misterjmasters:

So to this point I’ve only rambled about this but I felt it was a complicated enough issue to full on state my point of view on what’s going on here.

First of all, I am a fan of BBC’s Sherlock.  And I can appreciate the fact that no matter how innovative CBS thinks they’re being, they’re trying to feed off the success of another country’s endeavors by using ideas they did not come up with and seem to have no shame for.  A modern Sherlock Holmes?  What a novel idea they didn’t come up with.

However, Hollywood has been stealing from BBC for years and actually has, for the most part, paid them for their time.  It just seems to me in a modern culture like ours, we could simply import these shows and ideas instead of rehauling them and dumbing them down for American audiences.

Dumbing things down for people makes them dumb.  It’s not that hard to understand.

Still, that was more of a pet peeve than any real trial or tribulation.  I’m sure Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat are laughing all the way to the bank at CBS’s sure-to-fail attempts as they cash in their multiple pounds for the success of BBC’s Sherlock.  No one’s being hurt but CBS at this point.

Then we heard our first few tidbits about the series and I admit, I’ve been kind of turning circles in the emotional range of how to feel about it.

Lucy Liu announced to play Watson.  Watson a girl?

The literature fanatic in me rejected this idea outright.  I’m somewhat of a fan of sticking to the canon and I admit, it seemed bizarre upon first taste.

However, the literature buff was only allowed his rage (the literature buff inside me is male, a mid-aged scholarly British man to be exact) before the feminist in me shut him down.

Females in iconic roles are good.  Taiwanese females are better.  Think of the representation that we’re achieving here!  First of all, I love Lucy Liu.  From her minor role in Chicago, to her days in Ally McBeal, even Charlie’s Angels and Kill Bill, I’ve been madly in love with her sassy, no-nonsense characters since a young age.

So this was exciting.  Watson is intelligent, well put together… a war veteran!  A wounded war veteran!  A combat army doctor, healing the sick and wounded on the battle field.  A true hero in any right.  No one can deny the nobility of such a profession.

A scholar in his own way.  A skeptic.  John Watson really is the most relatable character of the two main protagonists of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s greatest masterpiece.  He is there to guide us through the intricacy of the genius detective Sherlock Holmes in a way that we can also understand but also to acknowledge and even admonish his deep set flaws.

He is, however, also there to bring sympathy to this nearly unrelatable character.  He is there to tell us how amazing he is and how much we should admire him, and we should, for Sherlock is a great man even if he is not conventionally so.

How awesome is John Watson, I mean really?  Looking past the inherent flaws and idiosyncrasies of a mad genius and bringing that intellect to us, a simple viewer with a simple way of looking at the world.  However, he does not just follow Sherlock, he protects him, he assists him, he provides valuable input.  He’s an amazing character.

To morph this character to female, to Taiwainese seems as though it would be an amazing compliment to a widely unacknowledged group of people.  Women are rarely anything more than eye candy on television and women of color are… pretty well nonexistent outside of the offensive tropes they usually are seen in right before they disappear never to be seen again.

I was excited.  Screw the canon.  This was better than the canon.  This took the canon, drop kicked it, held it down with its arm behind its back and made the canon scream uncle.  This took the canon, lovingly stripped it of it’s clothing and fucked it hard while the canon gripped the headboard and cried out for more.

Then, I discovered a few things.

Joan Watson does not have a military background.  She never went to war.  Oh.  Well.  Okay… That’s disappointing.

She was a former medical consultant for the NYPD who lost her medical license for losing a patient.

I… what?

At first I was merely disappointed.  Female or not, I felt this Watson should be closer to the canon than all that.  It seemed strange.

Then it hit me.  A WOMAN can’t be in the army.  That is not something sexy women do.  A woman can’t get injured in a war.  Injuries, limps, canes, none of those are sexy whatsoever.  Okay, maybe that’s cynical, but I really can’t help it.  Someone tell me why, when we are currently at war, was it so hard to make a modern day Watson who was injured in the military?  This is the only answer I can think of.

You see, TV has one requirement for women in their shows.  They have to be pretty and fulfill the male fantasy.  I can’t think of very many women on television who are main characters who don’t fulfill that role.

It became… exceedingly obvious and I should have seen it from the start.

Joan Watson will exist as a woman to please Sherlock.  She will become his love interest.  She will be boiled down to sexual tension and, likely, at some point, a sex partner.  She will be there to pick up after him, record his adventures and probably say something cute and snarky when the moment arises.

She will be his live in Asian maid.  Simple as that.  Because, you see, in Hollywood, women of color don’t get to be war heroes.  Or successful doctors.  At least not the main ones.  They get to be wives and girlfriends and love interests and sexual partners.

Once again, my gender has been classified as an object to fuck and a people’s ethnicity has been classified as not good enough to be all the things a white man can be.

Again, I know, cynical.  Maybe I’m wrong.  I hope I’m wrong.  But what are the chances I’m wrong in a society where literally almost nothing else exists on television today?  What are the chances that Joan Watson will be a strong, fleshed out character with all the force and empowerment of the character she is directly influenced by when that type of character does not exist according to American television?  At least not when that character is female and Asian.

I had high hopes and then I saw all these pointless changes and I knew it was going to disappoint everyone except the people who are always being pleased; straight, white, cisgender males.

Excuse me if I do not currently have hopes for this character at this point in time.  Excuse me as I sit back in anger and frustration with my arms folding, awaiting their next move.

I know some of you want to keep positive and see what happens but I’ve seen too many good opportunities fly out the window because empowered WoC aren’t good enough for Hollywood.

So yeah.  Have fun being disappointed.