Proof We're Supposed To Read John As Suicidal

Proof we're supposed to read John as suicidal

tw: suicide (but just talking about John in A Study in Pink)

Sometimes I get comments about my write-up of A Study in Pink saying it’s “reading too much” into the gun-or-laptop shot to say that John is suicidal. 

Well, if anyone out there still needs convincing, 221behavior (my queen and irl subtextual mirror) just took a picture of the original ASiP script that came with that special blu-ray set. Behold:

The gun is “a curious temptation to him.” We’re not being shown the gun just so we know he has one to retrieve later. If we’re supposed to infer only that John owns a gun, it would actually be more interesting to skip that shot entirely and just have it be an interesting surprise later when John retrieves it from the bedsit. We’d have still seen it well before he actually shot anyone. We get the suicide insinuation because that’s what’s interesting and important about John from the moment we meet him. That’s more interesting than the mere fact of John owning a gun.

There was also that other post going around from the same script, that showed that Sherlock was supposed to be read as suicidal as well (he talked about how “that’s not how I’d kill myself” or whatever, and Lestrade is worried about him). The entire episode is about suicide for reason.

EDIT: Here’s Sherlock’s part, everyone say your daily affirmation to 221behavior if you haven’t already. And if you have, say another one, she’s pretty great. <3

I know it’s something that people don’t think about if they’re not writers or involved with filming stuff, but shows and films don’t come together by magic. Visual mediums aren’t like prose, where you can get direct insight into what a character is thinking. There are people whose entire job is determining how to translate a character’s inner life into things you can outwardly observe. When there is something on screen, someone decided to put it there. Sometimes those things show up in the script as it does here, but often not.

Not every object on screen has meaning, but they went through the trouble to angle the camera at the drawer, ensure that the gun is beneath the laptop, and linger briefly on the gun. We get a big sequence of a war veteran with PTSD who is obviously intensely depressed choosing his laptop over his gun. 

Before this, John sits on his bed, completely still, presumably for an hour or more. [Link goes to YouTube.] That is not healthy behavior. He barely eats anything for breakfast. And the sequence goes like this: laptop, gun, blank blog, therapist. [Link goes to YouTube.] Let that sink in: after the gun, and the blank blog, it is immediately revealed to us John’s seeing a therapist, to whom he cannot even bring himself to talk about his feelings, and she has recommended a blog as a mechanism by which to adjust to civilian life. And we know from the past scene that mechanism is not working because he couldn’t find anything to write about. John does not feel he is capable of adjusting to civilian life. He says “nothing happens to me” and his early blog entries reflect this. He even talks about wanting to delete the blog. The feeling that nothing worthwhile is happening to you, and nothing worthwhile will happen to you, is a hallmark of suicidal thinking. So is not trusting anyone: John has no one in his life to whom he feels close, or around whom he feels safe.

John’s behavior is suicidal, and every sequence until the opening credits of the first episode hammers that home over and over. It is suicidal. It is. That is not “reading too much” into anything.

This is also worth considering in light of what I said in my last post, about how Gatiss is aware of closeted people hurting and needing suicide hotline numbers and how he called a gay hotline as a kid. Cough cough. Yeah, I’m sure Gatiss would think it’s a reaaal funny joke to code his John Watson as both in the closet and suicidal, and just never resolve that! All in the name of infinitely sustained tension! Haha! John wants to die. Clever, clever, very clever.

Or maybe Gatiss isn’t a self-loathing monster and wouldn’t think that at all. Given that he lives openly and retweets the stuff he does, it honestly bothers me when people allege he would believe the subtext is a big joke in that way. It’s taking him in such bad faith, and ignoring everything we know about his activities outside the show, that it’s insulting to him as a human being. Like, none of us can know the showrunners, but if I have to pick a consistent version of events wherein someone is not an inconsiderate asshole who thinks it’s funny that closeted gay people want to kill themselves, over an inconsistent version of events where someone is such a thing, it’s not even difficult. And maybe I’ll end up being proven wrong, but I’d rather take someone in good faith and be disappointed than reflexively accuse them of hurtful things while the jury was still out. Better to merely be wrong than hurt another person.

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