After the movie "No One Land" was released abroad, Zhao Ting won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, a hot rookie director who was talked about on the Internet because of his Chinese identity.
If you don't talk about Zhao Ting's own remarks and attitude, just talking about this movie seems to have a lot of room for talking.
In the film, a woman in her 60s named Fern, who lives in the Rust Belt of the United States for many years, lost everything in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and is homeless and has to live in a dilapidated caravan, becoming a nomadic herder in modern society.
She left her hometown and earned a small salary from odd jobs to survive.
On the way, Fern meets all kinds of companions, who have been devastated but still strong inside, as in the line: "I never said goodbye." I'm all saying, we'll see you on the road. ”
Such a story is very much like the American version of "scar literature", but it is not so scarred. In the film's shots, literature and art overshadow the pain, and the indictment is diluted, making people feel that even the fallen Americans have never lost their freedom.
If we imitate Wen Qing's tone, we can say this: according to secular logic, their trip is doomed to be sad, but if we look at it from another perspective, a car on the road can also have thousands of ways to go home.
Unfortunately, reality is reality after all, and if you remove people's spiritual filters, you will face the pain of life.
A similar story to "The Land of NoWhere" takes place after the Great Depression of the 1930s, when two places, Oklahoma and Texas, suffered a severe drought, with crops dying and yellow sand in the sky.
Countless peasants had to migrate and leave because of bankruptcy, and on the way, their wives and children were separated, their families were broken, and they continued to die of overwork, hunger and disease.
John Steinbeck witnessed these things with his own eyes and wrote the novel The Grapes of Wrath with a stroke of his pen.
Time flew by, and in 2008, history repeated itself, except that the peasants of that time became the workers of today. When the building collapsed, it is worth quoting the classic, after Auschwitz, it is cruel to write poetry.
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From 2006, on the eve of the subprime mortgage crisis, to 2014, nearly 10 million homeowners in the United States lost their homes because their homes were sold at court auction.
According to the APM Research Lab, the latest available census data from 2006 and 2016 showed that in 173 cities across the United States with a population of more than 150,000, the number of renters far exceeded that of homeowners a decade after the subprime mortgage crisis.
Matthew Desmond, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, said: "In the United States, the families that are forcibly evicted every year are not hundreds, nor thousands, but millions. ”
To this end, after the subprime mortgage crisis, he went deep into the bottom of the United States, conducted interviews and surveys among the poor, and finally completed the book "Sweeping the Floor: Poverty and Profiteering in American Cities".
The story takes place in Milwaukee, the largest city in wisconsin, USA.
On the last day of the move deadline, Arlene must move out despite the cold outside, or the landlord will call the sheriff, who will show a notice with a gun to inform her that this is no longer her home.
At this time, Arlene had two choices, and the belongings that were cleared out were either put into the bonded warehouse or placed on the side of the road. The former cost $350, and Arlene couldn't get it out, so she had to throw them around the road like garbage.
Next, Arlene and her two children moved into a homeless shelter, where life was inconvenient, no running water was the norm, and flushing the toilet became difficult, but Arlene liked it because it was cheap, and the two rooms upstairs and downstairs were only $525.
Life is like this, don't you feel, I want me to feel. A few weeks later, the government decided that Arlene's favorite place was "uninhabitable" and ordered her to relocate.
So she had to move closer to the Old Town, and when she got to Atkinson Avenue, she realized that this was a drug dealer's paradise.
The $550 a month rent accounts for 88 percent of her income, and as long as she survives the winter, she can achieve a temporary victory when the spring blossoms.
(Monthly income required for residents of U.S. states to afford to rent a house)
Many years ago, Arlene had rented a government-subsidized apartment for as little as $137, but she didn't want to live with her mother, so she decided to make up her own mind, and after listening to the advice of her friends, she quit the government public housing and jumped into the private rental market.
This jump is twenty years. After that, as long as Arlene remembered this choice, she would shake her head madly and regret it.
(House prices and rents have skyrocketed over the past decade.)
One day, on a whim, Arlene ran into the Milwaukee City Government's Housing Authority to ask for the list of people queuing up for rental subsidies, and told her that the list had not been moved for so many years.
This is already a good thing in the United States, many big cities, when I first went to register, I was a young woman with a child, and by the time the application was evaluated, she had become a white-haired grandmother.
