Sherlock Holmes While Any Character

Sherlock Holmes

While any character could in theory be transmedial, in practice there are certain features about a fictional character that makes it more likely he or she will reoccur across media. All of these potential features are too many and varied to discuss here, but it is possible to focus on one character in order to see how particular character features make him especially conducive to transmedia appearances. Specifically, the character of Sherlock Holmes is particularly to suited to transmediality thanks to his serialized origins, the fact that observation and liminal technological interest and use are constituent parts of his character, and the ease with which his original story was retconned following the character's apparent death. By examining the character of Sherlock Holmes in three Conan Doyle stories alongside some of his appearances in film, television, comic books, and videogames, one is able to see how these three character features are deployed across genres in order to recreate the essential qualities of Sherlock Holmes regardless of time or place.

Before addressing some of Sherlock Holmes' transmedia appearances in detail, it will be helpful to outline the three features of the character that make him especially amenable to transmediality. This list is not exhaustive, as one could likely uncover a number of detail that expand it, but it does include the most obvious features of Holmes' publication history, characterization, and fictional biography that allow him to appear across so many different media and within so many different contexts with relative ease. Pointing out these features in general first will make it much easier to notice them later, when Holmes' more recent transmedial appearances are discussed. In turn, one will be able to begin understanding why Sherlock Holmes, as opposed to other fictional characters, has proven so popular and time-tested, because it will be possible to see the specific elements of Holmes' character that mark him out as a character particularly suited to a transmedial existence.

The first thing about Sherlock Holmes' character that lends itself to transmediality is the fact that Holmes, as originally written, was serialized in a line of short stories and novels. This serial publication history is meaningful for the transmediality of the character, because it means that he does not have a single, definitive narrative, but rather exists across a wide variety of smaller narratives, even within his own official canon. While these stories agree with each other in general, they also leave open room for new additions to the character, a fact that served Conan Doyle well when he was writing the stories as well as new authors contributing to the legacy of Sherlock Holmes. As will be seen, the narrative gaps left open by this serialized publication history make it easier for other creators to insert their own contributions into Holmes' biography, because the space offered by these gaps allows for interpretation, recombination, and exploration above and beyond what was included in the original character.

As a serialized character, Holmes' fictional biography almost calls out for a transmedia existence, because there are enough gaps and mysteries in that biography that one could easily suggest new stories without ever really running up against the existing ones. Instead of providing hard limits, the existing stories provide new authors with a kind of thematic and character framework that they can adapt and mutate as they see fit. Because Holmes' story is already broken up into so many different pieces, adding more pieces to this story by way of transmedia appearances is fairly easy, and much more easy than for characters whose narratives are traditionally bound up in a single, definitive text. The character of Holmes then is not defined by a singular, consistent narrative, but rather is sketched by a number of shorter stories that provide a rough picture but ultimately leave the details to minds of the readers and whatever other creators come along to appropriate the character. This room for liberty and exploration helps set the stage for Holmes' existence as a transmedial character, because it provides a kind of nebulous linking space between these new explorations of his character and the original stories written by Conan Doyle.

In addition to his original publication history, there are certain character traits that help Sherlock Holmes function as a transmedia character. In particular, his powers of observation coupled with his abiding interest in the newest technologies and methods of disguise ensure that Holmes can fit in practically any context, regardless of place or time. Holmes' powers of disguise and deception are practically legendary within the original short stories and novels, to the point that he often hides in plain sight. For example, in "The Man with the Twisted Lip," he is able to reveal himself to Watson in an instant before turning "his face half round once to the company once more, subsid[ing] into a doddering, loose-lipped senility" (Conan Doyle, "The Man with the Twister Lip" 2). Furthermore, when he returns from the dead in "The Adventure of the Empty House," Holmes comes disguised as a "strange old book collector, his sharp, wizened face peering out from a frame of white hair" (Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Empty House" 5). This innate ability to blend in makes Holmes capable of blending in anywhere, and not just opium dens and book shops, because his tendency to disguise himself stems from his desire to adopt the most cutting-edge and up-to-date methods of crime fighting and investigation. As will be seen in the most recent iterations of Holmes' character, this desire to use the newest technologies make it so that Holmes can be transplanted to practically any time and place while still feeling relevant.

