Fear may be the root of adolescence rebellion
[Declaration: I don't know the American education system. The following analysis of behavioral motivations is guesswork. Comments are welcome! ]
If you only focus on the rebellious behavior of young girls, then the movie "Lady Bird" (2017) is really nothing to watch, because there are not many rebellious incidents around us, even more than "Bird". Miss De" is also "wonderful". On the surface, this film is telling a story of rebellion, but it seems that it is its true intention and value to guide the audience to pay attention to the reason behind the "rebellion". This "reason" is the "fear" mentioned at the beginning of the film: "We are afraid of not being able to escape the past, we are afraid of what the future will bring us, we are afraid of not being able to enter the university we want to go to, we are afraid of not being loved and praised , can't succeed." Combined with this film, it is true that all of Miss Bird's rebellious behaviors are related to her fear. Perhaps, fear is the root of all adolescent children's rebellious behavior. Of course, the reason why this film has gained such a high degree of attention is that, in addition to the superb performance of the heroine and the "reasons" recognized above, it also involves many topics worthy of attention in today's world, such as poverty, race, homosexuality, and abortion. , discrimination, unemployment, terrorism, etc. Next, we might as well analyze the specific reasons behind the behavior of "Miss Bird".
Worried about being born in poverty affecting her future. So she worried from the beginning that Sacramento, her birthplace, would give her the imprint of poverty. In fact, it was poverty that kept her mother from going to a university outside of California, and she couldn't convince her mother even if she claimed to apply for scholarships and part-time jobs to achieve her dreams. In her opinion, if you can't go to her ideal university, you can't get rid of poverty and remove the imprint of poverty. Of course she knew why her mother was against it. After all, her parents were old, and she also knew that her mother was sneering and just wanted her to be more considerate and sensible. However, for the sake of her ideals, she publicly declares that she is not "perfect": she needs more; she even fights to the death.
Afraid of the influence of the Catholic school, she fought alone for her ideal. She attended a Catholic-sponsored school, most likely going on to a Catholic university, and she was terrified by the school's current guidance toward that goal. There are roughly the following things, we can see how she resists the influence of religion.
Resist being stereotyped. The nun should be the person in charge of her middle school, and she is relatively friendly to her. She has a good impression of the nun, but when the nun talked to her and thought she was talented in acting and thought she should participate in musicals, she deliberately said What she likes most is to participate in the Math Olympiad. In fact, she is the least good at mathematics. Judging from her subsequent participation in the musical, her previous conversations with the nun were obviously to resist the nun's stereotype of her. She didn't want to leave a very submissive appearance with the nun, which would make her farther away from her ideal. After all, the nun's "assessment" still had a great influence on her application to college.
Although she didn't expect to rely on the school's recommendation to apply for her ideal university, the remarks from her academic advisor still frightened her, and she felt that her fate was in the hands of others. If she doesn't continue to apply to Catholic University according to the school's wishes, then she will not have the opportunity to interview at other universities, and in the academic tutor, this is the "reality" she must recognize. Although she is also making second-hand preparations for her ideals, what if the "reality" cannot be changed? Therefore, emotional investment is a natural choice. It's a pity that she was deceived in her feelings for the boy from the outside school named Danny. It is not easy for us to speculate on her first love with more utilitarian ideas. After all, it is a pure emotional effort, but it is objectively a resistance to the management system of her school, because her school obviously does not allow boys and girls to be too intimate of. If the first time was unconscious, then, the second time, she actively pursued that boy named Kyle was a mockery of her religious school, and the purpose of mocking was obviously a resistance. While this resistance may not necessarily lead her to a better recommendation, she will never surrender to the "reality" that others impose on her. This is due to her personality, and in fact, it is also the embodiment of her free spirit, and it is also the true meaning of her self-proclaimed Ladybird.
In order to fight against the school's unreasonable recommendation system, she must do more outrageous behavior. To this end, she sacrificed her friends, betrayed herself, and even crossed the bottom line of being a human being, just to get to know the girl named Jenna. Jenna was accused by the nun of wearing a miniskirt and threatened to re-evaluate her. Obviously, the evaluation is threatening, and it is nothing more than proving that Jenna is not suitable for further study at Catholic University, however, this is exactly what we Miss Bird's request. So she and Jenna make insulting decorations on the nun's car. With this, she approaches that cool Kyle through Jenna. However, the results backfired. Even if she had drawn Jenna, even if she had done something even more outrageous by publicly laughing at the indoctrination of anti-abortion doctrines and suspended from school, the nun in charge still praised her talent instead of punishing her.
In addition, she rebelled against her mother, apparently because she feared that she would not be the "perfect" girl she wanted. It is true that parents' hopes for their children are sometimes motivating and sometimes stressful. When love is attached with conditions, when the cost of love must be calculated, the love of parents becomes a source of fear, and the resistance of children is inevitable.
It can be seen from the above that "rebellion" may be an unspoken accusation against the rebellious behavior of adolescent children. When we realize that the revolt is caused by fear, no matter whether this revolt has consequences or not, what we need to do is to think Ways to free them from fear, not magnify the "consequences". Because of our youth, when we look back, as Miss Bird did, we feel that the things we fought against were not so nasty. (Text/Slate Planting Flowers Sunday, December 31, 2017)
PS. Thanks to the whale subtitles team for providing Chinese subtitles for this film.
View more about Lady Bird reviews
