As we all know, Stephen King has a lot of excellent works, whether it is a thriller or other genres. For example, the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" that we all know is based on his original book; and the classic "The Shining", also A big easter egg in the movie "Ready Player One". The Shining directed by Kubrick is the original novel by Stephen King, and this work is very important to him.
"Death Light" (it also has a very simple English name "IT") is also very important in Stephen King's works, and this is a work that we Chinese readers did not pay much attention to, or did not pay much attention to in the past. Last year, the film adaptation of "Dead Light" topped the North American box office with $700 million worldwide. This has made horror movie lovers around the world pay attention to this work again.
"The Clown Returns to the Soul" is a work without stars at all, and all the main actors are children. Strictly speaking, it's a children's movie and a thriller. It is unprecedented for a thriller with a niche theme to achieve such success. At the same time, the film broke box office records for the very classic The Exorcist.
The movie is not quite the same as Stephen King's book. The original novel is very long and is a two-line narrative. One line is the reality line, which tells about several adults; the other line is the childhood line, which is the past memories of several adults. The adaptation of the movie "The Clown Returns to the Soul" extracts the childhood clues, and reflects only half of the story of "Dead Light".
As a big Stephen King fan, I'm ashamed to say that I came across the work "Dead Light" very early, probably in the early 2000s, when I read it for the first time, I couldn't finish it. There are reasons for translation, as well as the American way of thinking, narration, language habits, etc. that Stephen King is an American writer, which is very different from the Chinese.
Last year, after watching the movie "Joker's Soul", I finally read "Dead Light" for the second time. That feeling is different from reading it back then. Maybe after more than ten years, I have grown up, and it is like the experience of an adult watching when I was a child. It seems like I am obsessed. And was deeply moved by the various plots of the book. This is definitely not just a horror story, definitely not just a story of a group of children fighting monsters, but a story about how one person struggles with fate, how to change fate, and how to change the fate of millions of others.
"Dead Light" uses two timelines to narrate, the children in 1958 and the children in 1985 27 years later. 27 years is a period of growth in the story, and it is also a cycle in which the monster "it" reappears. The seven children have gone from being bullied and ridiculed to setting up a "losers club" to defeating monsters for the first time and embarking on their own life directions.
The fourteenth chapter of the book, "Album", writes , "Because no matter how many changes have been experienced in the past 27 years, the love between us has not changed. This is the only hope." Defeating the monster is the only hope, and defeating the monster is the only hope. The hope left in the heart of fear after growing up.
The fear at this time is not just a clown, but the evil that has infected the entire Derry town. The clown "it" in the story is just a symbolic representation. What really hurts others is the closed, backwardness and human indifference and discrimination in the small town of Derry. In the small town of Derry, most people turn a blind eye to the killings that take place, and the police are simply curfews for the missing. In fact, it can be said that the whole town is the accomplice of the clown.
We can feel in Stephen King's pen that Delhi is like a reflection of the whole society, the gap between rich and poor, racial differences and discrimination against homosexuality and so on. The appearance of the monster "it" is just a product derived from this dark life; and the children's fear itself is the overall "corruption" of the Derry town. Stephen King's mapping of American social problems is all in it.
Here I say a digression, very interesting. Everyone knows that Trump may not be very friendly to China now, and he wants to engage in a trade war again, so what will he do? Trump, who was elected US president in 2016, was preceded by more than 400 American writers who signed an online petition against Trump.
They wrote that "this rising candidate host, the most vile and violent element in society, encouraged the aggressive behavior of his followers, drove off opponents with noise, terrorized dissenters, and denigrated women and minorities. His Rising, everyone is urgently needed, and a powerful counterattack can be made."
Among the signature writers, Stephen King is the lead "Big Brother". His condemnation of Trump shows a writer's anxiety about populism and a writer's condemnation of racism. We use a very bad saying, maybe Stephen King is a white left. But here, "white left" has no derogatory meaning.
After Stephen King was elected president, Trump often scolded Trump on Twitter, and Trump blocked Stephen King. Stephen King mentioned his work "Dead Light", as well as his other work "Mr. Mercedes". There is an American netizen who is very talented. He PS Trump's face into the stills of "The Clown's Soul". There is a very, very classic scene in this work: a child is chasing a paper boat, which is made of folded paper. The boat went down the drain on a rainy day. When the child was about to find the little paper boat, suddenly a clown's face appeared in the sewer.
This shot appeared in the 1990 version of the TV movie, and last year's 2017 version of the theatrical film, very classic. Netizens turned the face of the clown in the sewer into Trump's face, which is very interesting.
Because in the eyes of netizens, or in the eyes of Stephen King, Trump is a clown, but that clown is not that kind of cute clown, but a perverted murderer monster. He lurks in this small town in Maine, killing children year after year and making deaths, and in Stephen King's book he likens Trump to such an evil object. Even the few hooligans who appeared in the work "Dead Light" can also see the shadow of Trump created by Stephen King.
So, Stephen King's novel is actually very realistic. He writes about ghosts and monsters. In fact, he just expresses his many views on the real world in some magical way. Therefore, I think that excellent thriller and suspense novels and pure literature have the same goal.
Stephen King is indeed a writer we need to savor slowly, and many of his works can reflect the values of hope, courage and reality. They are all fighting against fate, trying to change the fate of themselves and others, over and over again, just as "Death Light" said, "Life is a spinning wheel that keeps repeating the story of the past. Only in this way can life become eternal. "
When you conquer your inner fears, you will get a lot of things you didn't dare to hope for before.
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