Author | Yongzhou
Edit | Wu Qing
If "Catching the Doll" is not a comedy, it must be a thriller.
It makes people laugh from beginning to end, but in the last ten minutes, the hairs stand on end. The laughter that left almost no gaps before is more like a massage technique to make you feel the pain later.
"The core of comedy is tragedy", which refers to the sharp contrast between the recliner of comedy and the sharp and vulgar things in human nature. The greater the contrast, the greater the impact on the audience.
In this sense, "Catching the Doll" cannot be said to be a comedy with tragedy as the core, it is more appropriate to say that it is a comedy that ultimately leads to tragedy. The people in the play and what they do can be crowned with a simple purpose of great warmth and positivity.
It's just that good intentions lead to bad ends, like the rhetoric of "I'm here for your good", which is also a metaphor and satire of reality in terms of education discussed in this film.
Ma Chenggang, a wealthy man played by Shen Teng, decided to train his youngest son Ma Jiye, who was born to his second wife, because of his eldest son's "practice waste". When Jiye was still a baby, the couple found that the effect of rich support was not good, and they immediately decided to "raise poor". In the courtyard in the eighties and nineties, a "besieged city" was created to return to poverty, and a whole team was invited to play the poor NPC in the son's life and secretly serve the child's growth.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
The family pretended to be poor and moved into the besieged city, hoping to temper the child by "remembering the bittersweet memories". This tempering is more than ten years.
The movie constructs a "Truman's world" in a sitcom-like structure. From childhood to adulthood, the young Ma Jiye is like a digital product, which is closely monitored and analyzed, and the environment and people around him are adjusted at any time to adapt to his own growth and changes and guide him.
Truman finally found out that he was being manipulated and watched, and while he felt disbelief, he also felt fear and anger that his life had never seen before.
The same is true for Ma Jiye. At the end of the film, when he finally broke into the "secret room" of his home and discovered that his parents had been manipulating, monitoring and deceiving him for more than ten years, this educational experiment ended in tragedy.
We can say that this is an educational film that is "entertaining and educational", and the protagonists, who seem to be nurtured children, are in fact parents who are educators outside the "fourth wall".
In fact, the real protagonists of most educational films are parents, and only adults can be educated in the end.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
The rarity of "Catching the Doll" lies in the fact that it reflects on the commonplace self-moving educational themes in domestic narratives, and at the same time gives all educators a warning: whether it is a greenhouse or a jungle, different environments may indeed cultivate different children. But it's easy to overlook that there are two basic elements of a person's growth, as indispensable as sunlight and water: authenticity and trust.
Siege education has been built on fiction and lies from the very beginning, whether it is a real siege as in the film, or a siege of ideas imposed by various adults, it will eventually break at the smallest point of the chain of trust.
Experimental specimens
Children are the experimental objects of parental education.
In fact, there are many parents in the world who think so, but most people will not admit it. And Ma Chenggang in the movie is more straightforward and exaggerated to treat children as experiments of some kind of concept.
Experiments require control variables, as well as observation of dependent variables. As a well-designed product, the "top configuration" that Ma Jiye had since he was born has been tampered with, and the big villa has become a dilapidated old house, without a cook and nanny, and he needs to buy groceries to help the family by himself. The young master, who was supposed to be pampered, was artificially placed in a petri dish of suffering education.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
The person who monitored and analyzed this "experimental object" was specially hired by Ma Chenggang. They appear in Ma Jiye's life in the form of role-playing, but in fact, among these people, there are educators, teachers who are proficient in physics and mathematics, and bodyguards who do daily chores and follow.
As a result, every element that "naturally" appears in the life of the young horse Jiye may be carefully designed, and everyone who exists in life may be an NPC in this experiment.
The foreigner he met on the way to school was specially arranged by Mr. Li (Sarina), who was actually an English teacher named "Grandma", and even the dialogue of asking for directions was carried out strictly according to the text. The "good book" he "happened to hear" about in the bookstore, called "How Steel is Made", was also deliberately implanted to hone his will.
Between the world that Ma Jiye sees and the real world, there is a huge one-way glass.
