I'm rewatching the new Sherlock Holmes movie and enjoying it possibly more thoroughly than I did the first time around. Mainly because I hadn't realized just how many references and direct quotations they took from Conan Doyle. The whole pocket watch analysis delivered by Watson was originally attributed to Holmes in The Sign of Four. A very nice reference while also establishing Watson as a seasoned collaborator. The boxing scene was also established in the same novel. The whole asskicking remix idea has far more basis in original canon than one would initially imagine. Ooh, ooh, and the whole knowing every street in London and being able to find exactly where he is despite being blindfolded in a carriage due to landmarks like potholes and bakery smells was also in the same novel! Maybe they just read the one. Well, either way, lovely!
It really is a shame so much scholarship has already been dedicated to Holmes. I would totally be on that. I may still be, if only in passing, for the Gothic tropes Doyle throws in there once in a while. The movie is rife with them, to be sure. Actually, the movie basically is a mashup of all of my favorite things about Victoriana. Industrialism! Science and the supernatural! 'Victoria Regina' engraved in a brocaded wall...with bullets! Top hats and monocles!
So you see, the title of this blog is not nearly so random as would otherwise be assumed.
And no, I'm not entirely procrastinating. Along with practicing for three hours (which felt a bit like slamming my head into a wall--Stravinsky refuses to stick) I did some cobbling together of notes and editing today that will ensure that tomorrow, I will be finishing the Hard Times/Past and Present portion of my dissertation, come hell or high water. Get excited! I kind of am myself. Mainly because things may actually be making sense to me now. There may be original contributions afoot!
Righto. Off to finish the movie. Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'
...I am such an Anglophile.
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