Johnsonian Delusion – a state of mind in which a person is completely unable to comprehend that someone else dislikes something because it is low quality, and in which a person will try to deny the very existence of opposing points of view.
I was recently watching a video by Star Wars Theory, in which he goes through an article that claims that anyone who dislikes Rey from Disney’s attempt at Star Wars films must be sexist.
The article isn’t really anything new. It’s filled with the same kind of resentful, spiteful, hands-covering-ears-shouting-i-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la non-thinking that we’ve seen ever since the release of The Last Jedi.
The arguments that are presented in the article were refuted years ago by YouTube critics. There are hundreds upon hundreds – possibly thousands of videos showing why they are flawed. It has been discussed to death, yet there are still people, six years later, desperately trying to cover for the idiocies of Abrams and Johnson.
And this reminds me of something I noticed the day after I first went to see The Last Jedi all those years ago. I went to see the film one evening – when it finished I remember being very confused, because it seemed like the story hadn’t even properly started. Afterwards I spent many hours thinking about the film, and came to the conclusion that it was utterly dreadful. The next day, I talked to some people about it, expecting others to have observed what I observed (the film’s many errors). But to my surprise, not only did they say that they liked the film, they were fervorous about it. Immediately, without hesitation, they dismissed any notion that it might have flaws. They didn’t want to even accept the possibility of it.
It’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed in lots of other people when it comes to The Last Jedi. A lot of the people who like it can’t just like it, they cannot accept any suggestion that it’s not a masterpiece. Some will reluctantly accept that the sequence on Canto Bight is a waste of time – but it’s hard to get them to even accept that. I had never known any film have this affect before – to instil almost cult-like adulation among some of its viewers. With most films, we all accept that some people will like them and some people won’t – but with The Last Jedi, a great many of its devout cannot accept that anyone dislikes it – it’s bizarre!
Even more to my surprise, it’s something I’ve seen increasingly for other films and television shows since the film’s release. I see the same attitude in people who like Star Trek Discovery, or Star Trek Picard, or Chibnall’s Doctor Who – a complete unwillingness to consider that maybe people have good reasons to dislike them.
I’ve seen this effect so many times now – and here we are seeing it again with this article – that I find I have to put a name to it. And I think I’ll choose: Johnsonian Delusion – after the Great Destroyer himself, Rian Johnson, who not only inspired it in so many, but seemed to exhibit it for his own film.
Johnsonian Delusion – a state of mind in which a person is completely unable to comprehend that someone else dislikes something because it is low quality, and in which a person will try to deny the very existence of opposing points of view.