Amazon's Australian TV series "Deadloch" was ready to be written after watching it, and it was procrastinating for months. Then post it at the end of the year and recommend it as an alternative year-end summary!
Before recommending, let's summarize my 2023: being scolded for being extreme and going online every once in a while, especially that I am too demanding. "This is already very good compared to traffic dramas. "This is already very good compared to the sweet pet of the ancient puppet. ”
"It's really not interesting, why do you turn a blind eye to the global trend of literary and artistic creation?".
Dai Lodge Town" was launched on Amazon in June, and it has been well received, and the biggest gimmick is:Kill only straight male whites
At the beginning, it was an episode that killed a straight male white man, and then it directly began to die in batches)
That's a good summary, but if I had to say it, the first thing I would have felt would be: I'm comfortable.
When I always feel uncomfortable in a lot of things, when I see "Dai Lodge Town", I know that it is not my problem. Creativity is already moving forward, and you'll find inspiration elsewhere.
The protagonists of "Day Lodge Town" are three women: Dulcie, an emotionally stable sheriff, Eddie, a raunchy police detective, and Abby, an Asian who is serious and overly polite.
The place where the case took place was in a small town called "deadloch" (pronounced deadlock, deadlock), so there are also subtitle groups that translate it as "deadlock town".
The town with the blue sea and blue sky originally belonged to the aborigines, and then white colonists came. In recent years, more and more lesbians have come. After the election of the mayor, there was a more diverse culture here, and a cultural festival was held for the LES community, so that a modest town began to become fashionable.
The rights and interests of indigenous people are a dark line in the plot, and the approximate metaphor is that the issues of vulnerable groups in all dimensions have something in common.
This kind of lineup with "extremely high female content" may give people the feeling of a so-called "daughter country".
Such a town with three female policemen is indeed the establishment of women who have differentiated from a patriarchal society. However, this kind of "establishment" is no longer an illusion at present, and it does have certain conditions. No small town is like this, but there must be some small communities that do.
This is not a fantasy of Journey to the West, nor is it a matriarchal society that has been preserved because of cultural traditions like Lugu Lake. The story belongs to the current urban society. There is a "female perspective";There is also a trend towards social development – women and LGBTI groups are exploring their own lifestyles;In the control group, misogynistic and homophobic people still exist in the town (= straight male whites).
The ecology in the "small town of Dai Lodge" can be said to be the practice of the "women's community", where the lesbians choose a quiet town to live again.
But the reality is clear: when women's ideas rise, opposition will also be stimulated louder and louder.
All of the above seem to be conceptual things in the plot setting. (That is, it will stimulate some male audiences: too extreme, too singular, too idea-first, and childish ......to create for women's rights.)）
However, purely from the perspective of reasoning and suspense and plot organization, the talent and technique of "Delloch Town" are also very good, and all the fine and dense threads seem to be disorganized, but in fact they are woven by the screenwriter very methodically, and the rhythm is wonderful.
Every answer that the audience can think of, the plot will be quickly rejected. In the process of guessing again and again, the ecological and ethnic issues of the town were unfolded. The ending of each episode is beautifully designed, and the emotions and questions are more intriguing like fireworks blowing up again and again.
The details I like are about this. (Spoilers below).
The first is, of course, the heroine group.
Sheriff Dulcie, tall and emotionally stable, every line reveals that she is a well-educated person, and every sentence is accurate, scientific and elegant, which makes me want to pause and learn English. The more I watched it, the more I liked it, and when I saw the end, I simply shouted that she was a high-quality human woman!
Detective Eddie, who appeared on the stage and looked like she was powerful, only to show that she had her own pain after a few episodes. I don't know how to read and write throughout the whole process, and I love to say yellow jokes. At first, I thought she was T, then I thought she was the fourth love, and then suddenly the pure love warrior was afraid that her boyfriend would die, and finally found out that people had tried other sexual orientations!Maybe Eddie is the main woman who can't be defined (except for really not being literate, and talking about it every time. ）
On the other hand, I would also think that Eddie's irritability and rudeness seem like a sexual transformation of some kind of "male cop who doesn't play by the rules". But later it was discovered that the expression of this character is far more than "sexual transformation".
No matter how strong, ferocious, sexually incomprehensible, and shameless ...... a woman looksMen will despise her, laugh at her, try to teach her a lesson with physical or other harm, and insult her sexually whenever they see her as a woman. Men do not worship strength and toughness per se, they only worship men if they have the possibility of violence, and when women have this quality, they only have disgust and ridicule.
