lechat said:
TrulyBritish said:
I don't think you could ever claim Holmes is redundant due to the rise in these crime dramas. For one thing Holmes stories are never really focused on the "real-life" aspect of crime so they fill different niches.
Secondly, claiming Holmes is redundant due to these is like claiming Tolkein is redundant due to all the fantasy stories we have now. Sure it's got a lot of the same tropes and ideas, but that's because everyones being saying "Hey look, that guy made a successful story about an eccentric genius detective that annoys his police friends, let's do that too!"
Of course I'm being pretty simplistic.
i think you missed the point. that would be relevant if i had said "there is no need for CSI new york because we already have CSI miami, CSI, NCIS, SVU ETC.ETC" (did i say that? cause if not im totally saying it now) i do not mean that sherlock holmes is played out i just do not see how he can fit into the modern world, i mean seriously, put him on NCIS and what is he? abbie's whacky sidekick for one episode?
Having never really watched NCIS I can't really say for sure.
However, I do think that BBC's Sherlock is a great example of how Holmes works. All the police have access to forensics, none of them (even Anderson) are actually incompetent (and having read the books, I'm not sure if there were any
actually incompetent police officers in that) and yet still Holmes is largely the only the person capable of solving the crime without resorting to a magic camera able to see the reflection on a screw on a license plate (although some of the solutions in the books are a bit daft. Yes, I'm talking about you
The Adventure of the Lion's Mane). Holmes was less about knowledge and simply scientific aptitude, but the use of knowledge in independent deductive reasoning.
Certainly I'd argue that Holmes is not
redundant in a modern setting, but merely less important as there is a greater knowledge of forensics. And I would still hold that if newer crime dramas are taking on 'Holmesian' attitude on how to recover evidence then it's still a testament to Holmes. For example, is Abbie able to spot all those pieces of evidence because she was trained that way by whomever in the training department, or because that's simply her character? Is she just Holmes' ideals in female form?