Time Writer | Tritin
Write movies with the heart of a fan.
Recently, the popular Korean drama "Pyramid Game" came to an end.
In the play, high school girls' schools, top chaebols, class antagonism and other elements are fused together, presenting the audience with a shocking drama of campus bullying.
Pyramid Game
Korean film and television dramas seem to have an obsession with the theme of school bullying.
In warm period dramas such as "Please Answer 1988", there are elements of campus bullying, and in revenge, gangster, and youth-themed dramas such as "Dark Glory", "Friends" and "The Cruel History of Ma Congee Street", the harm of campus bullying is depicted in three points.
Film and television dramas are expressing that different levels of bullying are ubiquitous in schools, which is a nightmare that some teenagers in South Korea are difficult to get rid of.
Korean film and television dramas with the same theme have been exhausted, what is so special about "Pyramid Game"?
Pyramid game, elect the victims
The story of "Pyramid Game" takes place in the fifth class of the second year of White Lotus Girls' High School, which was founded by the top Korean company, White Lotus Group.
The bully in the story, Bai Xialin (played by Zhang Duoya), is the granddaughter of the head of the White Lotus Group, and the fifth class of the second year has become an "independent kingdom" controlled by her.
The heroine Sheng Xiuzhi (played by Kim Ji-yeon), who was born in the ordinary class, faces the bullying of the chaebol class and has to rely on wisdom and courage to fight against the water.
At the beginning of the series, Sheng Xiuzhi transferred to White Lotus Girls' High School in her sophomore year of high school. When she first arrived, the class president Xu Daoya (played by Shen Shiqi) suddenly announced in the self-study class that it was the last Thursday of every month to routinely start a new round of voting for the "pyramid game".
The rules of the game are very simple, the whole class votes collectively, each person has five votes, and according to their personal preferences, votes for classmates other than themselves.
After the voting is completed, the person with the most votes becomes an A rank and is the leader in the game. After that, there are three levels: B, C, and D. If someone has 0 votes, then she is an F rating and will be punished.
In other words, F-class personnel are publicly chosen targets to be bullied.
Sheng Xiuzhi was unlucky, she had 0 votes in this round.
Sheng Xiuzhi's next encounter was beyond ordinary people's imagination.
As soon as class ended, the bully trio composed of Kim Do-yeon (played by Hwang Hyun-jeong), Goo Seol-ha (played by Choi Yoon-su), and Fang You-yi (played by Ha Yu-ri) surrounded her.
Gu Xuehe of the judo team gave Sheng Xiuzhi an over-the-shoulder fall, Kim Do-yeon mainly attacked punches and kicks, and Fang Youyi was good at verbal abuse. Ten minutes between classes became Sheng Xiuzhi's purgatory moment.
Kim Duoyan and others have endless tricks, and they even used ancient torture to wet special paper on Sheng Xiuzhi's face, causing her to have difficulty breathing.
Gu Xuehe grabbed Sheng Xiuzhi's hands and made her unable to move. Kim Do-yeon, this is a murder!
Sheng Xiuzhi also asked the class teacher for help, but the teacher only wanted to take pictures of her injuries to ask the parents of the bully for compensation, which made Sheng Xiuzhi even more desperate.
The 10-episode length of "Pyramid Game" revolves around bullying and anti-bullying. The pace of the series is as fast-paced as a movie, and the output content is high-intensity.
The whole drama uses the technique of a suspense movie to advance the plot, and the beginning is that the protagonist Sheng Xiuzhi falls into the maze of bullying without warning, and the whole class seems to have an ulterior secret.
On the one hand, Sheng Xiuzhi has to survive the bullying, and on the other hand, she has to find the culprit and fight back.
The characters in "Pyramid Game" have concise dialogues and strong dramatic conflicts. Sheng Xiuzhi must be on guard against endless bullying from the bullying gang at any time, and there are fights, stalking, and chasing and fleeing scenes from time to time in the play, a typical narrative technique of "literary drama and martial arts singing".
