sherlockedfanshani

[sherlockedfanshani]

Johnlock: Two years on

I posted the following on a Sherlock fan forum in August 2016. I’ve just found it again and revisited it. It thought it might be interesting to reflect on how things have panned out in the Sherlock fandom: 

OK if you can bear with me, this is a long one! I wanted to set down some thoughts on this whole situation, which - frankly - I think has become a bit of a mess. Whether it can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction at this stage I think is unlikely, but who knows?! As far as I can see it, there are two entrenched sides now: TJLC shippers on one, TPTB on the other, and other fans - both non-Johnlockers and Johnlockers who don’t want or don’t expect their ship to become canon - caught somewhere in the middle. This is just my personal interpretation. I realise others will see things very differently so please accept that my intention is only to try and set things out in a non-inflammatory way. I will set my cards on the table from the start. I don’t think it is or has ever been Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss’ intention for Sherlock and John to enter into a romantic or a sexual relationship in their version of this story. I take at face value what they have said about addressing the fact that, in the 21st century, two close male friends living together would make some people question whether their relationship was more than platonic. And that, combined with the fact that both Moffat & Gatiss’ careers began in comedy and sitcoms, the way they have explored this in ‘Sherlock’ has mostly been through humour. That humour, incidentally, is never at the expense of gay people or gay relationships. If anything it’s a gentle mockery of any characters (Mrs Hudson, Angelo, the innkeepers in THOB) who make erroneous assumptions. In fact, humour is derived from the notion that homosexuality is so unremarkable these days. Therefore characters automatically jump to the conclusion that what Sherlock and John are gay, simply because such a close male friendship is more unusual! Do I think the “gay jokes” are always successful? Not entirely. Even Gatiss is on record as having said maybe they overdid them. However, I don’t think for a moment that they ever expected any section of their audience to interpret these occasional moments in each episode as hints or subtext that Sherlock and John would actually get together as a couple. So what happened way back in 2010? The show airs and becomes a bigger hit than Moffat & Gatiss could ever have imagined. At some stage it becomes clear to them that the show is attracting a very devoted collection of predominantly young and predominantly female fans. And via social media interaction, the creators become aware that for this fanbase, the largest part of the appeal of the show is the relationship between John and Sherlock. I’ve no idea if they’d heard of slash fiction and shipping before it became such a phenomenon in the Sherlock fandom, but presumably they became aware pretty rapidly. In the early days, the cast and crew responded in different ways whenever the fourth wall was broken and they were confronted with the Johnlock-related stories, photo manips and artwork that the fandom was producing. Initially they seemed amused and even played along. However, their responses to some of the more explicit, NSFW stuff that was shoved in their faces - either by fans or by journalists such as Caitlin Moran or Graham Norton - was less genial, and you got the definite sense that they weren’t entirely comfortable. The image of these fans that was being presented then was that they were hysterical, teenage, heterosexual girls: unable or unwilling to have physical, real-world relationships of their own, and fantasising about two men getting together for their titillation in much the same cliched way that straight men fantasise over lesbians. (Note: I’m not saying this was the reality - just the perception which was promoted all the time and which presumably TPTB also inherited.) So their responses began to shift. The creators have always said that fans are absolutely at liberty to write or create whatever they like. To my knowledge they have stood by that. No legal action of any kind has ever been threatened against any of the Sherlock fanbase for anything they have written, drawn or photoshopped. They have even expressed admiration for some of the artwork. However, they definitely took a step back and cooled on this stuff. Over time, both Gatiss and Moffat’s attitude towards and relationship with online fanbases has definitely suffered. They are fans themselves as they frequently remind us. Massive fans. And although there was no ‘Sherlock’ when they were younger and growing up, there was of course the other big TV show that has shaped their careers: ‘Doctor Who’. Remember, they are from a different generation. When they were kids, teenagers, even young men, the fan experience was totally different and almost entirely passive. You couldn’t post your opinions on a massive global forum, there was practically no way to contact other fans outside your immediate geographic locality, and there was no way of contacting the people who made the series, or at least certainly no way of guaranteeing they could see what you wrote or elicit a reply from them. Maybe this means that they haven’t adapted to the way modern fandom works. Maybe it means that as middle-aged men, they expect their fanbases to be more respectful and more passive, and ultimately to accept what they are given or, alternatively, exercise