This film encountered a certain destiny in the country that turned a blind eye:
It was once listed as one of the "Top Ten Banned Movies in the World" on the Internet, and was mistaken by many for a purely anti-drug propaganda film-drugs make people turn into ghosts;
And when I talked to people that this is a critique of capitalism, several film practitioners actually laughed, as if I were an old Marxist-Leninist gentleman.
This really surprised me: the intention of the film was all on the forehead, but it was completely lost in the domestic audience.
Looking in this way is tantamount to eyes wide shut.
The most terrifying posture: move on your own.
For me, watching "Requiem of Dreams" on the big screen is a nightmare.
One of the most distorted is the scene that flashes by at the end of the film:
After the heroine Marion and another woman took drugs, butt to butt, they had sex with a dildo;
A group of well-dressed business people onlookers threw money at them frantically.
This posture, in a nutshell, is: move on your own.
It is said that it takes 5 days to detoxify heroin once.
But since I watched the film in the Film Archive, it has been more than two years, and this scene still lingers in my mind.
The reason for it’s horror is not that the scene of the depravity of the beautiful girl’s family is too stimulating and that it has violated some prohibitions.
But because I realized that we obviously live in this nightmare:
We are all addicts like this, and we don’t want to do anything. If the master (desire-maitre, Spinoza) whips, he will “move on his own” and become the master under the control of a certain addiction like a puppet. Desire and desire, the happiness and happiness of the master, sell yourself cheaply in the spectacle;
At the same time, we are also looking forward to going ashore one day to experience the chicness of those "masters" spending money like earth;
The most ridiculous thing is that we thought we had the initiative in our own body.
It is precisely because this scene is so important that when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) decided that it was "indecent" and planned to classify the film as NC-17 (not available for viewing under the age of 17), director Darren Aronov Ski and Artisan did not hesitate to discount the box office, and refused to delete it, making the film "unrated" in the end and it could only be shown in certain theaters.
A montage has shaken out all the secrets of our desires.
Well, it is a bit difficult to see such a deep subject from just one scene.
Don't worry, I still have a bunch of evidence.
In fact, in my opinion, the most prominent theme is what Eronofsky calls "hip-hop montage" (see the film’s DVD director’s commentary track):
Mix all kinds of images and sounds (quickly) for narration.
It is the repeated use and continuous expansion of this dazzling editing technique that makes the film an eloquent sociological film essay.
This technique started from 5:48~5:54 of the director's cut version of the film, with 12 close-ups in just 6 seconds:
Open bag, cells, lighter, boiling, needle, dilated pupils, open bag, alcohol, cotton, blood vessels, dilated pupils, moaning...
As a result, the audience is crudely involved in the immediate and powerful physical power of drugs, and realizes the satisfaction of desire-pleasure is so readily available that the expression of montage can be summarized as an equation:
Drugs = pleasure
Afterwards, the film uses two montages next to each other to illustrate the primitive accumulation of capital by the hero Harry through drug trafficking.
Among them, close-ups of drugs and money appear repeatedly and inseparably:
In the transaction, one-handed delivery of money, dollar bills, rolled up dollar bills to take drugs, money makes money...
Obviously, there is an equal sign between drugs and money here:
Drugs = money = pleasure
This equation is established because what Marx called the general equivalent-money, "enables people to accumulate certain abstract values" (Stigler "Technology and Time").
In a capitalist economy with money/currency as an intermediary, any item is marked with a price, which can be exchanged according to the principle of currency interoperability, the purpose of which is to create pleasure.
Therefore, we can no longer distinguish from pleasure which is brought by money, which is brought by drugs, and which is brought by other commodities in the equation.
In other words, the pleasure expressed by montage has universality, from the pleasure of referring to drug abuse to the pleasure of referring to all kinds of pleasure.
Moreover, money has become the most indispensable part of the equation.
As the philosopher Spinoza said:
We can no longer imagine that a kind of happiness is not caused by the idea of money.
(...On n'imagine plus guere aucune espece de joie qui ne soit accompagnee de l'idee de l'argent comme cause.
