I’ve been enjoying the new Sherlock a lot. It’s stylish and fun, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have really helped the show to have its own identity. But Cumberbatch’s Holmes—like Hugh Laurie’s House—is so persistently rude, and even cruel, that it really makes the show less enjoyable. Why is it that filmmakers think geniuses are best portrayed as unpleasant?
House being an original creation, it’s more excusable that he be a prick than that Sherlock Holmes be cast in that light. Compare Cumberbatch to the inimitable Jeremy Brett—far and away the greatest Holmes ever filmed, and a contender for the greatest dramatic portrayal ever of a literary character. Brett actually introduced a lot of the quirkiness of the character that is not present in the Conan Doyle stories, and I suspect Cumberbatch has imitated these to some degree. But for all his occasional sharpness and brief fits of temper, he’s never just purposely cruel. The contrary for Cumberbatch’s Holmes. It’s impossible to imagine the new Holmes letting Captain Croker go at the end of “The Abbey Grange,” for example—which Holmes does from tenderness and honor. Conan Doyle says in “The Solitary Cyclist” that Holmes interrupted important research to receive a potential client because although he “loved above all things precision and concentration of thought,” and “resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand,” could not turn her away “without harshness which was foreign to his nature.” Conan Doyle’s and Brett’s Holmes is a gentleman through and through; an elegant, intellectual James Bond. To the degree that Cumberbatch portays Holmes as a man suffering from Asperger’s, he does violence to the character.
I’m delighted to think that “Geek Chic” and “smart is sexy,” are really taking off, but I suspect what we’re actually seeing is “Geeksploitation” instead. Smart folks aren’t being appreciatively or fairly portrayed on screen—they’re either being exploited and laughed at,* or, what is almost as bad, smart folks themselves are enjoying these shows because the characters are being cruel to the less intelligent in ways that viewers wish they had the guts to do. To some audiences, I suspect, Sherlock’s rudeness is the nerd version of Falling Down—an expression of repressed rage. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: on the contrary, drama and literature exist to make certain statements that people feel they cannot say in real life. But it’s worrisome that there’s a market for such feelings, and it’s worse if smart people imagine Geek Chic as liberating when in reality it’s condescending and isolating. Regarding intelligence as a mental disorder may not be (how to put it?) the smart move.
One final thing. It may be that geniuses are portrayed as mean because to non-geniuses, they appear that way. This is often the case, for example, with religious people, who are sometimes bewildered or even offended by the very existence of non-believers. For you to regard the central myth of their lives as a fiction, even a harmful fiction, stirs a sort of resentment—and they often misinterpret your skepticism as cynicism. At the same time, the non-religious are often tempted into saying condescending and nasty things. The result is what H.L. Mencken so well described:
One of the most curious human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men—that cynicism makes for general biliousness and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact that cynics make other men unhappy. But they are themselves the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, though it may be too dreadful to put into formal words, at least usually has the merit of being true—and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence. He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom. The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months, two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the durable satisfactions of life.
It would be healthier for our society if geniuses and skeptics were portrayed as, on the whole, happier than the average. Which, in reality, I think they are.
*-Actually, I think Big Bang Theory laughs with, most of the time, and that is a good thing.
