Matters' Guide to Pursuing Drama｜ "The Distance Between Us and Evil" - We Live at the Tower of Babel

The following contains spoilers

I'm sure everyone is familiar with this show.

"The Distance Between Us and Evil", a Taiwanese drama launched in 2019, the plot revolves around a single random murder case, describing the before and after mood and situation of the characters involved in the case, including the perpetrator, the victim, and the victim Family members, even the media and the public from a third-party perspective, bring out the discussion of serious social issues, which is a rare heavy theme in Taiwanese dramas.

To be honest, I was frightened when I watched "And Evil". I haven't watched too many Taiwanese dramas. Most of my impressions of Taiwanese dramas are idol dramas, so I was surprised when I opened the first episode of "And Evil" and saw the whole atmosphere and production specifications. After watching it, I found that it wanted to say something. On the one hand, such a big theme is expected, but also worried. After all, social issues themselves are not easy to control. Whether the producer wants to bring out an issue as a reminder to the public, or subjectively express their views on the issue, in the The mastery of the producer's position at this level has become a key point. Moreover, how to maintain the balance between the entertainment and the theme of the work is also a test of the producer's skill. If it focuses too much on expression and lacks control over the plot, then this expression may lose its meaning, because it even conveys Can't go out.

But it turns out that "And Evil" has done it. It has achieved a win-win situation in the market and word of mouth. The ratings have exploded, sweeping awards, and it has become a representative Taiwanese drama in recent years. In ten episodes, it completely depicts the mood changes of different characters while maintaining the compactness of the plot and a high degree of follow-up, and also shows a profound theme discussion. For the former, Alyssa Chia plays Song Qiao'an. She hated Li Xiaoming and his family at first, and couldn't get out of the pain of losing her son (the scene "I can't get through" was too painful.), and later re-entered that dark theater , Slowly accept the reality, and re-experience life with my husband. The whole process has natural and unpretentious laying out and descriptions. The team's efforts in this regard to the characters in the play make the drama come alive in a chilling atmosphere. Let the seemingly hopeless abyss have hope.

Next, I would like to discuss more in depth on the topic.

I would like to introduce a few lines from the heroine of the play, lawyer Wang She played by Wu Kangren , in the drunken episode of episode 5:

"A democratic country ruled by law depends on killing people to comfort people and keep us safe. I've never heard of this, it's ridiculous."

"If he kills someone, he should die, but that doesn't mean he wants democracy and the rule of law to be buried with him."

"What is a good person...what is a bad person...do you have a standard answer?"

Frankly speaking, I was shocked when I was watching this paragraph, because these lines were challenging and shaking my own values, which made me begin to doubt whether the values I had always believed in were “correct”? Later, I saw more works, such as an animation I wrote earlier, "From the New World" Hui Tai's after-view | "From the New World" , which also asked the audience questions, what exactly is "goodness" ", what is "evil", and what is "right"? Coupled with reading some sociology in college, I began to have a different understanding of the "opposition" thing.

Each of us has a so-called standard of looking at things in our minds, and we are used to drawing a clear line between right and wrong. For example, the "perpetrator" must be a bad person, and the same is true for the "bully". As long as the bully is punished, the bully can be solved. Ling incident. But can anything be determined simply by "right" and "wrong"?

"With Evil" tells the audience that the way to solve similar incidents is to understand the "murderer"'s motive for killing, and "Lion in March" Yumino Chihua teacher also tells the audience that when dealing with bullying incidents, they should counsel the bully at the same time. Most of the time, people's habits are determined by the environment. Different families and societies will naturally produce different people. What is the experience of "murderers" before they have the idea of "killing", and what are they thinking when they kill? It is necessary to understand these before starting to solve the problem. Therefore, there is never only "right and wrong" in things. The reasons behind and process changes are the sources that people should look for. Just as we are seeing a person doing behaviors that we do not agree with, what we should do is not to judge him, but to try to understand the motives of his behavior, so as to understand his thoughts, otherwise, arbitrarily, people and There will only be more disputes between people, and the cycle will never stop.

"And Evil" screenwriter Lu Shiyuan once said that she thought of changing the play's title to "Tower of Babel" . The "Tower of Babel" is an allusion. At that time, human beings had a common language and wanted to build a high tower leading to heaven. Later, in order to prevent this from happening, God disrupted people's language and distributed people to various places, so that It is difficult for them to work together to do the same thing, and this is where the branch of language emerges. Putting it into the play, it may mean that we have a common language, but we cannot understand each other, or that we have different viewpoints from different viewpoints, as if we are speaking different languages, everyone is talking to themselves, Can't share ideas.

Therefore, in fact, the key word that "And Evil" ultimately leads to is "understanding" . Understand before criticizing, and understand before evaluating. Especially now that information tends to be one-way, the world we know is getting narrower and narrower, and it is becoming more and more difficult to "understand" this matter, and we should be more aware of its importance.

Although "The Distance Between Us and Evil" is based on a random murder incident, it actually draws the audience's attention to the matter of "understanding between people" with the seriousness of "killing", which is the core The expression of the core in the show, so I think the theme of this show is quite profound.

(Of course, there are a lot of things to talk about in the play about the relationship between the media and the public, but I won't talk much about it today.)

Finally, I conclude with an extended discussion of the title, "The Distance Between Us and Evil", which can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, it means that we often don't understand "criminals" and only unilaterally understand them through news, but I think it can also be interpreted on the one hand. Well, when we often judge as God before we understand it, we actually take a step toward "evil".

We who live in the Tower of Babel must each learn to stop talking nonsense.

PS

This is really hard to write. What the drama itself says is complicated enough. It is really laborious to digest it and integrate it into my own understanding. In addition, it was almost two years ago at the time, so Memories also became a little fuzzy.

Therefore, this time I read more interviews and materials when I wrote it. For example, the part about the Tower of Babel was also newly learned, which was an accidental discovery, and more materials were collected than before. (I originally wanted to mention the evil of mediocrity, but in the end I didn't write it because it felt a bit off.)

But this also proves how much I like this drama, although Wu Kangren's scene really hit me deeply, but in fact, after the whole drama, every episode touched me, like the teardrop of Alyssa Chia , Sicong's pain and helplessness as a caregiver. So even if I spent more space to write this time, I can only say that it only covers a part of the central idea of the play.

Really in the end, "The Distance Between Us and Evil" is really a work that will stay in people's hearts. When I saw this event, I thought of it for the first time, but after hesitating for a while, I finally decided to write it. . Now that I have written it, I feel satisfied. I hope everyone will resonate with it after reading it, and welcome to discuss the parts that I think I have misunderstood.

Thanks for reading.

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