Oedipus Complex and Trauma in Infernal Affairs

Grady 2022-03-21 09:02:52

I really want to use Lacan's theory to analyze "Infernal Affairs". I think this is a very Oedipus story. The two undercover agents, Chen Yongren and Liu Jianming, both murdered their fathers and suffered trauma to some extent, so they are forever affected by infernal affairs. Immortal.

In Infernal Affairs 2, Chen Yongren, as an undercover police officer, collected criminal evidence of his half-brother, the gang leader Yongxiao, and indirectly killed his elder brother; in the case that the common father was dead, the elder brother could also Counted as another form of father, combined with Yongxiao's preaching and teaching to Yongren in the movie, Yongxiao can be described as a father-like role to Yongren. Although Yongren did not forget his original intention - "I want to be a good person", he never agreed with this spiritual father, but at the moment Yongxiao was killed, he couldn't help crying. I thought that his heart was torn.

If the above one is not obvious enough, then Liu Jianming is a complete father-killer. His biological parents had long since immigrated overseas, so he followed Han Chen, even though he fell in love with his eldest brother's woman, Marry. The meaning of Oedipus here is already very strong. He has been suppressing his emotions, substituting his father's laws for his mother's desires. 在韩琛泰国遇难(没死)那一段儿,他和Marry表白后被Marry揍了,Marry说:“我是你大哥的女人。”你大哥三个字,甚至不需要你大哥的出场,就Liu Jianming, who was trying to violate the law, was shocked. In the name of his father, Liu Jianming was helplessly placed in Han Chen's symbolic order. However, a fantasy deconstruction was formed. Han Chen was turned into a father by Liu Jianming, who was regarded as someone who was outside the rules and stole his happiness. In "Infernal Affairs 1", he killed Han Chen with his own hands. Although most of the reasons were to completely separate himself from the underworld, to whitewash himself, and to make a fortune by making his own merits, but I think from the perspective of psychoanalysis, he is like this The meaning of doing this is to finally get rid of a heavy big Other, and from now on you don't have to be trapped in the desire and order of the big Other. I thought that, in a sense, father-killing also killed a part of himself - and Liu Jianming, apart from Han Chen's mentality, doesn't seem to have any other source of nourishment, so his father-killing seems to me almost equal to suicide. After killing Han Chen, he seemed to be in high spirits and had a bright future, but in fact he was already dead, and there was no way to find his spiritual godfather soon. And he was trapped even deeper by the ghost of his original father.

They are all traumatic. The word undercover originally meant betrayal, and betrayal without forgetting the original intention. The question is what to do after the betrayal? There is no absolute good or bad in the world, and the standard of value evaluation is not black and white. If you are an undercover agent sent by the police, and you want to be a good person, will your conscience be okay with betraying the bad people who are good to you? (See Yongren's guilt towards Yongxiao and Shiqiang) If you are an undercover agent sent by the underworld and decide to betray the organization after doing all the bad things, can you mentally cleanse yourself and say "I'm a good person" with a clear conscience? The reality is that people cannot easily convince themselves. In the end there was only one question left in my mind: Who am I? It's a mental trauma. In the world of symbolism, everything is in order; but this trauma from betrayal hinders the movement of symbolization, and it makes everything intolerable. Doubt about one's own beliefs can destroy people bit by bit.

So Chen Yongren went to see a psychiatrist, and Liu Jianming went crazy. In fact, their psychological quality is not as good as their predecessors. As early as the beginning, Officer Huang and Han Chen reached a consensus: murder and set fire to the golden belt, repair roads and bridges without corpses. Don't make value judgments, just treat it as a strategic game, and be a cold and ruthless undercover agent, maybe your mood will be much easier. But the movie wasn't that good either.

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Extended Reading

Infernal Affairs II quotes

  • SP Wong: Evil prevails. Only the good die young.

  • Chen Wing Yan: I only want to be a good man.