If Arlene wants to live in public housing again, she has to save a month's income, give it to the Housing Authority, and then spend two or three years waiting for the list to be unfrozen, and a few years to wait for the list in front of her to unfreeze.
Finally, she begged God for mercy, and the bureaucrats with the seals could ignore her deportation records and her welfare benefits when they tried her application.
The reality is often not as people want, Arlene because of the rent arrears, will be sued by the landlord Serena in court for eviction orders.
Arlene was not surprised, as early as she was 16 years old, she went through the eviction process, she rented no less than twenty places, which meant that she had to move every year.
Walking out of the courtroom, both Serena and Arlene feel headaches, Serena is angry because the judge cut her money sentence, and Arlene is starving after a long day without eating.
Serena complained to Arlene that some of the tenants were too poor, and when they came, cockroaches followed, rats followed, and they had to deal with a bunch of troubles.
She said to Arlene, you must not think of being a landlord one day, this is a hard job to make money, and what happens will always be the landlord's loss.
Between the words, it is like Pan Shiyi, who says that he is a proletariat.
In the past, evictions from tenants were rare even in the most desolate cities in the United States, because such behavior would provoke outrage.
In February 1932, three families in the Bronx of New York were evicted, resulting in a revolt among the residents of the community. The New York Times commented: "Maybe it was too cold, and only a thousand people protested at the scene." ”
At that time, the people were full of martial arts, and the neighbors confronted the federal bailiffs directly, sitting on the furniture of the evicted families, making it impossible to move them; even, they would ignore the judge's orders and move the belongings of the parties back. Federal marshals are also undecided and dare not enforce the law.
(Western Cowboys and Federal Mounted Police StandOff)
Today, in the 21st century, in an era of highly mature capitalism, there is a special group of sheriffs under whom their full-time job is to carry out expulsions and issue foreclosures.
Commercial institutions are also flocking to get a piece of the pie, some moving companies specialize in eviction cases, employees are not allowed to idle from Monday to Friday; and hundreds of companies dig around for data, make tenant screening reports, list tenant eviction records and court files, and sell the information to landlords.
Mark Flannery of the University of Florida said: "In a way, if you have the financial security to buy a home and be able to take on those financial commitments, it means that in a sense you have succeeded."
It's not that buying a house means you're successful, it's that your ability to buy a house means you're successful, it means you're partially fulfilling the American Dream. ”
If buying a house is regarded as a sign of success, no matter which country's dream, it has to be said that it is a great sadness.
Arlene is not the most miserable, the subprime mortgage crisis has made many owners unable to survive and forced to cut off supply, tragically collected by the bank.
On July 22, 2008, In Taunton, Massachusetts, Karenni, her husband and 24-year-old son have been living in a two-story villa in Boston for four years. Since the couple was unable to repay the loan, the loan company was ready to auction off their residence after closing the building on the 22nd. On the same day, Karenne committed suicide by drinking a bullet.
The posthumous letter of Karenne found by the police read: "When you arrived to reclaim my house, I was already dead!" ”
Such silent resistance is reminiscent of American farmers after the Great Depression.
In the movie "Grapes of Wrath", the son full of justice decided to lead the people to rebel, and on the night of parting, the mother asked where to find him, and he replied:
"Wherever the poor fight to feed themselves, there is me; wherever the police beat the poor, there is me; I am among the angry shouting crowds, I am among the children who smell the supper and laugh, and I am among them when people can enjoy their own food and live in homes built with their hands."
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Being evicted and forced to move is already head-scratching, and there is a group of people who can't afford even the meager rent and have to choose to wander around.
The novel "The Land of No One" tells a lot of such stories, and the later film of the same name was adapted from this, but after removing the self-lyrical expression of those literature and art, the truth is much more painful.
In Drayton, North Dakota, a 67-year-old former taxi driver harvests labor in a field. At sunrise, a large number of trucks drove out of the farmland, and his job was to unload several tons of sugar beets from the trucks.
At night, he slept in his van. Because Uber squeezed him out of the taxi market, he couldn't afford the rent without income, and the truck became his home.
In Combsville, Kentucky, a 66-year-old former general contractor who was working all night in an Amazon warehouse would need to push a cart back and forth, scan every item accurately, or be fired.
In the morning, she could go back to the small trailer-style house in the parking lot to rest, and in Amazon, there were many homeless workers like her.
