Liberty wrote:

I've got to answer this, because it's not true!  I have never had any objection to people having their own interpretations of the story.  I think we all do that to some extent, and we probably all get something personal from it that's unique to us.  I'm all for that! 

But there's another point of view, here and elsewhere, that Johnlock IS intended, and that anybody who can't see it is either not clever enough, or refusing to see it.  I do disagree with that idea.  It's as if, to take your lovely Baudelaire story about the old woman, I had a version of her story, but kept being told mine was ridiculous.   And even if the woman herself said it was true, I'd be told she was lying. 

I accept that people genuinely do see Johnlock there, and I obviously don't have any problem with that - why would I?   To be clear - I'm not debating whether people should see Johnlock (I'm all for people seeing it), but whether that's what's we think is being shown. 

Anyway, maybe The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is less controversial - what do people see there?  I think Holmes comes across as probably gay, but Watson seems to be straight - he seems to be genuinely interested in the female ballet dancers.  I've wondered if he's in denial (also possible), or closeted (also possible - particularly considering the way he rants about the consequences of being thought gay).   But there's something about his apparent sureness about his own sexuality, and his assumption that Holmes is the same that makes me think he's genuinely thought they were both straight.   I think if he had fallen for Holmes in that way, he'd be bound to have questioned their sexuality before, and it looks like he hasn't.

On the other hand, this issue doesn't seem to be unfamiliar to Holmes, which makes me think that he has thought about their sexuality, and that he's probably gay. 

What's interesting is that Holmes does kind of fall for a woman in the film too, and there are some parallels with ASIB, but I don't see the loaded interaction that I see between Sherlock and Irene (which may have been Benedict more than the writing, but still - it's there).  And he doesn't save her in the end (I do wonder if Moftiss found that very sad, and "corrected" it in ASIB?). 

Anyway, I think the "desparately unspoken" part is about Holmes - it's clear that he can't tell Watson what he feels. 

Liberty, I was not speaking about you. I too was speaking more about people I see on the internet whose only goal seems to subsit of denying me my the right to interpret the story my way. As you see in my original post, I said that it´s absolutely allright if people do not see Johnlock in the show. I also said elsewhere that Johnlock is not a religion, it´s something people belive for their own enjoyment. I therefore do not understand where is the problem.

But if somebody calls me delusional because I like to interpret story some way, I cease to see similar tolerance in it.

I believe the point of Baudelaire´s story was, that even if the woman told him her true life story, it´s his fiction about her what helped him to live. That doesn´t mean he would be deriding her - only that her actual reality is not that important for him, because that was not what helped him to go on during his dark nights and days.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes seems to be an interesting movie and I plan to see it as soon as possible, but because I have not seen it yet, I cannot really make any educated comment on it.

Thanks, Nakahara.  And I do understand - that's kind of what I meant by us all getting something from it.  The wonderful love and friendship I saw between John and Sherlock inspired me to reconnect with somebody who means an awful lot to me, and I'm so glad I did.  That version of the story means something special to me.

Private Life is pretty good, although I understand the final version is very much cut down from the what was originally intended.    It's a unique portrayal of Sherlock Holmes - in some ways, he's barely recognisable, but I do like it.  Although it's quite different to "Sherlock", there are a lot of references and parallels.  It feels quite emotionally driven too, which is very like Sherlock. 

Which to me proves that John is jealous. 

But it is a fact that Billy Wilder himself said that he originally wanted to make Holmes openly gay and did not dare at the time. And Mark regards Holmes as being in love with Watson and the love is desperately unspoken. So we might have not only one parallel between ASIB and TPLOSH (attraction of some sort to a woman, not necessarily sexual) but two (attraction to a man, i.e. John Watson). 
 

Nakahara, as far as I know the full version has never been filmed. But here is the script as originally drafted including that parts that were not filmed/did not make it into the film:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/2m3ti75bcfpkjim/Private_Life_of_Sherlock_Holmes,_The_-_Roadshow_Version.pdf 

Johnlock confuses me. Because when Moftiss say that they don't intend to make them more than friends, I believe that. When Ben and Martin says the same, and that is how they play them, I believe them. I honestly, to the core, don't believe it will ever happen. (But will open a bottle of champagne if it does).

I also think that the majority of analysis for Johnlock can easily be explained just as much by the two of them being close friends and nothing more. WIth emphasis on "the majority". Because even though I do have a sober approach to this, and I do believe what Moftiss and Ben/Martin say about this, every now and then a scene comes up that I find really, really hard to explain in any other way than Johnlock.

And John's jealousy in ASiB is one of them. It makes NO sense, no sense whatsoever, that a friend would act out of nothing but petty jealousy to see his friend flirting with a woman. No sense at all. 

I don't view that scene as "proof" Johnlock will happen. I just don't get why they put it in there. I don't get why they all stand on the rooftops shouting JOHNLOCK WILL NOT HAPPEN when they constantly shower the series with scenes like that. 

Last edited by Vhanja (January 26, 2015 9:54 am)

Vhanja wrote:

I don't view that scene as "proof" Johnlock will happen. I just don't get why they put it in there. I don't get why they all stand on the rooftops shouting JOHNLOCK WILL NOT HAPPEN when they constantly shower the series with scenes like that. 

This!

Yes, some scenes seem very weird if you don´t have "Johnlock googles" on.

 

Indeed, there are quite a lot of - sometimes small - things that do not make sense without Johnlock. Just think of Sherlock in TEH stroking his upper lip and doing strange things with his mouth when talking about John's moustache, followed by John shaving and Sherlock commenting on liking his doctors clean shaven. 

Well, if they put the scenes in there deliberately, they really can't fault the fandom for speculating, can they?

We must believe the evidence of our own eyes.

That´s very fitting for BBC Sherlock, I think.