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

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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)