Decent middle-class families are "killing" their own children
The love you thought it was
Perhaps a kind of destruction
Indeed, "Under the White Sun" is being screened in the mainland, and "Diary of a Youth", which is being screened, scored 8.6 points on Douban, firmly sitting on the highest score of Chinese films in theaters in the past year.
What is commendable is that the reputation of "Youth Diary" is not lost at all. After watching the film in the theater, the audience burst into tears and applause.
To you who have never been loved, it uses a sharp angle to uncover the fig leaf of middle-class family education, that is, selfishness.
This is not a small fresh style of painful youth literature, but a creepy reality.
This outsider looks happy, warm, and uplifting, and everyone in it is all falling, even destroyed.
At the just-concluded 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards, "Diary of a Youth" won 12 nominations, and director Zhuo Yiqian finally won the New Director Award with this film.
In fact, it fully deserves to be one of the best Chinese films of the year, and every middle-class parent should watch it.
01
A child
How was he killed by his family
A suicide note, a yellowed diary, leads to a "storm and tsunami" related to growth.
The core of the story is shocking enough - how did a child be killed by his family?
Teacher Zheng Youjun, when he was approaching the college entrance examination, received an anonymous suicide note, and although his life was in a mess, he still tried to find the student who wrote the suicide note.
Because it is not only about human life, but also about the trauma of his childhood.
Youjun was born in an enviable middle-class family in Hong Kong, his father is a respectable and well-paid lawyer, his mother is a stay-at-home wife, and he has an older brother.
In order to let them go to a good school, my father donated 100,000 Hong Kong dollars to the school every year.
"Win at the starting line", probably just the children of this kind of family.
My father climbed up step by step from the grassroots, and he experienced the pain and bitterness of being helpless and struggling alone.
I believe in the truth that only by becoming a superior person can we live a meaningful life.
Therefore, in the treatment of children's education, he is particularly "attentive".
Younger brother Youjun is a shiny, genius-like good child, but his brother Youjie has mediocre qualifications, he is always distracted in class, his grades can only be ranked 29th, and he likes to read comics when he goes home, and he can't even play a piano song well.
But the elder brother is not not working hard, he thinks that if he is admitted to the top fifteen in the class, he can go to Disney together as a family, play a complete piano song, and get his father's approval.
Even if he was beaten by his father with a feather duster, he would never reply, just crying and saying "I'm sorry".
The suicide note-style memory diary was also quietly recorded because I heard adults say that "writing a diary will help you get admitted to a key university".
Dad scolded him for being rubbish, and he wanted to give up on him directly after the stick education.
Mom said "if I get divorced, it must be your problem".
The younger brother thinks he is ashamed and always drags his feet.
All kinds of depression came to his face, Youjie, who was only ten years old, finally jumped down from a height.
02
The love you thought it was
Perhaps a kind of destruction
East Asian parents have always believed in the growth path of "jade is not cut", and the so-called "carving" is to intervene in their children's education as much as possible.
The father's original family in the movie itself is average, relying on the scores of exam-oriented education, desperately climbing, and only then can he fight a bloody road.
Because he endured hardships first, he had a strong desire to "change his life against the sky" and provide a good educational environment for his children.
He represents a large group of middle-class parents who believe that childhood is not for play, but for sowing.
In order not to let their baby lose at the starting line, the child will prepare a semester room during pregnancy, and the child will learn to swim at the age of one, learn English at the age of three, memorize dozens of ancient poems at the age of four, and start violin and Go at the age of five......
The post-00s teenager Su Yiming won the championship and swiped the circle of friends, and the Beijing parents began to discuss whether to sign up for a ski class for their children;
Gu Ailing, a genius girl at Stanford, switched between Chinese and English freely during the interview, and the mothers of the magic capital were ready to spend money to hire a foreign teacher to give their children 1V1 tutoring;
After more than three years of double reduction, the child is indeed relaxed at school, but the parents have spent their time in extracurricular cram schools.
The "fashion" of the Modu International Education family is the TOEFL 110+ in junior high school, the AMC8 score in the fourth grade of primary school is 1% in the world, and it is paired with swimming, tennis, fencing and other quality sports classes.
Children don't have time to enjoy being children, they have to be smart, mature, logical, and rational at all times...... What the childhood of a successful person of the future looks like.
But life is not a track, it's a wilderness.
In the Korean variety show "My Golden Child", those children who are accompanied by their mothers full-time are still drinking breast milk at the age of 6, and they need their mothers to accompany them at all times, their feet do not touch the ground, and they are extremely self-centered.
In the TV series "Little Shede", the son often has to tear the skin on his fingers to relieve anxiety, which is the epitome of many children who are depressed in adolescence.