One can make the leap from being a master of disguise in Victorian England to becoming a transmedia character because Holmes' interest in disguises goes beyond mere theatricality and demonstrates a deep commitment to new technologies and tools. Holmes is not merely smart and observant, because he augments his powers of observation and intellect with whatever technological developments he can. This devotion to integrating new technologies into his identity and person is important because it means that Holmes is a kind of cyborg in the sense that the word is used by bioethicist and critic Donna Haraway. Haraway writes that "cyborg anthropology attempts to refigure provocatively the border relations among specific humans, other organisms, and machines," and one can easily see how this could relate to description of Holmes when one considers his own use of technology and cross-organism "border relations" (Haraway, Modest-Witness@Second-Millenium 52). This is because Holmes'; disguises are not merely ornamentation, but rather help him become different characters, and furthermore, because he is not limited by his own intellect, but rather manages to expand his powers outward in web of human connections that serve to blur the border between individual and community action, something that will only become more relevant as Holmes makes his way towards the Internet age.

Holmes does not simply wear disguises, he uses them to become different people, and in doing so he integrates these disguises into his own persona, thus effectively incorporating this technology into his own person like a cyborg. Furthermore, although he is extremely intelligent and gifted, he almost never relies solely upon his own powers, and instead augments his powers of observation and deduction by including other people, such as Dr. Watson, Lestrade, and the Baker Street Irregulars. By expanding his own network of observational and deductive connections to include these other people, Holmes is also blending the lines separating individual organisms in order to more effectively crack cases. This phenomena will become especially important when discussing transmedia appearances that locate Holmes in a contemporary context, because the introduction of the Internet into these stories serves as a more obvious demonstration of Holmes' cyborg-like qualities. Essentially, the Internet allows Holmes to integrate himself into the web of human connections directly, so that he is able to expand his own observational skills to include anyone else connected to the social Internet. Always at the cutting-edge, Holmes is the perfect character to exploit the interconnectedness of contemporary society for the cause of justice.

Finally, in addition to Holmes' serialized publication history and his cyborg-like interest in technology and observation, the fact that he essentially came back from the dead makes him a prime character for transmedia appearances. In the short story "The Final Problem," Conan Doyle ostensibly killed Holmes by having him topple over the edge of a waterfall with his nemesis professor Moriarty, "locked in other's arms" (Conan Doyle "The Final Problem" 19). However, following fan reactions, Conan Doyle eventually decide to bring the character back, and he did so in the aforementioned "The Adventure of the Empty House." The decision to bring Holmes back from the dead, and thus make faking his death a constituent part of the character's biography, has had an important impact on the characters subsequent appearances because it introduces a mutability to the Holmes mythos that makes it especially easy to create new stories for the character.

While all stories can be adapted and changed, with stories in the public domain being the most attractive choice, Holmes' death and resurrection make his character special because they serve to retcon (from retroactive continuity) his fictional narrative, a process that cannot be undone. Once Conan Doyle decided that earlier features of Holmes' story were open to interpretation and mutation, it meant that going forward, almost any feature of Holmes' story could be shifted and reinterpreted. The practice of retroactively altering fictional continuities is common to pulp and serialized stories, and Conan Doyle's detective stories were no different in this regard. This will help explain the natural synergy that arises between the character of Sherlock Holmes and comic books, because Holmes' own magical resurrection and mutable continuity is directly in line with the editorial and narrative practices that would arise within the American comic books of the 20th century.

By bringing Holmes back to life, Conan Doyle effectively made him invincible, because if one death can be retconned, then any death can be retconned. As a result, Holmes was essentially given the ability to transcend his own place and time, because if his story has the space in which he can come back from death, then this means it has the space for practically anything anyone could think of. Thus, Sherlock Holmes might find himself in a story with vampires, or Batman, and it would not be any more extraordinary, because Conan Doyle implicitly gifted his character with immortality when he decided to reverse the matter of death's permanence.

