Less profound than expected, the theme wins.
Depression is inevitable, and terror and despair are far from being said. The performance is real, but the environment is very virtual, so people often have the illusion of going through RPG to find the clearance conditions. From the beginning to the end, I wondered where everyone else went from time to time, because objectively speaking, there is no civilian class in the city. It is difficult to justify it in terms of social structure and division of labor. The divided groups that appear in the play are not enough. Supports all backgrounds.
The core of the story is not so much feminism, but more of a critique and resistance to totalitarianism and mental control. Especially the latter has a textbook-like deconstruction.
First of all, changes are not made overnight, but are carried out in a subtle way. Women are despised in public, not allowed to own property, not allowed to work, and are gradually deprived of various rights like boiling frogs in the name of anti-terrorism. When the protagonist and others recovered, their bodies were already controlled, and they were locked in the so-called probation center and isolated from the outside world. The purpose of a series of rules was to achieve brainwashing and manipulation. Using religion as a means of taming, collectively preaching that in the past was sin and wrong, now is good and right, and only by joining and obedience can one gain divine blessing. As long as those who resist exert violence, fear and helplessness can overwhelm people. During this process, all individualized behaviors and attitudes are extremely suppressed, uniform clothing, work and rest time, language and wording, everything must follow the rules, there is a mother to supervise each other, and there is mutual supervision between each other, so that everyone abandons the past The self is the basis for instilling new behaviors and attitudes. Those who accept success will find their place in the group, and take being respected and affirmed by the group as their greatest value. Anyone who doubts will be despised and bullied by the group and miserable.
The purpose of mind control of one group of people over another group, specifically, is to exploit and plunder the resources held by the other group. The focus of the play is on reproductive resources, but the plot is still true when it is replaced with other resources, such as money, sex, and labor that are common in reality. Abstractly speaking, it is to gain absolute power.
So I think the core of this show is more inclined to be the story of the protagonist who is shocked to fall into the trap of a cult and gritted his teeth to save himself from the Jedi. Her self-consciousness has never been erased and perished. The final effect can have a high degree of presentation. In addition to the script with a proper narrative rhythm, the scenes full of metaphors and aesthetics, the concise and accurate lines, and the conscience that moves to tears, the heroine's performance is also indispensable. . After all these years, the little Peggy in Mad Men can still play, with a lively face and a firm and stubborn look.
My admiration and admiration for the heroine begins with the note that my fleeing husband got in Canada.
One episode earlier, the Mexican visiting officer, taking advantage of no one to tell her that her husband was alive, shoved a pen and paper at her shocked face, saying there was only so much I could do for you. I thought about what I would write for a few seconds. The first thing that popped into my mind was be safe, and I thought about adding be strong.
Of course, this is inseparable from the fact that my husband is actually a strong and intrepid man, but the heroine's I love you, so much. Find Hannah. is much smarter than me in terms of perspective and connotation. And this sentence can almost seal the relationship between the two. Even if it is a family established from an extramarital affair, this love and trust is real and unswerving. Moral flaws do not justify the mind control and physical torture she experienced, as she says, we are human beings.
The reason why people are sometimes confused or even lost is that, as a limited individual, it is usually difficult to objectively judge their own position, and they do not know where they are in history, where in the times, and where they are in life. In the dark, I don't know when the darkness will end. I feel that everything has just begun, but the actual sight is already the end. I thought I had reached the top, but it was only halfway there. People don't stop in one place forever. And the most powerful recourse in the unknown is self-awareness and self-worth. Knowing who you are, what is important, what you want, and how to achieve it will naturally give rise to firm strength to move forward step by step, rather than being easily influenced by the external environment.
Therefore, Moira, who is so smart, cunning, courageous and strong in the play, made a heartbreaking declaration of giving up after meeting the heroine for the second time after failing to escape. The once bright personality, the dazzling self-esteem, is more terrible than being destroyed is being defeated. What's more terrifying than the darkness in front of you is not knowing whether there is still light in the world, what's more terrifying than being oppressed by bad people is that your comrades around you change positions one by one, and what's more terrifying than being alone is that you are still alone in the crowd. In the end, the heroine gritted her teeth in tears and said, WE, we will find Hannah. Hannah is hope.
