LeonDeon🏳️⚧️’s review published on Letterboxd:
Jordan Peterson is the most thoughtful person he knows.
In The Rise of Jordan Peterson, we witness the degradation of intellectual thought as someone like Jordan Peterson is allowed to have a platform for his transphobia and bigotry passed off as fighting off authoritarian control of free speech. The issue is that his version of “free speech” is just not recognizing a person’s pronouns and then crying when people rightfully disagree with his lack of tact around issues that don’t regard cis-gendered people. The film is determined to die on this platform.
After watching this film almost a week ago, I still have a hard time understanding if this is sympathetic to Peterson or not. They try to humanize a man who dehumanizes others for intellectual pleasure, which is awful journalistic optics. Still, besides that, the film will include more controversial clips of Peterson disregarding women getting assaulted in the workplace by stating he doesn’t care because he got cornered by his own logic. Director Patricia Marcoccia tries to expand more on the lore of Peterson and his astronomical rise in pseudo-intellectualism, of which people like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, and Dennis Prager reside.
It’s not only that the film is aimless in scope about what the point of covering someone like Jordan Peterson is. It’s because it never challenges his ideas in a meaningful manner. It’s more or less including interviews of friends disgusted by his new platitudes and trying to comprehend what makes him this way now. Peterson himself couldn’t even really explain what anything he says means. In one scene, we watch Peterson give a speech about the essence of meaning. By that, we watch Peterson explain that taking on more responsibilities means more purpose in life. He then circles back by saying that meaning is only meaningful when the meaning given is applied to the responsibilities applied to one’s life - in essence, it means to clean your room condescendingly.
Before going on further, I must explain that I was once in that camp of Peterson supporters. I was one of those of people who denied others of their right to exist by denying their pronouns and mocking them. I didn’t understand how complex of an issue it is for someone dealing with it. People want to be able to live peacefully and to be accepted. I was the obstacle that prevented someone from feeling like their self-perception mattered. I minimalized their issues by simply taunting their platforms. I can say that I am not like this anymore, but it makes me recoil because I thought Peterson was an intelligent person. I am happy to say that now that I’m years removed from my previous thought processes, I’m a happier person because of it. I’m no longer carrying this anger and self-oppression. I can be self-reflexive now, whereas Peterson seems much happier stepping on others to “own the libs.” In a warped way, I viewed Peterson as a father figure willing to help me grow up in a complicated world. The issue being that Peterson’s philosophy is not nuanced; it doesn’t try to explore how the opposite view the world or understand the root of their idealogy. Because it makes him feel awkward, he has to bother others over the simple fact that someone’s pronouns should be recognized.
The biggest takeaway I had with this is that Jordan Peterson enjoys his position as an intellectual father figure. He has an insidious way of using the idea that if the masses reaffirm your position, you must be right. Peterson used Hitler as an example of this. By Peterson’s own words, he watched Robert Kennedy’s funeral and thought to himself that he would have his funeral of that scale - he was four years old. By the end of this, I’ve concluded that Peterson is an evil person pushing harmful rhetoric meant to dismantle progressive politics under the guise of galaxy-brained centrism. Still, when you examine his actual politics, he is a conservative through and through because he plays and leans to the right. Peterson will say all ideologies are flawed, yet wrote a book about how to be successful in life. Which is it Peterson, that all ways of life are bad, or if it’s a twelve-step guide written by you, then it’s okay to have that idealogy.