the only other option: stop watching and walk away. So what do they experience in this brave new world? Steven Moffat takes over the show-running job on ‘Doctor Who’, and has a colossal amount of vitriol flung at him by its fanbase. So much so that he decides to quit twitter altogether. He’s also routinely accused of misogyny, to the point where he is forced to give interviews rebutting the notion. I’m not going to get into whether or not the claims have any validity, I’m just trying to make the case for why he he may appear prickly or thin-skinned when it comes to criticism in general. Fan interaction also complicates matters just because the vocabulary that fans use is different. Young fans tweet “u lil shit” to Mark Gatiss in the way they would to their friends, and this is unsurprisingly not interpreted in the way it is intended. Offence is caused, people are blocked, and more barriers are erected between TPTB and the people who love and are inspired by their work. At some point, attitudes within fandom began to shift. Rather than just shipping two characters whose relationship nobody ever believed would become canon, many of the online/tumblr fanbase began to believe that Johnlock could and should do so. The notion took hold that if Gatiss were solely in charge of the show, this would indeed happen, and it was only Moffat - the nasty heterosexual - who was getting in the way. Gatiss was tweeted countless times to this effect. Only recently, someone on tumblr discovered an old League of Gentlemen sketch where Gatiss plays a gay character whose relationship (and its subsequent break-up) is fetishised and patronised by an overbearing straight woman called Tish. Whilst this sketch is problematic and can certainly be viewed as being misogynistic on some level, I don’t think it’s stretching credulity to speculate that ‘Tish’ is probably based on a real-life person and that Gatiss was indulging in some therapy by yelling at her on stage night after night. Did Gatiss connect this person with the Johnlock shippers? Did it seem to him that he was now having his professional career diminished by a bunch of pubescent teenage girls with a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch who counted him amongst their number “shipping Johnlock”? It also presumptuously placed him in the position of junior partner to his straight colleague Moffat, banning him from writing what he really wants. Another patronising assumption. This is total speculation, but I wonder if John’s vehement “I am NOT GAY!” to Mrs Hudson in the Gatiss-penned “The Empty Hearse” was provoked by all the online speculation directed at Gatiss via his twitter feed. Was this intended as the ultimate response - to shut down the Johnlock debate once and for all? Ironically, of course, it had the opposite effect. It was interpreted that Mrs Hudson was the ultimate Johnlock shipper, and she of course could see the fact staring in her face that John and Sherlock were simply made for each other! Then we come to Mumbai in 2014. And Gatiss - in a departure from the creators’ habitually evasive and jokey means of answering questions about forthcoming plot points - embarks on a lengthy and heartfelt explanation/justification when he is questioned about Johnlock. I’ve watched this video more than once and I can’t interpret his speech as anything other than sincere. And this is also why I think Gatiss and Moffat’s reactions to whenever Johnlock is raised are becoming more irritable, more frustrated and with none of the playfulness they exhibit everywhere else. Gatiss must be aware of the accusations of “queerbaiting”. They have appeared on his twitter feed, apart from anything else. And just as Moffat feels hypersensitive to accusations of misogyny, Gatiss must surely feel the same way about being accused of effectively betraying his community and having internalised homophobia. He tries to set the record state but what happens? He still isn’t believed. Of course, a big part of this is a problem entirely of Moffat and Gatiss’ making. When you spend the bulk of interviews smugly declaring that you lie to protect future plot points, you can’t then be surprised when your fans don’t then believe you about other things: no matter how impassioned or frustrated you might sound. They really have made a rod for their own backs. The With An Accent journalist detected a difference in tone and attitude to the Johnlock denials compared to other obfuscations about plot, but if you’re not in the room, AND it’s not something you want to hear, why would you believe them? Johnlockers have varying degrees of expectation of their ship becoming canon, ranging from those who want it to remain strictly in their own heads and never be actualised on the show, via those who think it would be nice but is unlikely, through to those who desperately want it to be but remain unsure. And then we have TJLC. TJLC is a conspiracy in the truest sense of the word. Every piece of data is viewed through the prism of an utter conviction that not only should Johnlock happen, it will. Costume choices, set designs, drinks, lighting, everything is presented as evidence of confirmation of Johnlock, and some of it in the most convoluted way, with no acknowledgment that there could be any other possible interpretation for what appears on screen. A coincidentally commissioned survey into LGB representation is cited as conclusive proof, as well as a quote from Gatiss from an interview years ago that the way to introduce more LGBT representation is “softly, softly”, so as not to frighten