After the bishop's wife learned that the protagonist was successfully pregnant, she locked her in the car and made her look at her daughter from a distance. She came back to face the heroine's cry and prayed, and said with a cold face, As long as my baby is safe, so is yours. I thought this was the scariest moment of the show.
The numbness and cruelty in the words, full of malice, make people shudder, and the murderous heart is nothing more than that.
However, after thinking about it, it still feels a little shallow.
The play's focus on female themes is of course the key to success in following the trend, but it also weakens the interpretation and thinking of totalitarianism and mental control to a certain extent. The horror of mind control is not how powerful the manipulator is or how clever the means, but the unconscious and subtle influence of the manipulator. The victim gradually becomes an accomplice, and the maid eventually becomes a nanny, manipulating and controlling more people.
Be wary of an extremely harsh authoritarian state that dictates what people should do and believe, and this is a powerful cautionary tale for everyone, not just women. But the pain of women's rights and interests lies more in their own people, and it is the sad part of tragedy that good people do evil without knowing it. A mother humiliated for not being able to have a son demands that her daughter undergo a gender screening when she learns she is pregnant, and threatens to cut the relationship when she refuses. This is one of the scariest live-action accounts I've ever heard.
The hostess can curse or resent the bishop's wife, can this daughter do this without any guilt?
The world civilization has developed to the present level, and it cannot be denied that there is extreme violence such as war, but most of the time, the ruling method, as Aldous Huxley said, is more inclined to use less aggressive and destructive soft power to govern the people, to satisfy the desire for power.
Culture and values are the representatives of soft power.
The original intention of the former is to prevent women from participating in politics and foreign relatives to abstain from the emperor, that is, to write to men what women should be shaped like. The latter is Ban Zhao's own experience of being a wife and a mother. Men are superior to women, the husband is the guide for the wife, and the three obedience and four virtues are the source of this theory. Even in the recognized civilized Tang Dynasty, there were talented women who wrote the Analects of Women to standardize the words and deeds of women throughout their lives. The Ming Dynasty compiled the Four Books of Women and began to promote the observance of chaste women. The authors and promoters of these books are mostly women. Written by women, standing on women's standpoint, as a representative of women's interests, from top to bottom, it is naturally accepted and respected by more women.
By the time of Nei Zeyanyi in the early Qing Dynasty, the length of chastity and martyrdom had become outrageous.
Of course, it is not fair to talk about the phenomenon out of the historical environment and the background of the times, and at the same time, the responsibility can never be simply attributed to the individual, but in the comparison drama, almost every detail of the reality can be confirmed to some extent. As women, have we really stepped out of history?
So the real horror is always the real world. The population is not enough to sacrifice heroic mothers. To increase productivity, women can hold up half the sky. The individual appears to be able to move freely, but is actually restrained and immobilized. In this play, the process of people being controlled is painful and tormented. First, their self-esteem is destroyed, and their humanity is wiped out little by little. The process of the real world often creates illusions by distorting reality to make people happy to be controlled, such as consumerism and the attention economy. In this model, people don't have to actually solve real-life problems, just get rid of their worries and everything will be fine. So it doesn't have to be really good, just feel good.
More broadly speaking, any kind of doctrine, system, or religion can be said to be a kind of soft power.
It's as if our film will be judged, cut and banned, and everyone hates those who deprive us of information. On the other side of the ocean, the film is casually posted, but no one is watching it. A lot of information equals no information.
As a small individual, it is too difficult to deal with the world alone. I think the key point is to never stop thinking, never give up self-awareness. No matter in the workplace or in life, no matter what organization or individual comes to tell you, you don't have to think about going with me, or you can do whatever I say, you must be vigilant and stay away from it immediately. Most of the things in the world are barter, labor is exchanged for rewards, youth is exchanged for capital, and sincerity is exchanged for sincerity. Even survival in any country itself is like being with a big brother, which means sacrificing some interests to pay protection fees. In exchange for belonging. However, you must clearly know what you are paying for. It is a fair deal to follow your own will to fulfill the contract. In the end, it is only yourself who will be fooled in buying and selling.
Thinking is the foundation of safeguarding the above-mentioned right to know. Thinking itself may not provide the answer, but questioning will not bring the end, nor will questioning the institutions and systems that rule our world. On the contrary, it will make people ask themselves what role they played in shaping the future, and what kind of world they want to leave to future generations.
I think this is enough.
Also the bottom line.
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