In the final pledge of the Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock confronts Magnussen, a newspaper owner who uses the press as a weapon to manipulate public opinion. Through Magnussen’s intimidation tactics, the show highlights the dangers of sensationalism and media games, which are often a problem in real life. It reflects the media’s ability to manipulate the public with inaccurate information and emphasizes the need for fair reporting.
When it comes to the world’s most famous mystery novels, there’s one character that never fails to pop up. We’ve all heard the name at least once: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. He is considered the greatest detective in the world of detective stories and has been reinvented and reimagined in various works. In particular, the British drama SHERLOCK, which aired since 2010, became a huge hit worldwide and was so popular with Sherlock Holmes fans that it was renewed for a third season in 2014. Season 4 premiered in January 2017, but there hasn’t been a new season since. However, the main actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, have been positive about Season 5, which has fans excited. Cumberbatch said, “I’d be willing to come back if the circumstances were right,” and Freeman said, “If there’s a good script, I’d be back.”
I, too, was captivated by the show and watched seasons one through four this year. Each episode had a different case and a different way of solving it, which kept things interesting and never boring. The final episode of season three, His Last Vow, was particularly memorable for its strong twist and Sherlock Holmes’s struggles, but it also touched on an important real-world topic: media play.
The episode opens with Charles Augustus Magnussen, the owner of a newspaper, being interrogated. He has regular meetings with the British Prime Minister and is suspected of pressuring the Prime Minister to make favorable policies. Magnussen denies this, but it is implied from this first shot that he is the episode’s final black figure. Soon after, Magnussen grills his interrogator, claiming to have found evidence of an affair between the husband of one of the interrogators and her husband in a private knowledge warehouse called the “Appledoor.” When the interviewer protests that this is blackmail, he says the shocking words, “Of course it’s not blackmail, it’s… possession. possession,” a shocking statement.
This line reveals his true nature: he uses information as a weapon to control people, accumulating it as if it were an asset. Eventually, Sherlock Holmes is asked to take on the case as the only person in Britain who can take on Magnussen, and the story becomes a full-blown cerebral battle. I watched the rest of the story in anticipation of how Sherlock Holmes would prevail against the newspaper magnate.
Sherlock Holmes devises a plan to capture the “Apple Door.” Sherlock Holmes has a plan to capture the Appledore, because any newspaper owner who gets his hands on top-secret state secrets is likely to be searched by British intelligence. With this in mind, Sherlock Holmes proposes to Magnussen to exchange the Apple Door’s material for a laptop containing state secrets. Magnussen accepts the laptop without hesitation, and I was now waiting for the reveal, hoping that the information contained in “Appledoor” would be revealed.
In a later scene, however, Magnussen reveals that he’s seen through Sherlock Holmes’s plan all along, and nonchalantly says that Sherlock Holmes has made a big mistake. The true nature of the “Apple Door” is then revealed, and to his surprise, it’s a virtual warehouse of his own memories! He didn’t actually have the evidence, he just remembered everything. He didn’t need physical evidence, just the fact that he could fool people with a big headline in the newspaper. This scene shocked both the Sherlock Holmes in the movie and me. The first shock was that Sherlock Holmes had lost the battle of brains, and the second shock was that it reminded me of the unreliable sensationalist articles, or so-called trash stories, that often appear in the real media. At that moment, I realized that the real-world media is a mirror image of the way the public is misled and manipulated.
In his work, Magnussen uses real facts as a tool of intimidation, but in a way that is inherently different from sensationalism. Magnussen makes threats based on real facts, even though he has no material evidence. On the other hand, Chirashi incites people with plausible stories, regardless of whether they are true or not. However, both are the same in that they are able to manipulate public opinion by misleading people without evidence. Just as Magnussen uses memory as a way to manipulate the public, so do real-life scaremongers use dubious evidence to deceive the public. In fact, many celebrities and politicians have had their image tarnished by the media, and it’s difficult to reverse the damage. Even if a correction is published, it rarely restores the damage done. In the end, people end up fearing the media as much as they fear Magnussen, which is a huge disconnect from the media’s original role of fair reporting.
More than just a retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story, I felt that Magnussen’s behavior pointed to the current problem of media play. Of course, not all media use media play to manipulate public opinion. Many articles are written fairly and based on facts, and even when they criticize someone, it’s right to let the world know if it’s based on facts and can be substantiated. However, it is clearly wrong to unfairly intimidate people to gain an advantage or to manipulate their image with false facts. Currently, there are not enough legal options to stop abusive media play, which is why a lot of trolls still thrive. One solution would be to establish legal penalties for unsubstantiated malicious articles, or at the very least, to ensure that they are only published with minimal evidence.
