Heresy itself is actually the searching for one's own value----Analyzing of the Figure of Luke

In the eyes of authority, Luke may be a heresy;
In the eyes of peers, Luke must be a hero.

Because of missing the first part of the movie, I found the entire one with subtitle this weekend and tried to watch it carefully. During watching this movie, I had to stop it and thought for several times. In the end, I sighed: What a man!

The Chinese tittle of this movie is <鐵窗喋血>，which means 'bloodshed in a window with iron grating' in Chinese. I must say it is really a horrible name which totally distort its original idea and categorize it as a prison breaking action movie. Maybe the translators just wanted to attract audience's eyeballs and made up such a typical Hong Kong Kong Fu movie's name. How ridiculous it is!

Okay, come back to our subject.

I cannot exactly remember how many cheaters and liars who Paul Newman have played in other movies, but the figure of Luke is totally different from Paul Newman's consistent acting style, which used to be funny and amusing. In this film, Paul perfectly illuminated the image of an unyielding man and how was he transformed mentally and emotionally during his prisoner's life. Another aspect which I very appreciate is that there is abundant metaphor and montage used by the director in the movie, which leaves audience much space to deliberate.

First of all, metaphor is an important feature of this movie. The talented director, Stuart Rosenberg, likes to utilize metaphor everywhere in his movie skillfully to insinuate the reality. In this film, the jail is not only the place confining freedom, but it is also a symbol of restriction in humanity. In another words, the jail is just our life, our world. In reality, people have a lot of thing they may desire to do but cannot do and people always have all kinds of dream to break the line between them. However, Luke does it, so he becomes a hero who is respected by other prisoners. Actually, We are these prisoners and Luke is the restless desire of freedom in our mind. The jail is the representation of the national machine which could trample on our right, freedom and even life without restraint, such as the prison officers could shoots birds, turtles even human as his pleases in the film. Luke was put into this jail as drunk vandal. Deeply, drunkenness is just the escaping of the social reality, but when he wakes up in the jail, he will find there is no difference between outside and inside. And the three failures of his escaping also indicated that there is only a bigger jail outside and his soul is confined everywhere. In many scenes of the movie, prisoners are working along the road. The tiny prisoners, the wild flatland and the endless road, there is such a strong contrast between confined people and open space. What a sarcasm it is: such a open free space contains a group of poor people whose freedom are deprived. The tragical reality is that the individual who refuses to yield to the control of authoritative ideology is exiled by the society finally.

Another feature of this film is that it conveys a mount of religion insinuation through Luke's behavioral and psychological transformation. At the beginning, Luke lost his believe during the war. He suspect the reality God brings to him: there is only slaughter and death in the battlefield. When his mom died, his love to his mother made his believe resurrection. In the film, Luke played many hymns and anthems to express his memory to his mother in the Heaven when he was forbidden to go to his mother's funeral. In the scene of eating eggs, the picture of Luke lying on the table is exactly the posture of Jesus' Crucifixion. Moreover, when Luke was shot in the chapel, the up shooting camera and the gradually emerging of the cross also sublimes Luke's death to height of crucifixion for the equal freedom and the image of policemen becomes a kind of evil force smashing the believe and destroying the freedom, which is the opposite of righteous . In the last scene of the film, in the endless road, there shows up a big crossing road which could be read as the confusing of people in their believes---turning right or left---or another religion insinuation of cross. Here, Luke transforms from a simple cynicism figure who blindly conveys his dissatisfaction to authority through destructing government's property to a real hero who has his own believe and value.

The reason why Stuart Rosenberg is a special director is that he refuses to convey his idea directly to audience, which makes us rethink our life through watching the movie. Unlike 'The Shawshank Redemption', which blurred the age background and emphasized generalized freedom, and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', which just wildly and directly cries out the word of freedom, 'Cool Hand Luke' is more specific and veiled. Stuart Rosenberg tries to tell a story implicitly about freedom which more agrees with spirit of a specific era and culture---the 60's American. The authority and equal freedom, the Vietnam War and peace, Luke's mermaid tattoo and sexual liberation, all of these leave us a lot of space to think deeply.......