"Éthique" IV appendix, chapter 28)
So on the surface, the hero and heroine’s addiction is to drugs;
In fact, money is the intestinal tract that must be passed through in order to enjoy the addiction , and it is the most powerful addictive .
At the same time, the quick editing of the montage also shows the psychological and material basis of the equation :
Its psychological basis is the feeling of compression of psychological time and space when drug addiction is satisfied;
Its material basis is that drugs in the capitalist economy circulate rapidly as a commodity and generate huge profits. Imagine that in a pre-capitalist society, such as the Qing Dynasty, no matter how rampant opium is, the psychological time and space of images is usually slow.
However, it is precisely in the rapid and repetitive cycle of equations that the characters gradually lose control of themselves, making the psychology and reality out of touch, and falling into a vicious cycle of addiction.
Therefore, when the climax montage of the film is again inserted into the scenes of money-taking drugs, the scenes have stripped off the narrative, but symbolized an invisible mechanism-that is, the operation of the equation of "drugs = money = pleasure".
TV = money = drugs = pleasure
In the two main story lines of the film, the main line of the protagonist Harry and the secondary line of mother Sarah start from the same starting point:
At the beginning of the film, Harry locked his mother in a small room, pawned her TV, and exchanged money for drugs.
In this way, television is subtly incorporated into the equation by the narrative, or in other words, television is captured by the equation:
TV = money = drugs = pleasure
The equation is established not only because large items like TV can enter the barter cycle and be sold for money,
It's because TV is as addictive (toxic) as drugs and money .
On the surface, Sarah was poisoned by an overdose of diet pills.
In fact, Sarah’s drugs are represented by television media:
Every time she finishes watching a program, she continues to watch the next program that she hasn't watched, and is always “entangled” by the media instead of actively “entering”;
The emotions such as "moving" she gets from it are always saturated, one wave has not subsided, and another wave of invasion, but without any persistence and continuity-this is a kind of madness.
In the words of the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, her "perceptual life (being) placed under the eternal control of the mass media".
(...Places the sensory life of the individual under the permant control of the mass media.
"Stiegler Nanjing Course: Reading Marx and Engels in the Anthropocene Era-From "German Ideology" to "Dialectics of Nature", p. 26)
Moreover, in the cultural industry era, the media is more than just nipples (Tittytainment, Brzezinski synthesizes titty "nipples" and entertainment "entertainment", referring to a child's nipples, using entertainment to eliminate class struggle),
It is also a cybernetic machine. In a closed loop of control, every step of her is counted as dead, and it can't move like a mosquito in a spider web:
The simulacrum of the media (simulacrum, Portcia refers to images that conceal and distort reality, and even have nothing to do with reality) is full of audiovisual stimuli, forming a strong contrast with the indifferent reality, making her lonely and having to immerse herself in TV to escape reality ；
And just as Malin & Block literally means “(phantom) both seduces and blocks people”, the TV company’s promise to her to be on TV captures her narcissism and love, and seduces her. She fantasizes about being on TV beautifully all day long;
But once she came to fulfill her promise, she was thrown into a mental hospital—the simulacra was shattered by the cold reality;
In the end, she was tortured by the electric shock therapy and left her empty mind, only the landscape she tried to plunge into—only here can she reveal a moment of truth;
After that, the movie was not shot, but we can completely imagine it-entertaining to death.
When she was locked up in a mental hospital, or even discharged, the only thing she could do and was indispensable was to stare at the TV.
In the 2019 phenomenon-level movie "Joker" (Joker), the same scene was staged again:
A lonely person keeps dreaming of appearing in a popular TV show.
What happened to them was the noetic proletarianization (or the proletarianization of minds and spirits) in the capitalist society that Stigler identified:
The media manipulated symbolic codes through industrial technology, which conquered the rationality of cultural consumers, hollowed out attention, blocked rationality, intergenerational communication (such as mother-child communication) and other cycles, making sensory life a The place where the false landscape products were put into place eventually caused symbolic misery (symbolic misery).