According to the Blue Book of China's Mental Health in 2023, the detection rate of depression among high school students is 40%, the detection rate of depression among junior high school students is 30%, and the detection rate of depression among primary school students is 10%.
"All I wanted was apples, and you gave me a box of pears. ”
What you think is full support, unconditional love, is likely to be a road to destruction for children, and there is no gratitude, only endless suffocation.
03
Inside the family
Invisible class divisions
In the past two years, parents seem to realize that after the chicken baby will have problems with the chicken, they have begun to change their direction and the chicken itself.
But what does the excessive contribution of parents point to?
In the movie, the father beats and scolds his wife and son everywhere, and his confidence is "I earn the money, everything is mine".
The logic behind it is that your life is all given by me. For the first time, people feel naked that the original family also has a biological chain of class and the jungle.
Elite families have a more extreme desire to control family members, and one person to bear the financial pressure of the whole family often needs a higher voice and domination.
The phrase "I am for your good" is just the most gentle tool to control children.
All the family members have become a pawn in the big chess of Dad's life.
Stay-at-home mothers have to be extremely patient in such a family until they lose their voice, but adults can at least choose to leave.
Children who are not yet minors and do not have the ability to think independently, financially, or even protect themselves have become the lowest class in the family, and are allowed to be brainwashed, insulted, and slaughtered by adults.
Youjie never thought that all this was his parents' fault, and he blamed all the faults on his own existence.
In the movie, he made it clear to his mother that he could only sleep 5 hours a day and hoped that his mother would take her to the psychiatrist, but his mother insisted that "my son will not be sick" because he was not allowed to be mentally ill, which was too humiliating.
Love is a utilitarian reward, no one really cares about him, respects him, and his role is only to play a good child.
If it is not done, it will be cleaned up, erased, and even if it falls from a building, it will be accused of "poor psychological tolerance".
Behind the glamorous and decent middle-class family, it is not that there is no violence, but that it is often presented in a more subtle way.
The father in a suit and leather shoes, with a feather duster in his hands, and the delicate and wealthy mother has blood on the corners of his mouth, and the little princes and princesses who are envied by everyone must be careful at all times, if they provoke adults, the law can't protect them, after all, that's home.
The cruelest thing is that young children are so convinced of this so-called "love" that they believe it is their own fault until they die.
04
Fragile middle-class families
The living conditions of middle-class families are so good, shouldn't life be easy?
In fact, the opposite is often true, and the middle-class seeks to make class leaps and bounds through effort, action, and sacrifice.
The children who grew up in the small town studied hard all the way, looked for jobs, saved money for loans, bought school district houses, and chicken babies...... After that, continue to study hard for a new round of hard work, change jobs or get promoted...... Reach the next goal, and so on and so forth, without stopping.
They are accustomed to sacrificing in exchange for "benefits" and firmly believe that "if you don't succeed, you don't work hard enough".
In his book We Have Never Been Middle Class, the Israeli anthropologist Haudus Weiss argues that the middle class is inherently an unstable identity, and that behind that identity is "a lingering sense of insecurity, liabilities, and forced overwork." ”
Therefore, the status of the middle class is shaky, and there is often anxiety that if you don't run hard, you will fall behind.
Earlier, there was capital to inherit, but now the middle-class road is becoming more and more fragile, they need to spend a lot of money to whitewash the façade, there is almost no family business to inherit, and the transmission of middle-class identity is almost only a way out for chicken babies.
What is it that destroys the immature life? Is there domestic violence? Is there pressure to go to school?
No, it reflects the almost demonized anxiety of middle-class families, and in order to maintain so-called decency, each family member carries the weight of "ten thousand arrows through the heart".
Everyone knows it's not happy and suffocating, but the victim isn't just that one.
The father who was advancing step by step back then couldn't empathize with his child, but when he was lying in the ward in his later years, he would also look forward to his son's visit.
In the cage woven by her husband, her mother has long lost the joy of being a wife and mother, she can't protect anyone, and if she doesn't collapse, she has already exhausted all her strength.
And the younger brother Youjun, the genius boy who made his parents proud, witnessed the whole process of adults devouring his brother's life, and there was not a day when he was not terrified. The person who covers his ears and shouts desperately "I'm okay, I'm not affected" is not a survivor, but someone who suffers in this world in place of another child.
This scar will not disappear over time, but will accompany every member of the family until the end of life.
Not all viewers were born into middle-class families, but many viewers cried in the theater, and so did I, because it was a bloody mirror that pierced our once fragile and porous hidden world, which was too stinging.
Text/Sister Shan, Editor/Kelp
The picture comes from the Internet, and the copyright belongs to the original author