Asian police officer Abby, I feel like the easiest role for us to take on!It's not because of the racial color, but the temperament of "I'm trying hard, I'm afraid I'm not going to be polite to me". The tall and indifferent Dulcie and the flamboyant Eddie are all people who can naturally put "me" first. Abby, on the other hand, is more like "us", a girl who grew up under an oriental education. We may have learned from new knowledge and self-education that we should pay attention to ourselves and be brave. However, it is difficult to implement this in life.
The easiest thing for Abby to work on is to study and work, because we are taught that this is the "right thing". But when it comes to emotions, gender relationships, and questioning, Abby hesitates.
But this hesitation is what many people realize. "Be yourself" and "go for it" are natural to say, and to really do it, you have to try again and again. What struck me about Abby was that although she would look forward and say a lot of overly polite things, she could say what was in her heart, and she kept fighting for herself.
Abby and her boyfriend are in a teacher-student relationship and have to quit the major she likes (ah, what a bastard, even if two people can only quit one male teacher for love, why don't they change schools). In love, she behaves according to the model of a so-called boyfriend and girlfriend, but her boyfriend has been beating her up, denying her, shaping and manipulating everything about her, and stealing her labor and intellectual achievements.
The interaction between the protagonists is also very cute, although the slogan is never shouted.
The two protagonists, Dulcie and Eddie, don't have a tacit understanding, so they make up a joke. But until they become good partners and move towards a new life, they have no tacit understanding!
At the beginning of the plot, it was not clear that Dulcie had any recognition of Abby, but when Abby was poisoned and fainted and couldn't come to work in time, Dulcie found that he didn't even have a record of the meeting, so he yelled: "Abby is in **!."People like her, who like neatness, can appreciate the meticulous work of their subordinates.
The female officers all understand that the forensic boyfriend is stealing Abby's intellectual gains.
In the end, when Abby was about to break up with her boyfriend, her female colleagues were her back.
Compared with the slogans one after another in some episodes, this kind of scene that does not shout slogans but is full of detailed understanding may better understand what "empathy" is.
The other female characters are also very memorable, so I won't introduce them one by one.
But I want to give people a sense of what it looks like"Group portrait of women".。For example, the little Aboriginal girl who grew up playing rugby, which is often considered a masculine male sport, and her chubby cousins.
For a long time, I have seen "middle school girls" and "adolescent girls" in film and television dramas, and there seems to be only one template, that is, delicate and beautiful. When you see such an adolescent girl in "Dai Lodge Town", you will think, yes, this is also a middle school girl. They are brave, righteous, and humorous, they are the generation that has grown up with a new education, and the so-called "do not be vassals", "live your own life", "represent my gender and ethnicity", "women's development is not restricted", and these new ideas have now become a bit clichéd.
At first, I thought there were a lot of characters and chaos, but after watching 8 episodes, every woman is alive in my heart, including women with few scenes. Domestic dramas are accustomed to "character building" with excellent details and strange lines, but "Dai Lodge Town" is very fine but very vivid, and these are throughout the suspense plot.
And a brilliant pen.
Dullice finally found a crime profiler, a female doctor, with a beautiful and knowledgeable face, and the audience must have thought that the master had appeared according to the suspenseful routine.
It turns out that no, this criminal profiler said that he didn't work on vacation, that is, he didn't work on vacation. She flashed a glimpse and went offline. But after confirming that she was just playing the role of "we resolutely don't work overtime on vacation", I thought, "It's even better!".
In addition to women, there is also a gay policeman in the camp of the protagonist group, who is also cute. Every day is a look of "I'm so tired at work", "Why did I take the police exam when I fell out of love, this is not suitable for me at all", "I'm going to resign", but he actually only needs to be on the job for one day, and he does his job well.
In the final paragraph, the heroine is excluded from the investigation process by the masculine male policemen, but she knows that the masculine men's thinking must be wrong. So three policewomen and a gay policeman hid in the women's bathroom to analyze the case.
The work process of female police officers and gay police officers is completely a slap in the face of "masculine" men, meticulous, patient, respectful, and equal, these traits are required for any job.
By the way, when Abby was about to break up, her emotional gay colleagues were also her back.
These group portraits of the characters also simulate the social structure.
On the opposite side of the "white straight man" are women, including their wives and daughters, the heterosexual women of the town, and the lesbians of the town;There are also men, including gay men and straight men with feminine temperaments.
And there are also women who stand with the "white straight man", that is, the living "I am a woman" and "I am a good woman". Oh, how sympathetic white straight men are, good women like me can get their love - in the end, the audience found out that this "I am a woman, I am" is a victim and does not know it, she was violated when she was a minor, and thought it was "love from men".