Drugs = Money = TV = Pleasure
The second time the two story lines met, when Harry made money from drug trafficking, his first reaction was:
Buy, buy, buy! Give mom a big color TV.
In other words, Harry lets his mother carry out cultural consumption of watching TV by buying the merchandise consumption of TV sets .
Just like many of us earn our first salary, it seems that the only thing we can do is place an order for someone we love to buy something.
So we are back to the equation, but the order of circulation is reversed:
Drugs = Money = TV = Pleasure
However, what this equation conveys is recessive (toxic):
On the one hand, everyone in the film is busy dealing with their addiction. It seems that there is a giant beast in his body and he wants to keep feeding.
This, on the contrary, strengthens the social and group nature of commodity transactions, making the equation universally valid and unimpeded time and time again.
In other words, in capitalism, any person-to-person relationship acquires the nature of things, and the material law governing interpersonal relationships is self-discipline.
On the other hand, interpersonal channels such as the brain's natural production of dopamine and other "happiness hormones" are short-circuited by addiction to drugs and consumption (Harry's consumer goods, mother's consumer culture).
In this way, after each addiction, the happiness hormone will be released in a complementary manner, so that the next time it has to be increased.
In the end, they lost the ability to communicate and love with others in forms other than drugs and consumption.
This is why Harry only saw the side effects of her mother's teeth grinding after knocking on more medicines, but turned a blind eye to her being dominated by TV, and did not realize that it was the TV he gave to her that made her deeper. The ground fell into "jailed".
And unfortunate families are always similar: Marion's parents will only use money to send her away.
Drugs are not poisons, only the medical system.
Sarah’s experience of taking diet pills when she was not ill to being forced to take drugs after she became "crazy" reveals that the core of the pharmaceutical market is "you are always sick, and I always have medicine."
In other words, Harry’s drugs are similar to Sara’s drugs in that they are not only addictive, but also commodities in the equation.
Since drugs and drugs are both drug in English, then the equation
TV = money = drugs
Becomes:
TV = money = medicine
Similarly, not only is the drug flooding on the streets, the entire medical system is rotten:
When she complained about the side effects of the medicine, Dr. Pill (Dr. Pill, literally means pill doctor) didn't even look at her. He didn't want to go into the cause of the disease at all, and would only continue to give her a prescription.
The medication was added layer by layer until she was turned into a "vegetable";
And the psychological counseling service Marion received, as a spiritual "drug", is only a commodity in the medical market——
When Sarah inquired about where to buy weight-loss pills, the shot that followed was that Mary was about to meet with a psychiatrist.
And every time they meet, they are a transaction to maintain the equation:
For the first time, the psychologist coveted her for a long time, and she went to the banquet to make him pretend that the psychological consultation is still in progress, so that the parents can continue to give her money (buy drugs?);
The second time, she borrowed money from a psychologist (to buy drugs), and he tempted her to sell herself.
It is equivalent to saying that part of the money paid by the psychologist to buy her body may come from the consultation fee paid by her parents!
This is really a copy of the old bottom of the psychoanalysis business:
If you pay for it, and tell yourselves about it, I will listen to you for a minute and give you a magnificent name for your social predicament, so as to exploit you.
How is sex involved in the equation?
However, the problem is coming-
If you don’t have everything in the equation, how do you get into the equation:
TV = money = drugs = pleasure?
This is Marion’s situation:
She has no money and valuable movable properties like TV, and her tailoring skills need to be developed before she can rent out. She is a total proletarian.
