and posted it the following day. I was not overly hopeful for a reply.
Today, at a moment that I did not expect it at all, I received the following envelope in the mail:
I couldn’t believe it. The letter had reached them. I opened it with trepidation, not sure what I was worried about but worried nonetheless. A smile so big it hurt crossed my face, and I felt a surge of emotion in my throat and behind my eyes as I read the letter’s contents.
This happened several hours ago, and I am still smiling as a write about it. Renato and Lina were okay. Furthermore, they remembered me and still wanted to show me hospitality. What a rare, beautiful thing that spirit is.
It’s easy to write about travel as a marketable subject of interest and quantify human contact into an abstraction. The depth or number of local relationships forged during a trip are used by the pretentious as badges of the nebulously defined “accomplishment” of being a “traveler” instead of being the dreaded “tourist.”
I have no time to engage in these arguments. At the end of the day, a few things are true as facts and the rest is interpretation. And the facts in this case are: I was a young man traveling alone, and I met a wonderful couple that remembered me as long as two years later. I have friends in Italy. They call me Stefano. And it means more than they know.
We could all take a cue from Renato and Lina's unhindered hospitality.
"Touch" Revisited: I nailed it.
Earlier in the week, I wrote that the FOX television drama Touch was an "intriguing show."
I quote myself:
In every episode of Touch, Martin Bohm is challenged on his ability to be a "good father" to Jake. His success or failure as a father is questioned because very few people understand what Jake really is, and therefore focus entirely on the wrong thing. Martin's antagonists continually make the faulty assumption that Jake is simply a disabled child with a talent for math, basically equating him with autistic children who excel at music. They further assume that Martin cannot possibly be a good father to Jake, because his responsibilities as a widowed breadwinner preclude him from "providing a suitable environment" for a boy the system has marked off simply as having "special needs." Such naysayers are repeatedly and frustratingly incorrect, because they never even consider Jake's true identity.
Jake Bohm is not a child; he is a fully-formed prophet in a child's body.
Touch is about a man realizing that he is the steward of a prophet.
Jumping ahead...
Furthermore, Jake does not require "therapy;" his intolerance of physical touch is not as quantifiable as an autistic "sensory defensiveness." Touch never shies away from a spiritual reference or metaphor, and in this spirit Jake's refusal to be touched is an echo of the Biblical Nazarites.
And...
Call it a divine plan, call it the will of the universe, Jake passes on glimpses of some ultimate plan to a fresh group of people every week, helping them understand that everything happens for a reason. Just as the Nazarites sought a closer connection to God by not allowing alcohol to cloud their minds, Jake's intensely focused mind cannot by distracted by touch. His manifestation as a child is inconsequential to his ultimate purpose, which is to provide hope to individuals.
I write most of my posts a week in advance. I also watch most of my television shows on Hulu a week after they broadcast. My post about Touch was one such post; drafted a week before it was posted. I had no idea that I would be vindicated the evening I wrote the post.
I literally just watched the most recent episode of Touch on Hulu; episode nine, "Music of the Spheres." I almost had a coronary upon hearing a character speculate that Jake is "one of the 36 righteous ones" who exist to "provide hope" to the rest of the world. Furthermore, Martin ends the episode by accepting that Jake might not want to talk at all, and he should stop forcing the issue. Don't believe me? Read the recap.
And read my post--written long before the episode aired and published before I saw it.
If anyone from the FOX writing staff happens to read this, I am currently open for employment.
Internal Links:
"Touch" and the raising of a prophet.
External Links:
Nazarites - JewishEncyclopedia
Touch "Music of the Spheres" Recap - TVRage
"Touch" and the raising of a prophet.
Touch is an intriguing television show.
If you haven't seen it yet, Touch is about a father, Martin Bohm (Keifer Sutherland) with a son, Jake (David Mazouz), who possesses the unique ability to perceive numeric patterns behind everyday events. Jake doesn't speak, and cannot abide physical touch.
The treatment is sentimental, but the themes and the implications of Touch's evolving story, are much deeper than than just a melodrama.
Touch explores humanity and its desire to know and be confidant in its purpose. Through its character's connection to numerology, be it a cognitive ability or a supernatural one, Touch dissects the human experience to expose the core elements which tie us together as a species. The show is actually very refreshing, because instead of going out of its way to be a "gritty drama," it tries to give its audience hope.
