From Sherlock Holmes to geek chic, mainstream culture is idolising intelligence. Popular
quiz show Pointless rewards not just
the right answers, but the most obscure ones, asking contestants to demonstrate
the depth of their knowledge by knowing more about everything that the general
public does by giving answers which had not been thought of by the public: think
reverse Family Fortunes. The second
series of the BBC’s award winning Sherlock,
a show which focuses on the supreme intellect of its title character,
attracted over 8 million viewers per episode and was screened in 180 countries.
Sherlock’s success has catapulted
lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch into the limelight and earned him a dedicated
following of ‘Cumberbitches.’ His character has also become something of a
style icon, with leisurewear label Belstaff resuming production of their
discontinued ‘Milford’ coat due to the huge demand generated by its place in
Sherlock’s wardrobe.
Whilst the show itself is clever, balancing just the
right amount of irreverence and respect for Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon and
providing us with some beautiful in-jokes, for example the ‘three patch
problem’ and ‘The Speckled Blonde’, it is the genius intellect of Sherlock
himself which really shines. Sherlock’s brain works like Wikipedia, flitting
from mental hyperlink to mental hyperlink, with Sherlock explaining the process
in short sharp staccato that’s almost too fast to follow. He
is definitely arrogant: everyone else, perhaps with the exception of John and
Moriarty, is boring because they are so dim-witted. Sherlock’s goal is to prove
himself cleverer than everyone else, from the police to Moriarty, and, by the
final episode, The Reichenbach Fall,
John and the viewers themselves. But we don’t mind this intellectual arrogance.
In fact, we love it. The immense popularity of the show and Sherlock himself
tell us that much. The public are responding to a hero who uses brainpower, not
firepower. There are fewer explosions, no fast cars and little sharp shooting
in this crime drama. As students and academics, we have naturally always placed
value on intelligence. But is the public starting to value brains over brawn? The world of television has picked up on this
intelligence fetish and tried to capitalise on it, with Heston Blumenthal’s new
series How To Cook Like Heston
further accentuating Heston’s already proven ‘mad scientist’ image. The opening
titles to the programme borrow on-screen text from Sherlock, as well as the display and explanation of the thought processes
of a ‘genius.’ Blumenthal walks around his home town, looking at various
animals and plants, for example a chicken and a rose bush, and we see diagrams
and brainstorms detailing his thoughts.
Surely, as academics, we should welcome the media’s
positive focus on intelligence? Or perhaps this is yet another, newer facet of
our society’s obsession with the easy option, the get-rich-quick scheme, with
instant results? Sherlock finds the truth because he’s a genius, cleverer than
those plodding, hard-working policemen and women at the Yard. For us, or most
of us at least, our good results come mostly from hours spent at the library or
at our desks, as well as a few flashes of inspiration. We don’t all run at
double speed, shouting out fully thought through and intelligent answers before
our colleagues have even finished unpicking the question. Clever may well be
the new cool, but it will probably take a few more years for the stacks of
books, flurries of paper, week-old coffee cups and half-eaten toast become the
latest in interior decoration.
