The reason why we say this: any society is a box, because no one can escape the discipline of society. It is a boundary and a protection circle. It can nurture and destroy. Different boxes nurture different people. And light, the light outside the box, is the ideal of a society, the culmination of an unreachable discipline, a standard, a model, a successful case, and the embodiment of an ideal.
Luce: From one box to another
Luce spent the first ten years of his life in an African country engulfed by war, and could not decide his own life, thus becoming a child soldier in the war. This is the boundary of all the disciplines given by that African country, and it forms the box in which the man before Luce spent his first ten years of his life.
Then he was brought to the United States, adopted into a white American family, and renamed "Luce" to start his life again. In the second decade of his life, he went from box to box again, he started all over again, from an African child soldier to an American top student.
This transformation means a kind of "rebirth", but it also means a "break" in life to some extent. Everyone's life will go through all kinds of changes, all kinds of hardships, and then when we are tenacious, we say "rebirth". But for Luce, this "rebirth" is not easy, because its "rebirth" is from box to box, from one reality to another, from a black world into a white The world, from Africa to America, from war to ideal.
This rupture made him become aware of the "self," which was determined by this rupture. But it was this ego that made him feel so stressed, that he needed to be understood, to be trusted, but during his ten years in the United States, under the careful protection of his adoptive parents, he had never understood what he was The society he lives in - the real situation of the box, he needs space and understanding, but he completely fails to understand his own real situation, so the kind of self-resistance he treats with questioning is completely a manifestation of "self", and he needs to To prove himself, he needs to express himself, but in a sense, the teacher made him feel pressured.
More importantly, he is at another node in his life, going to university, going to society, going out of family and going to society.
Harriet: Only a few people can touch it
Harriet represents the ideal of black people, and her rigor represents this ideal situation. Her emphasis on political propositions in the classroom is a testament to the reality of this American society, but it is also the difference between the campus and the society. The campus is the ideal place. This is something that these black students on campus can't think of, maybe they have thought of it, but they can't face up to this difference. If the disadvantaged group wants to gain a foothold in such a society, if they want to meet the light and meet the ideal, they must Put in more effort than others.
She looks to Luce as a role model, but the sensitive "self-expression" in Luce's work, the fireworks in the closet, and the like, the connection to Luce's first decade of life, and his black identity, inspires This teacher's vigilance is precisely what this society is vigilant about, and it is the vigilance of people who are familiar with this society.
In the same way, her attitude towards Deschamps and her report on Deschamps' drug use directly caused Deschamps to lose her scholarship, and she could no longer continue on campus well. And Deschamps' friendship with Luce also creates a kind of hostility between this act of punishment and appreciation.
It seems difficult to understand the interdependence and mutual hostility among such blacks in the context of American society. But when this situation is understood in the context of this society, there is a reasonable explanation. For the former, for Harriet, she has a greater responsibility, but she cannot avoid being scorned. As an adult, she understands the difficulties of black life, so she requires black students to be stricter. And black students, that is, for the latter, they only have an understanding of the present, an understanding of the near-ideal environment on this campus, interdependence, mutual understanding, mutual respect, this is what they understand and what they believe at the moment. of. When one of them is admired and the other is punished, as they are in the same group, they are fiercely competitive and at the same time interdependent, and they are thus in a state of hostility.
Harriet's suspicion of Luce is based not only on her experience in the first ten years of her life, but also on the real situation of black people in American society; while Luce's dissatisfaction with Harriet is based on the strictness of her own teaching and her political views. Emphasize that its punishment of Deschamps. This mutual distrust is complex and diverse, but the two are more distrusted and hostile between students and teachers. Just like what happens in all schools, this conflict is caused by Student-led, and at the same time it is up to the student to determine its outcome. But in the eyes of teachers, students are always too young to see the whole picture, which is often the case.
Amy/Peter: The Swing Between Trust and Distrust
And the other two characters in the film, Amy and Peter, the white adoptive parents of the film's protagonists, their swing state in dealing with Luce's homework determines the direction of the story.
As a child who has been raised for ten years, at the same time, try to avoid talking about complex political and racial issues, and try to avoid talking about the first ten years of Luce's life, try to maintain the integrity of a family, and give Luce support and protection . It's a trust-building process, and as the two talk about in the film, they sacrificed their lives to give Luce a better life, and they hoped the sacrifice was worth it.
However, Harriet found Luce's mother, Amy. Amy did not directly clarify the problem with Luce, which made the problem shift from the distrust between Luce and his teacher Harriet to the relationship between the parents and Luce. Among the trust problems in , Amy's soft handling allowed Luce to find his teacher Harriet again to deal with the problem, but he got another result that was more distrustful, all from the homework, the bag of gunpowder , and the kind of courage to express "self" in front of the teacher, which is like provocation and show, dangerous and ignorant.
After that, Harriet found Ruth's father Peter, and Ruth's father confronted Ruth directly and face to face in his own way, questioning him, escalating this distrust, and his mother did not go to Ruth to understand Instead, the situation went to one of his close friends, which led to another level of distrust. This kind of distrust stems from a kind of protection for Luce, but this protection makes him feel a lot of pressure, because the surface is calm, but the inner voice of doubt and doubt is one after another. All this is Harriet's reason in his eyes, he planned a revenge, but also a kind of compensation for Deschamps.
This kind of compensation is the maintenance of self-space, which does not seem to have much meaning, but it is very important to him when he is young. He needs another kind of understanding, another kind of self-understanding that is different from family, different from school, different from teachers, and everything else, so he has no choice, he needs friends, he needs to be able to understand the other side of him own friends.
He was looking for a sense of complete self, his sense of rupture, stemming from his own horrific childhood experiences, as well as from his black identity in America, and from his status as a top student.
In the end, he will gain his mother's forgiveness and trust, and start over, because he must finally understand his youth and ignorance, his recklessness and willfulness, and at the same time he understands the difficulties of his real life. He still has a long way to go.
Political slogans are simple, life is hard
Political slogans, so-called political correctness. Some kind of forced "ideal" under this correctness is holding back the normal rhythm of life. This is exactly the situation in American society. From the "Green Book" at the beginning of the year to this "Luce", the situation of black people has changed from a black musician to a teenager. One is a person who lives his ideal, while the other is a They are young people who are still on the path of their own ideals, and they show us two different life stages. But the important thing is that no matter what, society is that hard-to-change box. It's narrow, crowded, and its powerful shaping ability can even change everything, destroy everything, especially black people. Naturally, there are very few people who can reach the light and very few people who can achieve their ideals. You need to keep working hard and never let up for a moment. Especially for those disadvantaged groups.
Politics is the discipline of this box-like society to the ideal light outside the box. It is a seam, a beam of light. It is indispensable, but it is so limited for everyone in the box, because there are always people who are far away from the light. Closer, some people are farther away from the light, you have to squeeze hard, and you need to beware of all kinds of darkness in the box. It's hard to live, especially for those who are disadvantaged.
Of course, the classification of weak coercion is just a theory of relativity. The life of an individual can only be understood by an individual.
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