The home he saw since he was a child was poor, thrifty, and poor. Dad was reluctant to change a pair of shoes after putting them on and taking off the soles, and all his savings were handed over to himself, and there were only more than 1,000 yuan.
And his real home is 24-hour security monitoring outside the house, and there is a professional operation and maintenance team that occupies a whole floor under the house. The home-cooked food eaten at home is actually disguised by the chef with precious ingredients, and Ma Jiye runs to school every day, followed by security guards in disguise.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
Just listening to the description, such a childhood is suffocating, but the movie is shot with a comedic narrative grammar, allowing the audience to laugh passively while briefly ignoring the essence of manipulation and surveillance, just like the control packaged by many parents in the name of protection and love.
This is also the difference between Ma Jiye and Truman. The siege of the former is made up of the starting point of love and education. The ultimate goal of all monitors and controllers is for him to "grow up".
The problem lies in the definition and cognition of "success" by adults.
When Ma Jiye was a child, his parents and "grandmother" would also pay attention to some character and moral education. For example, when facing the temptation of cash at the cash counter at the convenience store, when everyone was worried about whether he would go astray, Ma Jiye withdrew his hand; For another example, in order to save money for the family, Ma Jiye took his mother and grandmother to rub Haidilao's free waiting snacks. After returning home, I received my grandmother's bitter teachings about "people can't make friends without faith".
Ironically, adults who care about children's moral development at every turn complete their educational plans precisely by constructing a long scam that has lasted for more than a decade.
As Ma Jiye grew up, the common problem of traditional Chinese parents gradually emerged: the only expectation and requirement for Ma Jiye to become a talent was that he was admitted to a prestigious school. "Qingbei University" has become the only task for the growth of adolescent teenagers, and all the details that Ma Jiye experiences every day, and all the people he meets, are as ubiquitous and moisturizing as a repeater to remind him: You want to go to "Qingbei".
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
This spell-like symbol was artificially implanted in his mind, and this became the only life task of the adolescent Ma Jiye. Even if the grandmother who has a deep relationship dies, she will be taken the opportunity to be beaten and educated.
The obsession of wealthy parents with their children going to prestigious schools is similar to that of ordinary families: their unfulfilled wishes when they were young are imposed on the next generation and transformed into sustenance in the name of love. Ma Chenggang's son Jackie Chan, on the surface, hopes that Ma Jiye can get ahead, but the essential purpose is to revolve around his own selfishness as a parent. For example, because the eldest is not angry, he needs the second child to inherit the family business, but he does not care about the child's own hobbies, and even stifles the pony Jiye's love for track and field.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
They firmly believe that prestigious schools change their fate, just as they firmly believe that hardships temper their will. Asking his son to be admitted to Qingbei instead of a sports school is also due to the pride and prejudice in his brain, subconsciously believing that an excellent child should study business administration in a top school, and the child becomes a sports athlete, which seems to be a shame for his family business and status.
Wealthy people like Ma Chenggang and his wife who don't have to worry about food and clothing also have many of the most common misunderstandings and drawbacks of Chinese parents. Even if they don't mean to, they take themselves as the center and starting point, and control the child's life like cooking, almost completely ignoring the child's personal will and hobbies.
Can experiments incubated in such a closed experimental base really get the fruits of education as desired?
As it turned out, the experiment failed, a complete fiasco.
"Who are you?"
When a child grows up in "falsehood", how will he feel "real"?
When Ma Jiye was in high school, he began to doubt the reality of this world. In his youth, he was trying to establish and feel the "self" while trying to establish the relationship between himself and the world in which he lived, but he found that everything in his life was full of a violent sense of unreality.
Shi Pengyuan plays Ma Jiye
Ma Jiye began to think about philosophy, questioning his teacher's theory that "matter determines consciousness", and he even imagined that there was an invisible force or higher-order beings controlling his life. His reverie was dismissed as insane, and everyone around him, including his closest parents, categorically denied his suspicions.
They continue to perfunctory Ma Jiye: You just have too much pressure to study.
