1] [Clear obstacles to understanding] The work "Cloud Atlas" contains concepts from Western culture, not concepts from Eastern culture, nor superstitious concepts. Popular and false interpretations see Cloud Atlas as implying the idea of reincarnation. However, this view not only misunderstands the work, but also misunderstands the concept of "reincarnation", and these misunderstandings do not brighten them, but tarnish them. The reason for this false perception may lie mainly in the interest of directors, who add elements of their own liking into the film, regardless of whether they destroy the original meaning of the story. As a result, they created only specious oriental ideas. This approach may also be related to commercial factors. On the one hand, it exploits the Western audience's curiosity about Eastern concepts; on the other hand, it exploits the Eastern audience's self-esteem for their own concepts. This approach of the director does not pay tribute to the oriental concept, but only pays homage to money.
2] [Explanation of subject headings] The basic meaning of the word "cloud map". Cloud map, the meteorological term, means predictive rather than decisive, and also means a hierarchical picture of change. Cloud Atlas, the story has a historical perspective, spanning from the past to the future. This historical development is only influenced by the past, not determined by the past. [An understanding or perception of history is based on an understanding of human nature, which writes history in interaction with the environment. ] The six stories in the cloud map present the partial scenes of human beings in different eras. The previous stories affect the later stories, forming a layered human picture. These epochal images are themselves connected through human nature, but fiction is a fictional text in which a mysterious and visible connection is made up: comet birthmarks. Treating these fictions as mystical phenomena does little good for understanding. What helps to understand is the words or plot in the story. In the words of Yoon in the first movie story: If God created the world, how do we know which things can be changed and which things we can't change and have to fear (07:10). This can be seen as a disapproval of mechanistic determinism. It is stated in the fourth story of the novel that the "cloud map" is a map depicting an indescribable, eternal and unchanging map (novel P352) (the film's expression of "cloud map" is different from the novel, but vulgarized. processing to accommodate the pseudo-Eastern concept of "reincarnation"). This can be seen as the basic thrust of the "Cloud Atlas" story.
3] [Correspondence Theory of Subject Matter] The basic subject expressed by the term "cloud map" is still relatively empty, and the substantial content corresponds to the theoretical picture, that is, "Darwinism". The use of "Darwinism" here does not only refer to Darwin's theory of biological evolution, but to evolutionism represented by Darwin's theory of biological evolution, including the philosophy of life and philosophy of history after the influence of Darwinism, a series of ideological theories. Darwinism is less pronounced in the film than in the novel, and the film also destroys or does not have the same thematic coherence that the novel has. Watching the movies aside from the novels is likely to result in a clutter of rhetoric, a jumble of story scenes, and a veiled rationale. In order to explain the consistent theme of the cloud map, the basic principle is to use the original novel as the basis, the film as the material, and to jump out of the limitations of the director's private inclination.
4] [The way to explain the main idea] The main manifestation of Darwinism in the Yuntu movie is in Story 1 and Story 6. Story 1 talks about the "Ladder of Civilization" (06:30) and the law of the weak; Story 6 also touches on the idea of "the law of the weak", and it is said that Xingmei is the child of the God of Wisdom named Darwin (1:49: 00). These are also found in the novel, and the content is more detailed than the film. The film story one does not show the inconsistency between "ladder of civilization" and "the strong eat the weak", but in the second half of the novel story one, the two have differences. The former is the world order envisioned by Christianity, while the latter has a background in scientific materialism. The other four stories in the film do not show the main theme of the cloud map significantly. At this time, it must be based on the understanding of the novel, because the main theme of the novel is not only reflected in the sentences, but also in the plot. In order to expound the consistent theme of the cloud map, the method adopted is to expound in two levels: the first level lists the representational forms, and the representational forms of the six stories constitute a sequence; the second level explains the specific content and ideas, and the six stories The content of the ideas is linked into a whole by the applicability of the ideas.
5] [Formal sequence of evolutionary outline and gist] Darwin's theory of biological evolution is an evolutionary theory with natural selection as the core. Natural selection is generally interpreted as a struggle for survival (the law of the jungle), the result of which is the formation of macroscopic species and the survival of microscopic individuals. In other words, the result of natural selection is the reality formed by history. This is the "fight" side of Darwinism, and it is often preached. The other side of Darwinism is "symbiosis" (mutual aid), which should also be the content of natural selection, and is the same or more permanent side of "struggle", but this side is generally ignored in the nineteenth century . In Darwinism, struggle and symbiosis are in tension and balance. The premise of struggle and symbiosis is differentiation. In the theory of biological evolution, differentiation is often narrowly described as "genetic variation". It is necessary to jump out of this description and understand differentiation in general.
Differentiation, which takes place at different times or at different levels, constitutes the formal sequence of Yuntu's story. The two aspects of struggle and symbiosis in Darwinism exist in the six stories of Yuntu, and their tension drives the progress of the story, making the story change from the struggle side to the symbiosis side, which constitutes the whole of Yuntu's storyline. .
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