Photo spread for an imaginary Sherlock Holmes of the Harlem Renaissance.
Wentworth Miller as Sherlock Holmes.
Idris Elba as Dr. John Watson.
1925: Harlem, New York City.
Sherlock Holmes is the light-skinned, blue-eyed son of a Black mother and White father, a man who has grown up with a foot in both worlds. By necessity, he is an astute observer of those around him, and frequently ‘passes’ as White. Holmes puts his powers of observation and his chameleonic tendencies to good use as a private detective in New York City, where he moves back and forth between downtown (White) Greenwich village and uptown (Black) Harlem, investigating illegal gambling rings, brothels, and speakeasies, where he is not above sampling the wares himself.
Dr. John Watson is a Black doctor who served in an integrated regiment during the First World War. One of the few commissioned Black officers in the U.S. Army, he occupied a respected position in the Forces, only to return to the harsh reality of a segregated society when the war ends. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Watson moves to Harlem in order to establish a private practice, where he can serve the up-and-coming Black middle class of New York City.
In a divided city, Harlem is where the classes and the races meet:
A major element of Uptown allure was its enormous social fluidity; in this urban free zone …the elite not only frequented public restaurants, but basement speakeasies, where they mingled not only with non-Social Register customers but with people of color.
From Hide/Seek (p. 28):
Prohibition…closed bars and dance clubs in white areas, but permitted them to fluorish in black neighborhoods like Harlem. Many white citizens first came to Harlem during Prohibition, crossing a profound racial divide that made Harlem essentially a black city in the midst of a white one. There, they first encountered Harlem’s personalities, social mores, and artistic culture.
The culture these white tourists found in Harlem was notably more tolerant of sexual difference, giving many whites their first taste of an unashamed, well-integrated queer culture. In venues like the Cotton Club, openly queer performers regularly entertained, and as the evening’s entertainment was already in violation of the law under Prohibition, it encouraged a sexual openness unavailable in other parts of the city.
Harlem thus became the center of many white homosexuals’ existence…For many white queers, Harlem was a ‘sexual playground’, and its poverty, un- and under-employment, and racial tensions were less germane to their experiences of the place than its erotic possibilities…
Fresh from the Army, Dr. Watson is thrust into this fervent neighborhood, into a Harlem where black and white, male and female, queer and straight, collide and converge. But his own understanding of himself, his race, and even his sexuality, is challenged when he meets Sherlock Holmes, who is investigating the death of a pair of singers at the Cotton Club. Originally called in to identify the cause of their deaths, the staid and sober Watson is thrown into a world where nothing is as it appears at first glance: a world where black is white and white is black, where the police pay pimps for the right to the street, and where moonshine flows like milk and honey. To make matters worse, the whole investigation is led by Holmes, a brilliant, crazy man who plays the dangerous game of passing as white in the city that never sleeps.
Thanks to AfroGeekGoddess for suggesting Wentworth Miller as a possible Sherlock Holmes in this canon.
yep.
I would watch the hell out of this show.
The name is Watson, Joan Watson. Lucy Liu is set to play Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick in CBS’ drama pilot Elementary, whose tweaks to Arthur Connan Doyle’s classic include switching Watson’s gender to female. The project, written by Robert Doherty, is set in present day and stars Jonny Lee Miller as eccentric Brit Holmes, a former consultant to Scotland Yard whose addiction problems led him to a rehab center in New York City.
IS HER NAME OFFICIALLY GOING TO BE JOAN
does elementary
actually have
POTENTIAL???
Jasika Nicole as Sheryl Holmes
John Cho as John Watson
Stealing Maria and Autumn’s idea of fancasting the American version of Sherlock Holmes with POCs.
And apparently slapdash photoshopping.
sCREAMSSS
THIS IS REALLY GOOD AND PERFECT WOW OH MAN
Right, well, as is probably obvious to anyone who follows gingerhaze, this is practically fanart of her entire journal and, uh, I was honestly kind of terrified that she would post the exact same thing minutes before I finished it or something.
(I didn’t scan the part of my sketchbook with a tiny me next to this going “YES”, but IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING… THAT IS THE ANSWER.)
(Simza has a nose ring and heavy eyeliner partly because the face ref I used had those things… but also because no one could convince me that a modern, Sherlocked!Simza would not have those things.)
cough
This is lovely, but it’s sad how much everyone is leaving out House and Wilson in all their fangirling. House and Wilson have shared a thousand looks like this.
^ I DEMAND MORE HOUSE INCLUSION IN OUR SHERLOCKINGS
(LET US NOT FORGET THAT THEY’RE ALL JUST FANWORKS :D)
I thought you’d never ask.
ugh I really thought about hating Sherlock Holmes, you guys, because it is so pandering and offensive and ughghghhghh, but… fffff.
Effort and non-effort doodlans of the first SH movie!
It’s amazing to think that THIS, this movie that I was randomly asked to see by a friend (THANK. YOU.), was the thing that hypnotized me to borrow all Holmes from the library and… I have no recollection after that apart from being lost in a land of hunting second-hand Holmes novels, taking people to see the movie with me over and over again, realizations that this fandom is over a hundred years old and has a shitton of adaptations with the most amazing actors ever and the most adshafdhsafgsagasd-inducing WAITING for new things.
It’s so good to be alive RIGHT NOW
!!!! I LOVE THESE
In this Sherlock Holmes game, the designers forgot to make it so that Watson would actually follow you when you moved, resulting in some freaky Paranormal Activity shit.
This starts out hilarious, but then it gets legitimately creepy. PERFECT EDITING + AUDIO COMBO
