Debanjali Roy1 & Tanmoy Putatunda2
1Assistant Professor, School of Languages, KIIT Deemed to be University, itsmeanjee@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2496-6091
2Assistant Professor, School of Languages, KIIT Deemed to be University, tanmoy.putatunda@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9698-9487
Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.44
Abstract
Appearing in the singular short story “A Scandal in Bohemia” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, the character of Irene Adler has been adapted and reconstructed in subsequent literary and visual media. Twenty-first century screen adaptations have swivelled upon postfeminist re-appropriations of the character and overt sexualisation of the ‘body’, thereby engaging in reassessment of the Irene-Sherlock relationship and problematizing gendered presentations of the character. Locating Irene in a heteronormative space, such narratives have attempted to revise the image of the cross-dressing ‘adventuress’ through varied portrayals which seemingly broaden her scope by means of her deliberate transgressions of fixed gender tropes. This article, by taking into account the gendered power-play embedded in three popular twenty first century screen adaptations of the text, namely, the films Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), CBS’s Elementary (2012-2019) and BBC’s Sherlock (2010-2017), scrutinizes the dilemma of presentation of Irene Adler through the lenses of sexual dynamics and gendered performances.
Keywords: Gender dynamics, Sexuality, Body, Subversion, Adaptation, Performances, Identity