The only thing that can be realized (rented) is the body:
Sex = money = drugs = pleasure
When Harry personally pushed his girlfriend onto someone else’s bed for the first time, a montage appeared:
The fluorescence of the TV reflected Harry's prostration face pale, and he saw the price of the diamond ring and the sales call and other commodity information during the TV shopping;
The picture of the diamond ring is superimposed into a picture of a girlfriend embracing and making love with a man, in which she is in the upper position, her eyes closed, full of pleasure-compared with the painful expression in her actual selling, we know that this is Harry’s imagination;
Then there is the picture of drug abuse, showing that he was in a trance when the drug addiction broke out, but he could not get any pleasure from the imagination of drug use at all, that is to say, the equation of "drug use = pleasure" is idling here;
Then, Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend, a diamond necklace pendant in the image of Minnie Mouse, appeared on TV. Product information appeared on the screen one after another, and the price list has yet to be announced;
In the end, the picture of his girlfriend having sex was superimposed into the picture of Minnie.
This set of montages not only explains the equality = money = drugs = pleasure , but also shows Harry's deep anxiety about his girlfriend falling into the equation:
He has sold TV for money many times, but this time, his girlfriend appeared on the TV screen, which implies that his girlfriend can be bought and sold just like TV;
The diamond ring in the TV shopping symbolizes marriage, and the Minnie on the pendant symbolizes American-style pure love. However, the scenes of girlfriends having sex have been superimposed into these two commodities, which means that girlfriends, even marriage, love, and diamond rings , Pendant is the same, just a link in the equation "sex = TV (representing goods) = money = pleasure", you can meddle in others after a phone call;
Witnessing his girlfriend having sex with others on TV hinted that he was worried that this green hat would be widely known;
And his girlfriend’s devotion to sex makes him even more anxious that if he is unable to provide pleasure through either money or drugs in the equation, he will be replaced—contrast that when he imagines the future of “getting rich”, or with “making money” The good news is that when she went home, she jumped up and embraced his excitement;
Minnie's pendant is up for sale, showing that he still doesn't know how much his girlfriend is worth-what it takes to borrow two thousand dollars, let alone price a girlfriend who is regarded as a noble object.
From this, we can see that the objectification of the equation to the person has caused a deep crack in the symbolic world (the law of meaning in Lacan's psychoanalysis).
In this way, Marion sold her body three times, getting deeper into the muddle of the equation every time :
The more she obeys the transfer of money, the more freedom she has to hand in, and the more money she reaps from men who dominate sex.
The sex she participated in was self-destructive:
From the emotional pornography (érotisme des coeurs, or translating the color of the heart) "based on the mutual affection of lovers" with Harry, it is increasingly degraded to heavy, gloomy, and even "cheeky physical pornography" (érotisme des corps, or transliteration). Lust), whose purpose is to tarnish her own delicate flesh .
(L'Erotisme, Bataille, Union Edition, page 202)
And the power of the three sex scenes - money and phallus (Phallus), have never seen the publicity :
For the first time, she did not dare to look directly at the penis in the frame, and her back also covered the penis of the psychiatrist, but his action like a condom complemented the penis in the audience's imagination;
For the second time, when she bowed her head to give oral sex to the pimp, her gaze led the audience to look directly at the penis outside the lens, and the bottom edge of the lens also stayed on the close-up of her folded hands and slightly opened mouth, and put the penis on again. Complete in the audience’s imagination, and make the imagined penis more oppressive than the previous one;
In the third time, no man even participated directly in the sex act. Instead, a close-up of the dildo and the money that was thrown between the buttocks of the two women and stuffed into their mouths ordered them to obey.
Obviously, sex has become a symbol of violence in patriarchal capitalism .
This is why when Marien committed herself to the psychologist, the psychologist asked to turn on the light, and she insisted on turning off the light:
She doesn't want her body to be ravaged, and at the same time become the spectacle of the other party, being "killed" again in the symbolic order.
The disaster caused by the equation-dehumanization.
After continuous proliferation, the form of hip-hop montage reached its peak at the end of the film, and it also allowed us to see the power of the equation to swallow everything.
As Aronofsky said, the whole film is constructed to achieve (this) climax. (The film is constructed to build to a climax. See the guide)
The climax montage can be counted from the prison doctors and guards selecting labor among drug addicts.
The procedure is performed like this-
The doctor checked the prisoner’s pupils for dilation and drug addiction with a flashlight, and then mechanically repeated a set of words to interrogate one prisoner after another:
can you hear me?
can you see me?
