Years & Years: Biting political satire and prophecy, the magical reality we live in

Produced by NGOCN

This article contains a lot of spoilers, please read with caution

In the Harry Potter series, Tom Riddle changed his name to "Voldemort", but few people dared to call him by this name, and even fewer people remembered that he was originally called "Tom Riddle". People preferred to call him "The Mysterious Man", and he became a man whose name could not even be mentioned.

In the past month or so, many viewers in mainland China have also been watching a British drama that cannot even be named. This British drama is jointly produced by the BBC and HBO. The original English name is Years and Years. The Chinese translations include Future Years, This Past Years, Years and Years, etc. This 6-episode British drama tells the joys and sorrows of the Lyons family in the next 15 years.

After the first episode of the drama was aired, an entry briefly existed on Douban, which scored 9.5 points. But before the second episode was aired, the entry was deleted by Douban. After that, netizens repeatedly recreated the drama's entries, but few of them survived for more than 24 hours.

Almost no subtitle groups in China dare to produce Chinese subtitles for the drama. The only subtitle group that insisted on producing Chinese subtitles for the drama, Dreamer, has also had its Weibo account deleted. As of today, the field "Years and Years" has been "completely banned" on multiple social platforms including Weibo and WeChat. On Baidu Netdisk, files with this field in their names cannot even generate shared links. Compared to "Voldemort", "Years and Years" is even worse.

What kind of British drama was banned in China after the first episode was aired on BBC? The answer may be hidden in this shot:

The image of leaders in mainland China has always been relatively well protected. Considering the tightening of freedom of speech in recent years, this kind of "humiliation" of the top leader is bound to touch their reverse scale.

In the drama, China built an artificial island in the South China Sea called "Hongsha", which is actually a military base built to expand China's military influence in the South China Sea. This "reality" also goes against the Chinese government's narrative , in which the United States is the driving force behind the militarization of the South China Sea, and China's original intention of island and reef construction is to "improve civil service functions."

In the first episode, the Sino-US trade war is still going on until 2024. Under the influence of multiple factors, US President Trump ordered the launch of nuclear missiles to Hongsha Island in the last few days of his term (the show predicts that Trump will be re-elected). The above shot is that after the nuclear missile exploded on Hongsha Island, people in the British refugee camp enthusiastically held up the puppets of the leaders of the two countries. This plot is the climax of the first episode and may also be the most attractive part for Chinese audiences.

This is one of the series' predictions about the future. In the next 15 years, the international situation and the political conditions of various countries will continue to deteriorate. In the second episode, the series predicts that Xi Jinping and Putin will both become lifelong supreme leaders, and that the current US Vice President Pence will be elected as the US President, but Trump is manipulating Pence behind the scenes (at least, that's what the character Daniel in the series thinks).

Another type of prediction Years and Years makes about the future society is how the development of science and technology will further change our lives.

In the near future, the development of Internet technology will accelerate the alienation of interpersonal relationships. Teenager Lee stares at the screen or wears VR glasses for a long time, and has less contact with his mother Rosie. He is also more rebellious and has a tendency to commit crimes and violence. Family members also discuss family matters through Family Link, and offline communication time and space are shifted to online. Due to the convenience of Internet communication, people generally work from home, but the work efficiency is very low. The government has to propose the concept of "town time" and call on people to return to the office to work and resume the 955 work and rest habits.

The most daring imagination among them is "Transhuman" . Bethany "came out" to her parents in the first episode and called herself Trans. Her parents mistakenly thought she was transgender, but her self-identity is actually transhuman. According to her own account in the play, she was also "born in the wrong body" and she should actually be a machine. "My lungs were filled with air, like a bellows, going in and out, and it felt really stupid." The more machines she had in her body, the more comfortable she felt. Her ultimate goal is to upload her consciousness to the Internet.

Consciousness uploading and body modification are not new concepts in science fiction. The creation of the play is to use "Trans" to reconstruct them and then propose the identity of "Transhuman". This idea enriches our imagination of the "Trans" movement and also makes the science fiction and political concept of "cyborg" have more possibilities.

Later, after Bethany participated in a government project and transformed her body, she was faced with the choice of whether to use her own technology to participate in exposing government scandals. Once she participated and left her "illegal" record, her transformation might be taken back, which means that the wires in her body would be pulled out. What role should technology play in our lives? Can technicians hold the political position of "technological neutrality"? Whose technology is it, private, state-owned or a public resource shared by everyone? These are the technological ethical dilemmas contained in Bethany's dilemma, and the show also touches on this.

