"Love, Death & Robots" second series "The Drowned Giant": Who is stranded on the beach?

On May 14th, the second series of (Love, Death & Robots) produced by Netflix was launched. The series caused a sensation when the first series came out in the past. The short length and distinctive visual style are about technological utopia, sex and variety. A short story with a heterogeneous temperament. Looking at the two series released so far, I actually don’t think it deals with too much about technological governance, dystopian thinking, and philosophical themes that have always existed in (good) sci-fi works (maybe the only close one is the first series ( Zima Blue), mostly just some kind of thriller stories set in the future technology. However, in the second series, (The Drowned Giant) stands out, with a narrative approach that is almost like essay film, plus just right The fantasy setting of the novel reveals the problems of a special dialogue between postmodernism and existentialism.

Deformed

"The Drowned Giant" is adapted from novelist J.G. Ballard's "The Terminal Beach" (1965). One of the short stories of the same name. In short, the story describes a drowned giant being washed ashore and villagers interact with it. The animated version also takes a scientist as the point of view, expressing the whole event and its profound meaning in his monologue. After reading the entire story, it is not difficult to have a dialogue with someone who suddenly found himself turned into a beetle upon awakening. The relationship between the people, existence and the world sought by the two is similar. However, in (Die Verwandlung, 1915) Franz Kafka chose (most of the time) a first-person perspective, and profiled the views of people around the protagonist, leading to the dialectic of the existence of person switching. This arrangement based on viewpoints seems to meet unexpectedly with the three dimensions body ontology proposed by Jean-Paul Sartre in (L’etre et le neant, 1934). Interestingly, "Die Verwandlung" uses a large number of first-dimensional bodies: the body as being-for-itseif, on the one hand, brings out the meaning of metamophors, and on the other, it reflects When the viewpoint becomes a two-dimensional body, that is, as the body as being-for-the-Other (the body as being-for-the-Other), the tragedy that is intended to be hidden bursts out. Even, the most beautiful convenience is that when the tragedy of the two-dimensional body transitions to the three-dimensional body—my body as body-known-by-the-Other (my body as body-known-by-the-Other), the reader finally knows that it is actually deformed The tragedy of "L'enfer c'est les autres" does not exist in the protagonist itself, but the self-repression caused by the reverse of others, and the helplessness that he has been forced to alienate himself: a subjective tragedy in which the other is hell (L'enfer c'est les autres).

And "The Drowned Giant" is changed to a third-person perspective in another sense (corresponding to Saudi Arabia's third-dimensional body). When the mysterious giant as the subject of the narrative has died (physiological level), how can we use it as a metaphor to perceive the tragedy of "existing" in the world? The story does not deal with the life experience and origin of the giant at all, and directly starts from the established fact that the giant is stranded. From the perspective of the three-dimensional body (from the perspective of the protagonist Stephen in the film), the first thing that can be noticed is the interpretation of the giant's ontology in the external world. The author spends a lot of time describing the process of human beings from fear to dancing together, and finally dismembered. We can further disassemble the above process into three interpretations of discovery-fear, dancing together-boring, dismemberment-flowing into ordinary people. In the discovery-fear stage, giants are like inhabitants of the mythical world. Their huge bodies make the humans on the side look like many crude replicas, and people are afraid of the "real" myths in front of them. When the existence of a giant (being-as-object) has been confirmed in full view, he already possesses a kind of transcendence as transcended (my transcendence as transcended). What's interesting is that in the Saudi discussion, no matter which dimension of the body is unfolded by itself, in the giant's story, the "self" has died and turned into a projection cast by Stephen. In other words, in the discussion of this story, although our subject is a giant, the narrator is Stephen. Therefore, this work is different from "Die Verwandlung", which is based on me (the protagonist himself), but has joined others. His gaze becomes a more vague double-pendulum narrative.