In fact, it should be summed up this way, the whole town was divided into "toxic masculinity groups" and "diversity, equality, inclusion and mutual aid groups" - just like the Internet today.
Of course, "division" and "position" are not absolute.
Elite white women are committed to caring for women, but they are unlikely to give up their own self-interest, thus hindering the rights of indigenous peoples. It's like some "high girls" in society who can't understand the pain of ordinary people. But she is also a victim of marriage, and she is happy when her husband dies. Just like how rich and powerful a woman is in reality, she can be bullied by men of the same class.
People are affected by the environment. A lesbian couple of sons may also have thought about betraying their mother and integrating into the "brotherhood" because of group pressure;After the white man overturned, the good woman of "my daughter and me" also began to learn what a rainbow family is. (It can also be understood that this character is actually a social follower.) ）
As forMale charactersHm.
Since the plot has "killed white straight men", the focus of the plot is more on the misogynistic and homophobic "brotherhood" in the town.
Those basic issues are anti-sexism, anti-gender-based violence, anti-gender stereotypes, support for LGBTI people, support for each ethnic group's own culture, respect ......for the individual, and so onIt's all the default value for this play.
My personal feeling is that if you have a basic understanding of these views and agree with them, if you already feel that the above content has seen too many accusations and discussed too much, you can quickly capture the creator's expression.
When the plot begins with a man's naked corpse, ** and a cigarette butt dropped.
When the deceased's wife screamed and fell.
When the first deceased comes out of the funeral, the camera slowly pans over the men in the town.
The creative subtext I understand: I knew it was the world of your brotherhood.
If "Barbie"'s attitude towards men (with a qualifier: straight men with cancer) is a joke, "Delloch's Town" attitude towards this is "faint boredom" - you know, you are like this, and you have to be saved, really.
A line that makes people laugh out loud).
"Killing white straight men" is the biggest setting in the whole film, and those who are constantly killed episode by episode are damned people, people who violate women and ** women in the town. Not only will they be killed, but their tongues will be cut out, as if the most direct punishment for "preachy men".
This kind of death constitutes "Shuangwen". But to analyze society, cool writing is not enough.
The picture of life in the town slowly unfolds, and the audience sees all kinds of representative bad men: violent, ** fathers, masculine male collectives that bully girls and gentle boys, men who hunt underage girls, men who are full of swear words and insulting women, men who despise homosexuality, and men who talk about narcissism.
The plot is not the kind of presentation of "look, let's criticize this man with mistakes", but "look, that's what they are, all the time, in every pore".
In the last episode, the men of the whole town were scared to death by the serial ** case of "killing white straight men", and they got on the bus and ran away, which was very funny. They finally realized what it was like to be a victim because of their gender and their sexual orientation.
But, is "revenge" the solution of the problem?
In general, this drama is a "sexual turn" of the traditional female hatred serial ** case, but this comparison is used to present very in-depth and delicate observations and thoughts.
And the question always arises in my mind: Is it okay to fight back?Is it that simple?In particular, I know that in structural injustice, it is not easy to fight back, and it is more about the immobility of vulnerable groups. The idea of anti-killing makes the audience more happy, the more because of how unconventional anti-killing is, anti-killing is not life.
Serious spoiler alert].
Serious spoiler alert].
Serious spoiler alert].
So, I really like the mystery at the end of "The Town of Dylodge".
Looks so much like a female revenge. But in the end, the slaughterer is a man after all. A man who used to be committed to "eliminating bad women", but with the change of social ideology, he began to change his goals.
A man who has learned new words and new ideas, but still wants to ** the world and transform the world. It is true that our words, our way of thinking, are rapidly iterating, but toxic masculinity only exists in a different guise. (I even want to say that this is the legendary "feminist man"!)）
If you ask, "What do you really like?" Then my 2023 recommendation is "Barbie", Xie Yingxuan's drama you know and I know, and "Dai Lodge Town".
The common denominator of these works is that after reading them, you will feel that your vision is clearer.
I always feel that you and I are the abby of "Dai Lodge Town".
We are always cramped, we try to understand everyone, we try to be polite and thoughtful. We stumble to study and find a job, and we have a strong intuition inside us to find out the problem, even though the world always says, you think too much, and this is how to go down and be so happy for generations.
But we're really serious about moving forward on our feet. Once you shake off those voices and insist on looking with your own eyes, it turns out that this is really the case - "I know that I am right".