"Pyramid Game" is the outer packaging of campus dramas, and the core is as cruel as "The Hunger Games", bringing the audience a terrifying experience of chasing dramas.
Anti-bullying methodology
Sheng Xiuzhi has just transferred to White Lotus Women's High School, why did she become the target of bullying before she had time to contact Kim Do-yeon and others?
"Pyramid Game" combines violent and suspenseful elements, and uses the campus as a stage to build a distinctive content character.
First, the uniqueness of bullying. "Pyramid Game" is different from other Korean bullying-themed film and television dramas, and the bullying content of this drama revolves around "games".
All of the bullies' actions are carried out according to the rules of the game, for example, if other level personnel bully F-class, they must obtain permission from A-class personnel. B-class personnel are not allowed to bully C-level at will, and the only common target of aggression is F-class.
A-class personnel have an absolute dominant position in the class, and the rich girl Bai Charin, the squad leader Seo Do-ah, and the bully Kim Do-yeon have been elected A-level for a long time, and they even have the privilege of not participating in collective labor.
Bai Charin is the initiator of the "pyramid game", she silently controls everything behind the scenes, Kim Do-yeon and others are her minions, and the principal has to grovel when he sees her. Sheng Xiuzhi entered the fifth class of the second year, and Bai Xialin was also selected.
She wants the child from a single-parent family to be bullied, and she thinks it's all a game, and everyone in the class is a pawn in the game.
Second, the universality of bullying. The bullying in "Pyramid Game" is based on real life, and the series accurately shows the evil and cruelty of the bully, the pain and helplessness of the victim, and the indifference and selfishness of the bystander.
The classmates saw that Sheng Xiuzhi was violently abused and did not react, they watched coldly, silently glad that they did not suffer themselves.
What's even more terrifying is that most of them have become accomplices of the bullies, and a few people in physical education class deliberately slapped Sheng Xiuzhi's buttocks, which did not hurt much and was extremely insulting.
Everyone in the class agrees that F-class personnel should be bullied.
Although the story of "Pyramid Game" takes place in White Lotus Girls' High School, each group in the class has the characteristics of real characters, and the plot and characters can be seamlessly integrated with the real campus.
No one is innocent in school bullying, and the whole class plays the role of bully, victim, and bystander. Bystanders are both accomplices and may one day become victims.
Therefore, "Pyramid Game" brings the audience emotional resonance at the same frequency with strong universality.
Third, anti-bullying methodology. In the process of Sheng Xiuzhi being bullied, she calmly analyzed the class and found out the mastermind behind it. She couldn't shake Bai Charin's hegemony for a while, but she found her first companion, Ming Cien (played by Yoo Do-bin).
Before Sheng Xiuzhi, Ming Cien was F-level, and the two soon formed an alliance. Ming Cien provided Sheng Xiuzhi with a lot of help and information, and Sheng Xiuzhi finally decided to abolish the pyramid game completely.
Sheng Xiuzhi's anti-bullying approach is divided into three steps: 1. Build an alliance. After Ming Cien, they also recruited Ren Yilin (played by Jiang Nayan) and Song Zaixin (played by Wu Shien) to strengthen the alliance.
2. Divide the enemy army. Sheng Xiuzhi observed that the squad leader Xu Daoya did not approve of Bai Xialin's behavior, and she gradually wooed Xu Daoya to sabotage Bai Xialin's plan.
3. Public opinion. Sheng Xiuzhi tried her best to keep the video and audio evidence of being bullied, and waited until the right time to expose it on the Internet, so that the school and the chaebol could feel the pressure of public opinion.
After this whole set of anti-bullying combinations punched out, Bai Charlene's pyramid game suffered a heavy blow.
However, the whole process of Sheng Xiuzhi's anti-bullying was extremely difficult, and every time she took a step forward, she would be hit by Bai Charin in all directions.
