I started watching The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and was immediately aware of a connection between Dr. Moriarty and the common idea of the disaffected nerd. The intellectual takes interest in obscure subjects because of social ineptitude and rejection. He or she pursues solitary hobbies, or joins with other quirky types in nerdy interests. The loner intellectual in literature does not find friends. Transferring attention from social pursuits, such as friends, parties, sports, and dating, the lone nerd also develops resentment toward the world that rejected him or her. So you end up with these characters in movies and books.
The serial killer is the most extreme example in this new mythology. Because of wrongs inflicted in childhood by those who should have loved and cared most, the serial killer transfers rage and hatred onto innocent victims, who happen to trigger his angry recollections. The parallel with the evil genius is struck in the popular mind, and Dr. Lecter is born.
In the character of Sherlock Holmes, we find the balance, the good genius, the friendly nerd. Also, as a man, Holmes is capable of physical action. By the time we get to James Bond, intellect has all but flown out the window. Bond is clever, but he is not particularly interested in abstruse knowledge. He relies on Q for the finer points and only needs to know which end to point and what to do to make it kill the bad guy. A character like Batman/Bruce Wayne recoups some of Holmes’s social qualities and his intellect, but Batman is still somewhat misanthropic. More so Spider-Man/Peter Potter in the original comic books.
I was never a comic book reader. I don’t really understand the interest in them or the rush to make every bad “graphic novel” into a film. It’s already in a cartoon. Why put it on the screen with actors? If I think too much about this, I’ll probably go off fiction altogether and find no pleasure even in reading. However, comic books are filled with disaffected outcasts, geniuses and freaks, who have special abilities. That characterization, and the sensibility behind it, undoubtedly strikes a chord with the audience. The readers are presumably feeling that way in their own lives and have some “secret sorrow” no one can appreciate. They will never be loved for themselves. Again, the antisocial extraordinary identity, which finds a broad audience because of resonating feelings of disaffection, shows this conception of intellect or ability as isolating is commonly believed, held, accepted.
Where is the happy, social genius in literature? It would be nice to see a well-drawn witty hero with great intellect and depth of humanity. If there are any, I would be interested in some examples. I am not as well read in crime literature to know.
Parodies, such as Buckaroo Banzai and In Like Flint, do have these exaggerated heroes, Renaissance men who know everything and can do everything. All of them are descendants of Sherlock Holmes. The person seeking knowledge over all else comes from Faust. I don’t know enough about these icons psychologically to connect them quickly with older ideas. I’ll send my Ahab after that whale, after I finish this.
What incites me is the obvious anti-intellectual tendency in entertainment, the notion that intelligence comes at the price of normalcy and social adjustment. Only a freak or a social outcast can have an interest and aptitude for the life of the mind. Such persons, at least as characters, are always resentful and warped, and want to destroy the world or a good portion of it. They are sexually kinky or shyly frigid. To be really focused, you have to be debilitated like Rain Man or a monster like Lecter. Only someone with obvious deficiencies in his humanity can be truly intelligent. Mozart becomes Amadeus instead of the socially aware person he was as evinced by his letters. We are to believe he died young because of a heartless world and his own lack of political skill, rather than his childhood excursions all over Europe to perform for royalty, which undoubtedly weakened his constitution, or other reasonable explanations.
The universe doesn’t make exceptions for the exceptional people. That is for other people to do, since what we admire is a human thing. What bothers me is the way we misidentify and then vilify or extol others based on our false assumptions -- about ourselves and the world. Smart people are shy and uncoordinated. Athletes must be stupid. He’s popular and therefore must have something going for him.
I don’t know why it’s difficult for us to understand how talent and intelligence, true genius, can be sources of joy for the person who has them. In my more lucid moments, I am happiest. How could it not be even greater for persons whose minds persist in those rare moments most of the time?
Great athletes must find pleasure in their bodies’ ability to excel. So it is for great minds; for them, the world is always resplendent, the very air of daylight must sing, the crystal clarity of a cold night rings, with a music I can only hear with effort. Or so I imagine.
KLK
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