Text | Li Yue
01
Recently, many people on the Internet are reposting a North Korean propaganda video that has been circulating before. In the propaganda film, Americans are in dire straits, drinking snow water, living in tents, and lining up to receive North Korea's relief supplies. The end credits conclude that this is the life of the American people .
I believe that many people view this promo with the mentality of watching a joke. Because, here in us, no matter how one feels about these two countries, it is basically impossible to believe it is true. Some netizens also continued to contribute ideas to it, posting pictures of European and American beaches, with text saying that Americans are naked, basking on the beach with nothing to do, and their eyes are full of despair. But it's different for people in that extremely closed, almost isolated country. "I don't know if there is a Han, no matter what Wei Jin", they live in another sense of "Peach Blossom Land", and will secrete a huge sense of excitement and happiness for such a promotional film . Never underestimate the power of information shielding to shape a person.
02
During difficult times, an old man in my hometown thought that Daddy Mao and his old man must have as much candy as he wanted. Eating candy has exhausted his imagination of a better life. The dazzling changes in the world of the same period were impossible to enter into his field of vision. There is a small mountain in my hometown, sitting on the east and facing west. People call it the front of the rock. There are rice fields and rivers in front of the cave, and the scenery is quite beautiful. When we were young, there was a local saying that this place is a treasure land of feng shui. Unfortunately, the entrance of the cave faces west. If it faces east, the capital will be built there. Back then, I was convinced of such a statement, deeply regretted that we could not become the capital, and wished we could learn how to move the world and move the entrance of the cave to the place where the sun rises. I think, if I continue to live in that kind of closed environment like an iron barrel, and no information from the outside can penetrate in the slightest, who can guarantee that such "regret" will not continue to this day. However, at the moment when the flood of information covers everything, that magical country can stubbornly become an island and stand firm in the flood, which can be regarded as creating a record in the history of human civilization that is worth writing about .
03
Reminds me of a movie.
There are many foreign films full of allegorical and critical spirit, such as the Russian film "Dangerous Building Fools". The film tells the story of plumber Dima Nikitin fighting against Russia's corrupt bureaucracy and sinking humanity in order to save the lives of more than 800 people in a dilapidated building.
The most impressive thing is that at the end of the film, Dima Nikitin decided to let his family flee and evacuate the 800 people himself. On a cold morning, a group of people gathered in front of the dangerous building, but the building did not collapse. Some people began to complain that Jima disturbed their lives, and the young man even beat Dima Nikitin to half death. Then everyone returned to the dangerous building and was finally buried in the dangerous building.
This powerfully symbolic film makes us once again see the great Russian literary tradition of realism .
But today, here, I mainly want to talk about another film, produced by a Greek director called Houndstooth, which won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film tells the story of an isolated family consisting of a pair of parents, an eldest son, and two daughters. A family of five lives all day in a big, secret house.
The three children were isolated from their fathers at birth, they had no contact with anyone other than their parents, and they knew almost nothing about the world beyond the walls. In the movie, the father is the only one who can drive outside, and he tells the children that the outside world is extremely dangerous. A cat or a fish can tear them apart. In this completely closed world, anything unfamiliar can cause internal chaos.
The patriarchy is paramount in this family, the dictator and interpreter of everything in this simulated society. In order to prevent the inflow of foreign information, he even deliberately tore off the outer envelope of the purchased goods, strictly controlling the thoughts of the children in the fence. He also turned all the words that the child had not seen before into the things in front of him, so as to cut off a person's imagination of all unknown things.
04
But the father also has to face the question of why he can go out and the children can't. He lied that he could go out after the children's "canine teeth" fell out. In order to escape her father's control, the eldest daughter hid in the bathroom and smashed her canine teeth. At that moment, what she felt was not pain, but a hearty relief. This is the awareness inherent in the human nature of the ignorant. This kind of awareness makes us believe that, just like every bird longs to fly, it is the nature of every human being to get rid of the fate of being enslaved, even if this nature is tightly covered by a big hand . Later, the eldest daughter hid in the trunk of her father's car. The final shot of the film is frozen on the car driving out of the house. What is her ultimate fate? We don't know. All we know is that the child who grows up in the absurd either perishes in the absurd or explodes in the absurdity, and the magnitude of the explosive force is proportional to the length of the absurdity. This movie is a huge dark metaphor for human reality, and you can totally understand "father" as something bigger , like a country. As long as the flow of information can be strictly limited, a cat or a fish can be regarded by children as extremely dangerous monsters; and the news of Americans queuing up to receive North Korea's relief food can also appear on TV or loudspeakers with seriousness. . "Canine teeth" are difficult to fall off on their own. For those who are in the information blind area or limit themselves to the information blind area, the biggest question is whether they have enough courage and self-consciousness to pull it out?
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