#enolaholmes2 — Public Fediverse posts

I watched the film with my father, a hard-right libertarian, and he was absolutely horrified by the film's politics... which is probably a decent endorsement of the film.

He was especially aghast at the scene depicting the protagonist leading a workers' strike for safer working conditions, which is a dramatized version of something that really happened in the 1800s. To make it entertaining, the film employed some dramatic conventions like the protagonist's speech not being enough to give the workers courage to stand up against their employer until a stamp of solidarity emerges from the crowd and is slowly picked up by the others until everyone does it, and then they walk out together. My father's interpretation of it was that a communist attempted to argue her position, was unsuccessful based around her position not holding up in honest debate, and then instead of conceding the point or finding a better argument, the communists encouraged everyone to forget the human ability to form rational opinions by eliminating speech itself and descending to the level of animalistic noises. He kept repeating that they stopped being human and turned into animals, which is just a bizarre take on the whole thing.

I pointed out that it's just a dramatic convention, comparing it to the slow clap in a sports film. Like, the team is failing at a critical moment, and then the fans in the audience slowly clap, leading up to a strong rhythmic patter, and this show of solidarity is enough to motivate the team to succeed. Or, it's like in The Mighty Ducks, when the team comes together with a chant of, "Quack... quack... quack... quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!"

Me: "You didn't have this problem understanding sports films!"

Dad: "But... they turned into animals!"

*sigh*

The thing, of course, is that he believes in this libertarian mythology about how everything is properly solved through debate and talking a lot. Atlas Shrugged is filled with this, people just delivering off the cuff speeches to argue their points. Even though it's biased in favor of Ayn Rand's beliefs and those characters come out on top, the constructions of arguments have the ideological opponents themselves ready to deliver their own speeches and solve everything through debate. That itself has become a right-wing and/or libertarian fantasy that all of America's problems can be solved through open debate and that there's a real threat to progress caused by silencing people who want to preach their positions even if they're, like, Nazis. The idea of the enemy wanting to stop "free speech", here construed as any debate whatsoever (even one platforming Nazis), is then something my father transposes onto the protagonist not succeeding at motivating people through literal speech.

What the film depicts isn't really a debate. She gives a speech to motivate people to strike and it doesn't succeed on its own but not because she lost a debate, but because people are afraid to be the first to agree with her. The stamping then shows support for her and once a few people commit to the show of solidarity, more are willing to commit until everyone comes together. There would be no confusion here if the point being argued was Randian in nature but because she's a leftist, he transposes the idea of her destroying free speech when it doesn't allow her to win and, much like Ayn Rand's Anthem depicts a communist dystopia in which language has been restricted to prohibit individualistic thought, imagines that she reduces the crowd to a base level of animalistic thought by removing their desire to speak.

Aside from a weird demonization of the leftist leader, it's a dehumanization of her followers. You don't need speech to communicate everything and, indeed, one of the things that separates us from the animals is our ability to appreciate rhythm. The stamping is technically a very simple song, one of the things that makes it appealing in dramatic entertainment, and it carries emotional significance like every song. Framing stamping strikers as essentially animals devoid of human rationality because they've chosen not to speak at the present time is both wrong and concerning in light of how that tends to be used as justification for violent action. When people are viewed as subhuman and a threat (like, say, to capitalism), hurting and/or killing them seems much more reasonable. It's kind of what the Nazis did. Yikes.

#EnolaHolmes2

🇵🇱 Właśnie obejrzałem #EnolaHolmes2, film jest OK, naprawdę fajne kostiumy i scenografia, historia ciekawa. Wiem, że to Netflix, ale to kogo wcielili w rolę Moriariego i Johna Watsona to po prostu wychodzi poza skalę „poprawności” 😑 Cud, że Enola nie jest lesbijką…

🇬🇧 I just watched #EnolaHolmes2, the movie is OK, really cool costumes and scenography, the story is interesting. I know that it’s Netflix, but who they played the role of Moriarty and John Watson simply goes beyond the scale of "correctness" 😑 Miracle that Enola is not a lesbian…