As mentioned above, Years and Years covers a wide range of areas. But for those who "get into it" with the first episode, they can clearly feel the narrowing of the narrative scope when they watch the second and third episodes.

In the first episode, the nuclear missiles launched by the United States at Hongsha Island made people feel that the end of the world had come, but the show only used "China made concessions" and "the United States was sanctioned" to pass over this incident. In the second episode, everyone was still watching Edith being interviewed on TV at home, and everything was peaceful. The audience, especially the Chinese audience who were looking forward to seeing more sequels, may be very disappointed.

Audiences who have such expectations for Years and Years may have misunderstood the positioning of the show. To better illustrate this point, let's go back to the first scene of the first episode. In that scene, the Lyons family watched the same political roundtable program live in their respective rooms, and discussed how Vivienne Rook made rude remarks on the program on their smartphones.

Years and Years is indeed a political miniseries, but its tone does not deviate from the scope of a family drama. Through the eyes of the Lyons family, the audience sees how their environment is deteriorating rapidly at a visible speed, and what role they will play in this torrent.

In this scene, different family members have different reactions to Vivienne, implying different values. These are real in reality and are also the reactions Americans have had to Trump.

Another scene in the play more directly presents the political views held by each of the Lyons family members. In the third episode of the British general election, some family members went to the polling station to vote together. All those who participated in the offline voting were filmed, so the audience could know who they voted for and could understand their vote in connection with their previous words and deeds. The eldest brother Stephen voted for the Labour Party, his wife Celeste voted for the Conservative Party, the grandmother Muriel voted for the Four Star Party (the Four Star Party was founded by Vivienne Rook, and she is also the leader of the party), the fourth sister Rosie voted for the Four Star Party, the second sister Edith directly drew a slash on the ballot, and did not vote for anyone, and Daniel voted for the Conservative Party.

The author extracted Stephen and tried to analyze him. Stephen is a classic middle-class straight man. His job is financial investment consulting. Because of the needs of his job, he is very concerned about current affairs. He thinks highly of himself and thinks that others are not as smart as he is. When many people could no longer afford the high cost of living in London, he was able to take root in London until the systemic financial crisis and the massive bankruptcy of banks. He lost millions of pounds and returned to his grandmother's house in Manchester in disgrace. By the third episode, he had several jobs to make a living, working all year round, and his salary could only barely cover his daily expenses. He voted for the Labour Party in this state. He believed that he was definitely not the kind of "fools" who would vote for the Four Star Party.

In the fifth episode, in order to get a higher salary, he was willing to be used as a "monkey" by his former classmates and was able to work in a think tank. This think tank later won the bid for the "Place of the Past" secretly tendered by Vivienne (she was the Prime Minister at this time), and Stephen learned the true face of the "Place of the Past" - a concentration camp used by the government to accommodate "surplus population". Before that, Stephen had always been upset about the death of his brother Daniel. He insisted that Daniel was killed by his former fiancé Viktor. With this idea in mind, Stephen took revenge on his personal grudges and used his position to transfer Viktor to the "Place of the Past" and sentenced Viktor to death. In just a few years, he has completely become a fellow traveler of the Four Star Party.

The way the show presents "The Place of the Past" is quite brilliant. One after another, seemingly isolated events, more or less, have contributed to the emergence of this concentration camp. Refugees, illegal immigrants, and even British people who have become homeless due to climate change and environmental pollution may all be sent to "The Place of the Past", "disappear", and be eliminated from society.

At the beginning of the first episode, Vivienne, who had not yet become prime minister, said on the show that she didn't care about the conflict between Israel and Palestine at all, and only cared about whether her own garbage could be collected on time. She received applause from the audience, which laid the first foreshadowing for "The Place of the Past": We don't care about what happens to others, we only care about our own life in the city.

In the second episode, Vivienne launched Blink during the constituency councillor by-election, a device similar to an electromagnetic pulse that can force all electronic devices offline. She claimed that she would legalize "Blink" and distribute it to schools and teachers, so that all minors would not be able to browse pornographic films online. This "protection" for minors became a control method in the sixth episode to block the signal of "The Place of the Past" and prevent people in the concentration camp from seeking help from outside.

