J A N E T I L I T Y

Not long ago, Nicholas Meyer – producer, director, screenwriter, and author of the Sherlockian pastiches The Seven Percent Solution, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer– wrote a very thought-provoking article titled “Whither Holmes” for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The article addressed the dilemma of adapting a classical work or character – specifically, Sherlock Holmes – for what he called the “postliterate” audience. Mind you, I don’t think that Meyer meant “illiterate”, but rather an audience whose predominant (or only) exposure to a classical work comes by way of a derivative work. Meyer observes that: “In my years as a filmmaker in Hollywood, I’ve attended numerous meetings devoted to making Sherlock Holmes movies; invariably none of the producers in the room have ever actually read Doyle.”

How far does parsley sink into butter on a hot day?

 In an earlier blog, “Do Whatever You Like With Him” (http://janetility.com/?p=648), I had suggested that a bona fide adaptation (or pastiche, sequel, illustration) is one that correctly  identifies the source of Holmes’s timeless appeal, era and environment notwithstanding. You can discard the trappings – the dressing gowns, the gasogene, the bullet-pocked wall  – but if you want to ensure that the audience, particularly the “postliterate” are getting the genuine Sherlock, you can’t reduce the essence of what makes Holmes Holmes to quirks and conduct derived from something other than Conan Doyle.

Watson, don’t you think the peas tasted a bit off?

 Which calls to mind the 19^thcentury “Butter Wars.” In the 1880s, the growing “butter substitute” (oleomargarine) industry came up against the dairy industry. In some cases, the consumer opted for the substitute because it was cheaper and tasted okay, but in other cases, an imitation product was passed off as butter to “the great unobservant public.” By 1886, a number of “margarine acts” attempted to eliminate any possibility that imitation butter might be mistaken for, or labeled as, the legitimate product. In New Jersey, these laws stipulated that “No oleomargarine, butterine or suine, or any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of natural butter or cheese, or any substance that is rendered, made, manufactured or compounded out of animal or vegetable or mineral fat or oil not the product of pure milk or cream from pure milk shall be sold…except when contained in tubs, pails, boxes, firkins, vessels or other packages that are marked or labeled as follows: … on the outside thereof and midway between the top and bottom thereof a stripe or band at least three inches wide and extending completely around said vessel or package and said stripe or band shall be painted with black paint [and] have legibly branded and burnt in ..in two places as nearly opposite each other as possible the words ‘oleomargarine’, ‘butterine’, ‘suine’ or ‘imitation butter’.

I believe I detected the merest trace of caul fat.

 This may sound excessive until you learn that only a year or two earlier, half of what was sold as butter was reported to be an imitation product made from tinted caul fat derived from hogs. An ingenuous consumer might conclude that because the substance that they were spreading on their toast was pale yellow or lightly salted or tasty or oleaginous, or was labeled in a manner evoked butter (butterine) or was even combined with some butter, it was the real deal.

How far does parsley sink into margarine on a hot day?

 Unfortunately, there is little to prevent Meyer’s postliterate producers from passing off any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of Sherlock Holmes as the authentic character, and no requirement that the end product be labeled “imitation Sherlock”. The result is that the postliterate viewer may never appreciate how radically different Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – the “chivalrous opponent” with his “cat-like love of personal cleanliness”, his fine balance of instinct with impartiality, and his embodiment of a great heart as well as a great brain – is from a spurious Holmes who presents as an ill-groomed, petty, socially inept vulgarian hopelessly afflicted with tachyphrasia.

 The success of any adulterated product, whether it is dairy or Doyle, will always be determined by what the consumer can be persuaded to swallow. There may be nothing at all wrong with suilline caul fat, unless you’re attempting to persuade people that it’s butter.

And don’t call me “Shirley.”

In glancing back at January’s focus on a few screen renderings of Sherlock Holmes adventures, I see that half of my subjects – The Blue Carbuncle and The Hound of the Baskervilles – addressed films adapted from Conan Doyle stories, and half – Murder By Decree and A Case of Evil – were original material incorporating the character of Sherlock Holmes.

Rathbone

Sherlock Holmes, as the subject of adaptations – pastiches, sequels, mash-ups, modernizations and assorted character cadging – has only one rival: Jane Austen, generally; Pride and Prejudice, particularly and Mr. Darcy, specifically. If Jane Austen derivative works outnumber Conan Doyle’s, it is only because some of Doyle’s property is still protected by copyright (in the US) and Austen’s work and characters are in the public domain. To an eager aspirant, “public domain” translates as “open season”; or, as Conan Doyle rather snappishly replied to William Gillette, when Gillette wanted to know if he might marry off Holmes in a stage adaptation, “You may marry him or murder him or do whatever you like with him.”

Williamson

Yet, given license to marry or murder or convert to vampires or transport to the twenty-first century, the nagging consideration is not, “What can we do?”, but “What should we do?” What license or should you take with a work or a character that was not of your own invention?

Cushing, as Holmes

In Edgar W. Smith’s cogent essay on the character of Sherlock Holmes- “The Implicit Holmes” – he asks, “What is it that we love in Sherlock Holmes?” and I think it’s that “what is it we love” that ought to define the limits of license. After all, haven’t Conan Doyle and Jane Austen – or, more specifically, Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Darcy – been singled out because they represent qualities that have a timeless appeal? And if that is true, should not special care be taken to retain those fundamental qualities even when the superficial trappings change?

Cushing, as Darcy

The first part of Smith’s essay defends the requisite of keeping Holmes in his era and place. Some may disagree; however, there was a social canon that shaped Holmes’s character (and Darcy’s) that risks appearing quaint, or alien or artificial when he is taken out of his time. Holmes and Darcy were gentlemen when “gentleman” described caste as well as conduct; when they are transplanted, their conduct may become irrelevant in the context of a modern setting, or is coarsened to adapt to a modern age. Even the Canon suggests this. In its most cringeworthy tale – The Adventure of the Three Gables – Holmes’s language and conduct are frequently appalling. So much so, that some scholars reject Conan Doyle’s authorship. The truth is more to the point – more to Smith’s point: The Three Gables was published in the late 1920s, when detective fiction inclined toward snappy dialogue and conditional morality. (Holmes could subscribe to conditional justice, but never conditional morality). In succumbing to the influence of a more modern style, Doyle’s Three Gables Sherlock is barely recognizable as the gentleman who was once prepared to commit an act that is “morally justifiable though technically criminal” because “a gentleman should not lay much stress upon [personal risk] when a lady is in most desperate need of his help”. Likewise, Darcy’s revulsion at the prospect of acquiring relations whose “condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own”, loses its credibility if he is taken out of his era, as does the extent of his chivalry when he lowers himself to “meet, to frequently meet, reason with, persuade and finally bribe” Wickham.

D'Arcy, as Holmes

Cumberbatch, as Holmes

For both characters, a re-imagining that cannot retain the fundamental blend of “Galahad and Socrates” (Smith’s phrase) risks losing what we love, however entertaining the substitute may be.