At this time, what Ma Jiye felt from his parents was no longer love. At that stage, the need for respect and equal dialogue may be greater than the need to be loved and cared for. But Ma Jiye's confusion and confusion have not been taken seriously and responded, and adults are still treating him with an attitude towards children.
After the suspicion of the world around him accumulated to a certain extent, Ma Jiye finally couldn't tolerate himself at a loss anymore. Relying on clues and reasoning, as well as the rules of life taught and instilled by his father since he was a child, he finally broke into the "dark room" of his family and found the truth.
From his birth to his childhood, every step he has taken, every big and small thing he has experienced, and even every homework and diary from childhood to adulthood has been analyzed word by word. In this secret room, I am like a sophisticated product, and the demand design, risk prevention and control, and special strengths and weaknesses are all digitized in this terrible place.
At this moment, the barrier between the constructed truth and the reality of reality has been broken, and the various comedic effects that have been foreshadowed before also make the audience sweat at the moment when Ma Jiye stares at the truth.
Shi Pengyuan plays Ma Jiye
This scene is probably the most thrilling scene in the whole film, a child who thinks he has lived in love since he was a child, finds that every step he takes along the way is carefully manipulated, of course, there is natural love in it, and the proportion and priority of cuteness have been questioned.
Once the doubts begin, the chain of trust collapses, which is almost devastating for a teenager who has not really stepped out of the world.
When Ma Jiye suppressed his anger, looked at his parents, and asked them, "Which two teachers are you?" At that time, the young man's inner collapse of faith was presented lightly, and he couldn't believe that the people he loved and loved him were all designed. At this time, it doesn't matter whether love is real or not, because the premise of love is trust.
If it is placed in a realistic situation, the child does not have a mental breakdown, which can be regarded as a blessing for the parents.
There is nothing more than emotional deception. In addition to the parents themselves, the most dramatic part of the movie is the relationship between Ma Jiye and "grandma".
Sarina, an education expert who pretends to be Ma Jiye's grandmother, has been pretending to be in his house for more than ten years. has been acting in a play for more than ten years, and the people in the play must be not shallow, and in this play, it is Sun Zi Ma Jiye who passively enters the play, and it is Teacher Li who plays the grandmother who takes the initiative to enter the play.
Sarina plays the role of an education specialist
When she was asked to "die", when she was lying in the mourning hall and was about to be sent for cremation, the "grandmother" was suddenly touched by her grandson's grief, and thought of the real grandlife between herself and Ma Jiye for more than ten years.
People's relationships, wealth, and circumstances can all be faked, but only feelings cannot be faked. Ma Chenggang and his wife did not feel this kind of damage. Because in the past ten years, they can treat their sons as sons as usual, release their father's love and mother's love, and they don't need to pretend their feelings, nor can they feel the tearing and pain caused by this kind of emotional deception with fake and real feelings.
The scene of parting with grandma is not grief, not only funny, but also more angry. A good child, a child who values love and righteousness, why should he experience this kind of artificial sorrow? How deep the mourning for his grandmother he felt at the moment, and how intense the anger and devastation he felt when he found out the truth in the future.
What is fake is fake, and it becomes unreal. The emotional damage has opened a big hole in the child's heart, which cannot be made up for by academic achievements and wealth.
Seeing the consequences of this tragedy, let's dissect the "cause" of this tragedy at the beginning.
Affliction this besieged city
After the movie was released, I saw a review in which the audience shared their own experiences. The viewer claimed that when he was a child, like Ma Jiye, he thought that his family was very poor, and he was used to frugality, hardship and low self-esteem since he was a child. It wasn't until after graduating from college that I was finally told by my parents that my family was actually quite wealthy. While the audience felt the thunder, they also felt powerless resentment and grievances in their hearts: "I didn't have to suffer a lot of suffering."
Even today, "hardship education" still has room for survival. One of the most common psychology that appears to parents is that they are afraid that their children will be too comfortable when they are young, and they will not be able to bear it in case they encounter hardships when they grow up.
Ma Chenggang in "Catching the Doll" also has such thoughts. As a self-made "local tyrant", Ma Chenggang was a child who was poor and bitter when he was a child, and he naturally attributed his achievements today to the hard-working and unyielding perseverance of his childhood. And if his son does not grow up in the same environment as himself, will he be pampered and lose his fighting spirit?
