34
Popular Culture Review
Where the Heart Is: The Achievement of Granada Television’s Sherlock Holmes
Films,” and Fred and Wendy Erisman, in their article, “‘Data! Data! Data!’
Holmesian Echoes in Star Trek: The Next Generation,^" are among the many
who have asserted that even more central to the canon than the mysteries, is the
near-mythic friendship between Watson and Holmes. While this is certainly
true, it raises interesting implications for the argument of Moriarty as Holmes’
double. At that rate—shouldn’t the professor have a friend as well?
While being on a first name basis alone fails to confirm friendship, it does
constitute a start, especially when you pause to consider how few arch-villains
are on such terms with their henchmen. Moreover, despite its many supposed
failings, the film does an astounding job of capturing the compassion that
Moriarty’s second has for him. So, while this certainly isn’t the archetypal
Holmes-Watson relationship, it does convey a level of intimacy we’re not
typically used to seeing displayed toward our arch-nemeses. Attractive, even
young—despite the post-Reichenbach timeline—the film’s Moriarty uniquely
reconstitutes traits other on-screen Moriartys have had. Power-hungry, with
aspirations of world-domination far exceeding the run of London’s underworld,
unlike most Moriartys, whose actions and attitudes are often foreshadowed by
their appearances, this man remains attractive despite being manipulative and
unabashedly evil. In this way, the film’s depiction of Moriarty perhaps most
realistically embodies the “banality of evil,” perhaps explaining why he is one of
the only representations of the character to be killed by something so mundane
as a bullet.
Unlike his unrecognizable cinematic counterpart, Moore’s Moriarty dies
much more fantastically, by falling into the sky. As Goldman asserts, “Moriarty
is so loath to descend to the level of the crowds that he grasps the cavorite [anti
gravity material] and flies upwards and out of this installment of the story”
(148). While Goldman’s point emphasizes Moriarty’s desire to stand out as an
individual, even at the cost of his own life—after the fashion of classic
mythological over-reachers such as Icarus and Phaeton—his argument overlooks
the fact that Moriarty overreaches merely in an attempt to save his precious anti
gravity material; unwilling to give up his designs, James clings to the Wellsian
cavorite with the same sort of psychotic frenzy with which he attacks Holmes at
Reichenbach. Sacrificing himself upon the altar of his ambition, rather than that
of his vanity, Moriarty stands out not only from the crowd below, but also from
the typical arch-villain.
Imagery of the literal fall is also attributed to Disney’s Professor Ratigan, in
their feature-length animated film The Great Mouse Detective, which features
characters based on those found in the children’s book series Basil o f Baker
Street. An obvious homage to Professor Moriarty, Ratigan is voiced by Vincent
Price in what has been famously attributed as having been his favorite role.
Virtually no scholarship exists on the film, which is too bad because it is ripe
with Sherlockian allusion, as well as an original mystery set in the Holmes style
and, indeed, taking place beneath his very nose.