But first to Cardiff, where an episode of the new series of Sherlock has been filming – an event of interest to various local photographers, it seems. Their ministrations have irked the star of the show, who a few days ago decided to hold up a sign reading: "Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important."
The reaction this got seems to have emboldened Cumberbatch to the possibilities of the form, and a few days later he returned photographer fire with a whole series of signs concerning the developing story around the detention of David Miranda, partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald.
"Hard drives smashed, journalists detained at airports … Democracy?" these read. "Schedule 7, prior restraint. Is this erosion of civil liberties winning the war on terror…? What do they not want you to know? And how did they get to know it? Does the exposure of their techniques cause a threat to their security or does it just cause them embarrassment?"
Crumbs. No doubt the Sherlock star means to use his power for good. But it's such a fine line, isn't it, between offering idiots some much-needed perspective, and subconsciously holding one's fans in contempt.
After all, the unfortunate implication of Benedict's signs could be that the sort of people who might see the photos have such a lack of interest in anything else in the news that this is their only access to trenchant comment on the big news of the day. The signs hint – unintentionally, perhaps – that the world is divided into two discrete sets: people who already know about things such as Egypt and the Miranda case, and people who might be interested in set shots from the new Sherlock.
One suspects that after much contemplation, Benedict is troubled by what might be perceived to be his role in this debased culture, and is struck by the injustice of his being – only by association, of course – lumped in with that second group. Thus he makes a brave bid to differentiate himself from all the trivia-narcotised morons who might be vaguely interested, for a couple of minutes, in glancing at some snaps of him.
The idea that there might be people right up to speed on events in Cairo or the Guardian's basement, who also happen to be vaguely interested in flicking through a few shots from the Sherlock set – well, that seems a modern bestraddling too far.
So where does this leave us? I'm obviously completely desperate for an army of semiotics students to light up their Gauloises and write me some 2,000-word emails explaining how on the most obvious level, the implied pronoun in Benedict's exhortation "Go photograph Egypt" refers to the paparazzi. But on the more profound, metapragmatic level – mais oui – that reading does not take into account the structural ambiguity its context confers upon the blah blah blah etc etc etc. Basically, doesn't it also imply that anyone who finds themselves in the sort of intellectual backwater where they might happen upon a picture taken on the Sherlock set should "Go read about Egypt"? In such a market-led sector, it can only be as much a comment on the consumer as the producer.
It's certainly a searing indictment of anyone who might use a weekly showbiz column to make reference to it. Such flibbertigibbets disgust me almost as much as those people who in a few days will temeritously offer a Man United-Chelsea match report, when an in-depth analysis of Schedule 7 or the Russian arms trade is the only morally defensible fodder for the sports pages, and the failure to take the opportunity to inquire loftily "Who is Jose Mourinho?" in the comments section beneath said report will simply mark you out as someone frittering unspecified amounts of your time away on having any interests other than 1) world affairs, or 2) typing out disparaging comments about people who are not talking about world affairs at that moment. Let's be clear: these two pursuits are the ONLY acceptable pursuits, AT ALL TIMES.
In fact, given the obvious dullardry of both entertainment photographers and those who occasionally see their wares, perhaps well-meaning actors need to spell out the total irrelevance of their work and the hoopla around it even more clearly for their benighted audience. No doubt Cumberbatch has already settled on the next instalment of his reproachful sign series. But if not, Lost in Showbiz suggests completing the trilogy with something along the lines of: "Look, I'm just fannying about in a long coat pretending to be someone else."
Source: Guardian
