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May. 10th, 2023 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiger_moran Anyway now I'm thinking about how in some ways the portrayal of Moriarty in AGoS is sort of... backwards?
Listen, I love Jared Harris's portrayal with all my heart and soul but part of the reason I've written I think only two (?) fics that were ever specifically set in that universe as opposed to using his (and Paul Anderson's Moran's) portrayal(s) but within the canonical universe is because some elements of Moriarty's character in the film especially his motives have always, always bothered me and struck me as being wrong and almost the opposite of what they should be.
I'm probably going to write about this in that essay (which is forever getting longer as I think of more stuff to incorporate into it) but it's like... they show Moriarty in a very elitist university setting, they portray him as being best mates with the british PM and very much sort of... in British high society, in with the elite and ruling classes. Whether he's meant to be Irish or of Irish family is not really explicitly addressed, it's sort of suggested perhaps with the casting but was that coincidence or deliberate I don't know. I mean I don't think Moriarty is actually really canonically Irish in any truly meaningful way, like for one I don't think he cares about nationality it all means nothing to him, also he seems to be living and presenting himself as British and his names are the anglicised names so...
I've lost my thread now, what was I going to say?
Well anyway I do think... Moriarty's not some kind of... big part of the british ruling/elite classes, he's probably not actually going to be best buddies with high ranking members of the british government. He's probably not really motivated by money either, he is almost certainly (like Holmes) motivated mostly by simply trying to avoid the tedium of existing. And even if he isn't Irish as such, possibly he or almost certainly his relatively recent Irish ancestors probably did suffer under the British. And really canonically Holmes is the one who is helping to prop up the british government (and thus british colonialism and all the other associated bullshit); Holmes is really in with the government (like with Mycroft, for instance, of whom it is said he literally IS the government sometimes); he seems to be very much a Real Patriot and pro-monarchy and all that jazz, shooting VR into the wall and being rewarded by Victoria herself. Moriarty is the one going against all of that canonically. And Holmes is the one descended from 'country squires' (i.e. english landowners who essentially owned entire villages) and generally the one assumed to have attended one of the really elite universities while Moriarty is only said to have worked in one of the 'smaller' ones (also as a university professor he is probably not going to be regarded as anything other than middle class).
But in the film Holmes (and Watson and Simza and the rest) are fighting against him where he kind of represents british imperialism and all that crap. I do think it is kind of... backwards.
Listen, I love Jared Harris's portrayal with all my heart and soul but part of the reason I've written I think only two (?) fics that were ever specifically set in that universe as opposed to using his (and Paul Anderson's Moran's) portrayal(s) but within the canonical universe is because some elements of Moriarty's character in the film especially his motives have always, always bothered me and struck me as being wrong and almost the opposite of what they should be.
I'm probably going to write about this in that essay (which is forever getting longer as I think of more stuff to incorporate into it) but it's like... they show Moriarty in a very elitist university setting, they portray him as being best mates with the british PM and very much sort of... in British high society, in with the elite and ruling classes. Whether he's meant to be Irish or of Irish family is not really explicitly addressed, it's sort of suggested perhaps with the casting but was that coincidence or deliberate I don't know. I mean I don't think Moriarty is actually really canonically Irish in any truly meaningful way, like for one I don't think he cares about nationality it all means nothing to him, also he seems to be living and presenting himself as British and his names are the anglicised names so...
I've lost my thread now, what was I going to say?
Well anyway I do think... Moriarty's not some kind of... big part of the british ruling/elite classes, he's probably not actually going to be best buddies with high ranking members of the british government. He's probably not really motivated by money either, he is almost certainly (like Holmes) motivated mostly by simply trying to avoid the tedium of existing. And even if he isn't Irish as such, possibly he or almost certainly his relatively recent Irish ancestors probably did suffer under the British. And really canonically Holmes is the one who is helping to prop up the british government (and thus british colonialism and all the other associated bullshit); Holmes is really in with the government (like with Mycroft, for instance, of whom it is said he literally IS the government sometimes); he seems to be very much a Real Patriot and pro-monarchy and all that jazz, shooting VR into the wall and being rewarded by Victoria herself. Moriarty is the one going against all of that canonically. And Holmes is the one descended from 'country squires' (i.e. english landowners who essentially owned entire villages) and generally the one assumed to have attended one of the really elite universities while Moriarty is only said to have worked in one of the 'smaller' ones (also as a university professor he is probably not going to be regarded as anything other than middle class).
But in the film Holmes (and Watson and Simza and the rest) are fighting against him where he kind of represents british imperialism and all that crap. I do think it is kind of... backwards.