As human beings, we want our lives to have purpose. If something happens that we do not (or cannot) understand, we desire to know that even things which are out of our control are not random, cosmic hiccups, but part of a plan. And even if there is no divine plan, can't there at least be a larger purpose? This enduring question, what is the point?, is confronted in different ways by different individuals. Some people surrender to confusion and drown in sorrow or self pity. Others are more constructive, seeking their answers in science and the tangible comfort of empirical evidence. Those with the capacity to place trust in the unseen turn to faith for their answers.
Most television networks restrict their programming to increasingly desperate reinterpretations of legal, medical and police procedurals. But, now and again, a show comes along that attempts something different. However, in just its inaugural season, Touch is investigating the meaning of life itself, exploring themes of hope, cause and effect, chaos theory and the consequences of small actions. It is going so far as to attempt synthesis the answers provided by both faith and science to the deep, unsettling questions surrounding human purpose. I am hard-pressed to imagine any other show, past or present, which would open an episode with a child's voice reciting an opening monologue like this one:
Numbers are constant. Until they’re not. Our inability to influence outcome is the great equalizer. Makes the world fair. Computers generate random numbers in an attempt to glean meaning out of probability. Endless numerical sequences lacking any pattern. But during a cataclysmic global event — Tsunami, earthquake, the attacks of 9/11— these random numbers suddenly stop being random. As our collective consciousness synchronizes, so do the numbers. Science can’t explain the phenomenon, but religion does. It’s called prayer. A collective request sent up in unison. A shared hope. Numbers are constant, until they’re not.
During cataclysmic global events, our collective consciousness synchronizes. So do the numeric sequences created by random number generators. Science can”t explain the phenomenon, but religion does. It’s called prayer. A collective request, sent up in unison. A shared hope, fear relieved, a life spared. Numbers are constant--until they’re not. In times of tragedy, times of collective joy--in these brief moments, it is only this shared emotional experience that makes the world seem less random.
Maybe it’s coincidence. And maybe it’s the answer to our prayers.
- Touch Season 1, Episode 7 - "Noosphere Rising"
In every episode of Touch, Martin Bohm is challenged on his ability to be a "good father" to Jake. His success or failure as a father is questioned because very few people understand what Jake really is, and therefore focus entirely on the wrong thing. Martin's antagonists continually make the faulty assumption that Jake is simply a disabled child with a talent for math, basically equating him with autistic children who excel at music. They further assume that Martin cannot possibly be a good father to Jake, because his responsibilities as a widowed breadwinner preclude him from "providing a suitable environment" for a boy the system has marked off simply as having "special needs." Such naysayers are repeatedly and frustratingly incorrect, because they never even consider Jake's true identity.
Jake Bohm is not a child; he is a fully-formed prophet in a child's body.
Touch is about a man realizing that he is the steward of a prophet.
Martin's primary role in relation to Jake is not to provide a "caring, nurturing environment." In their unique relationship, Jake sets the rules. The pilot episode's entire point was that Martin had to accept Jake's rules if he wanted anything like relationship with him. Jake doesn't "need" Martin in the conventional sense of a son needing father, but Martin's desire to feel connected to his boy helps Jake expedite the delivery of his prophecies.
Martin was responsible for helping to bring Jake into the world, but he has no control over Jake's divine purpose. His conventional duties as a father end at provision. As long as Martin fulfills his voluntary role as mediator between Jake and those who are affected by his numbers, Jake will maintain a relationship with him. But at the end of the day, it is not because Martin is Jake's father, or even special in any other sense; Martin is merely one of few people on the planet who has accepted Jake's authority and is willing to listen.
Furthermore, Jake does not require "therapy;" his intolerance of physical touch is not as quantifiable as an autistic "sensory defensiveness." Touch never shies away from a spiritual reference or metaphor, and in this spirit Jake's refusal to be touched is an echo of the Biblical Nazarites.