OK, it works.
(Can you hear me? Can you see me? Ok, for work.)
If drug addiction does not affect work, just tick the form;
If you lose your ability to work, hand it over to the prison guards unceremoniously.
Next, these three cold interrogations run through the parallel montage of the four protagonists, thus forcing each of them to be questioned.
And the cold answer is that these four bodies are all exploited by the equation in different forms to exhaust the use of value and desire, and become "waste people":
Tailong was beaten by the supervisor's wicked language and kept pestering the mashed potatoes until exhaustion, and was drained of the last drop of labor power;
Harry always takes drugs with more impurities, and the needles are rotten when he beats his hands-when this part of the body can no longer be connected to the "drug = pleasure" equation to work, or continue the "work" of drug trafficking, Have to take away the amputation;
Marion’s "work" is to mechanically greet the body under the hysterical call to "climax", and completely become a sex slave;
Sarah, who had long retired from work, was aroused by false images in the media—but when she threatened her job in a television production company, she would be deprived of her desire.
After the climax of this fast editing, we came to the end and saw the overhead shot slowly zooming out of the character:
Marion, Tyrone, and Sara curled up like babies in the womb, looking for a sense of security. As for Harry after the amputation, it was difficult even to turn over.
In fact, this method of contrast between the climax and the epilogue runs through the whole film:
Through a large number of subjective shots, we suddenly pushed us into the state of characters, and then poured cold water over, dragging us back to the cruel reality.
And this pouring of cold water is the consequence of the deepest violence that affects us-proletarianization (translated by Xu Yu as "dehumanization"):
Creative work no longer exists, but only mechanical, life-consuming work for money.
Here, activity means being moved, strength means weakness, and human life is not dependent on ta, does not belong to ta, and turns to oppose ta’s own activities.
When Aronowski reached the end of the filming, he was not sure whether Harry should live or die. The original author Selby said: Of course he will survive; he must suffer more sins. (See guide review)
The life of the characters in the film is to expose the equation that makes life worse than death.
Even in this device that coerces everyone to "work", the "masters" such as doctors, prison guards, and spectators are just working when they give orders and follow a set of procedures for maximizing efficiency-interrogation, Desperately pursuing orgasm...
Light is the life of a show.
In this montage, when the doctor shines a flashlight on the pupils of the prisoner, the next shot is when Marion is playing in a sex show, and the audience's flashlight is so hard to open his eyes.
The combination of the two shots, on the one hand, implies that the doctor's examination of the biological symptoms of the labor force, and the audience's examination of Marion's female sexual characteristics-the quality required for sex work, are essentially the same .
On the other hand, it reminds us that this spectacle society uses vision to conceal and distort reality .
At the beginning of the film, it was the biggest landscape in the whole film——
Sarah followed the title of a self-help infomercial (see guide review) "Month of fury" (Month of fury).
And the first thing that appeared in the title of the show was not the host or the title of the show.
Rather, the audience chanted slogans in the first place to create the atmosphere:
In several mid-range shots of different cameras, these nurseries were surrounded by darkness, while the spotlight was walking around them.
This kind of mirroring and lighting effects is nothing more than to cover the pitiful place and a few people going back and forth, creating a crowded and mysterious atmosphere.
Imagine that you can easily betray the shame of the scene by changing to a large panorama with all the lights on.
And the sex performance at the end of the film is exactly the same as the TV show:
The pimp who saves the game is equivalent to the host of the "show", the women are all obtained by him;
The start of the show was when he ordered "show time" (show time), a close-up of his mouth appeared-this is the title of the show;
More exactly like the TV show, the first thing that appeared in this show was the crazy shout of the audience:
These men were surrounded by darkness, and at the same time they used a flashlight to shine from Marion’s face to the naked body, and the flashlight’s light kept swaying with their restless emotions. It seemed that the structure of this body was more special than the other body. Place.
Such use of light is for the purpose of continuously covering and revealing the otherwise mediocre body, creating an evil and enchanting effect that is "greater than the body."