the horses, so that everyone just sees it as mundane, everyday and normal. Ironically, if the conspiracy is true, and Johnlock is ultimately going to be the ‘big reveal’, that would be precisely the opposite approach to what Gatiss describes. It would make gay representation into a sensational shock twist, just like Mary’s reveal as the assassin or Jim from IT being Moriarty. That’s not treating LGBT issues with the respect they deserve in my eyes, and maybe that’s what Moffat is getting at when he describes that approach as ‘trivialising’. The TJLCers express the certainty that such a shock reveal would shake the foundations of society to its core, and it would be such a landmark, water cooler moment, that TV and gay representation, and indeed society itself, would never be the same again. Even if I remotely believed Johnlock were on the cards, I actually think the reverse would happen. The show would be universally derided as having ‘jumped the shark’. Not because its viewers are homophobic or resistant to the idea of gay couples, just because it would genuinely come out of nowhere for them. It would be perceived as pandering to a tiny minority of its fanbase - that is for those few of the general audience who are even aware that this is what some of the fans expect from the show. And for the vast majority of the audience it would come completely out of the blue and be utterly confusing. After all, in their eyes, at no point in the show, have John or Sherlock ever exhibited any kind of sexual attraction to another man. And this is another problem, and I’m sad to say, feeds into the sense of entitlement which some fans do exhibit. ‘Sherlock’ is a massive, mainstream, worldwide hit show. It is very easy to forget that in the little bubble of tumblr where you’re speaking to a self-selected group of people who all feel the same way and all agree with you. But the online fanbase is a tiny minority of the people who watch the show. Threats to ‘desert it’ and expect that to hold any weight with the creators really are meaningless. It’s not a niche, cult show where a fan can expect to stamp her feet and automatically get her wish. To put it bluntly, when your worldwide viewership is in the hundreds of millions, if a few thousand storm off because their ship is not actualised, it really makes no difference. What really makes me sad is that I can’t see any way that this is not going to end horribly for some people. I don’t think Gatiss and Moffat realise that - whatever it may have been to begin with - the fanbase now, or at least the ultra-ardent TJLC part of the fanbase, contains a number of young people who identify as LGBTQIA. For these young people - again predominantly women but also with a number of trans, non-binary and gender queer members - they feel their sexuality, their gender and indeed their whole identity has been helped and in some cases shaped by ‘Sherlock’: specifically by their conviction that Johnlock will be realised in the show. Watching the youtube video TJLCExplained Episode 25 “Why it matters” gives a glimpse into the passion and the desperate certainty these people have. It grieves me to see these bright, passionate, articulate and intelligent young people ploughing their energies into this conspiracy. They’re politically aware: educated in and fired up by gender politics and sexual awareness. So why waste all that energy and passion on two white, middle-class, middle-aged fictional men who - if the conspiracy is correct - are so far into the closet they have been unable to express their true feelings emotionally or sexually for many years to the one person they have shared a home with in all that time? I wish Gatiss and Moffat could see these inspired yet vulnerable people. I wonder what they would think. Would they be gratified that their show has had such a profound and positive effect on their fans? Or would they be sad or bewildered that these young people’s convictions have foundations built on sand? I’m not sure how or when it will end. Of the TJLCers who were fully signed up theorists before last week’s interview dropped, I have observed a couple of reactions. A few of them seem to have now been convinced that it isn’t going to happen and have already expressed disappointment and anger that they were duped or queerbaited. Presumably if they do feel so betrayed, this marks the end of their relationship with the show. However, most of the fan responses I have seen on tumblr have assimilated the new data as ‘yet more lies’ and rejected it, along with anything else that does not fit the conspiracy, whilst at the same time reserving some anger at the way Moffat and Gatiss spoke in order to protect their great ‘lie’. So what happens in five months’ time when Series 4 airs and - as I fully expect - Johnlock doesn’t happen? Will there be an explosion of rage and bitterness which will make last week’s little flare-up look minor in comparison? Or will the conspiracy continue on the basis that Series 5 is the ultimate destination? Or the special after that? Or the one after that? Until sufficient time elapses and everyone moves on? Only time will tell. It just makes me sad that fandom - which should be a positive, happy place - and which, when everything works, means friendships are made and creativity flourishes - can and has become such a toxic environment for both fans and creators. I’m sorry this has been so long and I apologise if I have offended anyone with either what I said or the way I said it. I guess I wanted to lay out my position - to clarify it in my own mind if nothing else!