In historic Judaism, Nazarites were consecrated individuals, devoted to purity of mind and body. Their identity in modern times has been carried on to a certain extent in the Rastafari practices of uncut hair and a strict, Levitical diet. Many of the famous spokespeople of the Bible, such as Samson, Samuel and John and the Baptist, were Nazarites. Their personal lives were marked by complete abstinence from grapes, grape derivatives and all forms of alcohol. Publicly, they could be identified through their hair, which was to be left uncut for the duration of their vows, which could be as short as thirty days or as long as a lifetime. They were also to have no contact with corpses.
Why do I see a correlation between Nazarites and Jake Bohm? Both crave purity in order to fulfill an ultimate purpose.
Jake exists as a strictly cerebral being. Call it a divine plan, call it the will of the universe, Jake passes on glimpses of some ultimate plan to a fresh group of people every week, helping them understand that everything happens for a reason. Just as the Nazarites sought a closer connection to God by not allowing alcohol to cloud their minds, Jake's intensely focused mind cannot by distracted by touch. His manifestation as a child is inconsequential to his ultimate purpose, which is to provide hope to individuals.
The idea of a prophet requiring purity shouldn't be so unfamiliar. Even James Bond dealt with the subject in Live and Let Die. The character Solitaire loses her ability to read tarot cards after Bond takes her virginity. Again, purity of one form or another is necessary for a prophet to perform his or her function.
Historically and in entertainment, prophets always separate themselves from the rest of the world. It is not a petty declaration of superiority, nor is it an expression of some disability of which second sight is a coincidental side effect. Purity is necessary to a prophet's fulfillment of purpose. This purity requires some kind of separation.
For Jake Bohm, this separation is physical touch. Jake looks like a child, but he is not a child. His abilities simply manifested themselves at an inconvenient time. Jake is a prophet, and a prophet's identity is not constrained by age or appearance. Jake knows his purpose, and as long as he is given the space to work, his purpose manifests itself.
There are so many possibilities for a character like this. There is an unimaginable level of depth to which the show's writers could explore Jake's identity in the context of history, religion and mythology. I wonder if the writers are even aware of this themselves, or if they will take the easy way out and and pause at the lower common denominators of father/son sentimentality and easy explanations.
External Links:
Touch, "Noosphere Rising" - IMDB
Nazarites - JewishEncyclopedia
Live and Let Die - Wikipedia
Solitaire (James Bond Character) - Wikipedia
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Redux
There is nothing quite like a Victorian adventure story. Victorian adventure novels have a unique flavor; detached, yet oddly engaging. Often written in the first person as diary entries or a journalist's notes, they offer a unique perspective on adventure and action in a style that is now coming back into vogue in books like The Hunger Games and World War Z, which seem to be reviving the art of first-person narrative.
In the world of Victorian literature, one name stands apart from the rest. You can talk about H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left the greatest literary legacy of his era in the creation of Sherlock Holmes. I could almost stop with that, because just the name "Sherlock Holmes" carries enough weight and individual associations that my thoughts on the subject are, honestly, entirely superfluous.
Much like I enjoy Doctor Who without feeling the need to identify as a "Whovian," the adventures of Sherlock Holmes occupy a special place in my heart, but I don't call myself a "Sherlockian" or a "Baker Street Irregular." I enjoy good books and good films, and Doyle's stories happen to be some of the best one can ask for in either medium. I have enjoyed the stories since before I was old enough to fully appreciate them. The annotated editions are on the shelf next to me as I write this piece, and through the added maps, background information and photographs, the books inspired me to take a sincere interest in the actual history of London and the life of the man who wrote the stories.
The impact of the character of Sherlock Holmes is indicative of the brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Harlan Ellison, the great science fiction writer and endlessly entertaining raconteur, went so far as to make the following statement in an interview:
"You want to be smart?...Read the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. You read the entire canon--there aren't that many--you read the entire canon and you will be smarter than you ever need to be. Because, every one of them is based on the idea of deductive logic. Keep your eyes open and be alert. That's what all good writing says: wake up and pay attention!"
Ellison was right. If you read a Sherlock Holmes story online or on a device, make the text as small as possible and look at it statistically. Most of the stories are made up of questions. Holmes asks questions until the interviewees are out of answers. When he has asked enough questions, he sifts through all of the pertinent facts in his mind and often deduces a correct conclusion without leaving his apartment. Solving a crime was, for him, an intellectual exercises, and one in which he engaged largely for selfish reasons. This fact was made clear in a passage from The Sign of the Four that is most often included in adaptations for its perfect summation of his character.