In the general elections of the third and fourth episodes, the Four Star Party dramatically and legally obtained the status of the ruling party, which was the most critical step in building the "Place of the Past" (as mentioned above, Vivienne is the leader of the party, which makes her the prime minister). After that, large-scale and long-term rainfall caused many people to be homeless. The large-scale resettlement and movement of the population provided the government with an excellent smokescreen for running the "Place of the Past". The refugees would "disappear" during the resettlement process and be transported to the concentration camps. In the sixth episode, the infectious disease "Monkey Flu" was prevalent on a large scale. Many infected people were sent to the "Place of the Past" to infect the refugees in the concentration camps, and the "work efficiency" of the concentration camps was greatly improved. At this point, all the seemingly unrelated isolated events were connected together, and together they gave birth to the terrible monster "Place of the Past".

So, was there really no one who tried to stop all this from happening? Of course there was, not to mention the experienced activist Edith, the second sister, and the story of Daniel and Viktor to illustrate what happened to those who fought alone in the tide of the times.

Daniel is an official of the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department of Manchester City Hall. He builds and arranges temporary housing for refugees. He meets Viktor from Ukraine in a refugee camp. In 2024, the living conditions of homosexuals are still very bad. Viktor was reported by his parents in his homeland. At this time, Ukraine has been occupied by Russia, or "become part of Russian territory", and Russia's anti-gay laws are therefore applicable in Ukraine. Viktor, who was reported, was tortured with electric shock.

Daniel and Viktor fell in love in the refugee camp, and Daniel tried every means to live with him. Britain deported Viktor back to Ukraine, so Daniel planned a plan to smuggle Viktor to Spain, hoping that the Spanish left-wing government would provide asylum for Viktor. After the plan succeeded, the Spanish left-wing government fell. The extreme left-wing government came to power, and Viktor was once again in danger of being deported. Daniel decided to take a risk, hoping to smuggle Viktor back to Britain. However, things did not go as he wished, and Daniel eventually died in the English Channel.

The man who carried firewood for the people had already frozen to death in the snow, not to mention that Daniel didn't really want to help "the people", he just wanted to live with his lover. And we let all this happen, we let kind people die in vain, we let "the place of the past" slaughter innocent people silently. Just like Gran said at the dinner table at the beginning of the sixth episode, "This is all your fault."

However, the ending of the show is still quite romantic. In the sixth episode, the Lyons family decided not to remain silent. Edith planned to lead everyone to rescue Viktor, and blew up the signal shielding tower in the "Place of the Past", and took out her mobile phone to broadcast the real situation of the "Place of the Past".

Bethany and other "transhuman" programmers use their technology to ensure that Edith's video will be seen by everyone in the country. Rosie can no longer bear it and drives through the curfew gate. Stephen turns back and sends the internal documents of "The Place of the Past" that he has been collecting as evidence to the police. More importantly, the Lyons family is only part of a large-scale operation. There are many more people who have done similar things to make "The Place of the Past" public.

In the end, the Four Stars government fell and Prime Minister Vivienne Rook was arrested and imprisoned. Although Gran also predicted that when one clown falls, the next one is on the way, it is still a victory. As long as we stop standing idly by and as long as we see the truth, we can win.

In Years and Years, there are many easy-to-understand allusions, as well as relatively complex metaphors. For example, Vivienne Rook, who is a businessman and speaks out loud, is obviously alluding to US President Trump. Many of her catchphrases are imitating Trump step by step, such as "fake news" and "lonely Britain has never been so great."

But I think her clothes and the name of the "Four Star Party" are also worth pondering. She named the party "Four Stars" to commemorate the past when she said the word "Fuck" on a live TV show, which then caused huge controversy. If "Fuck" cannot be said, it becomes "****", which is the origin of four stars. She believes that the Four Star Party is striving for "Five Stars", and I believe that the "Five Stars" as a political symbol should be familiar to domestic audiences. In addition, she only wears red clothes after becoming prime minister, and when Stephen told her that the power outage was caused by Russia's attack on the British network, she replied "Don't be stupid". These clues are enough to form a convincing metaphor chain.

Of course, Years and Years doesn’t need these metaphors to make us shudder. Many of the “prophecies” mentioned in it are already our reality and daily life. This drama faces this era directly, and we who watch this drama should also have the courage to break the silence and defend the freedom from fear. No one can stay out of it, this is what Years and Years teaches us.

NGOCN is a non-profit independent media. We focus on public issues such as the environment, education, gender, mental health, etc., and provide the public with responsible documentary content.

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