Category Archives: Geek

The hat and pipe don’t make the man.

Will the real Mr. Sherlock Holmes please stand up? You know, the one with the deerstalker hat and the pipe?

Actually, while the hat has become iconic, it’s actually a later addition to the Holmes canon. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made Holmes a pipe smoker, an eccentric, a recreational drug user and an occasional lout, but the hat and the cloak-cape-thing were practically all Hollywood. Indeed, throughout the history of the character, he has changed and adapted with the times. And for anyone who’s writing fiction based on already established characters — historical or fictional — a look at Holmes can be instructive. It also helps that I’m something of a Holmes aficionado. So settle in for this post, dear reader.

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Wow...this looks really good on me. Hope I get to wear it again.

If you’re a geek-movie fan like I am, there are moments you’ll readily identify in nearly every pic in the genre. James Bond puts on the tuxedo for the first time in Casino Royale. Batman catches a villain from behind and growls, “I’m Batman.” (Both Michael Keaton and Christian Bale had that pleasure.) Aragorn rides forth wearing the symbol Gondor in the final battle in Return of the King.  

There’s a bunch of books that have similar iconic moments, but I’m deliberately going for the immensely popular images we see in movies here. That’s because we already knew what would happen to these characters. Bond in Casino Royale was just at the start of his career, and we knew he and that tux would have a long history of kick-assery together. Batman wasn’t just scaring some thug; he also was owning the fact that, yes, he was a guy in a costume doing something crazy and dangerous. And Aragorn, well…he was fulfilling the classic Campbell hero’s journey, finally coming back home to free his people. All of these characters had just escaped from their origins to fulfill their destinies.

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