While the reviews of the latest Holmes movie didn’t make me go see it, quite the opposite in fact, even though I like Downey as an actor, I don’t care for his rendition of one of the world’s favourite character and one of my personal role models, it did get me thinking.
I looked at the way he portrayed Holmes, and then I looked back at this series that was aired on The History Channel and the old one I used to watch on DD back in the 80s. I feel that even this change in the depiction of a fictional character is a sign of our social zeitgeist. In the 80s series, Holmes was the way I pictured him, intelligent, aloof, with a supercilious air about him, a trifle egoistic perhaps, but eminently logical and methodical almost to the point of inhumanity. Watson was a little dense perhaps, but loyal, true and always in acceptance of Holmes’ intellectual superiority. The THC series showed Holmes as more petulant and vain, more emotional, more impatient and almost brash. Watson was shown as more intrusive, more irreverent, almost jealous and more eager to score a point against Holmes. I guess the director wanted to equalize the relationship between the two, and he even showed Holmes being proven wrong once or twice with Watson displaying a smug smile. The latest Holmes, of course, is a muscle bound hunk who uses his fists as often as his brains, quite the opposite of Doyles’ hero.
I guess that is the key word, hero. Our society has over time become more and more disbelieving of heroes. The Supermen, as it were. People who transcended their circumstances, even in fiction, are no longer looked upon with admiration and as examples worthy of emulation. No, they must be brought down to our level for us to relate to them. So all heroes have perforce to become less heroic as it were, to stay popular. So Spock today shows more emotion in Star Trek than Nimoy ever did, Spiderman has to be helped by the common public in the third edition, even Superman is rushed to the hospital. James Bond gets broken, hurt, and bleeds. We don’t want supermen anymore. We don’t want to believe that anything better than us can exist, that we can be better than we are today.