<h1>introduction</h1>
When you think of a creature like a pig, what comes to mind at the first moment?
Is it the cute English Peppa Pig, or the lustful canopy marshal?
Or "Entering the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, the slaughter of agricultural pigs is a sign of entering the busy season of farming." Peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon, fragrant leaves, various spices mixed and stir-fried..." Delicious food in the narration of "China on the Tip of the Tongue".
I think most people think of table food like braised pig's trotters. Pigs, in our eyes, are nothing more than food in captivity. But there are always some pigs, unwilling to accept this fate, choose to counterattack.
A 7-minute short Denmark drama animation film, Pig Me, tells the story of a piglet trying to change its fate.
In a dark, cold corner of the big city, a pig awakens in a bloody slaughterhouse. It saw the tragic fate of its companions' open stomachs and fled in a panic. In this city dominated by humans, there are scenes of pigs being slaughtered and eaten by humans.
Until the piglet came to the door of a pet store, saw a young man's love for kittens, and thought that he had found the "Taoyuan", he broke into the store, imitating various animals hoping to be chosen. However, no one chooses a pig as a pet. In the dead of night, the piglet howled and cried, and finally attracted the hostess of the pet shop. The hostess stretches out her arms to embrace the piglet, and the piglet, thinking that she has found a home, plunges into the mistress's arms, only to become a braised pig's head at the end of the film.
This animated short film has a score of 8.0 on Douban, although the plot is simple, it implies a lot of deep meaning. Also wanting to escape from the pig that was eaten by fate, Wilbur the pig in "Charlotte's Net" and the boar in "A Maverick Pig" successfully counterattacked, while the piglet in "Pig Life" still did not escape the sanction of fate.
Did this little pig really fail to change its fate?
Why did a 7-minute animated short film achieve such a high score, and what is the moral to tell us?
Next, I will analyze this animated short film from the film's plot, camera screen, and background music, and interpret the charm of this animated short film and the inspiration it has given us.
<h1>First, the simple plot has a meaning that is not simple</h1>
1. The piglet "awakens" to escape, which is in stark contrast to the insensitivity of adult pigs
At the beginning of the film, piglets and a group of adult pigs are transported by truck to a spooky slaughterhouse. Unlike other adult pigs with fat brains who don't even open their eyes, a lean pig squeezes its head out of the fence of the wagon. It looked around curiously, only to see the "pig tragedy"—its kind beings were disemboweled and hung neatly in the air. So, the little pig "awakened" out of fear and began his escape journey.
Logically, the pigs that humans choose to slaughter are often adult pigs that grow to a certain weight, and the appearance of this piglet is most likely an accident. But it was this accident that triggered a series of stories that followed. The piglet's attempt to escape also contrasts sharply with the insensitive reaction of the adult pig, forming a strong and spicy irony.
Whether in "Pig Life" or "Charlotte's Net", it is Piglet who chooses to rebel against fate. The adult pigs could not move, or even bothered to open their eyes, as if they had accepted their fate.
This is not the case with human beings in reality. Young people are always reluctant to accept the arrangement of fate, they are full of yearning for the future, and they are more willing to absorb new ideas and knowledge. Most of the older adults, due to the more realistic and their own energy decline, began to rigidize their thinking, and gradually accepted the status quo.
Young lives desire change, while old lives reject change.
2, human beings choose pets, in a black humor way to express human prejudice and selfishness
In the middle of the film, Piglet finds the "utopia" of the pet shop in the city, and when he sees that humans are friendly to animals, he naively thinks that he can escape the fate of being slaughtered by becoming a pet.
However, no matter how this clever little pig imitates other pets and flatters humans, no one chooses it as a pet.
In this plot, there is a very interesting design: the human who picks the pet looks "very" similar to the pet that was picked!
The little boy who likes cats has the same yellow hair color as the pet cat, and also has large round eyes; the man who chooses the dog has the same red hair as the dog, and the nose is protruding; and the three ladies who choose parrots, goldfish, and rabbits, the smoking man who chooses the red snake, and so on, are exactly the same as their pets, as if they are carved out of a mold.
Such an interesting design not only adds to the black humor atmosphere of the film, but also vividly expresses human prejudice and narcissism.
The prejudice is that the pig in the eyes of human beings will always be a pig, the ingredient of the dinner table, and the label of food will accompany it for a lifetime. Just like the Cinderella effect in psychology, when you have an inherent one-sided idea of something, then these pre-existing prejudices will cause your attitudes and behaviors to deviate.
Narcissism is that humans tend to prefer things that are similar to themselves. This state of mind is determined by the characteristics of the person himself, and people have a tendency to increase their self-identification in cognition.
