The Many Faces of Moriarty
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any aspect of the character, let alone this one specifically, it seems likely that
radio proved the means through which Moriarty transcended his limited role
within the original Holmes canon. As Jim Harmon explains in his
comprehensive book entitled Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearance
in Film, Television, and Other Media, “Moriarty appeared many more times on
the air than in the books. Holmes put down his plots week after week” (174).
Then, although it is not an aspect which Harmon himself explores, it seems
likely that radio is the medium most directly responsible for giving rise to the
modem mythos of Moriarty, one that would continue to be augmented by
unfathomable television, film, and video game interpretations to come; like
those created by the classic radio plays, each of these subsequent interpretations
would derive, on some level, from the studios’ need to exploit an established
arch-nemesis, around which they could craft an endless series of Sherlockian
installments.
This assertion, however, seems to imply that Moriarty is needed in order to
sustain Sherlock. As Jessica Page Morrell asserts in her creative writer’s
reference guide. Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: How to Write the Bad Guys o f
Fiction, the function of a “bad guy” is to make the protagonist vulnerable, which
will in turn lead readers to identify with him or her; in this way, Moriarty very
much defines Holmes, poignantly reminding readers of the Great Detective’s
humanity, and of his consequent physical fragility. Moreover, a definite case can
be, and has already been, made for Moriarty and Holmes as doubles.
David Lehman’s, The Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection, contains a
chapter entitled “The Double,” in which he elucidates the key difference
between the doppelganger as presented in its original. Gothic context, and as it
becomes transformed when exported to detective fiction. Essentially, Lehman
asserts that unlike his Gothic counterpart, a detective can survive an encounter
with his double, and that it is only through doing so—through acknowledging
what he could so easily become, and then defeating, and thereby disavowing,
this identity—that the detective defines his own existence (95). Moreover,
Lehman maintains, it is his similarity with his opponent that allows the detective
to best him: “He has, in order to understand and foil the villain, looked in his
own heart and found him” (95). Concluding this chapter, Lehman points out
that, “Conan Doyle, trying to kill off his immortal hero, provides the ultimate
proof that a truly Great Detective can emerge unscathed from a fight to the
finish with his double” (100). Beyond the canon, the dual nature of Holmes and
Moriarty has grown to encompass varied and complex implications for them
both.
Alan Moore’s steam punk, intertextual foray into Victorian adventure
fiction, emphasizing the visual nature of its comic book genre, graphically
depicts the professor and the detective so similarly that, as Jonathon E. Goldman
observes in his article, “Extraordinary People: The Superhero Genre and the
Culture of Celebrity in The League o f Extraordinary Gentlemen,'' they could
pass for twins (148). This physical signification is heightened by their Doyleian