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Last year, a Taiwanese drama in collaboration with Netflix - " Your Child Is Not Your Child ", became a hit in the circle of friends.
Dressed in the guise of science fiction, the play explores the parent-child relationship between in the name of love and harming the child invisible in the context of East Asian Confucian culture.
We speak the same language as Taiwan, are nourished by the same culture, and face similar social problems. But their TV series focus on social ills and reveal the bloody reality; this is something we find difficult to achieve.
Recently, a new drama co-operated by Taiwan Public Television Station and HBO was launched, once again focusing on sensitive restricted topics -
" The Distance Between Us and Evil "
What is it about?
A chain reaction caused by an indiscriminate killing incident.
The so-called "indiscriminate homicide" refers to: premeditated murders, randomly selected crime targets, and the motive is generally to retaliate against society.
In the play, Li Xiaoming opened fire at random in the theater, killing 9 people and injuring 21 others.
The murderer deserves to be imprisoned.
The murderer’s family and the victim’s family were thrown into endless hell.
Li Xiaoming's sister, renamed Li Dazhi, lives cautiously in the shadow of the murderer's family.
She was once prone to depression , and eventually left her parents to live alone, and was recommended by her teacher to intern at Taste News Channel.
Li Dazhi’s boss is Song Qiaoan (Alyssa Chily), a resolute and powerful woman. She has a bad temper, outstanding work ability, and lives in an ultra-high-pressure work environment.
But she actually just used her career life to numb her nerves, because her son was killed in the Li Xiaoming shooting two years ago. Suffering from the pain of losing her son, her family life has become a mess: she has many conflicts with her husband and has an estranged relationship with her daughter.
Almost everyone is looking forward to Li Xiaoming's early execution, except for one person - his defense lawyer Wang She (played by Wu Kangren).
He is not a person who holds a high defense fee, talks like a lotus flower, and confuses right and wrong. On the contrary, he took a longer-term view: wanted to use this to discover the motives of the murderer, so as to prevent such cases from happening.
Of course, the concept of staring into the abyss is not understood by most people. The victim’s family was so excited that they threw feces at him, and his wife also stood on the opposite side.
The murderer’s family, the victim’s family, and the defense lawyer formed three forces. They were related to and restrained each other, and together they formed an airtight web of humanity.
Exposing "indiscriminate murders" is only the director's first intention. Cases like
happen in life, but is often regarded as curiosity news by the public, and then is gradually ignored. The second intention of
is to insert more social issues into this web.
For example: Are the family members of prisoners guilty?
From a judicial perspective, there should not be consecutive crimes; but from a rational perspective, the family members of the prisoners have to bear the pressure and condemnation from all parties.
Because of his brother's case, Li Dazhi started a new life incognito. She and her parents knelt in front of the victim's mourning hall and murmured to herself: "I really have no choice. There are so many people. How can we apologize and compensate?"
Another example: Psychiatric appraisal of the case verdict How big is the impact?
Due to the mental patient's lack of understanding of his own behavior, he can be partially or fully exempt from the criminal harm caused by himself. However, we cannot avoid the occurrence of distortions in identification and malicious evasion of punishment.
Even if the murderer is really a mental patient, it is difficult to understand and forgive from the perspective of the victim's family. As Song Qiaoan’s husband said: “I am not God, I am not that great."
Another example: How should society and the public treat mental patients?
A YouTube video was borrowed from the play to show the public's various reactions to "social welfare institutions being built in the community". Everyone expressed their opposition and resistance, thinking that it was a violation of normalcy. People's safety is potentially dangerous. It is recommended that they all go to the mountains to live in seclusion.
These social issues are the contradiction between justice and reason. They are sensitive and sharp but are often ignored. Most of the cases in the drama are adapted from real events. You can see "Taipei Jiji". The shadow of social news such as "Random Murder Case" and "Lesheng Nursing Home Controversy".
Lu Shiyuan, the screenwriter of "The Distance between Us and Evil", has done a lot of field research and interviewed human rights lawyers, criminal psychology professors, and psychiatric experts. She and others even observed two death penalty trials. She said:
"I (am) a layman. I can't even tell the difference between the prefectural prosecutor and the prefectural court, so I have to go around... I'm not A talented screenwriter, romance doesn't appeal to me. The excitement of real people and real events makes me see the world in a different way.
The last level of intention directly pointed to the question: How far are we from evil?
Evil does not only refer to Li Xiaoming who committed heinous crimes.
It also includes the banal evil of everyone, Each of us may be involved in evil.
In the play, except for Li Xiaoming, who is defined as evil by the law, everyone else is close to "evil" consciously or unconsciously.
When Song Qiaoan went against the original intention of the news, he changed the news headlines in order to win. When more attention is paid;
When everyone is busy labeling and drawing clear lines between "murderers" and "mental patients"; when people who eat melon think they are on the side of justice and angrily insult and speak out on social media...
We are not far away from evil.
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