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Case of Evil and a Case of Disagreement . . .

This week saw two stimulants to the Sherlockian of enthusiasm, for better or worse: a new Holmes movie and the general readership of the latest editorial in The Baker Street Journal. Both featured somewhat radical views on Sherlockian subjects, and I found myself falling on the conservative side in one case and the liberal side on the other.

Steve Rothman, editor of The Baker Street Journal, implemented a policy of not using the Jay Finley Christ abbreviations for the Holmes stories in that publication, then proceeded to introduce this change with a rather inflammatory editorial denouncing the four-letter codes.

Christ’s simple four-letter codes have been a part of Sherlockian scholarship and The Baker Street Journal since their original proposal in 1947, and after fifty-five years, are as ingrained in most of us the original stories themselves. When Rothman’s editorial started getting mentioned on the Hounds of the Internet list, people generally didn’t seem happy about the thought of giving up the abbreviations, and with good reason. While Rothman seemed to primarily be addressing contributors to the Journal, he also seemed to be seeing this change in the Journal’s policy as the forerunner to a general ending of use of the Christ abbreviations.

Okay, now here's a personal bit, and I hope no one gets too offended, as often happens when I express such thoughts. Whenever opinions disagreeing with the policies of The Baker Street Journal or the Baker Street Irregulars come up, the defenders of our core institutions often use the phrase "The BSJ/BSI can do what they want, " and in this case, we saw it once more. I really hate that argument, and I'll tell you why. The Journal and the Irregulars have traditionally been the core of the American Sherlockian world. To say "they can do what they want" implies a distance from the rest of the Sherlockian world, an arms-length autonomy where a kinship close as blood should exist. And when discussing a policy moving away from a mainstay Sherlockian tradition, this sense of distance from "regular Sherlockians" only increases with the "can do what they want" line.

On the other side of the Holmes front, USA presented the movie Case of Evil for the first time this Friday night. And hooooo-boy, is this a different take on Sherlock Holmes.

A youngish Sherlock Holmes sword-fights Professor Moriarty on the streets of London and obtains banner headlines "SHERLOCK HOLMES KILLS PROFESSOR MORIARTY" when he wins the duel to the death (and he clips out the headline, ignoring the article, for his scrapbook, it seems) . . . and that’s just for starters. Eventually we get to such treats as a Baker Street striptease (great for the researcher wondering about ladies undergarments in Holmes’s time) and a Sherlockian three-way sexual adventure. WOW!

While a Sherlockian’s first tendency might be to cry, "This is not our Sherlock!" I found that my reaction, at first, was quite the opposite: "Hoorah, something other than another lame attempt to film The Hound of the Baskervilles!"

Among younger Sherlockians, there are a number of comc book fans, and I suspect those Sherlockians could find these drastic revisions more acceptable than some of their fellows. With continuity issues limiting the stories they could tell about their long-running superheroes, comic creators turned to a concept alternately known as "What If . . .?" and "Elseworlds." In stories under these banners, writers and artists could redefine classic heroes like Superman or Batman, telling stories where their characters and casts were drastically different than the ones we were used to – tales of alternate realities, where the classic myths could be retold freely, unencumbered by current continuity of the characters main storylines.

Case of Evil is such a complete and utter redefinition of Sherlock Holmes that it can only be viewed as an alternate reality tale of Holmes, something to stand or fall on its own merits. Sherlock Holmes isn’t a rigidly defined set of facts and events. Sherlock Holmes is a character, a personality, and any story that can convey the feeling of that personality and character can do nothing but aid Holmes’s popularity overall.

Does Case of Evil capture Holmes? Well, it certainly seems to capture one general public perception of Holmes since the 1970s . . . Holmes as a drug addict. The cause is a bit different in this tale, but the effect is the same as when Nicholas Meyer pulled the trick in the 70s: it takes something away from a man who once seemed a pinnacle of human intellect.

Is the future of Sherlock Holmes to be the detective symbolized by the deerstalker, the curved pipe, and the syringe? The intellectual ever battling his own drug addiction?

While some Holmes movies are just bad movies, Case of Evil is a somewhat frightening movie in what it might be showing us of Holmes’s future.

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver