I had promised @ebaeschnbliah to write this meta sometime before Christmas when we were chatting about a few more of the infamous rainbows we had discovered on the show. So here goes…
Is there a metaphor for the closet on the show that’s more excruciatingly painful to watch than the bonfire scene in TEH? I don’t think so.
Because that bonfire is a giant closet metaphor: The whole thing goes up in flames (=John’s in love), John is writhing in pain (=heartbreak) and yet he just can’t speak out, no matter how hard he tries.
It’s very painful to watch.
And it’s more than just a metaphor for the closet; it’s a metaphor for what it’s like to FALL IN LOVE while you’re still in the closet.
Because being deeply in love while still trapped in the closet is absolutely horrible, and Gatiss knows exactly what he’s talking about in this episode here.
Wanna take a look at the bonfire (=closet) scene step by step? Come along.
The whole scene starts by giving us…the moon. The ‘moon’ is Mary, remember (x)?
The moon is watching the bonfire scene from above right from the start.
This tells us…
a)textually: that there’s no doubt that Mary has known right from the start that John’s in that bonfire.
b)subtextually:that Mary has known right from the start that John’s closeted (=in love with a man and not out about his same-sex feelings)!!!
The ‘moon’ (=Mary) is watching all of what’s going on. (And you will see in a minute that that moon shot is no coincidence and not just an establishing shot to tell us what time of day the scene is taking place at. The whole scene is perfectly framed between the moon at the beginning and the sun at the end. So, the moon here is definitely a metaphor, ie, subtext.)
Then we see John coming to. He is trapped (literally and subtextually). Because subtextually John is trapped in the closet now that he is about to marry a woman:
And surprise, surprise…John looks miserable about the whole situation he is trapped in.
How do we know, though, that this bonfire is supposed to be read as a metaphor for the closet? Well…I give you…THE RAINBOW!
So, a situation in which you’re trapped and that’s tagged with a rainbow for our subtextual-interpretation-convenience…Yep, that’s the closet.
Wanna see how horrible it is to be trapped in something like this. Here have a close-up of John trying to scream in horror.
Then we get a shot of Mary which again (visually) connects her to the moon (remember that this happens just a few seconds after the moon shot I showed you above): Over Mary’s right shoulder, there’s a light that’s perfectly round and has the size of the moon as if it were supposed to remind us of that celestial body.
I don’t want to repeat myself, but this tells us that Mary knows that the man she’s about to marry is in the closet.
(Also, note the black gloves that mark her out as a Sherlock!mirror, albeit a quite dark and distorted one. We will see Sherlock wear those same gloves just a few moments later in a rather prominent scene.)
Let’s skip the next part because I’m not too keen on Mary pretending to be innocent, Mrs Hudson pretending to like the idea that John has a female fiancée and Sherlock pretending that he isn’t totally freaking out about John being in danger.
Also, people have already written lots and lots of metas about the John/James distinction, so no need to go into that here.
Here comes the really horrifying part: John’s not only trapped in the closet; he’s trapped in the closet and IN LOVE! Remember how ‘fire’ is a metaphor for love on the show?
This ‘Guy Fawkes’ (who’s dressed exactly like John with his chequered shirt) is being set on fire:
And if ‘burning’ is a metaphor for being in love…look what kind of love John is experiencing right now. Look how huuuuge that fire (=love) is:
And the crowd (=the audience watching this TV show) doesn’t understand what’s going on and is cheering this ‘bonfire’ on.
Yeah, man, just one episode later, the TV audience of this show absolutely did cheer for Mary and John’s wedding, not understanding John’s situation.
In the bonfire (=closet), right at the centre of the metaphorical ‘fire’, John is trying, he is trying so, so hard to speak out, to scream…but he can’t. Because when you’re trapped in a loveless straight relationship with a woman, while actually being in love (=ablaze) with your same-sex best friend, you just CAN’T SPEAK OUT.
Try as he might, he can’t make a move (both literally and figuratively with Sherlock):
John’s in pain (heartbreak), he’s paralyzed, and he’s trapped (in a loveless relationship). But no sound escapes his open mouth…
It’s excruciating to watch. And I betcha Gatiss knew exactly what he was writing about here. Because let me tell you that’s what being in love while also being paralyzed, scared and ‘mute’ in the closet feels like.
Remember that subtextually it’s no coincidence that this bonfire incident happens right after Sherlock returned to John in TEH:
The moment Sherlock returned, John was basically trapped in his loveless relationship with Mary (=the bonfire-closet) while at the same time absolutely burning up because of his love for Sherlock.
Let’s get back to our bonfire.
The only one who can save John Watson from the horrible pain (=heartbreak) of burning alive (=being in love while being trapped, paralyzed and mute in the closet)…the only one who can save John from that horrible fate is Sherlock.
And Sherlock does. As others have pointed out long before me, the little-girl-Sherlock!mirror (with a hat similar to the train-guy!hat Sherlock wore earlier in this episode)…this Sherlock!mirror is the only one who can hear John’s muted screams in the bonfire (=closet). And she’s horrified by it.
And Sherlock (as Sherlock himself) is the one who can bodily drag John out of the bonfire (=closet). They will both get pretty singed doing that, though…because they’re both metaphorically ‘on fire’ for each other.:)
As I pointed out above, the two pairs of black gloves highlight the difference between Sherlock and his dark!mirror Mary in this shot: Sherlock’s gloved hands are tenderly cupping John’s face. Mary’s gloved hands seem to be holding John down (=Sherlock loves John; Mary is just controlling him).
And because John is Sherlock’s metaphorical ‘sun’ (while Mary, as shown above, is nothing but a cold moon watching on), John’s face here morphs into the sun shining above Baker Street (the metaphorical residence of Sherlock’s ‘soul’):
Aaaand…scene!
(There’s a little bonus scene under the cut…)
Remember who else is watching all of this whilst fully knowing what is going on? Magnussen!
Magnussen represents the media, right? That’s TV stations, filmmakers, producers, journalists publishing books about Sherlock Holmes for over 120 years, authors writing articles, etc.
So, for more than 120 years, the media have known exactly what was going on (with our heroes having to fight the burning horrible bonfire-closet in which they were trapped, paralyzed and mute). The media have known…and done nothing about it. They have enjoyed watching our heroes suffer:
And the media are even worse than that.
Remember that, on the show, fireplaces are metaphors for passion and love in a relationship (as per TAB where John pretty much complains that his and Mary’s, ahem, ‘fireplace’ is always cold and unlit).
So, Magnussen (=the media) goes and has a piss in John and Sherlock’s fireplace.
Read: The media have been pissing all over the ‘fireplace’ (=Johnlock romance) for more than 120 years.
And that’s probably why Mofftiss decided Sherlock (=their show BBC ‘Sherlock’) had to shoot the media in the face:
After more than 120 years of bad press for a potential Johnlock romance (that hadn’t even been attempted by anyone) that’s more than deserved, in my opinion. And my guess is Moffat had a lot of fun writing this scene.
I forgot to post this here, wrote it 4 months ago, if not more.
So a lot of the info is from that time, however, I still consider that there are some very relevant themse to the AOT/SNK fandom here.
This is a small analysis on the themes of the whole manga, and on what Reiner, Gabi and Eren represent and the reasons behind some character’s deaths.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
THEMES
So far from what I’ve seen of this manga, I’ve seen how the main themes are (mostly) four:
- Otherness/empathy and how they work at war.
- Power and corruption.
- The cycle of revenge (sins of the father/an eye for an eye).
- The “hero” and the crimes of war (duality between hero and monster).
With those themes we see how humanity works and is often redefined, the term of monster is also changed through the manga and otherness (the phenomenon where “I” and “my community” acquire identity by finding who the “Other” is, the “Other” is the person or community who is opposite of “me” or “us”. This is a very simplified definition.) and empathy (where I decide to try to see the world through the eyes of the other) are used to explain how a war works and how a “hero” of war, no matter how good his or her intentions are, will end up losing his or her humanity.
Otherness in war is how in conflict we divide upon one another, despite all of us being humans we start seeing our community as THE humans and the enemy as the monsters or the bad guys, and that division makes us give away labels all around, we judge the many for the few and put the term “evil” on them, deciding that they don’t deserve the same right as us. When the war ends there is a definition of who the “heroes” really were and a redefinition of who the “bad guys” were.
However, because of that we always forget that in any conflict there is always two sides, each side with their own heroes and their own reasons to have rationalized their actions.
This is what Attack on titan/Shingeki no Kyojin shows us through the manga.
At first the definition of humanity is easy: There are Titans and there are Humans. The traits of titans have similarity to the humans, but there’s no way for a human to consider them as something that is part of humanity. Titans are monsters; hence they are the enemy to fight in order to recover freedom.
Humanity and the definition of the enemy “other” start becoming less and less simple. In fact, it is at the very beginning, with Eren, that we see this subject.
EREN
Many people would consider this kiddo here a stupid brat who knows nothing at the beginning. However, from the very first scenes of the anime we manage to see something important: Eren is always fighting. This is something everyone and their mother knows already, what few stop to consider is: Fighting against what?
That’s where the otherness comes into play, he’s fighting against the ones he considers the “others”. We see Eren cheering for the scout regiment and then actively attacking those who wonder why the fuck there’s even a scout regiment when things are bad enough inside as to send a bunch of people out to show how, indeed, the titans are still hungry.
The scout regiment represents something very precious to Eren, and that will be seen throughout the anime and the manga: They represent hope.
Things are bad inside the walls, there’s little to no justice, the ones who deliver justice are not doing their job correctly and abuse is something very common.
Eren has lost hope in those who are supposed to keep him safe (the garrison), he does not believe in anyone to keep things as they should be, so, whenever he sees some thing he considers wrong, he reacts.
He reacts against people he considers the enemy, against the “others”: To know who are Eren’s “Others” we only have to see the first episodes of Attack on titan.
