YMMV / An Enemy of the People

• Designated Hero: Dr. Stockmann may be the protagonist, but his arrogance, coupled with his irrational demands, makes him extremely unlikeable. Mind you, the simple fact is Jerkass Has a Point and nothing about his behavior changes the fact he's right nor justifies the reaction he got.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Just about any mass denial about things like climate change or cigarette smoking's dangers becomes this when a comparison is made.
  • A town in financial trouble and a problem with unsafe water, and the whole situation going From Bad to Worse thanks to people in power not doing enough (or, sometimes, anything) to help? Welcome to Flint, Michigan. A 2019 production in St. Augustine, Florida emphasized this by playing news coverage of the Flint water crisis over scene changes (and, to drive the point home, having the crowd start chanting "LOCK HIM UP!" at the end of the town hall meeting).
  • The play has new relevance with vaccine denial and the conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19.
• Inferred Holocaust: The town can declare Dr. Stockmann to be an enemy all they want, but the fact remains that the water is still poisoned. It will likely come back to haunt them in a big way once the tourists start coming in. If they think their financial situation is bad now, once their town gets branded as "Poisonville" it will likely be the ruin of all them.
• Moral Event Horizon: Kiil crosses it in Act V by investing every penny of his grandchildren's inheritance in the baths.
• Take That, Audience!: Ibsen's previous work, Ghosts, was a critique of the upper class that was mostly ignored because people were too caught up in the scandal it caused. In An Enemy of the People, a group of people are ignoring the truth because it's uncomfortable. You connect the dots. For added meta, Ghosts can be read as a Take That, Audience! at the scandal caused by Ibsen's earlier work, A Doll's House.
• Values Dissonance: Dr. Stockmann is depicted espousing Eugenics in a few scenes of the play as was common in the 1800's. Notably Arthur Miller's post-WWII translation cut out this.