"Rango" is a comedy cartoon about small people's self-discovery and growth, as well as dreams, beliefs, and values, but it is also built on the ambition to reveal the appearance of all beings.
✏️Kurt Anderson wrote in "Dreamland": "America was built by devout believers and passionate dreamers, but also by mercenary salesmen and willing audiences." And this happens to be echoed in "Rango".
*Dreamer Rango: an individualist with a heroic dream
"Who am I? I can be anyone." Between fantasy and reality, doubt and affirmation, Rango walks on the road of chasing the heroic dream. In the repetition of swelling, shrinking, and re-swelling, he practices about "self" The search for value. The wit of doing as the locals do, the arrogance that takes off on the spot, the shit luck that everyone is angry with, and the self-digestion that he pretends to be X with tears and will finish... Rango interprets a little character whose ultimate life value is a hero's dream. It has to be funny and bloody, humble and decisive.
Rango's heroic dream is a stirring aspect of American Enlightenment, which can be traced back to the origins of the United States. Since Spain made a fortune in Columbus’s poor travel plan invested from a young age, America has been given the expectation of becoming rich overnight and becoming famous in the first world war. The envy of Britain, France and the Netherlands gave birth to the golden age of the Caribbean Sea, giving America the genes of adventure and dreams; the first Englishmen in the New World imagined themselves as optimistic heroes in adventure stories. At that time, the fictional literature of Shakespeare and Cervantes in the modern sense also inspired people to pursue their fiery beliefs, distant dreams and fascinated visions.
*Dreamer Doudou: An empiricist with an industrial dream
Of course, a dream like Rango's to reshape himself according to his own imagination and wishes is not the whole of the American dream. Compared with Rango, Doudou's farm dream in the film is more down-to-earth. In fact, the first British colonists' vision of gold and the Northwest Passage took two or three centuries to materialize. In the 1620s, after 40 years of British colonial failure in the New World, rational people would not continue to chase impossible dreams with their lives. They gave up searching for gold and turned to planting. The residents of Dust Town, represented by Doudou, are empiricists and pragmatists whose dream is to make a fortune in the New World by nurturing, making and selling them.
* Devout Pangolin: Believers inspired by Protestantism
In contrast to the "falsifiable" quest for gold and waterways, most supernatural religious beliefs cannot be falsified. In the 16th century, the New Education gave birth to the rudiments of American thinking. Luther's "delegation of religious power to the common man" and "belief in the Bible is the only prerequisite for being a true Christian" led thousands of common people to think that each of them had the right to decide what was True, what is false. This has greatly inspired people, as long as the foundations of the dream land have been built with fanaticism. As a result, there is a pangolin like the pangolin that Lango encountered before stepping into the desert. Even if it is crushed, he still has to move forward. After all, "the road leading there is full of thorns", but he firmly believes that "see you on the other side". believers. In the film, the pangolin really sees the "other side". Compared with the more advanced existence in the small world in which it lives, at least it can be seen that the creator's positive attitude towards religious belief or the approval of supernatural views.
*The Mayor of the Liar: Conspirator and Ambitioner
The mayor of the dusty town is both a lie maker and a lie promoter. The mayor is one of the few people who has witnessed the development of the valley on the other side of the road, the development of urban modern civilization and the surging commercial value of the land. In order to acquire and control land at a low cost, and to collect wealth, he made up the illusion of a huge crisis of water cutoff and that the land is about to become worthless.
The secret of the mayor's deception lies in keeping himself out of the way: on the one hand, he uses Rango's heroic dream to portray him as a trustworthy law enforcer; As long as Rango executes the Rat Clan according to the mayor's plan, he will secure the hero's honor, and the mayor will unknowingly control the town's water resources.
The mayor sells clever lies because he uses temptation (worship of idols and yearning for truth, goodness and beauty) to express it. It is more effective in manipulating people than rough control. It can comfort the victim into passive The state of acceptance makes it unknowingly act according to the controller's wishes, and it makes the people naively and stubbornly believe in all the illusions made up by the controller.
*Audience for conspiracy and lies: small town residents with a hard life
The harsh living environment, including the shortage of (water) resources, the power of natural enemies, the ignorance caused by the occlusion of information, and the false panic caused by ill-intentioned rumors... make people naturally develop attachment psychology and religious fantasies, expecting a hero, Savior, save it from fire and water. As the residents of the town are grateful from the bottom of their hearts, "Life is not easy, and sometimes I don't know how to persevere, but Sheriff Lango strengthened my belief that we need heroes, and you gave us one." The film satirizes this blind worship mentality in a playful way. The residents of the small town are obviously good at riding and shooting and have a sturdy physique, but they are convinced of the thin "outsiders" who are full of mouths running on the train. And the town residents' desire for heroes has also become a bargaining chip for those with ulterior motives to weave scams.
✏️Finally back to the part of the video about individual value.
The film separates the advanced human civilization from the savage existence of animals, calling each other "the other side", instead of digging deep into the creator's religious metaphor for the relationship between humans and higher existences, just the "Who am I" Rango keeps asking. ” to analyze the setting of Rango’s image in the film. Lango, a cute animal playing pet from the human aquarium. Compared with the small town animal residents, on the one hand, he lived in the limited vision of the advanced world, but he did not have a clear and macro understanding of the advanced world; He's no better than a small town dweller. So when his cowhide was exposed, he realized its insignificance, and the real insignificance was that the vehicles on the road couldn't hold him down, and it was like dust. So the question that the film leads us to think about comes, "Since it is so small, where is the value and meaning of the individual?"
After all, every individual is insignificant in this world, and "everything" is infinite to an individual. But it is precisely because of this that everything becomes less important, and each unique individual significance is highlighted. The meaning of an individual lies in its uniqueness. It "plays" a role in the world, and the individual produces meaning in the world. What is often misunderstood is that the "role to play" should not be given by anyone, but one's own choice.
Just as Lango has never lacked a "hero dream" from beginning to end, the residents of the town also need a hero, and the mayor also awarded Lango the "Hero Medal", but these are not enough to make Lango a hero. "For what you like, you have to work harder. It doesn't matter what they call you, what matters is what you do. You can make a choice." The Holy Spirit of the Western Regions woke up Lango. Only when the heart is firm can dreams become beliefs, and beliefs have power. Lango finally smashed the mayor's lies and conspiracies, and the town regained its vitality. And Rango also chose to live by choice. After all, the individual is small and unnecessary, but it must have real value and meaning when it exists in lovers, groups, memories, and legends.
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