In Coquan City, Colorado, a 72-year-old truck occupant who broke three ribs while maintaining a camp is staying at a loved one's home to recuperate.
These people, once a glossy "middle class", bankrupted by the financial crisis, never imagined they would one day be displaced, and ended up driving on the road.
On Thanksgiving Day 2010, 60-year-old Linda May was cut off from water and electricity because she couldn't afford to pay her utility bills. She couldn't find a job, ran out of unemployment benefits, and sat alone in her trailer home.
Linda also has a family, but she doesn't feel the warmth, she can only sleep on the couch every day, the family will not take her when they travel, rather than relying on people's sniffles, it is better to rely on herself.
On a long journey, the author asked her if she was excited, and she replied, of course.
Linda, who had to work odd jobs to make ends meet, found a job as a camping site manager. Once, while climbing to the top of the trash can to pick up a bear chain, she broke a rib that hurt her for a long time.
The job at the camping site is not simple, Linda needs to be on hand to meet the needs of the campers, help them check in, dispose of the fire, clean the garbage, and so on.
Wages are not guaranteed, for example, sometimes working more than 12 hours, but when filling out a pay card, they are not allowed to fill in more than 8 hours of working time. That's why the camping ground will look for the elderly who are in urgent need of work.
The FDA received a complaint, and the official spokesman responded that the FDA did not have the authority to deal with cases involving violations of labor law provisions and could not conduct investigations.
The author can't help but question: Why does a 64-year-old woman who has been diligent and earnest all her life end up without a house to live in, and can only rely on unstable basic salary jobs to survive? Why could she live in the mountains at high altitudes, eating and living in a trailer, but her fate was in the hands of her employer?
Many homeless people like Linda go to work in Amazon, working more than 10 hours and walking more than 15 miles per shift, bending over, squatting, climbing stairs, things high enough.
In the job brochure, Amazon packs this kind of work very warmly, saying that you are here to gain not only money, but also great friendships.
The media exposed the essence of Amazon sweatshops, and the administrators still refused to open the door to dissipate heat because they were afraid of the theft of goods and the temperature of thirty-seven or eight degrees.
To monitor productivity in real time, Amazon has also developed an AI system that feels like they've entered a tense game level whenever they start working, and with each scan of an item, a countdown appears on the screen that shows how much time he has to get to the next item.
Not only that, they were being watched everywhere, and an employee accidentally walked the wrong passage, causing the work to be delayed by five minutes, and immediately a manager came to reprimand her.
The Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received complaints about back injuries from Amazon employees while lifting heavy objects.
Two official prosecutors came to the warehouse for a brief look and came to the conclusion that the company did have several cases of muscle strains, but this was not due to the working environment.
Linda thought critically about this, saying:
"This company has hundreds of such warehouses. We raised slaves in other countries, such as China, India, Mexico, and any other third world country with cheap labor. And our economic convenience is based on their hard work.
We don't have to witness their toil, but we can enjoy the fruits of their labor, and this American company is probably the largest slave owner in the world. ”
Contrary to the film's rendering, many wanderers will die alone in their motorhomes.
A homeless man drank himself to death while camping in the parking lot of a Walmart supermarket. An 80-year-old man lived in a church for three months before dying in his motorhome near the Ellen Desert.
Bob, a wanderer, said that when he could no longer live like this, he planned to walk into the wilderness and shoot himself, "My long-term health insurance plan is a pile of white bones in the desert that have faded from the sun."
If this underlying performance art is also romantic, then they have indeed achieved self-liberation.
When the hair is gray, you have to leave your hometown, look for seasonal jobs over and over again, and worry about where your first meal will be when you wake up every day, so the life of wandering is probably not enough to make people yearn.
With the blessing of the director's lens, the deep and shallow scars on the capital leeks are covered, and the clear pain in those dark nights can no longer be found, which is probably the reason why they can be given the name of "freedom".
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The downfall of the homeless needs no elaboration, but in the eyes of many media, this is not the case at all.
In their descriptions, the homeless people abroad, like the white-collar workers, use their mobile phones to send and receive emails, write blogs, find jobs and even apply for housing, happy and unrestrained, and many people enjoy it very much.
More importantly, they believe that homeless people abroad are dignified and will not be discriminated against by anyone.
