"Today, the new words we want to learn include the sea, highways, hiking trips... The sea is a kind of leather sofa. When you are tired, you can say that I want to sit on the sea to rest. The highway is a strong wind. . Hiking is a kind of hard material..." This is the opening line of the movie "Dog Tooth", which is a Greek movie in 2009. This movie is not about the creation of modern poetry, it is about a strange closed family, but this family has all the secrets of totalitarianism. The parents enclosed the house with high walls. They repeatedly told their three nearly adult children that the world outside the high wall is treacherous and brutal, and only inside the high wall is safe and happy. They also told the children that they can only go out by driving, and to learn to drive, they must wait until their "dog teeth" fall. They have no internet newspapers, no TV broadcasts, and no information about the outside world. The children played monotonous games day after day in a quiet house. When a wild cat broke into the courtyard, the son killed the uninvited guest without hesitation. The father praised him for his good work: "Cats are a kind of Very cruel animals, specializing in eating people for a living.” In this father’s governance, there is violence—children are often beaten and scolded; there is brainwashing—the tape recorder will always play "family love" propaganda; there is bribery ——The father buys delicious and fun foods for the children, and even regularly sends his son a sex partner to prevent him from escaping...In short, the father implements a "textbook-style" totalitarian rule. In this mode of governance, a core element is the transformation of language. What a dangerous thing the sea is. It is blue, vast and unfathomable, and it evokes the children's longing. It is simply the apple in front of Adam and Eve. And how safe and comfortable the sofa is, there can only be a groggy butt sitting on it. So the sea is defined as a leather sofa. When all the unfathomable is defined as safe and comfortable, the magical is defined as plain, and the speeding is defined as sluggish, the world in the eyes of children becomes a "desensitized" world. The son heard a new word "ghost" from a prostitute. He asked "what is a ghost", and his mother said blankly that a ghost is a very small yellow flower. All despots try to control people's thoughts, but the police cannot enter people's brains, so they can only control the expression of thoughts. Language must therefore be disinfected and domesticated. Some words are demonized, others are tied with bows, Some words were infused with sulfuric acid, while others were sprayed with perfume. After many years of education, when I talked about the "peasant uprising", I thought of "songs and tears", when I talked about "landlords", I thought of "exploitation", when I talked about "KMT", I thought of "three mountains"... …I know that history is not so black and white as an adult, but the emotional reflections left in the depths of consciousness by these "processed" words are not going to go away for a long time. Using conditioned reflex instead of thinking, so that every word emits a certain "smell" before unfolding its content, is the success of this type of education. Redefining words is just one way to castrate language, another way is to directly cancel the existence of certain words. In "1984", Oceania invented a new language called "new language". Syme is the dictionary editor of Oceania. He excitedly told the protagonist Winston that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary is shrinking year by year. "Don't you understand that the whole purpose of Newspeak is to narrow the scope of thinking? In the end, we want to make it impossible for everyone to commit any crime of thinking, because in the future there will be no language to express these thoughts." Let reactionary thinking not. You may find words to express it. This is really a trick to control your mind. It is almost equivalent to not finding a machete if you want to eat coconut, and not finding a container if you want to boil water. Do you want to say that "the only thing the proletariat loses is the chains"? Sorry, there is no such word as "chain" in the world. "All that is lost is the shackles"? Sorry, there is no such word as "yoke" in the world. shackles? No such word found. rope? No such word found. Curse? What is this? ...Well, let you make a revolution, all the proletariat loses is bread. Of course, the price of increasing sensitive words is that the language becomes increasingly impoverished. An extreme example is the Great Characters of the Cultural Revolution, all of which are languished words such as "knock down", "long live", "poisonous grass", and "anger". Chinese has changed from a field with beautiful waters and grass to a barren land. Guo Moruo wrote to Jiang Qing: "You are good at learning and applying the invincible Mao Zedong Thought/You are fighting on the cultural front...", even Lao She wrote "Long live long live long live". Even a totalitarian rebel cannot find his own language-he can only borrow the language of those in power. Yuluoke’s "Birth Theory" is about the principle that everyone is equal, but the lines between the lines are full of words like "defend Chairman Mao's line." Yang Xiguang's "Where is China Going" advocates direct democracy, but the text is full of stereotypes such as "winning the victory of the proletarian revolution". They want to serve a bowl of steaming rice, but the "rice" they can find is only the most hideous words. The squeeze of thought creates a famine of language, but the famine of language also exacerbates the poverty of thought. The degree of dictatorship of a regime is always inversely proportional to its word richness. In "Dog Tooth", the dog trainer said: "Dogs can be shaped like clay." Such a metaphor is really frightening, but is it really so? Qiu Ju doesn't understand the concept of "human rights", but she knows that she needs a "statement". Ordinary people rarely use the word "democracy", but they understand the spirit of "discussion." Real emotions always find its language outlet, just like a winged thing always wants to spread its wings. At the end of "Dog Tooth", the eldest daughter broke her tooth and hid in the trunk of the car and escaped. One day, she will go on a hiking trip across the highway and see the endless sea. At that time, my father could no longer hide from her how amazing the world was.
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