This pyramid game is played to the end and there is no real winner.
Five classes in the second year, the epitome of Korea
School bullying is a serious social problem in South Korea. "Pyramid Game" shows the common people affected by social problems through the eyes of Sheng Xiuzhi, Ming Cien and others.
The fifth class of the second year seems to be a high school class group of girls' schools, but it is actually a microcosm of Korean society.
There are more than 10 main characters in the series, and there are 25 students in the class, most of whom have lines and character lines of varying lengths.
Through the vivid portrayal of the student group in a class, the main creator reflects the life of all classes of Korean society.
Sheng Xiuzhi comes from a single-parent family, and her father is a soldier, so she keeps changing schools.
Her father's resolute and upright character had a certain influence on her. She needs to be in charge of the family inside and outside, and she needs to be raised to be an independent character. Such a growth environment can make Sheng Xiuzhi not afraid of chaebol bullying.
Bai Xialin grew up in a wealthy family, and her grandmother, President Bian, controlled the White Lotus Group, spoiled her granddaughter excessively, and did not look at right or wrong.
Under the cultivation of her grandmother, Bai Xialin has developed a highly self-interested thinking, knows how to win over the umbrella squad leader Xu Daoya in the class, cultivate the thug Kim Do-yeon, and suppress all the classmates who come forward. She is not very old, and she has already mastered the doorways of the three worlds of politics and business.
Ming Cien also came from a single-parent family and was poor. Her mother works in other places, and she lives alone. Ming Cien has the typical characteristics of students who are bullied, the family is weak, the parents are not around, he swallows his anger, and he will not even resist when he is bullied.
If it weren't for Sheng Xiuzhi's appearance, Ming Cien might have slowly gone to a dead end.
The squad leader Xu Daoya's father is the director of the hospital, and the hospital has close interests with the White Lotus Group, so she has to acquiesce to Bai Charin's behavior.
On the one hand, her father flattered the Bai family, and on the other hand, he despised the subordinate doctors for being powerless and powerless. Xu Daoya is disgusted by this hierarchical social environment, but she has nothing to do.
Ren Yilin is a trainee, a class flower, and her family background is also a wealthy family. However, Ren Yilin has a good nature, and she took the initiative to vote for Sheng Xiuzhi in the new round of pyramid games.
She was not on good terms with her parents, because her parents did not approve of her stepping into the entertainment industry, so she never relied on family power.
Gao Enxing (played by Ding Xiatan) was born in a civilian family, she always dreams of going to a good university, and Bai Charin obviously has the strength to help her. Therefore, she was willing to become Bai Charin's follower and worked hard to complete every task assigned by Bai Charin.
There is a great contrast between the early and late stages of this character, in the early stage, she was submissive, which aroused Sheng Xiuzhi's sympathy, and in the later stage, she exposed her true nature and became Bai Charlene's eagle dog, and her performance was amazing.
The number of students in the fifth class in the second year is not large, but it is already a miniature model of Korean society.
Children from all walks of life gather here, and due to differences in family backgrounds, they are maliciously divided into classes by pyramid games, and live in a precarious atmosphere every day, for fear that they will be on the wrong side and cause no return.
"Pyramid Game" seems to be dark and heart-wrenching on the surface, but it contains a precious light of hope at the core.
The group of young people represented by Sheng Xiuzhi is already in the period of youth rebellion, and they have a distinct spirit of resistance.
Sheng Xiuzhi is not afraid of hegemony, Xu Daoya does not want to be in the same stream, and Ren Yilin hopes to realize her personal dream.
Their parents have fully resigned themselves to their fate and are trying to play their part in life.
Sheng Xiuzhi and her friends have a deep desire to break the deadlock of secular class divisions.
People should not be divided into three, six, nine, and so on. They smashed the injustice in the class with practical actions, and injected a light into the dark reality.
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