Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 November 17

= November 17 =

The X-Files - The Red and the Black (05X14)
I was watching this episode on VHS & noticed that in the scene where Scully is in Dr. Werber's office about to get hypnotized, she shakes hands with Dr. Werber (I think just after she/they have sat done) with her left hand. Why did she do that ? Considering that I thought shaking hands with your left hand is supposed to be insult. I'm left handed & on occasion automatically go to put out my left hand & when that has happened the people I was with totaly refused to shake hands with me,even AFTER I apologized & offered my right hand. 80.254.146.140 (talk) 13:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, our own article Handshake does not (yet) address the question. It is well known and easily verifiable in other articles and via G**gle that in Arabic and Muslim cultures the left hand is considered ritually unclean and, in those cultures, offering the left hand is considered an insult.
 * Outwith those cultures (or in emigrants retaining this trope as a matter of family culture) I do not know of and cannot immediately find references to the same attitude: everyone else would expect a right-handed handshake and would be wrong-footed (sorry!) by the left being proffered, but perceived insult seems unlikely.
 * However, as mentioned in the article linked above, left-handed shakes have been used by the Scouting fraternity and by some secret societies, so purely as speculation one could suggest that, as The X-Files is all about hidden conspiracies (or so I understand - I've never watched it), the intention there was to suggest that the two parties involved are members of such a society, or maybe just known to each other as current or ex-Scouts/Guides! {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.145 (talk) 17:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * [Addendum] Even more speculatively, I would suspect that the writers may be intending to allude to the novel Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal, to the trilogy Les Fourmis by Bernard Werber, and to a Science Fiction short story with a similar title to this X-Files' episode, by an author whose name I've forgotten, about an asylum patient who realises that the conflict between red and black ants is a minor manifestation of an eons-old, universe-wide struggle between super-powerful entities in which mankind is only a minor tool. {The poster formerly known as 87.91.230.195} 90.197.66.145 (talk) 01:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I just watched the scene. Scully's right thumb was in a brace. That's why she used her left hand, because her right hand was injured. APL (talk) 09:13, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't see that, I'll have to watch it back again to see if i'll notice it, thanks for that. Was the injury part of the story line of a real life injury ? 80.254.146.140 (talk) 12:20, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I don't know. I just brought the episode up on Netflix instant and jumped around until I found the hypnotist scene. I'm sure I watched that episode on TV long ago, but I don't remember it. APL (talk) 18:42, 18 November 2011 (UTC)