The real situation of the homeless is very different from the media's statement.
American software developer Synventus created a game called "Hunt the Tramp," inspired by a friend of Synventus CEO Joel Usher.
"A friend of mine who rides the subway a lot in the Washington area, he photographs homeless people along the way with his camera and jokingly calls them 'hunting,'" Arthur said. In addition, a group of respected lawyers are doing the same thing. These triggered my inspiration for developing this game. ”
(Game "Hunt the Tramp")
According to the official website of the game, users can join the game by taking photos of the people they want to hunt, and then choose their own weapons.
"Point the camera at the tramp and press the shutter. You can hunt down real tramps, your friends, your family, teachers, bosses, and anyone else. The sights and real weapon sound give it a hunting feel. ”
This kind of soft violence is already the least threat to the homeless, and more often than not, they are either punched and kicked, or robbed with knives.
In January 2018, in the U.S. city of Honolulu, two police officers had a homeless man lick the urinal in a public bath and beat him if he didn't. The tramp squatted on the ground, sticking out his tongue until they were satisfied.
On the B station, there was a UP master interview with a Chinese tramp in the United States, who said that he only had 49 yuan left on his body, and as a result, he was robbed of the only remaining money by a black man holding a knife to his neck last night.
The motel costs ten yuan a night, and he can't afford it, so he goes to the trash can to pick up leftovers and barely cope with hunger. The situation is very bleak.
At the end of the video, the UP owner gives him a few dollars, and he says that he can finally buy a few steamed buns.
The fate of another blonde brother was even more tragic than that of the Chinese uncle, who was also a tramp who took a bus with his wife to Los Angeles and found that it was not paradise at all.
He lived on a drug-strewn street and never slept restlessly at night, because when he woke up in the morning, he wouldn't find his shoes, even though they were smelly, rotten, and worthless.
It's impossible to buy shoes, after all, you need money, so you can only walk barefoot through a place full of broken glass, feces and cockroaches.
If so, why come? Because the place where he stayed before was even worse than here, life was forced to beg, and then there was a triad to ask him to collect protection fees, and he kept increasing.
If you don't give it, you will be repaired fiercely, and the little brother will be beaten 13 times.
Someone spat at him, someone spilled coffee on him, and it was already common for him.
Just like the movie, the little brother also said a very emotional word, but it is by no means warm and free, only the bottomless darkness and despair.
On a visit to California, Mr. Trump once criticized homeless people and their tents for blocking the entrance to office buildings, saying that these "low-end populations" have seriously affected the reputation of cosmopolitan cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and people have fed up with them.
If they had a home to go home to, who would want to go wandering?
In 2019, CNN reported that los Angeles Homeless Services Authority data showed that the number of local homeless people has "increased unprecedentedly," with nearly 60,000 people sleeping on the streets across the county.
There are 60,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone, and the vast United States does not know how many people there are.
In the glory days of the left-wing movement, Grapes of Wrath was like an epic of resistance.
John, who followed the family wandering, once asked incomprehensibly: Whenever there is a fight, the people will talk about "red", what is "red"?
Later, when he witnessed the injustice of society and the darkness of the country, he gradually began to awaken, personally answered what "red" was, and said that ambitious declaration to his mother, and embarked on the revolutionary road with his own actions.
Also on this path is Pastor Casey, who pleads with God to save this arid land, but God is completely indifferent. So he turned around and redeemed himself, uniting the workers for the welfare of the proletariat, and finally sacrificing for it.
At that time, people believed that the United States in the future would set off a wave of revolution, but this spark of stars eventually fell into the darkness of eternal silence.
McCarthy's frenzy swept across the Western world, the red flag landed, the revolution ended, and naturally there would be no such movies in the United States today.
When "The Land of No One" stripped away the painful background on the screen and filtered out the class meaning in it, it only chose to infinitely enlarge the personal perspective, and the meticulous and dense writing was full of emotions, but it only soothed the already barren hearts of the little bourgeoisie and satisfied their momentary curiosity.
Just like the people watching the fire from the other side are not in it, but feel that the flames burning on the other side are full of flowers, and it is beautiful, but do you know that others are suffering?
Resources:
Grapes of Wrath, John Ford
Sweeping the Floor: Poverty and Profiteering in American Cities, Matthew Desmond
The Land of No One, Jessica Brudd