At the beginning of the film, the social animals crowded in the subway car like canned sardines, the pregnant woman who was raped by her husband, the driver stuck on the viaduct, and many other people with anger in their hearts, suddenly burst into flames unbearably. According to the explanation later in the film, these people began to resonate with Promea through the cracks in time and space, so that they could use the power of Promea to burn. Freud's instinct theory holds that people have two instincts, the life instinct and the death instinct, which constitute the fundamental driving force of all human behavior. The death instinct, also known by Freud as Thanatos, is an instinctive desire to attack and destroy, buried deep in our unconscious and used by the ego using various defense mechanisms. control. Promea in the film seems to be a deformation and figuration of the instinct for death. These Burning people who can resonate with Promea are the people whose self-defense mechanism fails and the desire to attack breaks through the defense.
The death instinct manifests itself as a desire for self-destruction when directed inward, and a desire to attack others when directed outward, just as the power of Promea in the film allows the Burners to freely use fire while also burning their own flesh. But for a person with a healthy personality, the id, ego, and superego can check and balance each other to form a dynamic balance. The ego and the superego will protect people from being hurt by the desire to attack in the id, just as the body of the Burning tribe can continuously Rebirth and rebuild until the moment of death. At this point, the ego and superego can no longer contend with the power of Thanatos, and the flesh is burned to ashes by Thanatos/Promea.
The ego takes many defensive measures to prevent the id's desires from causing harm to people. One of the most important and common is repression, that is, suppressing desires in the unconscious so that they cannot enter people's consciousness. However, long-term repression will consume a lot of psychological energy, making people have no energy to live a normal life. Therefore, the ego will use some relatively safe and non-threatening methods to vent and satisfy the id desires to a certain extent. One of the methods is called substitution, which is to vent the desire to some alternative, non-threatening objects. For example, when you are angry, slapping the table and throwing things are all alternative vents to the desire to attack.
The administrator Gu Lei used this defense mechanism instead. He suppressed a strong desire to attack in his heart, and he transformed this desire to attack into an ambition to conquer, wanting to gain supreme power. Gu Lei is a very interesting character in this film. It can be said that the ideological core that the film wants to express is reflected in him. He is a person with a strong desire to control and cannot accept that he is controlled by Promea's desire, so he has been trying his best to suppress his desire to burn, as if to interpret that self-discipline is true freedom. However, Gu Lei, who tried his best to control his desires, was actually controlled by his own ambitions for a long time. His desires just broke out in another place. This is exactly the tragic meaning of Gu Lei's character. He thinks that he is beyond desire and absolutely rational, but in fact, he has been wrapped in desire from beginning to end and has long lost his reason.
Another defense mechanism similar to substitution is called sublimation. Sublimation is also an alternative way of venting desires, but unlike substitution, sublimation behavior is beneficial to society and can be recognized by others. Sublimation is also considered by psychologists as the only truly successful defense mechanism. . For example, athletes often sublimate their desire to attack into the driving force for defeating their opponents on the sports field. Through sublimation, they can not only vent their aggressive desire, but at the same time, this venting behavior can be recognized by the society. Galo adopts the method of sublimation. He sublimates his desire to attack into the soul of fire extinguishing. Through the act of extinguishing fire, he vents his desire to attack, and at the same time, he can save the lives of others. Therefore, Galo can be said to be the person with the healthiest personality among the main characters. He has a very strong id power, but also a strong ego and superego who can check and balance with the id, and use the power of the id as a he used. Galo truly controls his desires and achieves self-realization through the act of sublimation, rather than being controlled by desires like Gure.
Another main character, Lio, has a very strong id drive, so he is also the most resonant with Promea among all Burning people, but he does not completely indulge the id because he also has a strong superego. In Freud's theory, the superego is the moral part of the personality, which can also be called a person's conscience. Lio's superego contains a moral concept that must never kill others casually. This moral force is balanced with the id's attacking instinct that wants to explode and destroy, so that even when Lio obeys his instinct to burn, he has always been Make sure you don't hurt other humans. But Lio finally realized that he was only being controlled by Promea's will, and he had always obeyed Promea's will to burn, but what was the meaning of such burning? He rescued the Burning people from Gulei, allowing them to live and burn freely, but are they really free when they are controlled by Promea's desire?
At the end of the film, Lio's flame combines with Galo to become a harmless cyan flame, and this may be Galo's powerful self to make up for the missing part of Lio. Under the control of the powerful ego, the instinctive power of the id becomes available to people, and the flames they burn are no longer blindly attacking and destroying, but gently protecting people.
Probably one of the most interesting characters in the film is the villain, Guray, a controlling narcissist with a near-crazy ambition, desperate to fulfill his immigration plan and cast himself as the The savior and creator of the world in the eyes of the people. It is precisely because of his strong desire to control that he cannot bear to be controlled by Promea's will, and he has been trying his best to suppress Promea's desire, or it can be said that he has been suppressing the instinctive desire of the id. Maybe that's why he hates Galo so much, seeing Galo reminds him of a time when he's run out of control, being dominated by burning desires, making him aware of burning desires he's been repressing. His paranoid desire to emigrate, to leave Earth, may not just be for ambition, but also to get rid of Promea. Ironically, however, he thought that he was free when he suppressed the instinctive desire to burn, unlike other Burning people who just burned blindly under the control of Promea, but in fact he was already controlled by his own ambition, he suppressed His desires are just expressed in another place, so how could he ever be truly free?
From the perspective of Freudian psychology, the film discusses topics about desire, reason, and freedom. Human beings make all kinds of actions under the control of instinctive desires, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, studying, working, falling in love, mating, and multiplying. All these behaviors are driven by instinctive desires. Such human beings are really Is it free? People who pursue "self-discipline is freedom" strictly suppress their desires, thinking that they can get freedom by getting rid of their desires. However, desires cannot be completely suppressed, and suppressed desires are often manifested in a more subtle way. The fire burning in my heart, even if I try to hide it, will still smoke from the cracks. If you want to gain real reason and freedom, you must learn to sublimate your instinctive desires, express your desires in a sublimated way, express your desires, and use them for my own use, just like Galo did. However, is this easier said than done?
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