This is important because it demonstrates that the continuity of Holmes himself is more important than the continuity of the stories. As such details can be changed and pasts remembered differently in the service of whatever Holmes is being presented or discussed. This interpretation is in line with Franco Moretti's argument that in the world of Sherlock Holmes, clues are ultimately secondary to Holmes himself, because "Holmes as Superman needs unintelligible clues to prove his superiority," and as a result the details that make up these clues can change at will (Moretti 216). As will be seen, Moretti's comic book comparison is apt, although for reasons that will become clear, it would have been more accurate to say "Holmes as Batman," because Batman is closest superhero analogy to the character of Holmes, so long as one is not counting Holmes himself as a superhero.

If the story can be retroactively changed in order to fit into whatever the most recent Holmes story is, then this means that the story can always be changed, and that new Sherlock Holmes stories, appearing in whatever media, will always find a conducive and comfortable narrative superstructure upon which to rest. This is not to suggest that there are no internal standards or logic to a Sherlock Holmes story, but rather to point out that this internal logic includes within it the ability to change and alter the story as necessary for whatever new story to fit into old continuity. This mutability is not unique to the Sherlock Holmes stories, but Holmes does exemplify this tendency in way usually reserved for fairy tales, folk legends, and comic book narratives.

This is actually what separates Sherlock Holmes from more straightforward detective stories such as CSI, because although in general both share "a similar pretense: a world of incontrovertible evidence where noble sleuths toil to reveal the truth; a narrative of crime told through traces and often substantiated by convenient and detailed criminal confessions," in Sherlock Holmes stories these "traces" are ultimately second to the sheer power of the detective himself (Harrington 366). In the essay just quoted, Ellen Harrington argues that Holmes stories and CSI serve similar functions in regards to their respective nations of origin, and although in general this thesis is convincing, it misses crucial details when it comes to Holmes' transmedial nature, namely, the fact that for Holmes, the details actually matter somewhat less than the character of the detective himself. While both Holmes and CSI serve to reassert the primacy of their respective political contexts (they are both "fighting crime," after all), CSI does this through an appeal to facts and evidence, while Holmes ultimately does with an appeal to genius. While there are clues that play a role in solving the central mysteries, the audience can rest assured that in a Sherlock Holmes story, the sol

Having outlined the major features of Sherlock Holmes' character that seem to make him especially receptive to a transmedia existence, it is now possible to demonstrates these features in some of Holmes' actual transmedia appearances. One may begin with examples that do not transplant Holmes into new temporal or spacial locations, but rather retain the original setting while creating new or different stories. Perhaps the most obvious of this at this point would be the big-budget film Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. As the titular detective.

The 2009 film keeps the setting of Victorian England, and it actually highlights certain details of the character and his compatriots that were gradually lost over a century of radio and television dramatizations. In terms of narrative, the film exploits Holmes' mutable continuity in order to create a new adventure for Holmes and Watson that nevertheless recreates certain scenes and ides from preexisting stories, essentially creating its own continuity that mirrors the original like a kind of 21st-century echo. Furthermore, the film attempts to use contemporary technology in order to highlight Holmes considerable intellectual and observational skills, and in doing so reactivates the idea of Holmes as a cyborg. In particular, during fight scenes, the film slows down so that Holmes can provide a blow-by-blow account of his intended movement, effectively integrating his martial arts prowess and observational skill into the special effects shot, such that Holmes' and the material of the film itself become blended. Once again, Holmes' ability to blur the lines between person and technology allow him to more easily assume a transmedial position, because the film is able to seamlessly blend Holmes' 19th-century character with 21st-century visual aesthetics.

In addition to the 2009 film (and its sequel), another recent text that retains Holmes' 19th-century setting while adapting the character for a new medium is the 2012 videogame the Testament of Sherlock Holmes. Once again, this new iteration of the character features an entirely new story inserted into Holmes' considerable biography, exploiting the existing mutability of the character in order to tell a story of Holmes' being incriminated in the theft of a priceless necklace. What is most interesting about this transmedia appearance, however, is the way that Holmes' powers of observation and intellect are rendered in true cyborg fashion.

