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While this “common picture” (Doyle & Crowder, 2010, p. 10) cultivates familiarity and generates a viewer endearment towards Holmes and Watson, this stereotype is merely the surface of a contradictory individual. According to Watson, in The Musgrave Ritual (1893/2001e), Holmes, “in his method of thought . . . was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men” (Doyle, 2001e, p. 358). Watson often found Holmes intolerable: His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London. (Doyle, 1913/2005i, p. 1341) This once un-stereotypical and unruly depiction of Holmes has recently, after Ritchie‟s Sherlock Holmes (2009) and the BBC‟s Sherlock (2010), become his new and eccentric stereotype. Again, this stereotype is born of the original canon, but it is unbalanced and misleading, aimed solely at general audience members and early fans. Original product: Short story cultivated impression of the stereotype Doyle‟s short stories encouraged my further interest in the portrayal of The Great Detective. For it appears that Holmes is seldom portrayed, in a popular context, as he truly was, an uncompromising and passionate detective: Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard, black lines. While his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downwards, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him, that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or at the most only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply. (Doyle, 2001d, 84) This is the Sherlock Holmes seldom seen on screen; in Ritchie‟s adaptation Holmes‟s mental agility was translated into physical action and the character‟s cerebral prowess 48
was lost. Therefore, Doyle‟s original intention, the serialisation of a character and in turn his readership, cultivated in me a dissatisfaction in nearly all supplemental Holmes products, whether they were official or not. Original product: Short story ideologies Doyle‟s ideological use of friendship and loyalty were perhaps the most reoccurring and accessible themes in the short stories. Seen consistently throughout in Holmes‟s small compliments to Watson, such as A Scandal in Bohemia’s (1891/2001b) classic line: “I am lost without my Boswell” (Doyle, 2001b, p. 7) to those rare occasions, Watson‟s bullet wound in The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (1924/2005m) when circumstance reveals the depth of their friendship: It was worth a wound – it was worth many wounds – to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. (pp. 1598-1599) While Doyle cultivated Holmes and Watson‟s ideological friendship and loyalty, he simultaneously cultivated ours, the readers‟. So much so that when the chronological tale ends in His Last Bow (1917/2005j), with Holmes asking Watson to “stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk that we shall ever have” (Doyle, 1917/2005j, p. 1442), only to exclaim: “Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age” (Doyle, 1917/2005j, p. 1443). You wholeheartedly share the sentiment, and their friendship becomes the ideological “fixed point” of your own Holmes fandom; all other mediums and products either succeed or fail in capturing this theme. While the themes of friendship and loyalty strongly influence the reader and cultivate similar responses over the course of the canon, the contradiction remains. Holmes disliked Watson‟s stories and thought very little of his readers. Holmes‟s social detachment, constructed by Doyle to create an intriguing distance between the Detective and his admirers, succeeds as it oddly cultivates a greater sense of loyalty within his readers. Throughout the texts, there is a consistent pattern of Holmes, during the height 49
Page 1 and 2:
The Case Study of Sherlock Holmes (
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents Attestation of Au
Page 5 and 6: List of Figures Figure 1. Abercromb
Page 7 and 8: Attestation of Authorship I hereby
Page 9 and 10: Abstract This study investigates a
Page 11 and 12: Abercrombie and Longhurst‟s audie
Page 13 and 14: and Morgan‟s (1990) and Shanahan
Page 15 and 16: two and turn them into action” (G
Page 17 and 18: Jenkins (1992), however, would disa
Page 19 and 20: that to be a secondary phase, a res
Page 21 and 22: they designed their continuum, were
Page 23 and 24: economistic theory, alongside Aberc
Page 25 and 26: informs us that we take our communi
Page 27 and 28: Methodology This chapter explains t
Page 29 and 30: albeit in Sherlock Holmes for Dummi
Page 31 and 32: Figure 2. Original model from Maste
Page 33 and 34: and like many, have a stereotypical
Page 35 and 36: Drawing from Shanahan and Morgan (1
Page 37 and 38: Model My research advocates the the
Page 39 and 40: Creative component Critiques Regard
Page 41 and 42: ethnographic position is made on tw
Page 43 and 44: Table 2. Ethnographic order of prod
Page 45 and 46: Good Doctor to placate any qualms t
Page 47 and 48: preconception was derived from its
Page 49 and 50: and Watson in defeating Lord Blackw
Page 51 and 52: The common picture of Holmes is of
Page 53: “embrace of fiction” (p. 606) a
Page 57 and 58: this was the only Holmes novel the
Page 59 and 60: 9). While the tale and its quick pu
Page 61 and 62: his feet with a cry of pleasure.
Page 63 and 64: Cultivation analysis: Official seco
Page 65 and 66: their flaws and their frailties, in
Page 67 and 68: may suggest, this film is not a dir
Page 69 and 70: Holmes in the role of supporting ac
Page 71 and 72: have endeavoured to intertwine and
Page 73 and 74: Official secondary products: The Pr
Page 75 and 76: 245). Redmond‟s (2009) statement,
Page 77 and 78: “shocking affair of the Dutch ste
Page 79 and 80: cited in Jenkins, 1992, p. 32). In
Page 81 and 82: The fan Sandvoss (2005) believes th
Page 83 and 84: emotional, or cognitive); they tres
Page 85 and 86: knowledgeable fans [who] may . . .
Page 87 and 88: negative connotation, for it no lon
Page 89 and 90: Figure 6, the consumer-to-fan culti
Page 91 and 92: Creative Component Introduction Fan
Page 93 and 94: esponsible, Lord Blackwood, played
Page 95 and 96: short and are exposed as fraudulent
Page 97 and 98: Conclusion We take our communicatio
Page 99 and 100: References Abercrombie, N., & Longh
Page 101 and 102: Davies, D. S. (2009). The further a
Page 103 and 104: Doyle, A. C. (2005k). The case-book
Page 105 and 106:
Jenkins, H. (2007). Afterword: The
Page 107 and 108:
Signorielli, N., & Morgan, M. (1990
Page 109 and 110:
Bibliography Ackroyd, P. (2001). In
Page 111:
Miller, P. V. (1994). Made-to-order
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