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
His own experience not only constitutes Ma Chenggang's proud outlook on life, but also directly causes his outlook on education and the source of his worries about his son.
At the end of the film, after Ma Jiye discovered the truth, Ma Chenggang cried and tried to redeem his son's trust, but he still shouted at his son in an indignant and strong tone: "You have to go through hardships to become a real man!" ”
In the cultivation of his son, Ma Chenggang has always instilled in himself the "steelmaking" thinking that he believes in. He hung Ma Jiye's practice of calligraphy and wrote "If the young man does not work hard, the boss is sad" on the wall of his home, but his son could not enjoy the mansion where this character was hung.
The question is never whether or not to endure hardship, but whether it is necessary to endure hardship.
Ma Jiye's hardships are completely artificial, and it is the natural nature of a child to choose between buying shoes for his father and buying a tablet for his beloved. Parents have to kidnap him with emotion on the side, so that the child falls into self-blame and depression. Later, Ma Jiye was ridiculed, humiliated, and even beaten by his classmates because he was ashamed to pick up bottles to subsidize his family.
Is it really necessary to experience such inferiority and helplessness in childhood?
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
Zhang Ailing said through the mouth of the characters in "Little Reunion": "I don't think it's normal to be poor. The family is poor, and even eating a fruit has become a moral problem. This sentence just shows the impact of poverty on a child's development. It is often said that "the children of the poor are in charge early", which at first glance sounds like praise, but the so-called "master" is only forced to mature at the labor level. The age of mental development, the education of self-esteem and freedom, the education of love and beauty, all give way to material sensitivity and tension, and such an education cannot make a complete person.
For parents like Ma Chenggang, the necessity of enduring hardship lies in tempering one's mind and being ready to deal with crises that may befall one's life.
But what danger can there be?
A generation's belief in "remembering bittersweet memories" and "being prepared for danger in times of peace" may have specific factors of the times. Our parents and grandparents grew up in a period of social upheaval or change, and their lives were full of hardships and the possibility of falling, but at the same time, they were also full of countless opportunities to change their destiny through hard work.
The products of a special era, which are reproduced to the next generation of children one by one, will inevitably produce rejection.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
Today's young people may encounter a crisis of a deeper level, including a spiritual crisis and, of course, a crisis of trust that is unique to modern society. and then through the way of fox and fake tiger, half-coaxing and half-deceiving children into a thorny road that is not necessary to take, which will only lead to this crisis of trust appearing in advance in the road of growth.
Whether it is the competition for academic examinations, the underlying solidification of classes, or the objective employment pressure at the individual level, in order to deal with these more modern crises, those qualities that can nourish the human heart and spiritual strength should be emphasized in education. For example, the basic ability to love and be loved, the courage to be honest with oneself and dare to face the truth.
In the education of hardship, all these things are erased. The laws of education based on material things will only collapse even more when they leave the measuring stick of matter one day in the future.
Even if the parents who actually went through material difficulties changed their fate through their own efforts, that generation may still go back to the past in the comfort of today, and feel that everything they have now is not real enough.
The shadow left on the child is also part of the tragedy.
The experience of picking up bottles when he was a child left Ma Jiye with a strange inertia, as long as he saw waste bottles, he couldn't help but want to collect them. At the end of the film, Ma Jiye, who finally left the control of his parents, suddenly deviated and turned to the waste bottle on the side of the road when he was participating in a long-distance running race.
Stills from "Catching Dolls".
Although this scene is treated with a slightly dramatic comedy, it still expresses a terrifying metaphor: the long childhood has left eternal traces on Ma Jiye, and even if he tries to escape his parents' arrangement and "go his own way", the past that has been imposed on him can never be denied and erased.
At the end of the film, the parents at home watched the live broadcast of the long-distance run on the TV with a frown, and discussed "having another trumpet" in a shy. If it weren't for Shen Teng and Ma Li's skillful skills, this would really be the end of a thriller comedy for this film.