“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
Holmes is incredibly nuanced and interesting as an individual, but beyond the literary skill required to create good characters, Doyle had to create a believable genius. Holmes couldn't satisfy readers or project brilliance by simply ascribing titles and backstories to the people he observed; he had to be able to explain how he knew what he knew. And that is where Doyle was truly brilliant.
Doyle was able to take simple elements of daily life, from splatters of mud on clothing to a dog's tooth marks on a walking stick and extrapolate correlations and plausible causes from them in his stories. Bear in mind, he wrote for his audience. The distance of time between the original publication and the present day can lull modern readers into a casual acceptance of "that's just what it says," but that is a cheap form of acceptance! Doyle made Holmes impressive because he made perfect sense to his readers in 1887. His stories were authentic because they referred to tools, professions, crimes, international political climates, pets, clothing and customs with which his readers were intimately familiar. And he did it so well that his stories were extremely popular in their day. If they had been outlandish statements that didn't ring true with his readers, such popularity would not have been the case.
Nevertheless, Holmes is still a fictional character. Detractors from the stories will likely remind the reader that many of Holmes deductions never reference any unspoken margin of error, and were furthermore dependent on the strictly defined social customs and not-yet-disproven pseudosciences of the Victorian age. This is exemplified in the following passage from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, in which Holmes draws conclusions from trace clues found inside a hat. His deductions only work in an era in which phrenology is accepted as science and women were expected to maintain their husbands' accoutrements, but Doyle's level of detail is nonetheless staggering:
“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.”
“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”
“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”
“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”
“But his wife—you said that she had ceased to love him.”
“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection.”
“But he might be a bachelor.”
“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg.”
“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”
“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?”
“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”
Waste of energy, indeed. But impressive, for both Doyle and Holmes.
As the development of entertainment technology increased by leaps and bounds very soon after the introduction of Sherlock Holmes into popular literature, it is no surprise that Sherlock Holmes started appearing onscreen as early as 1900. It is hard to imagine any literary figure who has been adapted for the screen more times than Sherlock Holmes. At present, Wikipedia lists seventy-three men who have played Holmes on the stage, large and small screens, and radio.
The two actors who have most recently brought Holmes back into the public consciousness, Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, have reintroduced Holmes to the world in unique ways. The interpretations of Doyle's stories have been incredibly unique when compared to previous adaptations, but also surprisingly respectful to Doyle in their respective steampunk and modern-day treatments of the stories.
Looking at it objectively, Guy Ritchie's first film adaptation of Holmes, starring Downey Jr., is much closer to the original material than most critics give it credit for being. In Sherlock Holmes, which I saw with my family on Christmas Day, 2009, draws much of its dialogue verbatim from Doyle's stories. Of course, the story itself is a new narrative for Holmes, one with manifold problems, but a fun story nonetheless. Where it succeeded most, however, was in its interpretation of Holmes himself.
In the stories, Holmes is constantly referred to by others as having skills and abilities which he used when necessary. But, Doyle was careful to structure his stories so that Holmes is never actually seen by Watson when engaged to the fullest extent of his abilities. Holmes is shown to the readers via Watson as action in repose. We only see him when his mind is doing the work, but throughout the short stories and novels, Holmes talked of by others as a superb boxer, a chemist in the tradition of mad scientists, and an accomplished collegiate theatre actor who used his craft professionally to completely assumed new identities while in disguise.
The screenplay of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes diverged from its source material by showing Holmes fighting and assimilating his disguises. Whereas Watson's point of view, often catching nothing more than the aftermath of a fight or hearing the story of a journey in disguise from Holmes after the fact, is the reader's only glimpse of Holmes in the text, Ritchie's camera follows Holmes when Watson is absent.
Through this shift in viewpoint, we are treated to the Holmes that actually did exist in the text; the difference lies in which side of him we see. Sadly, last year's sequel Game of Shadows, while having moments of brilliance, was very inferior to its predecessor as a film as well as an adaptation what makes Sherlock Holmes the character that he is. When Sherlock Holmes gets too far away from London, he is no longer Holmes, and the most recent film inadvertently turned him into James Bond. I will say, however, that the casting of Jared Harris as Moriarty is a decision for which I will never cease applauding.
