Archives: Sherlock Holmes and The Story of Disgust - Part I.
Originally published on my old blog link here.
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About a year ago, I watched an episode called "His Last Vow" in the third season of BBC's crime series Sherlock, which, as the name hints, is a modern adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the famous detective from Baker Street. The show as a whole is a fairly watchable pastime as long as one ignores the once-in-a-while cringeworthy moments when Sherlock Holmes presents his ingenious psychological analyses and extrapolations. However, Sherlock's psychoanalysis is not what I want to talk about here. Rather I'd like to have a look at the plot of that particular episode I watched, and ask you whether there is something odd about it.
The anti-hero is Charles Augustus Magnussen who, unlike others from previous episodes, is neither a murderer, nor a terrorist - he is a blackmailer. He hoards information about powerful people and then uses it to his own advantage. This is how Magnussen describes himself: "I am not a villain. I have no evil plan. I am a businessman acquiring assets." Surely, it's not a nice thing to do. He's still a criminal, but one can't help but think that it could be worse. Now, let's ponder what happens in the episode:
Holmes and Watson try to get Magnussen arrested, but their attempt fails, and Holmes shoots Magnussen to stop him from blackmailing Mary Watson [Watson's wife].(summary from Wikipedia)
To clarify, Sherlock shoots Magnussen in the head thereby killing him instantly. And just to let you know, Mary Watson is being blackmailed because she is an ex-assassin who had killed quite a few people back in the day. By now you might have spotted that the punishment did not exactly match the crime by today's standards. It is not frequent, as far as I'm aware, that one gets a death penalty for blackmail in contemporary London. What's more shocking, however, is that Sherlock got away with it with impunity and without any loss of popularity among the viewers of the show (me included, I must confess). Now, how's that possible?
Obviously, Sherlock is a likable character (albeit somewhat weird) and the story of Mary Watson evokes empathy in us, we believe that she regrets her wrongdoing and we want her to be happy with dear old Watson. Nonetheless, that wouldn't be enough to entirely override the human moral compass. The reason why we're fine with Magnussen getting killed is because he is portrayed, and thus perceived, as thoroughly disgusting. He is sweating. He licks people's faces (Yuck!). He urinates into Sherlock's fireplace (Disgusting!). What’s more, other characters often use the language of disgust when talking about Magnussen: "You’re sweating. It is disgusting..", "That disgusting creature..", "None of them turns my stomach like Magnussen", etc.
You might want to argue that the fact that we perceive someone as disgusting should not matter when judging their actions (and I would whole-heartedly agree with you). But unfortunately for Magnussen, it does.
Researchers led by Joshua Tybur who study disgust have pointed out that there is a close relationship between the emotion and our moral sense. Across different cultures, objects and actions that are potential pathogen or sexual disgust elicitors, such as certain foods (meat in particular), bodily fluids, or sexual acts (e.g. anal sex) are often moralized. Disgust is reported in connection with other acts that are not related to pathogens or sex. These often include moral violations that are linked to principles about harm and fairness, and violations of religious rules and rituals. In addition, disgust is argued to play a role in social cognition as it seems to facilitate prejudice through dehumanisation of the out-group. The very latter kind of moral disgust is most relevant to our story. There are, however, two questions that need to be addressed beforehand. Firstly, why is it that the disgusting is so often moralised? And secondly, why is it that moral violations are found disgusting?
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