We should be more imaginative about the suffering of others. ——Lin Yihan
Watching horror movies with my dad (my mother refused to watch) is already a family habit, but I found that for some horror movies, my dad’s ability to understand is not even a little bit worse than mine, such as the two-line narrative of "Nightmare Doll House" It is clear and easy to understand for me. It takes my dad several times to understand why the black-haired sister Beth falls into an imaginary world of her adulthood.
Also causing the misunderstanding is the newly filmed "Invisible Man" which was filmed at home a few months ago. (Mom also watched it together, because the classification is science fiction) Needless to say, even my mother, who is inferior to my dad’s logical thinking ability in daily life from an objective point of view, bothered the choice made by the heroine in the face of crisis and the plot of the whole plot. There is a faster understanding of the structure, what is going on?
Did my dad suddenly become stupid as a person who usually considers himself smart? Or is it because some factor, such as gender, restricts his logical chain?
"Nightmare Doll House" is essentially the same type of movie as "The Invisible Man", even if their classification labels are not the same, in fact, they all tell a bloody, realist core in a surreal way. The real "scary" of these two films is not in their specificity (science fiction/spiritual setting), but in the authenticity of their materials based on reality: women in reality will encounter such a situation. Regardless of whether the director inadvertently inserted the willow or deliberately did it. I even think that the beginning of these two movies should be marked with a trigger warning. "The Invisible Man" should remind people who have experienced intimate relationship violence, sexual abuse, stalking, and gaslighting to watch the movie carefully (both men and women); "Nightmare Doll House" should remind people who have experienced illegal imprisonment, underage sexual assault, abuse, and street Randomly follow the audience of..., watch the movie carefully. Because even people like me who grew up almost happily after watching these two movies (especially the invisible people) will be very sad and even have symptoms of alternative trauma. I originally wanted to write a film review of "The Invisible Man" and Domestic Violence, because the thought of watching the movie again just to write the details felt unbearable, so I gave it up.
In the short comment section of these two films, there are many comments like "This is not terrible, what is terrible" and "The heroine is so rubbish, I will be scared to cry". I don't think about the quality of the film. To put it simply in terms of painful imagination: I'm sorry, everyone here failed.
It took a long time for my dad to understand that "beth as an adult was imagined by the 14-year-old Beth", and I understood it in seconds. Taiwanese writer Lin Yihan suffered from depression due to sexual assault by a teacher in middle school. In severe cases, she would "dissociate". She would lose a memory, or could not control her behavior, or had auditory hallucinations and voices. Vision. This is a self-protection behavior of the brain after a severe mental shock. It is to correct the victim's cognitive dissonance. It is your brain that is trying to prevent you from going crazy. Similar reactions include Stockholm syndrome and schizophrenia.
Some people in the comments of "The Invisible Man" wondered why the heroine didn't leave earlier? Is it because my boyfriend is rich and reluctant to leave? They probably don't know that many people who have experienced domestic violence will learn to be helpless and completely give up the idea of running away: this is my destiny. In the same review of "Nightmare Doll House", many people said that the two sisters are so useless. How can they only cry and scream when their mother is fighting with perverts, and neither help nor run away. They probably don’t know that when facing violence and sexual assault, the victim will be “frozen”, just like the pseudo-death reaction of an animal in the animal kingdom encountering a natural enemy. The whole person is frozen and unable to command their body . This is also a "rape myth": why don't you resist? Why don't you run? Why don't you refuse?
These questions are equivalent to asking whether you were raped voluntarily.
Some people think that such movies are too far away from us. Such perversions only exist in movies. In reality, there are no high-tech invisibility cloaks, no transvestite witches and doll-loving giants.
But in reality, how many women are randomly killed, domestically abused by their partners, or sexually assaulted by their teachers? We don't talk about the hot searches on Weibo, or social news, just talk about myself. My friend and I have experienced random stalking on the street more than once. I was shot on my skirt by a stranger while on the subway and sexually harassed by my teacher. And I'm just a very lucky existence among thousands of girls (or boys), and I haven't experienced other more irreparable injuries.
Perhaps this is the reason why I can always understand the plot of this type of movie very quickly, not because I am smarter and more logical; it is just because I have more imagination about the suffering of others.
The plot metaphor in the movie is so real.
Beth escaped because of menarche. Although it is not depicted in the movie, her sister has a high probability of being sexually assaulted. It is difficult for mothers to protect their daughters, and it is difficult for older sisters to protect their younger sisters. Trolls don’t like the dolls to talk. When the dolls all over the room start to "talk", what he hears is "No one loves you", "You are so ugly", "You monster"... Profiles of heterosexual men and pedophiles who are randomly violent by women: Killing unfamiliar women without being recognized by women in the courtship market, only liking children, because children are "innocent" "will like me" and "don't look down on them like adults I". So Beth will be told by her sister: No matter what he does to you, don't cry or move.
The transvestite "witch" dressed the two sisters as ideal girls in the eyes of men: big eyes, fluffy skirts, bright lipsticks, and white stockings. It is mostly in line with the fetishism of transvestites, or the obsession with stereotyped gender symbols. He tried to portray himself as a woman through makeup and dresses, so he used the same method to portray the girls who hadn't grown up. Isn't our society doing the same thing to women? Be a lady, they say.
At the end of the film, the rescued two sisters were seen on a stretcher. Inside and outside the house were broken dolls. Two of them were even very similar to their clothes: the two sisters were lucky to survive. Everyone in the world Countless other children are experiencing such injuries every second, and no one will save them. Just like at the beginning of the movie, my sister Vera saw a little boy running across the wilderness, standing in the middle of the road watching their car go away. He was probably also a survivor who had just escaped from a murder, maybe the candy bus came out. It's not necessarily the case that he met a mother and daughter and locked a new target after looking for him.
Beth's hallucinations and mother's love protected her to some extent, while her love for her sister saved them both. I think this is a good ending: Mom pointed to the typewriter on the floor behind the window, which meant that she should not give up her dream of writing. Many people may not know that writing, even journaling and running accounts, is a very effective method of psychological healing. When we have the ability to write our own stories, we have a sense of control over our lives, and are no longer powerless and difficult to resist.
Don't give up writing, we should all be like Beth.
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