Western civilization has two traditions, one is Greco-Roman culture and the other is Christian culture. On the surface, these two are contradictory. In fact, the behavior patterns of Westerners are simultaneously influenced by these two cultures. In the movie "Apocalypse Now", you can clearly see the harmonious existence and common expression of these two cultures. For example, the colonel who did not hesitate to start a battle for surfing. In this scene, the Americans are Greek gods and Roman behavioral logic. Since I came, I saw that I conquered (Caesar).
Greek gods are characterized by a very high degree of personification, no distinction between good and evil, indistinguishable from virtuous and foolishness, and they carry private goods in everything they do. Its divinity comes from the kind of ability above human beings, and in many cases, God will use this kind of ability to do bad things. Of course they will do "good things", but people have to sacrifice to them and ask them to use power that humans can't reach to help people, not the other way around. When some people are blessed by God and are blessed, then he or they can also use this power to do things that those who are not blessed and do not have this ability cannot do. Therefore, the colonel in the movie can freely slaughter the villages controlled by the Viet Cong and get a unique surfing experience. Although he did not manage to do so, because the explosive power of the napalm bomb caused changes in the local climate environment. While destroying the fire resistance of the Vietcong and ensuring the safety of the surfing area, it also caused the man-made atmospheric vortex to blow away. Waves cannot meet the conditions for surfing. Then the low-ranking officers who could not understand his style led someone to steal his special surfboard. So the whole thing became ridiculous. Apart from slaughtering a group of innocent lives and causing unnecessary casualties to his subordinates, his original goal was not achieved. He was in pain, he tried to create a spiritual comfort space in the war but couldn't.
The core logic of Christian culture comes from the cognition of the only god, and the divine personality is higher than the personality. In the face of all kinds of human deaths, giving revelation and final judgment, occasionally directly intervening with the hand of God. Greek gods belong to pagan gods on the cognitive plane of Christianity, and they are the kind of negative existence that tempts humans to do things that go against God's will. No matter what human beings do under the temptation, whether they succeed or not, they must pay for their actions. This is the role of Revelation. It replaces suggestion with preaching, pointing out the misconduct of human society, the misguided human behavior, and the catastrophic results of individual behavior and group behavior that deviate from the spirit of Christ. On the one hand is the death of life, on the other hand is the suffering of the living, two mad colonels, helpless generals, captains in great perplexity, grassroots officers and soldiers who died innocently, and Vietnam whose lives were taken by American force and their homes were destroyed. People, and... and the literary accent after being contaminated by brutal blood in the mind of director Coppola.
The whole movie is entangled in this kind of spiritual high-level depression, and does not give the ultimate salvation. Whether it is the labor department building a water sound and light stage in the jungle, let the Playboy girls of May, December, and the year dance and entertain; two barrels of fuel in exchange for soldiers and bunny girls to vent the helicopter shock for hours; or the captain The mad colonel in the mission committed suicide by the hand of the captain in order to get rid of his personal pain; it all brought human beings closer and closer to the disaster of the apocalypse...
The United States in 1979 was a United States that lost its sense of direction. Like the ancient Chinese, Americans regarded their country as the master of the world and the world itself, and the national fortune was the trend of the world. Americans’ spiritual distress takes precedence and represents the ideology of all mankind, which is closest to God. The end of America means that the bright side of the gods has given up the guidance and protection of mankind, leaving only temptation and sin, pain and greater pain.
This is the connotation of the movie "Apocalypse Now". The United States represents the fall of mankind. It was the first to feel the crisis of God's distance from mankind, and it was also the first to speak out in an attempt to recall God's favor for man. Since the Roman Empire, Western civilization has experienced many times what they thought was the crisis of God abandoning the world. The root of Western civilization, old Europe gave up treatment and hid in the new world and started from scratch. But hundreds of years later, they still failed to avoid their cyclical law (God cares for the world-man degenerates through death-God abandons the world-saints go out to save the world-God cares for the world again-man degenerates again... …) Repeated the same mistakes, and the crisis is getting bigger and bigger. This time even the New World, the last promised land, is involved. What way out can human beings find?
I originally said that Vietnam War films are American scar literature. In fact, from a macro point of view, this scar is a pseudo-reflection that Westerners cannot get out of the limitations of Western civilization. On the one hand, they indulged in the racial superiority of the Greek god Christ God, and at the same time benefited from the reality control of the objective world brought about by scientific and technological progress after the age of enlightenment; on the other hand, they fell into the thrill of degeneration and couldn’t extricate themselves. , And at the same time worried about the advent of the doomsday judgment, vaguely knowing what the consequences of the collective carnival of human beings will bring. Translated into adult words, it is not only reluctant to bear that point of immediate benefit, but also very afraid of settling accounts after the fall, and live so much. Borrowing the cultural concept of Apocalypse to express the spiritual metaphor, looking at the special literature, the super tall, the special scars, and the reflection, in fact, it's all shit. Although my literature and art are more earthy and not high-end, the concept I convey also has a meaning~~
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