Paoding Jie Niu's unity of nature and man and reflection on modernity

Idella 2022-09-06 06:42:41

In the first half, the four musketeers. The first is to achieve harmony and unity in terms of skills, and the perfection is close to enlightenment. The second is the state of ecstasy, which entrusts the self to the non-self and eliminates the dexterity of the debate between the small and the big. The third is the prophet. The body and the body are one with the heaven and man, and they have begun to blend in with nature. The fourth is the Holy One who completely eliminates the differences between all living beings. Life does not exist, and death does not exist. Humans have become one with heaven. And the protagonist kills them all one by one. Just as the male protagonist gave up his son and chose a woman at first, the male protagonist represents the image of a typical modern person-confidence and even narcissism, rational but retains a proper degree of indulgence. Unable to comprehend the prophets with their limited reason, who represent the treasure of ancient knowledge and its dignity, it destroys it in a brutal and cunning way, and finally loses itself in the doubt of eternal value, and the hero's partner, This worldly incarnation then turns into another woman—another woman, presumably, a metaphor for trends like the modern gender freedom movement?
In the second half, when the protagonist wakes up again, he has been reduced from almost a privileged class - a cowboy to a street performer. The village where he lives, according to the symbol, probably refers to the business society headed by the United States. All the bloody exaggerations point to sensual consumerism—even religion has turned into a pragmatic juggling of miracles and comforts. In the end, the protagonist's painstaking efforts to open the channel to realize the ideal of equality of all beings were also destroyed by the villagers' guns-they always had to maintain their surface decency and refused to "hide filth". The angry protagonist couldn't bear such ignorance. The prejudice has been deeply ingrained, so they become invulnerable and kill them all, and the self-immolation after they are completely romantic.
This film is very Lao Zhuang meaning, first of all, it is the musket skills of the unity of heaven and man and the Tao. Disabled people in the cave can point to Zhuangzi's so-called "useless and useful", the purpose is to eliminate all differences, with the vision of the eternal To look at the differences in the world, but helpless hegemony is in power, any ideal can only face the end of destruction in the end, forced to be secular and forced to self-destruct, and by the way, clean the world well.
So the second half is a reflection on the first half, and it is the process of the hero re-acquainting himself with himself—in the second part, he observes himself in the first part from the perspective of a bystander—the stupid and arrogant villagers. Ah, the modern man who has lost his reverence for self-inflation.

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Extended Reading

El Topo quotes

  • El Topo: Too much perfection is a mistake.

  • [first lines]

    El Topo: [to his son] You are seven years old. You are a man. Bury your first toy and your mother's picture.