Marx said: "The traditions of all the dead ancestors haunt the minds of the living like a nightmare." And this "tradition of the ancestors" on the "Surprise" (British warship) is the beginning of Nelson and Nelson. Trafalgar's grand heroic narrative, this scene seems to remind us that those who carry the Union Jack battleship are powerful souls from the blood of heroes. And it is the dead and martyrs in these grand narratives that are like the power of sails, and the sailors who push a whole ship step by step chase the French army far and wide. The story of "Fighting in the Furious Sea" has a simple theme but is very heavy, and this heavy feeling is given by the grand narrative of the hegemony of the British Empire. So how does a grand narrative connect individuals? How do these heroic undead connect with the living? And how do these so-called confidence and courage connect the life and death of the past and the present, while allowing the living to cross their own life and death?
Tradition and courage are undoubtedly the easiest words to see in "Fighting on the Furious Sea". Tradition can be regarded as belonging to the dead, and courage can be regarded as belonging to the living. The bridge between life and death is nationalism. This kind of nationalism is not about revolutions, heroes, and struggles, but with all kinds of symbolic forces, even symbolic heroes, that permeate the film. If Captain Jack is a hero, he must be a hero who was born and died for tradition. He adheres to the conservative ideas of the imperial navy, even dogmatic, and stares with the eyes of a strong man from the old times. Facing the sea, old-fashioned brings him a different kind of tenacity and an air of authority full of Chrisma's charm. And all of this is nothing more than the "traditional symbols" achieved by the century-old imperial navy on his body: a ruthless worldview of the jungle, strict and even indiscriminate iron-fisted discipline (punishing sailors who challenge officers), and never giving up stubbornness. Therefore, the British tradition and old-fashioned construction of Jack's absolute symbolic authority, and legitimately exerted various symbolic violence to unify the "Imperial Navy" - "Surprise" - "Captain Jack" on himself, he seems to be this Emperor on a battleship. The inherent unity of this symbol integration lies in the century-old hatred of France based on nationalist ideology. The sword and sword are filled with mutual hatred between the two nations. No matter how history evaluates Napoleon and how he commented on the French Revolution, Jack and his The sailors of the 1970s were born to sink the French army, and to defeat the enemy is justice, and these nationalist sentiments not only exist in those great epics, but are injected into everyone's daily life by Captain Jack:
" Do you want to give London to the French? Do you want Napoleon to be king? Do you want your children to sing the Marseillaise!"
The city is symbolized, Napoleon is symbolized, and the Marseillaise is more of a symbol, which means that the loser in the nationalist battle will be "punished" in everyday life (actually if Captain Jack fails, does history make Completely different ending is very doubtful). Captain Jack's old-fashioned and conservative make him the incarnation of Nelson in the eyes of sailors, making the hardships of chasing thousands of miles the only way to inherit the great cause, and even very young children are also fascinated by this kind of symbolic power. down and become the heirs. Therefore, in the eyes of sensible doctors, this endless pursuit across the ocean, but in the eyes of the officers, the motivation is clear, which is to shoulder the national tradition full of heroic qualities connected by the meaning symbols in life. They fought not only for interests, but for symbols and traditions. Therefore, they do not derive their strength from progress, but from tradition and conservatism to overcome their opponents.
Therefore, nationalism is not only a set of doctrines, but also a symbolic force based on tradition and old-fashionedness, a set of real "nightmare composed of dead people". What these symbols build is the "greatness" that transcends past and foreign, eternal existence, immortal time and beyond life and death.
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