Big Citizens by Zheng zhihua (Taiwanese)

Big Citizens (1990s)

(Music)
伟大的工程要建三百年
The greatest project needs to be constructed for 300 years
区区的小事
Compare to this
六年国建
The Six Year National Construction Project (1991-1997) is such little case.
小小的岛国
It is really a small island.
肮脏的台北
Taipei is a dirty city
贪官污吏 一手遮天
Where corrupt government officials control everything and hoodwink the public.
美丽的谎言
The beautiful lie
说过多少遍
How many times is it going to be said?
说来说去
Back and forth
从来没实现
It never comes true.
宣传的口号
The slogan which has been broadcasted every day
说大家都有钱
is everyone will be rich.
贫富的差距
However, the great wealth gap
假装没看见
is that they pretend not to see.
这不再是个适合好人住的岛
It is no longer an island that suits for good people to live.
礼义廉耻没有钞票重要
Money becomes more important than honesty and honor.
这不再是个适合穷人住的岛
It is no longer an island that suits for poor people to live
一辈子的辛苦连个房子都买不到
They struggled for whole lives, but cannot afford a place to live finally.
嗨~嗬~嗨~嗬~嗨嗬~嗨嗬~嗨嗬~嗨嗬
~ Hol~Hol~Hol
大家辛苦啦 Everyone, it is too hard.

(music)

两岸不通航
Because of the embargo issue between the Mainland and Taiwan,
辜汪谈一谈
here comes the Go-Wong Conference (4-27-1993).
谈判像谈天
But the negotiation is just like a chat
还是没主张
There is no any constructive proposal
1997要解放香港
In 1997, the Mainland will liberate Hong Kong
日不落帝国
They are willing to see that the empire on which the sun never sets
向中国投降
surrenders to China
有人搞台独
Someone is planning the Taiwan Independence
没人来帮忙
But there are few people to support it.
放眼看大陆
Have a look at the situation in the Mainland
遍地是台商
There are Taiwanese businesses everywhere.
台湾的未来 究竟会怎样
What is the future of Taiwan going to be?
政府和人民
The government and citizens,
大家还在想
are still considering about it.
这不再是个强人统治下的岛
It is no longer a island whose governers are powerful.
生存和面子问题哪个重要
Which one is more important, survival or glory?
这不再是个明天会更好的岛
It is no longer a good island where there is a better tomorrow.
何去何从二千万同胞
What are we going to do, my 20 million citizens?

(music)

嗨~嗬~嗨~嗬~嗨嗬~嗨嗬~
Hol~Hol~Hol

I cannot remember the exactly years of this song published, but what I can only remember is the singer was arrested by Taiwan authority that year and had vanished for many years.

When he showed up on the screen again several years later, I surprisingly found that he was singing with crutches.

He lamed, but he still persist in singing out the voices of common people.

I don't know what happened to him, and he never told the truth of the accident to public.

Yet, we could guess what happened in that dark jail.......

He is not only a singer; he is also a fighter!

Saluting to Mr Zheng.

Rebellion of Younth, the beauiful Poem from Gwendolyn Brooks

The pool players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

WE
Real cooool.
WE
Left school.

WE
Lurk late
WE
Strike straight.

WE
Sing Sin
WE
Thin gin

WE
Jazz june
WE
Burn weed

We die soon?
Huh!
WE REAL COOOOOL!


Just having talked about the obedience, we met some people who refuse to obey!
Very interesting!

To be honest, there are three phases in my life about obedience.
When I was a little child, I did not dare to challenge the authority of my parents and teachers.
that is phase one----too young to rebel.
With the coming of adolescence, I became trustless and fearless. I blindly rebelled everything around me, which is just like the situation described in the poem.
that is phase two----too blind to obey.
Entering adulthood, I became mature and sophisticated. Time have polished my roughness. Sometimes, I found that obey and silence can help me saving a lot of trouble.
That is phase three---lack of enthusiasm to rebel.

I think many of you guys must have the similar experience, don't you?

