Nicht das schon wieder

[narcasse]

Rachel McAdams stars as Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have bested Holmes and who has maintained a tempestuous relationship with the detective.
- film summary from a National Express competition

No, just no. Really. Irene Adler threatens to ruin the King of Bohemia so that he can’t interfere with her marrying that man that she loves. She takes on the Bohemian state and Sherlock Holmes and wins to secure a safe future for herself and her husband.

I’m aware that there’s fanfiction where she has a relationship with Holmes and possibly even published fanfiction at that but this really is another nail in the coffin of just how bloody wrong this film is. Of course I’ll probably still watch it though possibly not in the cinema or I might accidentally murder someone in a fit of blind rage. It’s a shame really because Robert Downey, Jr. is a rather good actor and could probably have done a good job of a role featuring some Victorian action hero who wasn’t Sherlock Holmes.

I rather dislike when things I enjoy become mainstream fashionable in that cheap knockoff fashion where what’s served up isn’t anything like the real thing. Sadly it looks like budget Sherlock Holmes is going to be the next thing served up and ruined because anybody whose first point of contact with the stories is that film will come away with entirely the wrong idea. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen with the word ‘chai’ becoming fashionable amongst twenty-something idiots recently who have to tell you all about the fabulous chai they got from Starbucks as if Indian tea is anything new and people haven’t been drinking it for years in countries across the world long before the ‘trendy’ idiot twenty-something set deigned to notice it. Apparently tea in general has become fashionable too which is highly disheartening. First anime, then tea, now Sherlock Holmes. Will none of my interests remain un-bastardised? If they go for German opera next I may have to defenestrate something.

Comments

[levy.livejournal.com]

That's movie adaptation for you boy. If there's a female character, she has TO GET INTO THE HERO'S PANTS. Or at least try to, with UST for the masses.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

It’s not as if the heteronormative gender binary is under threat: there’s no need for this. The human population won’t die out if Hollywood doesn’t remind us that being straight is perfectly normal and that some people are just born that way.

I’m not even totally against romance in action films or games either. Sands of Time did it beautifully, Hitman managed to add in a romantic subplot in a way that didn’t destroy the plot and only added to the credibility of the main character’s code of honour, Farewell, My Concubine revolved around a love triangle, the romantic subplot in Kind Hearts & Coronets proved to be the villain’s undoing: it can all be done well but just not like this. Even the 1945 film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray made a romantic plot work at the end (which I don’t recall in the novel though it’s been a while since I’ve read it, admittedly).

[levy.livejournal.com]

...mh, I don't think it's strictly a matter of straight or not, rather, to give the deputed hero a love story no matter what.
to make him more complete... could be.. :(

First thing that popped into my mind reading this was Hellboy movie, in wich there is a love story between Hellboy and another important character of the support cast that, AFAIK from what a friend that actually read it told me, in his comic canon has something like a history with another male support character.
I'm sure there are other examples around..

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the male lead must always have a female love interest, you can’t leave it open to interpretation: he has to be a hot-blooded heterosexual. I wouldn’t even mind if no love interest were mentioned at all, in fact I’d prefer it that way but Hollywood just doesn’t like that sort of non-hegemony reinforcing archetype. Granted, Hollywood films do serve to reinforce the default norm anyway so I shouldn’t expect much from them but when you’ve grown up surrounded by images of people who are never anything like you then it tells you that you don’t fit, that you’re not capable of any of those damned heroic things that the cultural myth talks about because if you ever do see anybody like yourself they’re always the villain and that’s the best you can aspire to. It’s about defining what’s ‘acceptable’ and god help you if you don’t fit that mould because then your only media representations are either the bad guys or you just don’t exist. Of course the disingenuous argument that always comes up then asks why there aren’t straight pride parades to which the answer is because every fucking day is straight pride: that’s the hegemonic norm, everything reinforces it. And of course the minute you say that you’re ‘attacking’ straight people because they don’t have a fucking clue how much privilege they have and when something challenges that dominance they bitch about it because they’re so used to come at any discussion from a position of power where their argument with automatically trump anybody else’s due to said privilege. Then you get into the really, truly fucked up argument that a privileged person doesn’t have trouble identifying with x fictional character who is a different species so why should you want any media presentation which entirely ignores the fact that once they stop identifying with a hobbit or something they go back to a society that lauds them as the default norm anyway.

Then of course it can swing the other way where you get tokenism and bullshit films marketed at titillating straight women who think it’s oh so cute that there are gay people out there e.g. women who’ll state that they’re so progressive because they watched Brokeback Mountain. Well, fantastic, you watched a film featuring two actors that you evidently found attractive, wonderful. Oh, and you read yaoi? Well, that’s equality right there, isn’t it? God, I hate those people.

[levy.livejournal.com]

Are you in for a good laugh?
We actually had a Straight Day parade once, here in my church-domained, undercivilized country. It was againsty civil rights for homosexual couples, because giving that would ZOMG compromise the roots of our society. * *

I can see your point about 'gay' fiction, and I totally agree with that, it's even more irritating than the aforementioned hetero egemony, that might have not fully developed awareness as an excuse for its dumbness to reality

[blasphemiliar.livejournal.com]

*hammers nails up through the underside of desk*

*headdesk*

Unfortunately I have to agree with the above comment.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

See my above reply and Yahtzee’s all too perfect way of framing it (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/284-Silent-Hill-Homecoming). (There’s a Silent Hill: Homecoming review around that point, which is about two and a half minutes in, but it’s worth watching too.)

[madame-parker.livejournal.com]

It's pretty much been proven that Hollywood has a one track mind when it comes to female characters, it's made me swear off watching most new films the last few years. It's so beyond the thought of most people in Hollywood that a female character shouldn't exist solely to get into the pants of the main hero. I'm so tired of that crap.

I think the day Hollywood starts remaking Asian tv drama's is the day I start to weep non stop in anger.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Yahtzee’s has a perfect way of sumarising that point (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/284-Silent-Hill-Homecoming). (That’s a Silent Hill: Homecoming review but he makes his point at about two and a half minutes in.) I don’t understand it either: what’s wrong with a female character who isn’t after the hero? In fact why can’t they just leave the whole love interest thing out of storylines where it’s not needed? I don’t know if you’ve seen Surrogates but the film ending differs from the comic and that really does make all the difference because sometimes the fact that there isn’t a ‘happy ending’ is the whole point.

If they ever start making versions of Chinese or Korean dramas I really don’t want to know how they’ll handle the obligatory mother-in-law slapping by the daughter-in-law.

[madame-parker.livejournal.com]

You're a darling for pointing me towards that competition, I'll be sure to enter. :)

I haven't seen Surrogates, the trailer put me off giving the film a try. I've noticed how so many people make a huge fuss when there isn't a happy ending in a movie, they start saying how brave it is for a movie to go in that direction, going against the norm is something Hollywood doesn't do anymore, that's why so many films are mostly one note.

I think if I ever watch a film where the female lead isn't just a love interest, I'll be too overjoyed to notice if the film is crap. I'm so tired of the whole love interest plot, it took three seasons for Doctor Who to win me over and that's because they finely gave him a companion who wasn't in love with him, who was with him for the sheer joy of it and because it made her a better person. And then, everything that she'd learned and seen was taken away from her, man, was I pissed off. These days tv and movies have to work so much harder to win me over.