Dogtown, a film about human nature, is written by the famous director Russ von Teal. Grace, a young and beautiful woman, flees to a remote and isolated town. She had a life-threatening secret that could not be leaked out, or she would be in big trouble. However, the townspeople soon learned her secret, and in order to continue to stay in the town, and in order to let the townspeople continue to help her keep the secret, Grace was forced to agree to all kinds of unreasonable and even obscene demands of the townspeople. In the end, the men who had to make inches took turns to behave more out of line with her.
A remote, isolated rural town called Dogville, is poor and backward, almost isolated from the world, and very few outsiders come in. One day, a young and beautiful young girl Grace accidentally broke into this town, she was helpless, hungry and cold. Tom, the writer of this town, was suddenly attracted by Grace's beauty. He volunteered and pleaded with the townspeople to take Grace in.
In exchange, Grace promised to help the townspeople do farm work and housework in exchange for supplies and shelter. Grace's beauty amazed everyone in the town, with a delicate face, a slim figure, and skin like snow. The townspeople had never seen such a beautiful woman, and in comparison, the appearance of the small-town women suddenly felt much darker.
While working in the town, Grace was hardworking, competent, and empathetic, and the townspeople began to accept Grace, while also feeling a little guilty and grateful for letting her do too much chores.
Grace is grateful that she has come to a paradise where people are simple, hospitable, and kind, and she intends to end up here.
Soon, a wanted notice suddenly appeared in the town, and the townspeople looked at it and found that Grace was actually the person the police wanted to arrest. However, in the face of the investigation, the whole town said that they had not seen Grace. The police questioned to no avail and left the town.
After this, the mentality of the townspeople has changed subtly, they think they are taking Grace at great risk, so Grace should pay more.
At first, the townspeople sent more heavy work and chores to Grace, and without a trace of guilt or courtesy, Grace accepted.
Then, with the bold townspeople, they began to sneak into Grace's thighs, and Grace compromised, and she did not dare to speak up.
Later, a townsman, Chuck, seeing Grace's forbearance, breaks into her room and defiles her body as a threat to expose her identity.
In the end, the men of the town imitate Chuck's behavior, and Grace is trapped in a place of doom. What is even more infuriating is that the women in the town believe that all this is because of Grace's seduction, which seems to be good-looking and is Grace's original sin.
The film "Dogtown" is undoubtedly a profound work that tests the lower limits of human nature. I have been thinking about why when Grace first came to town, the townspeople were polite to her, but as soon as they learned Grace's "secret", they immediately began to do evil.
Is it because they caught Grace's "soft underbelly"? To understand this question, we must first start with the narrative background of the film.
The film freezes the narrative in a remote and isolated town, isolated from the rest of the world, and the influence of the spirit of the rule of law is minimal. The townspeople here have their own set of living customs, and for decisions on major events, they will gather directly in front of the church, vote to decide, and the minority obeys the majority. Therefore, we can think that this closed town is actually an "extralegal place", and the townspeople rely on a vague sense of morality to deal with people.
So, purely by the moral bondage in the heart, is human nature black or white? The film clearly gives a desperate answer.
The townspeople test Grace's bottom line little by little, and finally treat Grace as a slave to vent her desires.
The "evil" of the townspeople has two outrageous points:
One is that they believe that this is the "reward" that grace deserves to be taken in, and without their protection, Grace would have been arrested long ago.
The second is that they think that the "evil" they have done to Grace is not evil, because everyone does this, the three of them become a crowd, and the group behavior dilutes the individual's guilt.
"Dogtown" is a movie about human nature. The results of the experiment were frustrating: the depths of human nature were dirty, far beyond our imagination.
Many people are not good, they are just losers who have no conditions to do evil.
The townspeople of Dogville, exactly. They are poor and backward, poor and white, mediocre in appearance, uninteresting, and have no temptation to attract each other, and they have no motive to do evil. After the beautiful Grace broke into the town, the townspeople felt the temptation, but they were quite restrained at first, because they knew that once they offended Grace, they broke the law, which meant punishment. When they learned that Grace was a wanted criminal, the fire of desire was immediately ignited, because the townspeople began to know that even if Grace was violated, she did not dare to speak up, so there was no need to worry about being punished after committing evil to her.
When there is no consequence for evil, the true face of some people is immediately revealed.
We cannot deny that there is still a lot of human brilliance in this world. But on the other hand, there is inevitably an element of "evil" in human nature, which is the truth told by the 178-minute "Dogtown".
Zhang Ailing also once said that I believe in people, but I never believe in human nature.
From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the root cause of the evil of human nature is desire.
David Bath's book The Evolution of Desire tells us that human beings have two basic desires: survival and reproduction, which are instructions deeply rooted in the human genetic chain.
Human instinct always prioritizes satisfying one's own survival, then the survival of the family, and then the survival of the family. In ancient times of extreme famine, why did there be a tragedy of "people eating people"? Because ensuring one's own survival is the highest command issued by desire. For the sake of their own survival and reproduction, people will do whatever it takes in extreme circumstances.
When starving to death, human nature and wolf nature may not be much different, and filling a stomach is obviously more urgent than maintaining kindness.
So why do most people in modern civilized societies look good, or at least not do evil?
That's because the serious consequences of evil are unbearable: once they break the law, they can go to prison for years, or they can exchange their lives for their lives.
Most people don't do evil not because they are good, but because they are afraid of punishment. The real test of a person's goodness is to see if he still adheres to the bottom line of human nature without bearing the consequences. In "Dogtown", the special identity of the heroine Grace (fugitive) is a special situation set by the director, and the townspeople believe that there is no consequence for "evil" of Grace. Faced with such a situation, the result is very cold, no one in dog town can continue to be kind, they have indulged their own fire of desire, become a vicious-looking perpetrator, even the town's noble writer Tom, finally tear off the mask of hypocrisy due to selfish desires, asking for a relationship with Grace. The reason is also very grandiose: everyone else can, so I want it too.
Only the law can keep the wolf of human nature in a cage.
Never overestimate human nature, never underestimate desire.
Similar to "Dogtown" is Akira Kurosawa's famous novel "Rashomon", which also gives us a full appreciation of what is the two sides of human nature. Samurai, samurai wives, robbers, and woodcutters, in order to cover up their selfish desires, all four people made up lies and told 4 completely different versions of "what happened". Once again, a simple truth is confirmed: where there is desire, there is a lie. However, at the end of the story, there is still a glorious side of humanity: the once greedy woodcutter, who saw an abandoned baby on the side of the road, picked up the baby and walked to his own door, where he would give the child a home.
The question of the right and wrong of human nature, good and evil, may be a subject that will always be controversial. Of course, we believe that although there are two sides to human nature, with the progress of society, it is moving towards the glorious side.