My thoughts on "Sherlock Holmes"

Or, "The Fansquee vs. Asexiness Battle Within."

This weekend I saw the Sherlock Holmes movie for the second (and hopefully not the last) time, and I loved it beyond measure, though not quite as much as I love the original books. One of the things that was highly debated prior to the release of Sherlock Holmes was how faithful it would be to canon, given the amount of fighting, scruffiness, and otherwise non-deerstalker-like qualities that were apparent in the trailer. Chief among these things was the highly promoted sexual tension between Holmes and Irene Adler.

Traditionally, Holmes has been viewed as more or less asexual by fans of the books, making him one of the very few characters most people with no knowledge of the ace community would commonly refer to as asexual. The plausible options for Holmes' sexuality in book canon, in my opinion, are the following:

a) Holmes was asexual

b) Holmes was a picky heterosexual

c) Holmes was in a more-than-platonic relationship with Watson

d) More than one of the above

I tend to lean towards agreeing that Holmes was mostly asexual. However, I am also a Holmes/Watson slash fan and I love Irene Adler. And as much as I loved the movie, I felt like it pretty much removed option A. Arguably it is not impossible that movie!Holmes could still be gray-asexual, but he did not really strike me as such. Personally, movie!Holmes appeared to my eyes canonically bisexual, as did Watson, but like the books, things are left mostly open to individual interpretation.

To be honest, however, I'm just getting very sick of everybody constantly arguing about Holmes' sexual orientation in a way that makes me want to put on a funny face and ask "Y SO SRS?" Frankly, if you were to read just the text for the movie and compare it to the books, there is very little difference with regards to the portrayal of Holmes' sexuality. Actors, of course, can vastly change this, and in this case, the actors seem to have chosen to play the characters in a rather undertone-laden, handsy way. It's still not much different from the books, where Holmes is constantly seizing Watson's hand and whispering with his lips to Watson's ear. A little bit of innuendo (with a lot of flame-fanning by RDJ) has overtaken public discourse and morphed from "touches of the homoerotic" to "OMG HOLMES IS GHEY PANIC IN THE STREETS."

Actually, it's particularly amusing to me that the worry about Irene/Holmes so highlighted in the trailer has basically disappeared now that the movie is out, leaving this to become a mostly asexual vs. gay debate. It's true that asexuals have virtually no representation in the media, and the situation is only slightly better for gay folks. We need to take a breath. Militant slashers need to realize that asexual people do exist and stop claiming that it's humanly impossible. Purists (I'm looking at you, Andrea Plunket) and asexuals need to realize that the movie isn't saying "Holmes is this way, absolutely without a doubt, nana-nana-boo-boo!"

And we can all stand together and recite the MST3K Mantra: "It's just a show, I should really just relax."