After coming to the United States for so many years, the world of the bottom people has always been invisible to me. From China to the United States, from studying to working, I have always been lucky to live on the basic line. For me, the people at the bottom are more streetsiders, handicraft vendors, and supermarkets that don’t know where to pop up. Alcoholic customers and restaurant attendants. It was not until I read Barbara Allenrijk's book "My Life at the Bottom" on the "undercover" life at the bottom that I found that the stratification is difficult to break, the hard life of the people below the poverty line, and the hopeless future.
"Florida Paradise" is the life of the poor in the shadow of the prosperity of American supercapitalism. The film ironically selects Florida, a tourist resort full of false landscapes, and focuses the lens on a cheap hotel that is close at hand, but completely two worlds. Some people may not understand why the poor do not live in an apartment but live in a Motel. Actually, there is a good explanation in "My Life on the Ground Floor". Apartments require a deposit, and the poor who do part-time jobs cannot afford the deposit, or do not have enough credit scores to rent a house. Instead, they can only live in more expensive hotels for daily or weekly rents, forming a vicious circle. The "magic castle" in the film is the layout of a typical American motel. It is a bit like our tube building, except that it cuts a vertical knife and leaves half of it. All the windows face the corridor.
Another huge contrast is that although the film is about the life of the poor, the protagonist is not an adult, but a child. Where is the difference between poverty and wealth in a child's world? The spiritual world of every child is full. As long as there are friends and venues, whether it is a Disney service that can only be bought for a $1,700 bracelet, or the grass and unfinished houses in the wild at home, the adventure is the same, the latter is even more exciting. Those of us born in the 1980s, who were never poor in childhood? At that time, it seemed that milk powder was a luxury. Pork must be divided by catty, and the fried lard must be left for the next stir-fry; I remember that I once got a Smurf doll about five centimeters in size. I was ecstatic all morning until some vicious classmate Pushing it down the corridor railing on the third floor has left an indelible wound in my heart. But in the eyes of children, where does poverty feel? Therefore, the content of the film is more interesting. The world in the children’s eyes is the same: the purple castle, the naked woman by the pool, and the fireworks blooming in Disney in the distance. They don’t think they are any less than the girls who are standing in Disney parks and wearing princess dresses to take pictures; and the film It also provided the audience with a view of the poor world from the perspective of a child. The camera was lowered, and the grass was running across the grass, the garbage in the abandoned house, and the melting ice cream on the ground.
The film is about the poor, and every second is full of the poor's bitterness, but it is not entirely about the topic of "poverty", but friendship, neighbors, and family affection. So for us, apart from poverty, there are childhood memories. That simple tube building, when we were children, looked so tall, like a maze, that we can run freely, loaded with all the memories of our childhood. The new girl from the neighbor’s house eats a small cake for her birthday. She is so happy once she goes to a restaurant, she can’t wait to order the next menu. Although the mother failed to give her daughter a good education, after watching the movie, she recalled that under such bad conditions, she had never lost her temper to her daughter, even when the perfume was robbed and desperate. For those middle-class families who can report their children to families who can afford princess dresses after school, how many parents can do it?
The setting and final shots of the film remind me of the "false landscape" and "commodity accumulation" mentioned by the professor when the graduate student was studying. Debord said: "In a society where modern production conditions are ubiquitous, life itself appears as a huge accumulation of landscapes. Everything that exists directly is transformed into an appearance." When the children ran into Disneyland hand in hand, all the real world was hidden. Gone, replaced by the "surreal" global landscape. In Disney, everyone behaves so happy, everything is so beautiful and unreal, everyone lives on a huge stage. Mani and Janssi lived a poor life, but it was real, full of the smell of grass and tropical showers; when they wanted to escape, they fled to a false stage, disguised as Snow White How much is the life stacked up with Mickey Mouse actors?
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