A Million and One Sherlocks (a really abbreviated version of my thoughts on the subject of intermodal storytelling)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes series in the late nineteenth century.

A quick IMDB search reveals that at least 11 movies, TV series, and video games have been made from Doyle's concept since the 1930s.

Among these, there are two "modern" TV series that have made a big splash in the past few years: Elementary on CBS and Sherlock, imported to PBS from the BBC.

There have been tons of non-canonical Sherlock Holmes books and stories and whatnot by people who aren't Arthur Conan Doyle as well as works loosely based on the Doyle characters written since the original stories' publications.


Sherlock Holmes, detective extraordinaire, is recognizable in every one of these stories. But as he jumps from London to New York, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from book to movie, from Nicol Williamson to Robert Downey Jr., what remains the same in every adaptation that makes each story the "Sherlock" story?

How can a story be told and retold in many mediums, formats, cultures, and languages, sometimes without an original canon version to pull from, and still be the same story (think Cinderella, Pride and Prejudice, Charlie Brown, and of course Sherlock Holmes)? Many stories have undergone these transformations and always been the same stories no matter how they were told. It's something very magical about storytelling that can take an idea, lesson, structure, or character and communicate it in many different ways without compromising the integrity of that basic, beginning concept.

Something that has always intrigued me about stories is how each exists in a metaverse all its own. For instance, Harry Potter takes place in a particular "parallel universe" in which magic exists and Hogwarts educates young magical folk and a creature whose name must not be spoken is determined to enslave non-magical humans. Other parallel universes are much closer to reality, like that of Because of Winn-Dixie or The Casual Vacancy. These parallel metaverses, the realms in which each story takes place, might be seen as the calling card, the main identifier, the barcode of a story. But when you remove these stories from their home medium, language, or time period, often immensely altering the metaverse they exist in, how are they still recognizable? These changes that alter the metaverse in which a story takes place are perhaps the most interesting changes to analyze. Some stories, such as the Cinderella story, don't even have a primary canon version that all others can be measured against to find the "real" backdrop to which the story belongs. 

Perhaps these changes are what really bring out the power of a timeless story. The place, characters, time, clothing, and other details are often able to be changed without making it unidentifiable. Each varied retelling of the story without a primary source contributes to the intangible creation that is the entire story, never contradicting a "real" narrative. In other words: the stories have rather little to do with the places, fringe characters, and other considerations included. These never-ending, ever-present stories have everything to do with something a little less visible, a little less replicable, and immensely more powerful. In stories without primary canons, the story has a life of its own that is only made more complete with every change in its re-telling.

Is the same true for adaptations that do have canons? Do the original Sherlock Holmes stories, my favorite example, benefit from the creation of "spin-offs?" I would argue that they do. A story that can have changes made to its metaverse without altering the basic story itself proves its worth. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." A book that can rely on its ideas to be ever-expanded and more or less infinitely squeezed and prodded has the greatest power of all.

(For more complicated references, think about stories where the canon is conflicting. In the first National Treasure movie, Jon Voight's character pretty clearly indicates at one point that his wife is dead--yet in the sequel, Helen Mirren appears as his estranged wife with whom he does not see eye-to-eye. Rachel has like nine different birth dates mentioned on Friends. Several of the books JKR references in the Harry Potter series have name or author changes between books.)

This is something I'd really love input on! Please write me (YourBibliomaniac@gmail.com) or comment below! I think it's very common to disregard or besmirch adaptations of one's favorite literature, and I've certainly done that. But maybe there's more power to an adaptation than we think….

Always,
Your Bibliomaniac

Bibliographic Citation:

• IMDb. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Jan. 2014. .
• "Non-canonical Sherlock Holmes Works." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., n.d. Web. 2 Jan. 2014. .