The one with obedience

Personality, which could be the most essential feature or quality of a person, as a combination of emotions, feelings, attitudes and behaviors, depends on people's cultural and educational background greatly. Interestingly, personality can be also used as national personality to describe the common or typical characteristics of entire people from a country or culture, such as tenacious for Japanese, precise for Germany and independent and realistic for Americans. According to most people's impression, modesty and cautiousness could be the national personalities of Chinese people; however, obedience is actually another essence of Chinese people’s ideology and philosophy. Chinese people tend to and are used to obeying not only rules or codes but also rulers or any people who are powerful than them. This has rooted in Chinese people’s souls. Moreover, especially in ancient China, this was considered as an unalterable principle in most Chinese people's mind. Although the phenomenon is obvious, the reasons are complicated. Summarizing them briefly, the most possible reason could be philosophical.

Researching the history of ancient China, a very interesting fact that the core of Chinese philosophy is obedience will be found in many historical references. According to the theory of Confucius, Sky and Land, Monarch and Minister, Father and Son are three pairs of essential conceptions of the Confucianism and the relationships between each pair would be unconditional obedience, which means the latters of these three pairs must obey the formers absolutely. Furthermore, the any kind of behaviors of resisting or disobeying can be considered as treason or unfilialness, which will be judged by law or family discipline. Even if a father killed his son for reason of unfilialness, he would be innocent according to the law at that time. The obedience principle of the Confucianism embodies the demand of ruling and administrating in feudal society, and it is good for the national stability. For example, since Sky rules Land in the Confucianism, people must obey the conditions of climate to do agricultural production. For another example, in a typical ancient Chinese family, the grandfather is the dominator who gives orders; his son, the father, is the executive who obey these order and he will be the next dominator after the grandfather die; the son of the third generation is the one ruled. Unfortunately, women cannot participate in the family events’ decision-making; they are just involved in household duties. Predictably, a boy growing up in such a family will be definitely a loyal who respects and supports his monarch when he becomes a member of the empire.

Thousands years later, this principle of obedience was pinned in the personality of Chinese people. Even nowadays, we can still see some phenomenon of blindly obedience occurring in many situations. At schools, students must obey the rules of school. Moreover they must obey their teachers, even if the orders given by the teachers are not according to the school rules. 15 years ago, when I was an elemental school student, I used to be asked to do some garden works in my teacher’s yard after school when I did not do well during the school days. Although I knew clearly that there was not such a rule in my school that gardening was used as a punishment and I also knew clearly I would not get any payment or tip, I still performed my services on and off until I graduated. Ironically, my teacher tried to persuade me to keep the job as my part work when she finally found that I was the best gardener among those students after my graduation. It is really amazing that I remembered such a tiny little thing that should have been forgotten since forever after I read Stanley Milgram’s article about obedience. I tried to ask myself, ‘Why? Why I still did that even if I knew it is not a rule? It is just a personal order from my teacher.’ Then I thought about it and gave the answer--- because she is my teacher and she is powerful. This kind of power is not given by school or education bureau. According to the definition of this profession, they cannot control students after school. However, in China, teachers are offered more powerful authority so as to not only dominate in classroom but also control students after they go home. Surprisingly, the givers of this superpower are not others---just the students and parents. Every morning before I went to school, my mom always reminded me: ‘Don’t naughty! Listen to your teacher!’ Every time when my mom visited my teacher, she always said: ‘If he don’t listen to you, you can punish him at once and don’t wait to tell me.’ Thus, my teacher can totally handle with me and I also did not dare to resist. When I told my the weeding things of my teacher’s backyard, my mom told me ‘Just do it. It is good for you.’ Then I obeyed. Since my mom thought I should obey my teacher because it is good for me and I thought I must obey my mom because she is my mom, I followed the Chinese people’s obedience principle subtly and brought it into my further study experience, life and career in future.

I did not realize it until I read the paper. Obviously, I have been used to obeying. However, I don’t want to change it totally after I realize it. Obedience is not that terrible and it could also be moral excellence. In some meaning, obedience means tolerance. When I think through my life used to be, I know that I might obey too much or silence too much---sometimes, I should; sometimes, I shouldn’t. The rethinking about the obedience thing illuminates me and offers me more options. Maybe I should ask myself first when I face the situation of obedience.