Dance together

Therefore, in the first stage, the author (director) first deals with the relationship between the narrative subject and the object of discussion, and enters into the construction theory of the three-dimensional body. Through Stephen's narration of the facial features and figure of the giant, from the classical nose and lips to the homeric figure and the heroic imagination of argonauts; and finally he said:

"Of course, one of the reasons I was deeply attracted must be his huge figure. But what fascinates me even more is the "fact" that he absolutely exists in the world."

This whole paragraph of very beautiful description reveals the nature of the myth mentioned above. When facing mysterious and huge creatures, general epistemology makes us use a set of adjectives about epics and ancient stories, and even reveals the past at the end. The myth is confirmed to be moved and true. And when Stephen watched everyone stepping on the giant's body on the verge of triggering, the loss of himself in the crowd and the subsequent posture of turning away from the crowd determined that it would become a narration in the story: a kind of detachment from the story itself. Story role. Immediately came to the second stage, from dancing together to being boring, it happened very quickly, and the mentality of mankind to see the joy of hunting is no longer news. What we should pay attention to in this passage is Stephen himself. The sentence "for me the giant is still alive" once again proves his existential thinking. The demise of the soul does not represent a person's true death, but how the "existence" itself continues and constantly has a relationship with the world.

At the same time, with the passage of time, the giant began to swell due to the water, and the body began to rot. Corresponding to the aforementioned giant who is still "alive", this description once again emphasizes the opposition between existence and the physical body, and subsequently reduces the homogeneity of time and the meatmorphosis caused by decay, and even from this qualitative change leads to fleeting changes. Modernity aesthetics. As Bauerelle described in (Une charogne) in "Les Fleurs du mal":

Les formes s’effaçaient et n’étaient plus qu’un rêve,

Une ébauche lente à venir

Sur la toile oubliée, et que l’artiste achève

Seulement par le souvenir.

Whether it is the carrion on the streets of Paris or the giants on the beach, they all embody metaphysical abstract meanings, which are transformed into fuzzy paintings under the gaze of poets and scientists. Then came the last paragraph of the work, and it was also the most profound dismemberment-flowing into ordinary people. The giant was dismembered from the original spectacle into another proof, and the bones that flowed into the ordinary people reversed the existence of the giant. A shot of a stove that draws numerous cooking corpses from the cracks in the giant's bones will undoubtedly indicate to everyone that while the body is dying, the existence of the giant will also come to an end. One sentence

"The few remaining human features gently cling to his corpse. As the features die out, the interest of the visitors also dissipates."

In addition to re-showing ordinary people's outdated definition of existence, it also lays a more subtle introduction to the subsequent irony and dialectic of existence. When these bones flowed to the folk, its meaning was replaced with a commercial spectacle-like vulgar decoration. However, it is not mentioned in the film but it is conceivable that when ordinary people see the remains of these butcher shops, shops, and circuses, they still seem to be able to connect them to the giant's presence on the surface. It’s just that for Saudi Arabia or Stephen, the existence of giants is undoubtedly absorbed by society. From the original worship and fear to the return of highly spectacle logic, the giants did not experience the once blank break in the axis of public cognition, but continued from the beginning (unable to Marked the time) has been interacting with the world (and ordinary people), and eventually was drowned in formalin unable to die, stranded between the illusion and the reality.

Exist

As far as its form is concerned, the animated version of "The Drowned Giant" undoubtedly provides a visual spectacle, which also forms a very appropriate overlap with the emptiness and existence discussed in the original work. I strongly recommend that viewers who like this work can read the original text. The coldness and barrenness in the words and sentences reveals the nihilistic beauty of existentialism. This work transitions from literary imagination to watching animation. A visual transformation even echoes the visual transformation revealed by (WB Yeats) in (A Vision): from Greek to Roman, from installation to Hollowing out, from concrete to metaphysical, whether it is visual meaning, giant body or existence itself, our observation, thinking and existence are no longer merely the appearance of appearance, but into a kind of central emptiness, and then create The meaning itself forms a personal game of thinking.