Lessons on Geek Anthropology: JohnLock Subtext

This week’s lessons on Geek Anthropology is pretty hot. We’re going to talk about the JohnLock subtext that can be found on BBC’s Sherlock. But first, let’s talk about what subtext is, shall we? The subtext is a topic hidden within the contents of a creative work. Sometimes is more evident and explicit, and others it is subtle. Authors might use subtext as a device to touch topics that are controversial, ambiguous or that might fuel the main story. It can be used as a humor device or as a way to enchant the audience. Said in other words, the use of the subtext can be innocent or mischievous. So, it is possible for producers and authors to include certain topics within the narrative to acquire a bigger audience, or to make sure that the story will have lots of fans.

So yes, subtext can be used as a way to allure fans closer to a story, make them fall in love with it, and yet deny that any subtext is contained in it. However, some subtexts are too strong as to be denied. That is the case of JohnLock.

You might be thinking that BBC’s Sherlock has started with the subtext of JohnLock, the romantic pair of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. However, this is not really the case. JohLock is as old as Sherlock Holmes is. That means that the imagination of thousands of fans throughout the years has been there all along. Thank you, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Or, do we really have to thank him? Or were the fans the ones to start having naughty thoughts with the ship on the first place?

JohnLock has been fueling fans imaginations for years, enough to find very old fan fiction. Sorry for Cumberbatch and his dismissals of the hideous fannish activity of slash fanfic, but this activity didn’t start with your portrayal of Sherlock. Blame the mimeograph, a low cost printing press. You can picture accommodated ladies taking some tea with female friends and commenting how awesome Sherlock and Watson were. Some would write about it, and some would print their stories and share it with friends. Sorry folks, the internet, didn’t actually made it possible to share slash, it only made it bigger and wider. It went from cozy tea-time afternoons to mass mayhem production online.

However, Johnlock wasn’t that naughty at the beginning. Mind you, the tastes of consumers of fanfic have changed over the years. As female fans felt more free to talk about sex with friends and online, so stories grew up in their naughtiness. And that is fantastic! Just as men comment every single inch of skin of their favorite characters, so women do.

Does this mean that the JohnLock subtext, or any other subtext, can only be grasped by female fans? Does this mean that the only producers of fanfic are females? Not at all. Traditional academia on fandom assures us that fanfic is the realm of women. However, many writers, men, and women, tend to use nicknames to write fanfic and test the reception of their writing. So, even if the number of women is high, we cannot just affirm that only women enjoy and write fanfic. Thus, it cannot be stated either that they’re the only ones to catch the subtext within the story.

Despite this fact, reality bites: writers know how to target female fandom and put the right subtext along so that the fandom base fuels. That we already had JohnLock in large quantities wasn’t enough to assure a staggering success online. Add smart subtext in the plot, choose actors that have chemistry together, and let the fanbase catch up and create online marketing for you. Sorry to break the magic on the topic, but, BBC’s Sherlock subtext has been incredibly well crafted targetting a specific audience and assuring an incredible success.

And success looks like this: [Nudity Ahead: if you don’t like slash or are Mr. Cumberbatch or Mr. Freeman, I highly recommend you to scroll quickly till you find letters instead of drawings again.]

So, what’s going on here? Fans take in the subtext and create fanfic, in writing or fan art form, share it online and fuel Sherlock again. The more fanfic and fan art shared, the healthier will be the fannish status of Sherlock.

Fans create for amusement and for other fans. They can create slash fan art like the one above, or create amazing, humorous memes using as a topic the subtext that they can find in the story. Like, for example:

Or you can find promotion memes to fuel the JohnLock’s ship:

So, are writers and producers evil? Subtext is a great device to include controversial topics and say it was incidental and that fans are imagining things. It’s also a great way to fuel fans imagination and get them producing for other fans using the producers’ products so that, in a way, they work for the producer for free to make the fanbase strong. [Most of them will deny this fact.] And even if the stars that play the characters who are involved in the subtext deny its existence and affirm that the fannish activities it fuels as inmoral, reality is that these activities make fandom alive. It’s a circle. If one fails, so fails the other. [Or at least, this is how it normally works.]

So, subtext is running amok within Sherlock. You can’t deny the staggering ammounts of it in every single chapter: how Sherlock and Watson look at each other, the lines that they say, the body language…

In turn, subtext fuels the creativity of fans which explodes online. You just need to google “JohnLock,” or to search for the word on Tumblr, and you’ll discover tons of fanfic of all kinds along with tons of fan art and memes. The more the fans share, the stronger and long lasting the fandom and the fannish objects will be.

So, if all was orchestrated thanks to the naughty subtext, what do fans gain from it? Entertainment is the principal gain, but other payments come to mind, like experience. Fans who write fanfic or draw fan art for amusement or to share with other fans are training themselves. So, even if entertainment might be the principal gain from such activities, experience of fans who produce for other fans is also pretty clear.

BBC’s Sherlock contains very smart subtext that has worked amazingly well. JohnLock, however, as a ship, hasn’t been invented with this version of Sherlock and Watson. JohnLock is old. But the subtext masterpiece in it looks like orchestrated by CumberSherlock himself.

Next time you come accross any subtext, whether it targets JohnLock, Wincest or any other ship, take a closer look and see if it was deliberately done. How well has it worked? How much controversy has it created within the fanbase? How many fans are creating content that producers might consider as an abomination and unlawful?

Tell me, who is being Loki’d with JohnLock’s subtext?