Sherlock Homes: “Why do you do it?”

Culverton Smith: “Why do I kill? It’s not about hatred or revenge. I’m not a dark person. Killing human beings (chuckles) It just makes me incredibly happy”

“You know in films, when you see people pretending to be dead, and it’s just living people lying down? That’s not what dead people look like. Dead people look like things. I like to make people into things. Then you can own them.”

This was the scariest episode I have ever seen in Sherlock Homes and probably on TV for a long time, and that partly has to do with the impact of that statement. Look, as political science majors, we don’t really specialize in much, but we do get a deep sense of what power looks like. When you read a lot of philosophy, from Aristotle to Foucault, from Hobbes to Habermas, you get a real familiarity of what power dynamics either should look like or what it does look like.

Let’s get into the abstract for a second. A person in control of a state relies on an ideology, a tradition to follow under, in order to remain legitimate. They can’t venture too much out of the ideology because then they have to resort to violence. Violence that is not legitimate in the eyes of at least some will produce a collapse of the regime. Think the Iranian Revolution or the Arab Springs: leaders may be in power, and some can make it last, but they cannot do so without looking over their shoulders.

In the basic sense, power is making others do what you would have them do, and that can be through fear like Machiavelli, through creating a surveillance state like Foucault, through a social contract like Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc… you get the point. You can probably learn this stuff in your next political ideology class.

Here’s where TV can teach you a few things.

A person is legitimate until he/she uses violence that doesn’t sit right with most people, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still in power. Having others do what you would want them to do is akin to treating people as dolls in a dollhouse: so long as you stay in the house and follow all the rules, the adults around you won't take a second glance. But what if Barbie becomes an ex-commando shooting Kens left and right to save the world from a male dominated patriarchy and…

OK, I had a weird childhood, but that’s beside the point. The kids are still in control of the dolls, even though the parents might not think you’re ready to play house.

From dolls to people, we give a lot of our powers and freedoms to the person in charge, and to some degree, we need to be OK with that. However, know that the person in charge has the capability to orchestrate massive violence. It’s unpopular, it’s messy, and it doesn’t usually bode well for the leader’s future, but know that it can be done: the heads of state can make a lot of people into things.

Take the next step. When we rebel, we don’t take power back. Power is only taken back when an exhausted leader makes one of two choices: either he or she recognizes the monster he must become and secede power before that happens, or ignore the privilege to rule and find it as a right, doing everything in his or her power to stay in charge to the very end.

There is a serial killer in all of us, because when we take the throne to act, the throne acts upon you.

As Culverton Smith puts it:

“Imagine if the Queen wanted to kill some people (He’s playing with a doll at this point) We all love the Queen.”

John Watson: “Sherlock Homes is not about to arrest the Queen.”

Culverton: “Well of course not, not her majesty. Money. Power. Fame. Some things make you untouchable. God save the Queen, she could open a slaughterhouse and we’d all probably pay the entrance fee.”

A lot of the time we object to a Queen, King, or President not because of what they do but because of the standards they set, the morality they at times tend to forget.

That’s why we have to look at the character of our leaders: not for how they are going to rule but because of what they might do when their rule is challenged. Don’t make government perfect, just make it workable so that leaders of bad character can be checked.

Here’s where reform can shine some light in this rather bleak post. Make a government that checks bad character. Make the circle of government larger than it is, for what it lacks in efficiency it makes up for in representation. Finally, don’t wait for the benevolent dictators of the world because they’re not coming. As Watson retorts: “Nobody is untouchable.”

I'm talking about a lot of things here: how important the character of the people we put in power is. How revolution must be done right and it must be done through reform. Finally, how important your life is to the people in power when you respect them, but how worthless it becomes when you oppose them.

Sherlock Homes said it best:

“Your life is not yours, keep your hands off it.”

That could mean you have no control over the things that happen to you, or it could mean you affect the lives around you in a positive way by fighting to put the right leaders in power, because this world thrives on hierarchy and you better trust the ones on the top.