Elementary 5.05
Nov. 8th, 2016 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI spent the last few days distracting myself from the ticking clock of potential US voterdoom by writing the ambitious Yuletide story I've been planning on writing ever since Certain Events in one particular canon happened. It worked; I was so focused on my tale that I had all my emotional energy there. But now the first draft is done and off to the beta reader, and I'm sitting in a train en route to a v.v troublesome region in Germany where the Orange Menace would feel right at home, so the fretting is back.
Therefore, as further distraction: uneasy complaining about the latest Elementary episode.
Which managed to collect several things I dislike in its case of the week. To start with the end, the motivation for why the killer killed was the most unlikely since the case with the two siblings who were survivors of an evil father. It was really out of the blue and didn't make much emotional sense. And then this was capped with a return of my least favourite thing about the s4 finale, to wit: Sherlock and Joan consider it just fine to frame someone for something that person hasn't done as long as he's guilty of other things. In this particular case, via a cop buddy of Sherlock's planting drugs. At the risk of repeating myself, this is so incredibly stupid, in addition to being of questionable morality, because in such a scenario, there's always the risk that evil villain X who couldn't be convicted of the deed he's actually guilty of can afford the lawyers and detectives to prove he's innocent and has been framed in the other case. Because he was.
More troubling, if you encourage a law official to plant fake evidence, this is corruption. You are corrupt, and so is the officer in question. I mean, possibly I'm too imprinted by a combination of Dürrematt's "Der Richter und sein Henker" and Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil", but framing someone who is actually guilty (of something else) is still evil. I hated it when the s4 finale seemed to think there was no moral problem there, and I hate it in this episode, too.
Then there's the whole premise of the case of the week, in which a lot of issues that to me simply AREN'T the same are all thrown together under one label. For me, there IS a difference between an adult blackmailing or otherwise forcing a teenager to have sex, or a teenager having sex with an adult out of their own free will. Especially if the age is 15 years, which it was in one of the listed cases. Unless something changed since the days of Queer as Folk, the original UK series, 15 is the age of consent in Britain, where Sherlock is supposed to be from. Queer as Folk UK starts with a definitely older than 30 adult having enthusiastic sex with a 15 years old - I hear the US version of the show made him 16, but he's definitely and textually 15 in the original.
(ETA: I was wrong re: legal age of consent in Britain, which is now 16; more about the background and legal implications of the QAF scene here.)
Anyway, the other ages given - 13 and 14 - made me feel repulsed, too, admittedly, independent from other circumstances. And of course any non-con sex, at any age, is vile. But you know what made me also feel repulsed? This whole idea that public shaming, humiliating someone with a combination of some physical violence, shouting and displaying that person to the public, is a good thing. No. If someone is a criminal, you punish him or her by law. You don't do the modern digital age equivalent of a medieval market place and everyone shouting abuse.
(I also resent the easy manipulation, because I felt I could hear the scriptwriters thinking, hey, everyone hates sex predators and pedophiles, so let's have a go there, and never mind that going to a dating site and sexting someone who presents themselves as a teenager there and wants to date does not by necessity make you Roman Polanski.)
What did C.S. Lewis write once, that it's not a sign of virtue and enlightenment on our part that we don't persecute witches anymore, because we don't believe in witches? If you don't believe a woman (or in rarer cases a man) is busy ruining your crop, causing the death of your children and/or perverting them with satanic rights, then it's no wonder you don't feel the urge to accuse, shame, torture and kill that person. What I'm getting at here: true value of ideals isn't tested by how we treat people who don't do anything repulsive to us, but how we treat those whom we do believe to be guilty of this. Not that we should let them go. But engaging in "shame the pervert!" Exercises? No.
All this upset me enough that I couldn't really focus on the long term storyline stuff in this episode, like Shinwell's Sinister Former Aquaintance dropping by at the end, or the first Kitty mention we got in ages.
Therefore, as further distraction: uneasy complaining about the latest Elementary episode.
Which managed to collect several things I dislike in its case of the week. To start with the end, the motivation for why the killer killed was the most unlikely since the case with the two siblings who were survivors of an evil father. It was really out of the blue and didn't make much emotional sense. And then this was capped with a return of my least favourite thing about the s4 finale, to wit: Sherlock and Joan consider it just fine to frame someone for something that person hasn't done as long as he's guilty of other things. In this particular case, via a cop buddy of Sherlock's planting drugs. At the risk of repeating myself, this is so incredibly stupid, in addition to being of questionable morality, because in such a scenario, there's always the risk that evil villain X who couldn't be convicted of the deed he's actually guilty of can afford the lawyers and detectives to prove he's innocent and has been framed in the other case. Because he was.
More troubling, if you encourage a law official to plant fake evidence, this is corruption. You are corrupt, and so is the officer in question. I mean, possibly I'm too imprinted by a combination of Dürrematt's "Der Richter und sein Henker" and Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil", but framing someone who is actually guilty (of something else) is still evil. I hated it when the s4 finale seemed to think there was no moral problem there, and I hate it in this episode, too.
Then there's the whole premise of the case of the week, in which a lot of issues that to me simply AREN'T the same are all thrown together under one label. For me, there IS a difference between an adult blackmailing or otherwise forcing a teenager to have sex, or a teenager having sex with an adult out of their own free will. Especially if the age is 15 years, which it was in one of the listed cases. Unless something changed since the days of Queer as Folk, the original UK series, 15 is the age of consent in Britain, where Sherlock is supposed to be from. Queer as Folk UK starts with a definitely older than 30 adult having enthusiastic sex with a 15 years old - I hear the US version of the show made him 16, but he's definitely and textually 15 in the original.
(ETA: I was wrong re: legal age of consent in Britain, which is now 16; more about the background and legal implications of the QAF scene here.)
Anyway, the other ages given - 13 and 14 - made me feel repulsed, too, admittedly, independent from other circumstances. And of course any non-con sex, at any age, is vile. But you know what made me also feel repulsed? This whole idea that public shaming, humiliating someone with a combination of some physical violence, shouting and displaying that person to the public, is a good thing. No. If someone is a criminal, you punish him or her by law. You don't do the modern digital age equivalent of a medieval market place and everyone shouting abuse.
(I also resent the easy manipulation, because I felt I could hear the scriptwriters thinking, hey, everyone hates sex predators and pedophiles, so let's have a go there, and never mind that going to a dating site and sexting someone who presents themselves as a teenager there and wants to date does not by necessity make you Roman Polanski.)
What did C.S. Lewis write once, that it's not a sign of virtue and enlightenment on our part that we don't persecute witches anymore, because we don't believe in witches? If you don't believe a woman (or in rarer cases a man) is busy ruining your crop, causing the death of your children and/or perverting them with satanic rights, then it's no wonder you don't feel the urge to accuse, shame, torture and kill that person. What I'm getting at here: true value of ideals isn't tested by how we treat people who don't do anything repulsive to us, but how we treat those whom we do believe to be guilty of this. Not that we should let them go. But engaging in "shame the pervert!" Exercises? No.
All this upset me enough that I couldn't really focus on the long term storyline stuff in this episode, like Shinwell's Sinister Former Aquaintance dropping by at the end, or the first Kitty mention we got in ages.