Therefore, Piggy's COSPLAY behavior is destined to be a confusing behavior prize, and no one can understand its efforts.
3. The ending of the film is reversed, pointing out the reality that the piglet cannot escape fate
The ending of "Pig Life" is very interesting, when the piglet is happily held in the arms of the hostess, the ending song rings out just right, and the subtitles on the screen begin to slowly play, as if the film has ended here, and we have watched a fairy tale short film full of truth, goodness and beauty.
If you are patient at this time and do not fork in the upper right corner, then you will witness a different ending. As the camera slowly moves from the first floor of the lights-out pet store to the bedroom full of warm orange light, it was thought that the human pig was living in harmony, but it turned out that the hostess served a plate of braised pig heads and prepared to eat.
This absurd and realistic ending and the concept of harmonious coexistence between pets and owners that were buried in the hearts of the audience before formed a huge contrast, and a strong sense of fatalism and loss filled the hearts of the audience, making the whole movie come to a climax and full of tension.
This reversal ending was unexpected and reasonable. The film only savagely tears off the cloak of human warmth, showing the naked animal attributes and pragmatism of human beings: the food value of the pig is far higher than the emotional value of the pet, so the fate of the piglet can only be served to the table as food, not as a pet in the arms of the owner.
<h1>Second, the picture tone and background music are perfectly combined</h1>
The color of the whole short film is rough and bold, often in the same picture will not appear more than three colors of the main color, all colors have a deep meaning, representing the psychological state of the piglet. At the same time, the sound elements are fully utilized, and the sound effects and scenes are highly combined, so that the background music and the color changes of the picture tend to be consistent, and the effect of "smelling the sound, watching the scene, and being there" is achieved.
As soon as the film opens, it is full of red eyes. The wagons carrying the pigs, the fence of the slaughterhouse, and the red of the oven in the background of the dead pigs who were slaughtered in the middle of the factory building all created an atmosphere of oppressive, morbid and bloody horror.
Paired with red are metallic grays, which represent human architecture, and green skies that have been polluted by industry. Bloody red, icy gray and eerie green, the whole lens seems to be an abstract work of postmodern painters, which visualizes the piglet's feeling of not seeing the light, feeling the darkness around him, fear and despair.
At the same time, the film stimulates the audience's emotions by using non-linear sounds such as the miserable pig's cry and the sound of the chainsaw, so that the audience can reach a state of fear consistent with the piglet.
By the middle of the film, when Piglet arrives at the pet store, the hue changes and the background color changes to a warm yellow tone. In the pet store, the slightly drunk lights are scattered all around, and the world is back to its vibrant colors. The change in tone here reflects the piglet's psychological state of changing from panic and fear to safety and stability.
As the tone of the picture changes, the background music also becomes a light happy song played by instruments such as violin, cello, and electronic keyboard, and a man's happy singing voice. The piglet's various COSPLAY and other animal actions in the film, combined with the cheerful music rhythm, make the atmosphere of the whole short film instantly happy. While the audience laughed heartily, they also let go of the anxiety of worrying about the piglet.
Later in the film, it's getting late. The piglets hissed and cried in the empty pet shop, the moonlight shone through the windows, revealing a melancholy blue, and the background sound was replaced by the soothing sound of the piano playing, coupled with the nun-style female chanting, which perfectly showed the piglet's sad mood at this time.
In these three stages, the music and pictures in the film are seamlessly coordinated, and the perfect cooperation of sound and picture is truly achieved.
<h1>Third, the inspiration brought to us by the film</h1>
"Tragedy destroys the valuable things of life for people to see, and comedy tears apart the worthless things for people to see." —Lu Xun, "On the Fall of Leifeng Pagoda Again"
In real life, everyone doesn't want tragedy to happen, because they can't psychologically accept that something valuable will be destroyed before our eyes.
In the movie, the directors and screenwriters like to let the tragedy play out repeatedly. The fundamental reason is that the film is a form of expression that can destroy "valuable" things in the virtual world, arouse the emotional resonance of the audience, and thus trigger the audience's thinking.
In "Pig Life", on the surface, the piglet has not escaped the fate of being eaten by humans, and is an adult animation short film with a relatively mournful theme. In fact, if we seriously explore the connotation of this film, we will find that the key to changing our destiny is hidden in the film.
1. Don't be an "adult pig" in "Pig Life", and bravely take the first step of change
In "Pig Life", the end of the piglet is still slaughtered and brought to the table, so does it really not change its fate?
In fact, it has changed its destiny, but it has not reached the success we imagined. We think that the criterion for its change of destiny is not to be eaten by humans, when in fact it only changes the process and place of death.
But this is very important, because the end of death cannot be avoided by any life, and all we can change is this process of coming to death.
