Who is the barbarian-"Waiting for the barbarian"
Today we will talk about the movie "Waiting for the Barbarians".
The title is Waiting for the Barbarians (2019), alias Barbarians Truth (Taiwan).
The original work of the film is a novel of the same name by John Maxwell Coetzee.
J.M. Couche is a South African novelist and the first writer to win the Booker Prize, the highest award for English literature twice. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
"Waiting for the Barbarians" was written in 1980 and was the first novel by J.M. Couche to win him an international reputation. This time, J·M·Ketze served as the screenwriter of the film and put his work on the big screen.
Coetzee's works mostly focus on criticizing the rationalism and pseudo-morality of Western civilization. In the film, you can strongly feel the author's ruthless exposure of the hypocrisy of Western civilization.
The labels of savage and ignorance are artificially affixed, and no one has ever thought that they are savages, ignorant and uncivilized. Only when the aggressor wants to decorate himself, will he label the enemy savage and ignorant, so that he can become famous. The essence is aggression and colonization, and it is necessary to act and stand up again. This is the standard hypocritical behavior.
Reversing black and white is the usual method of Western powers, and "Waiting for the Barbarians" has become a microcosm. In order to beautify the aggression, they will fan the flames overtly or secretly and use the logic of robbers to occupy one colony after another.
Just like in "Waiting for the Barbarians", the empire occupied this "Blessed Land", and then declared that because the barbarians rebelled first, the imperial troops came to counter the rebellion, and at this time the shadow of the nomads didn’t know it was there. where. Say a lie a thousand times and it will be true, as long as the aggressor believes that it is the truth.
A real example is that history books always say that the two world wars were initiated by Germany, listing a lot of reasons. The real reason is very simple. The defeated countries in the two world wars are Germany, and history is written by the victor. The victor can never say that he triggered a world war in order to divert internal conflicts.
"Waiting for the Barbarians" does not have a clear time and geographical background, perhaps it is John Bull or maybe Stilt, North Africa or Central Asia. The story in the work takes place in a fictitious border town, referring to the aggression of Western civilization. culture.
The protagonist is the sheriff of this border town, living a peaceful life in peaceful days. After the young and strong army officers represented by Colonel Joel came to the border town, the situation changed. The peaceful life no longer exists, and everything is developing towards collapse.
Colonel Joel desperately wanted to obtain information from the local barbaric population and captured a large group of nomads. Using torture to extract confessions, he "successfully" obtained information that the barbarians wanted to attack the empire. So Colonel Joel happily brought the information back to move the troops, leaving the sheriff with a feather.
Among the many barbarians captured, the sheriff met the stray blind woman, moved her compassion, and treated the blind woman, hoping to complete his atonement.
The sheriff wanted to ease the relationship with the local nomads through his "kind deeds", but the result of the matter was completely beyond his imagination, and he got himself in the mirror—not people inside and outside.
In "Waiting for the Barbarians", readers and viewers naturally have a question: Who is the barbarian?
On one side are the invaders armed to the teeth and aggressively occupying other people's land, professing to be the sheriff of the empire; on the other side are the nomads who live in harmony with nature, live by water and grass, and have no settlement.
The two ways of life have no distinction between high and low, but the "civilized man" with plenty of military virtues relies on his own more advanced weapons to declare that the other party is a barbarian, occupying a land of no owner, and occupying a nomadic nation in a stately manner. The site is beautifully called the border of the empire.
The answer is obvious. From the perspective of the aggressor, the poor and backward aborigines are barbarians. From the perspective of the aborigines, the invaders are the moral barbarians.
"Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, but arrogance is." In the film, the whites show the arrogance and ignorance of Western society to the fullest.
The way of life of nomads itself is part of nature, and it has been like this for thousands of years, but it is different from the way of invaders and they are brutally slaughtered as barbarians. It can be seen that the predatory development path of the West is an unsustainable development behavior. Once some people question their predation, the Western empire will have a rift to bridge the gap. Even if the American emperor slaughtered the Indians to death, the ethnic issue would be their eternal pain.
The sheriff is better than Colonel Joel, but not much better. It is not from the main point of view of the sheriff, the sheriff is a good person. The sheriff has enjoyed so many years in the border town, but he has always been arbitrary and has never introspected himself. It's just that Colonel Joel's more radical behavior frightened him, and the sheriff wanted to complete self-salvation by treating blind women.
But the sheriff himself was at a loss as to what kind of results he wanted to achieve by treating blind women. The sheriff was confused, and the blind girl was also very distressed. She couldn't guess the sheriff's intention to keep herself by her side.
The biggest distress of the blind girl comes from the sheriff. She spends so many days together and lives under the same roof. In the end, she still can't figure out whether it is for sex or power. Anyway, it can't be love.
Everything always has two sides. Individuals cannot simply divide people into good and bad.
Kutcher has spent a lot of pen and ink describing the psychology of the characters, but you can't be sure of Kutcher's position. Kutcher’s point of view is very subtle. You can say that he sympathizes with the perpetrator, or you can say that he sympathizes with the victim, or both sympathizes and neither sympathizes.
Standing to the last recorded history,
The genocide is the barbarian.
Here is the distribution center for hardcore movie fans, welcome to pay attention: Miaokan Film and Television
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