University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 12-2016 Crime and culture : a thematic reading of Sherlock Holmes and his adaptations. Britney Broyles University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, Chinese Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Television Commons Recommended Citation Broyles, Britney, "Crime and culture : a thematic reading of Sherlock Holmes and his adaptations." (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2584. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2584 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. 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CRIME AND CULTURE: A THEMATIC READING OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND HIS ADAPTATIONS By Britney Broyles B.A., University of Louisville, 2008 M.A., University of Louisville, 2012 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Humanities Department of Comparative Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, KY December 2016 Copyright 2016 by Britney Broyles All rights reserved CRIME AND CULTURE: A THEMATIC READING OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND HIS ADAPTATIONS By Britney Broyles B.A., University of Louisville, 2008 M.A., University of Louisville, 2012 Dissertation Approved on November 22, 2016 by the following Dissertation Committee: Dr. Simona Bertacco Dr. Susan Griffin Dr. Mary Rosner Dr. Caroline Reitz ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Joshua Caudill, for all his patience and help and my papaw, John Stein, who always encouraged me to use my imagination and pursue knowledge. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Dr. Simona Bertacco, for all her help, thought-provoking suggestions, and tireless support. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Susan Griffin and Dr. Mary Rosner, without whose comments and suggestions this caliber of work would not have been possible. Thank you to Dr. Griffin for introducing me to Alexander Welsh’s George Eliot and Blackmail, which inspired the framework for this project—the analysis of types of crime. I would like to thank the entire committee for their timely response to my exhaustive drafts. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Caroline Reitz, my outside reader, for her unique perspective on the intersection of ethnicity, empire, and national identity in the detective genre and willingness to collaborate on this project. Her scholarship has provided a model for the serious critical analysis of popular culture attempted in this dissertation. I want to thank Dr. Michael Johmann for introducing me to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. His class on Victorian Popular Culture was foundational in engendering in me a love of the late nineteenth century. Dr. Johmann has been an important influence on my academic interests and a tremendous mentor throughout my graduate career. I offer my deepest thanks to all of my family who have been supportive of my continued education, patient with my long discussions of detectives and art, and forgiving of the missed family celebrations spent working on films, papers, and grading. iv Finally, I want to thank my husband, Joshua Caudill, who has never faltered in pushing me to pursue my ambitions and never give up. Without him I would not be where I am today; he is my rock. v ABSTRACT CRIME AND CULTURE: A THEMATIC READING OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND HIS ADAPTATIONS Britney Broyles November 22, 2016 This dissertation focuses on the adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character and stories into the television shows Sherlock and Elementary on air today. The project will consider three central questions: 1) Why is this Victorian detective hero still popular in the twenty-first century and what has remained constant and still resonates with modern audiences? 2) Both television shows transport Holmes in time by setting their narratives in the present day; therefore, what has been changed in this process of adaptation? 3) How do these changes represent shifts in our cultural thinking about important aspects of humanistic inquiry? The dissertation is organized around types of crime with each chapter devoted to a different crime that will bring to the fore specific themes central to the chapter. Chapter one is focused on the crime of murder and considers the intersection of reason and emotion. The detective character has been considered, throughout the history of the genre, as an exemplar of rational thinking. To what degree does Holmes make use of irrational methods and how does he understand— seemingly without experiencing—human emotion that often motivates criminal behavior. Chapter two examines the crime of smuggling and the representation of the East (with a specific focus on China). Since smuggling is a crime that crosses borders, it highlights the vi relationship between countries or the relationship between national and international contexts. Chapter three considers the crimes of the powerful in order to focus on the relationship within society between those with power and money and those without such resources. More specifically, this chapter examines the representation of social class, the government, and corporations and the potential culpability (within the diegesis) of such powerful institutions. Finally, chapter four is centered on the crime of blackmail in order to examine the relationship between public and private identities and information. This chapter addresses how the television shows have updated the understanding of public and private in response to digital technologies and the proliferation of online media. Doyle uses print media throughout the stories while the television shows take advantage of the internet and broadcast media. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF IMAGES ............................................................................................................. xi INTRODUCTION 1 Why Holmes?........................................................................................................1 2 Methodology .......................................................................................................12 3 Rebranding Sherlock Holmes .............................................................................14 4 Adaptation and Cultural Myths ...........................................................................19 CHAPTER I—“THE SCARLET THREAD OF MURDER”: REASON, EMOTION, AND SHERLOCK HOLMES 1 Rationality and Deduction ..................................................................................24 2 Sherlock Holmes as Automaton..........................................................................26 2.1 Cognitive and Emotional Empathy ......................................................30 3 Visualizing Deduction ........................................................................................37 4 Diagnosing the Detective ....................................................................................44 5 Love at First Sight ...............................................................................................54 6 Irene Adler: The Woman, the Dominatrix, the Heroine .....................................59 7 Conclusion: Reason, Emotion, and Humanity ................................................................66 CHAPTER II—TEA AND OPIUM: SHERLOCK HOLMES, SMUGGLING, AND THE CHINESE 1 The Occident and the Orient ...............................................................................71 viii 2 China and the West: Drugs, Disease, and Death ................................................74 3 Representing China in Sherlock and Elementary ................................................86 3.1 Sherlock’s Aesthetic of Opposition .....................................................88 3.2 Elementary’s Articulations of Ethnicity: Joan and Jun ......................105 4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................120 CHAPTER III— THE CRIMES OF THE POWERFUL: SOCIAL CLASS, THE STATE, AND CORPORATIONS 1 Crime and Class ................................................................................................122 2 Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the Consulting Detective ..............................................124 2.1 An Analysis of The Hound of the Baskervilles ..................................130 3 Sherlock, Mycroft, and the War on Terror .......................................................138 4 Sherlock, Moorland, and Corporate America ...................................................147 5 Conclusion