Between criticism and “contempt speech”. Case study – All Our Fears (2021) by Łukasz Ronduda and Łukasz Gutt

Abstract

The subject of the text is the presentation of ways of talking about people from minorities discriminated against on the basis of origin, sexual orientation or religion. The “mirror” in which these examples can be seen, indicated and organized is, among others, film art, which – as if “through a lens” – reveals strategies of arguing with “hate speech”. The aim of the text is to answer the question: is it possible to counteract homophobia in social communication (linguistic level) through artistic communication? The initial hypothesis assumes that art may prove to be a language that, in a sophisticated way, based on the principle of soft power, can be a good tool for counteracting verbal aggression against minority groups. The research material is the Polish feature film All Our Fears (2021) directed by Łukasz Ronduda, Łukasz Gutt, inspired by the work of the visual artist – Daniel Rycharski (born 1986) and his work Cross, which was presented at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw in 2017 as part of the exhibition: Late Polishness. Methodology: quantitative research of language in the world presented in the film and use of the Hatespeech tool to detect hate speech in texts on the Clarin.pl platform.