Most recently, the BBC has brought an entirely new perspective to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, delivered through the mind of writer and show runner Steven Moffat. More and more, Steven Moffat is styling himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of screenwriting. He possesses a mind with a seemingly endless wellspring of creativity, and a propensity to turn viewers on their ears with plot twists, overlapping timelines and character deaths. In the space of five years, he created and ran the underrated Jekyll, took over the writing of Doctor Who's two most staggeringly complex seasons to date, co-wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin, only to leave Tintin early to be the guiding hand behind Sherlock.
True to form, Moffat wasted no time in making Sherlock thoroughly unique. He accomplished this by doing something that no one else had done before: he placed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in modern-day London. Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. had created a very modern interpretation of Holmes, but they retained him in his original, Victorian environs; the overall effect being one of confinement for the character's personality. By contrast, Moffat's reasons for total commitment to a modern setting were staggeringly obvious:
“We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.” [Link]
"Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes - and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters." [Link]
As previously stated, staggeringly obvious. These reasons are also in keeping with the spirit of Sherlock Holmes as a character. As the Victorian Holmes was always on the cutting edge of the era's science, publishing articles in print journals on the subject of science in deduction, Moffat's Holmes does exactly the same thing, albeit with newer science and the internet. Moffat even went so far as to placate hardcore fans with some long-awaited catharsis, allowing Sherlock to poke fun at the enduring image of himself as constantly wearing a deerstalker cap. It could even be said that Moffat "lucked out" with the recent British involvement in the War on Terror in Afghanistan, which allowed him to retain even more of John Watson's original character as a wounded veteran fresh from the Afghani desert.
Sherlock Holmes, as Moffat indicated, is an individual who transcends the limitations of a specific time or place. Furthermore, the level of respect which Moffat has shown to Doyle has been deep. Obscure lines of dialogue and camera setups which perfectly mimic Sidney Paget's Strand illustrations make appearances in the BBC series, and are a never-ending source of delight for attentive fans. To Moffat's further credit, he has kept the show confined to London for two seasons, with the exception of the obligatory Baskerville episode, apparently feeling no need superfluously bloat the supposed importance of a case by giving it global or supernatural import.
The idea of Holmes as an eternally modern man is also why I can defend the Guy Ritchie adaptations, albeit to a lesser extent. Culture evolves. As Stephen Fry said, "Evolution is all about restless and continuous change, mutation and variation." The more time that passes between the present day and that moment in 1886 when Doyle first put pen to paper and wrote Holmes into existence in A Study in Scarlet, the more necessary it becomes to update the adaptations to appeal to the very different culture that might be seeing it for the first time.
Provided that the Doyle estate protects Sir Arthur's stories from being tampered with or expanded by new writers (such as the recent continuation of the late Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels under the authorship of Eric von Lustbader), so that future generations may continue to experience the stories as they were written, not just as stories, but as a reflection of Victorian culture, and a stellar example of the period's style of writing.
The Ritchie/Downey films have reached the widest audience thus far in recent years, and they have their flaws. However, they retain enough of the character's essence to make people want to read the books. I am personally unprepared to admit that the BBC's Sherlock has any flaws, but I will concede that they are unconventional in their unabashed commitment to Holmes as a modern man.
Where too many literary fans of Doyle and Holmes make a mistake, (and this holds equally true for fans of all book franchises which have been adapted for the screen), is in confusing the quality of a film or television show with the fidelity of the adaptation from its source. Simply being different from the source material does not automatically make a film "bad" in any objective sense of screenwriting or production quality.
The root cause of many adaptations being popularly labeled as "bad," is that good books have the tendency to become the equivalent of good friends to devoted readers, and any deviation from what fans already know and love consequently feels like a very personal slight. The more popular the book, the better the odds are that subjective fan opinions will color popular opinion far more than objective reviews which weigh the adaptation on its own merit.
However, there is one point on which I believe that all fans of Doyle's stories can agree. If either of the two (soon to be three) franchises currently celebrating the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle inspire their audiences to seek out the source material and discover the brilliance of Doyle's work on their own, then the adaptations, no matter how disagreeable to some fans, have succeeded. And I think we can all be happy about that.