Imagine that the most unappetizing thing in this turbulent atmosphere is that the lights are suddenly turned on, exposing the mechanism of obscuration and manifestation, and illuminating the pale flesh and the distorted faces of the onlookers. now.
In other words, behind these landscapes is nothingness (that is, what Lacan calls the real world).
This is why we have to give so many shots to the audience in the audience, instead of just focusing on the object of desire on the stage :
Just like the philosopher Zizek's analysis of "recorded laughter" in sitcoms, fanatical spectators are essential because they show that at this moment, many people are enjoying the good time for me.
In this way, even if we perceive the emptiness of the landscape , we can still plunge into it .
This pleasure is not a side effect, but the only driving force, aimed at satisfying one's unsatisfied desires.
("The Sublime Object of Ideology" translator's foreword)
The American dream is a nightmare.
Let us look back at the title "Requiem for a dream".
Requiem was originally intended as a funeral, but it was extended to requiem-the main theme of the film "Lux Aeterna" (Lux Aeterna) uses drums sampled from some traditional requiems.
So, what dream is this dream?
The scene of the film is set in New York——
This is the United States with the most "American" characteristics for the whole world.
It is also the center of global capitalism and the place with the highest degree of capitalism development.
But the camera is not aimed at feasting, but on the rotten side of "Big apple" (nickname for New York):
Dilapidated buildings in Brooklyn, drug dealers all over the streets.
Here, the male and female protagonists, the young couple, are chasing the same dream:
After accumulating drug money and setting up a shop, and then relying on the tailor's skill to start a small business of making clothes, he turned from a poor to a petty bourgeoisie, loving each other for a lifetime.
This dream was put forward by Marion, and Harry took it seriously, and he worked out and implemented a route to pursue the dream.
And Marion’s dream probably came from her father, a clothing tycoon.
It can be seen that this intergenerational dream is deeply rooted in the American capitalist economy .
As a result, this American dream went bankrupt completely--
In a literal sense, the capital they invested was also lost and the economy was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Therefore, the title and even the theme of the film can be understood as " the funeral of the dream of American capitalism ."
It is all the good people who have realised and even surpassed their American dream.
These "bosses" not only live on the opposite side of the "smelly ditch" where the protagonist of the film stays, but also succeed in Harry's unfinished business of exploitation.
In other words, if you stay away from the white powder and find a job with more money, you can let the female poisonous insect perform a play of interoperability in front of you and your twenty friends. This is the American dream.
Don’t pretend to be surprised, we have seen the group sex parties of big people in "Eyes wide shut" (Eyes wide shut).
I have seen the younger generation version in "Social network"-Zuckerberg squeezed his head and wanted to join the Harvard end-of-term club party:
Why do sweet dreams suddenly collapse into nightmares?
Many viewers dumped the pot on drugs.
But as mentioned above, addictions such as drugs are only part of the equation.
And the fact is, the movie heroin (heroin), but the word never appeared.
Aronovsky also admitted in the interview: This is not a story about drugs. (Not a drug story)
Others say: it's the fault of addiction; you must do everything in moderation.
Even Aronofsky blamed the eternal "addiction":
When we were still amoeba (primitive invertebrates) in the primordial soup (the liquid substance that existed before life on earth), we were looking for carbon molecules to cool off.
But they did not realize that the nature of biology to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages is not the same thing as social chemistry (in Michele Sehe language) such as the media that makes people obsessed under capitalism.
The social mechanisms behind drug and media addictions are the crux of the film's diagnosis through the ambitious portrayal of group portraits—Ironofsky University studied sociology.
Stigler's evaluation of the French parents who committed infanticide is more appropriate as a footnote to the characters in the film:
They are all victims of dizzy consumers' daily despair...because they are caught in an economic poverty that triggers a symbol of poverty.
If they really have to condemn them, such a trial must also clearly analyze and detail the economic situation in which the crime is generated, and may first have to condemn the social system that allows such misfortune to be triggered.