Unlike the other texts discussed here, the Testament of Sherlock Holmes is a videogame, and as such it incorporates a player, rather than an audience. Almost immediately, then, one can see how Holmes' cyborg qualities are reactivated here, because the simple act of playing a videogame is effectively and act of cyborgification, as the player blends him or her self with the character of Sherlock through the mediating power of technology. The player and Sherlock become a single, shared persona, as the player directs Sherlock to investigate clues and question suspects. Holmes' own powers of observation and deduction are quantified and rendered here as a central game mechanic, and because these powers are always already a form of cyborg blending, the transition from regular narrative to interactive narrative is seamless.

While these appearances have kept Holmes firmly rooted in the 19th century even as they present that time through contemporary media, comic books have tended to act as a kind of bridge for Sherlock Holmes by locating him in the 19th century but providing him with a way of reaching into the twentieth. There are two notable appearances of Sherlock Holmes in comic books that help demonstrate why he is particularly suited to transmedia appearances. The first to discuss is Alan Moore's the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which features characters from a number of 19th century stories banding together to fight a super villain (who turns out to be Moriarty). Although Holmes is not actually among this group, his brother Mycroft makes an appearance, and in the second volume of the story it is revealed that he is alive and met in secret with Wilhelmina Murray (of Dracula fame).

Even though the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does not feature Holmes prominently, even this fact is a testament to his mutability and transmedial propensities, because the comic did not need to feature Holmes prominently. By focusing on Moriarty and Mycroft, the story was able to access incorporate the Holmes' mythos into the larger world of the League without having to include Holmes directly. Furthermore, the fact that Holmes faked his death is what makes it possible to include him in the comic, because it is precisely during this time in hiding (when neither the reader nor anyone else is completely sure of Holmes' activities) that the comic decides to incorporate him. Because the original, serialized and retconned narrative included this space within it the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was able to exploit this space for its own narrative ends.

The other instance of Holmes' appearance in comics features the character much more prominently, and helps to demonstrate his continued resonance. This appearance came in 1987, when Sherlock Holmes was featured in the fiftieth anniversary edition of Detective Comics, otherwise known as the comic where Batman made his first appearance and the publication for which DC Comics got its name. The cover actually features Sherlock Holmes and Batman looking closely at what appears to be a comic, as Batman points something out to the famous detective. The comic is particularly interesting because it considers Holmes in precisely the same way that it treats all the rest of its comic book characters.,

That Batman and Holmes should meet is only natural, because Batman is essentially an American, capitalist version of Holmes' British imperial detective. Batman has his Irregulars in the form of Robin and his allies, and one could argue that his butler Alfred is in many ways an echo of Dr. John Watson (with both having medical experience and serving in a war on the side of the British). However, what it most interesting about Holmes' appearance in Detective Comics is the fact that the character that appears in 1987 is supposed to be the same Holmes who was alive in the 19th century, having survived as a result of his own good health and powers of meditation. This is notable because rather than reinvent or else transplant the character of Holmes, this story seeks to extend Holmes' fictional biography in order to maintain a consistent continuity.

This tendency to imagine a coherent, retconned continuity even in the face of contradictions and gaps is a central part of comic book storytelling, so it makes perfect sense that Holmes, who depends on retconning himself, would make an appearance. As the prototype for Batman, Holmes was the preeminent detective and crime-fighter, and even his serialized, retconned narrative set the stage for Batman's own narrative journey to come. By including Sherlock Holmes in the fiftieth anniversary of Detective Comics, the comic uses Holmes' transmedial tendencies in order to simultaneously pay homage to and transcend the stories featuring the original detective.

The link between Holmes and comic characters like Batman is also helpful because it helps demonstrate how Holmes has essentially given rise to a kind of new archetype, the archetype of the master detective. Although detectives and investigators have been an important part of literature for some time, Sherlock Holmes helped popularize the idea beyond genre readers and, thanks to certain easily-identifiable features such as his hat and violin, became a kind of cultural shorthand for detection or observation. In this way, one could say that Holmes has even managed to transcend media and become part of the collective imagination in general, all thanks to his particularly transmedial character.