Showing posts with label deduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deduction. Show all posts

Friday, June 27, 2014

Lacking an Alternative: Sherlock Holmes and the Best of All Possible Worlds. Deduction is as Deduction Does… Life is Like a Scratched iPad

You're probably an idiot.  The odds are stacked incomprehensibly against you.  Unless, of course, you happen to be Sherlock Holmes.  Next to him, however, no matter how smart you are, you are still a total fucking moron by comparison.  The version of Sherlock Holmes as portrayed in BBC's Sherlock (co-created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss)  is something of an insufferable prick.  Despite the fact that he exists at the very centre of a veritable whirlpool of arrogance and narcissism, there's something universally endearing and relatable about this modernized take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos, and we seem almost inescapably drawn into those swirling, mruky waters.  Inexorably, like a man on death row about to be hanged (not hung).  There's something about Sherlock Holmes that transcends his Victorian trappings and speaks to the very core of the human experience.

Even though the titular character of Sherlock represents the epitome of cold, hard, logical reasoning and stands as an ideal both for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence and startlingly anti-social behaviour, he is also more relatable to the common man than he may appear at first glance than other more apparently "human" versions of the character.