(They were victims of the everyday despair of the intoxicated consumer,[...],because they were trapped by an economic misery engendering symbolic misery.[...]if it is true that one must condemn them, nevertheless such a judgment must precisely analyze and detail the circumstances attending the crime, and can only be just inasmuch as it also and perhaps above all condemns the social organization capable of engendering such a disgrace.
"Symbolic Misery"
This social system is the capitalist economy;
And the uniqueness of all things succumbed to the calculability of money, resulting in de-symbolization—that is, the consequence of destroying symbolism.
In Harry's daydream after smoking marijuana, we saw his noble symbol:
He walked towards Marion in a red dress, Marion turned around and smiled.
In the real part of the film, Marion never wore red clothes. Mother Sarah has been wearing a red dress since Harry's high school graduation ceremony, and has always wanted to wear this dress on TV.
Obviously, Marion's red dress came from Sarah.
Thus, Mary in the red dress, and even the red dress itself, symbolized motherhood and love for Harry.
But this symbol was destroyed in the equation.
Just after Harry proposed that the first step in pursuing his dream was to sell drugs to get the principal of the business, he looked at Marion and said, "You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen."
Marion responded that she felt meaningless when others praised her like this.
At this moment, their meaning to each other seems to complement each other.
However, the split screen in the shot blocked the eyes of the Bi people in the same time and space, thus implying the false intimacy of the two.
And this is precisely why they use pleasure to maintain this illusion of intimacy.
After the next drug use, Marion further responded to Harry next to him:
I love you, you make me feel like a person, make me feel at ease, make me feel beautiful.
(I love you, you make me feel like I'm a person, like I'm me, like I'm beautiful.)
However, her words, like those compliments to her, seem meaningless:
When she was speaking, she faced the ceiling without even looking at Harry;
The lens rotates 360° and keeps moving away from the subject, implying that she is in a spin after taking drugs, and her consciousness is gradually moving away-this is when her subjectivity is weakest! Compare the moments when she used her talent to make clothes.
In the following three sales, the price Marion paid was less and less "a person" (a person), less and less "comfortable" (me).
She buried her head in the water and shouted, but she couldn't utter a single syllable.
In other words, she lost her words and could not produce meaning.
At the end of the film, when Harry amputated, he dreams of Marion in a red dress.
But instead of turning her head, she disappeared at the end of the pier.
When the nurse asked Harry who was the "Marion" he called in his dream, and said she would be notified.
Harry didn't answer directly. It seemed that the degeneration of the sublime symbol made him hard to tell. In the eyes of the pimp, Marion was the maid Marion in the Robin Hood story, that is, a lamb to be slaughtered.
He just shook his head firmly and said: No.
Not only was Marion trapped in his own equation, unable to extricate herself, and had no reason and ability to save him;
More importantly, they are completely psychologically short-circuited by their respective equations , and they cannot have a psychological connection with each other .
Why do we tolerate the vicious circle of equations?
At the end of the film, Marien's hands pressed a large bundle of money from prostitution to her chest, and then smiled comfortingly, letting her dream, the clothing design manuscript, be scattered all over the place.
At this moment, for each of us deep in the equation, we all seem to have known each other:
When you receive a text message for salary entry, when you roll to the car number, when you look at your newly cut eyelids in the mirror, or even when you get a small copy of the real estate certificate and marriage certificate ...
Only in that short moment, we were as indifferent as her to think:
The equation is still waiting for us to continue.
Chuck Palahniuk, the author of "Fight Club", wrote stories about addiction in "Suffocation." He explained this question:
The addict is at ease knowing what is most likely to be waiting for him on the way down.
In this way, he had some control over his ultimate destiny, and his addiction made his death no longer a complete accident.
(The addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.)
This is what Spinoza said, "a kind of happiness that arises from the elimination of all uncertainty in an event in the future or in the past."
（Une joie née de l'idée d'une chose future ou passée à propos de laquelle toute incertitude est levée.
"Ethique" III p. 14)
And the fastest way to create this happiness is money.
So in the end, we all become addicted to the equation.
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