Wilbur the Pig in Charlotte's Web also chose to be a pet, and as a result, it survived with Charlotte's help and created a miracle. The pig in Wang Xiaobori's "The Pig That Has Always Been a Maverick" is even more powerful, and it was hunted down by more than 20 humans and escaped, and finally became a wild boar wandering in the mountains and forests, not only escaping the fate of being slaughtered but also gaining freedom.
Compared with the piglets in "Pig Life", these two pigs are undoubtedly an example of changing their destiny and a miracle of layers of progression. But we look at it from the other side, the piglets in the film are not a change of fate compared to the "adult pigs" waiting to be slaughtered in the slaughterhouse.
I often laugh at people who open their mouths and shut up their fatalism: "Fatalism is a basket, and everything can be put into it." I never argue with them, because they have a perfectly self-consistent iron logic: "When you succeed, it is fate that makes you successful; when you fail, it is fate that dooms you to fail." "They were content with the status quo and accepted the result in the end, but I wanted to have a different process.
When we are unwilling to accept the status quo and take the first step bravely, we have begun to change our destiny.
2, do not choose the wrong way of the piglet, in the right direction of targeted efforts
"On the vent, pigs can fly." ——Xiaomi founder Lei Jun
"Two college students from the same family and the same school, ten years ago, one bought a house in Zhongguancun, and one attended a ten-year class in Zhongguancun. Ten years later, one became a multimillionaire and one became a 'Shaolin abbot'. ”
This is the most "choice is greater than effort" passage in recent years. Although slightly exaggerated, it is also a good example of how important targeted efforts are in our time.
In order to get the love of humans, the piglet in the film learns parrot singing, dives as a goldfish, and dresses up as other animals. But even so, it still had no one to pay attention to it after using the eighteen martial arts, and in the end it could only cry silently in the darkness. Is it that it is not smart and hard enough? Obviously not.
A great man once said that "the route is wrong, the more knowledge the more reactionary", put on the piglet in the film, it is "the wrong direction, the more effort the more hurt." "It has chosen the wrong direction of its efforts, ignored the prejudice of human beings against it, and naturally came to a void."
When we are unwilling to accept the status quo and bravely take the first step, we must work in the right direction.
3. Don't be a "pet" of others, and refuse to become a person with dependent personality characteristics
The piglet in the film, after escaping from the slaughterhouse, does not have the idea of escaping the city to survive in the wild, but hopes to become a pet to continue to eat, drink and sleep.
This is its choice error, and this error is caused by its psychological characteristics. This psychological trait, called dependent personality, is called one of the five social personalities by psychologist Fromm, and is pathological and universal. Most people with such psychological characteristics are affected by the family environment when they were young, and a small number suffer great setbacks when they grow up, and lack independence and autonomy in thought and feelings.
People with dependent personalities often have no self-confidence, docile personality, do not love to make their own decisions, are easy to agree to the requirements of others, and are born with the feelings and evaluations of others. Their fate was never in their own hands, but generously handed over to others.
The piglet in the film is a typical dependent personality. Its life from childhood to adulthood is handled by human beings. It doesn't have to forage and hunt, it doesn't have to look for its own nests, it doesn't even have to actively look for a mate, it has become accustomed to relying on humans to live. Therefore, after escaping from the slaughterhouse out of fear, it will choose the path of becoming a pet.
People with dependent personality traits may be college students who are mentally controlled by PUA, housewives who have suffered from domestic violence, good old people who have been bullied and promised, and you and I who only want to rely on others after suffering setbacks.
There is an old Chinese saying, "Rely on the mountains to fall, rely on everyone to run", Zeng Guofan also wrote in his family letter to his brothers: "Our people can only rely on the two things of entering morality and cultivating." "On the road to changing our destiny, we must refuse to become a person with a dependent personality, and strengthening our own body and mind is the fundamental way to change our destiny."
<h1>Write the words at the back</h1>
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished by the Olympian gods for kidnapping the god of death, causing him to push heavy stones up the mountain every day, and then let the stones roll down the hill when they were pushed to the top of the mountain. He could only keep repeating this meaningless mechanical act. His fate seems more unchangeable than that of the pigs in "Pig Life". However, even if it falls into the tragic situation that the world thinks of as a doll of fate, there are still people who get inspiration from it.
The French philosopher and writer Camus, when discussing the fate of Sisyphus, did not hesitate to give high praise:
All the silent pleasures of Sisyphus are included. His fate belongs to him, and his stones are at his mercy.
We are the same, our destiny belongs to us, and every little effort we make is to change our destiny. Death awaits everyone at the end, and all we can do is enjoy the process of living to die.