You all sing about getting together, but I want to persuade you to separate

Sigurd 2022-04-09 09:01:09

The film exposes a Chinese-style symbiotic relationship between mother and child.

Symbiosis (mutualism) means that two organisms live together, and if they are separated from each other, either or one of them cannot survive.

Between mother and child, it is a community connected by the umbilical cord at first, which is a natural state of mother and child symbiosis. Babies before six months are still in the mother-child symbiosis phase, and then enter the separation and individuation phase. According to normal development, by the age of three, a child initially has an individualized self.

The child has realized that he and his mother are two people, they have self-awareness, and then they can enter the Oedipus period with the theme of competition with their own unique personality.

After completing the transition from symbiosis to separation, the child becomes a truly independent individual and truly understands " I am me, you are you ".

However, what is not uncommon in society is the abnormal symbiotic relationship between mother and child: a child who already has a sense of independence is like being stuck in the spider web woven by his mother, trying to break free from the web that binds him, while relying on the sense of security brought by the spider web. .

Although their biological age is already an adult, their mental age is still like a baby, not growing up, like a giant baby.

Once the child wants to "resist" like Bao Baobao, then the mother will feel intolerable and even unable to understand - the child is a part of her body, and her love for him even surpasses her own love... Why does he always Thinking of "betrayal"?

However, such mothers may not know that good love should have a sense of boundaries, including maternal love.

In the morbid symbiosis, the mother who takes care of the child, eats, and asks for warmth is actually the one who is more inseparable from the other.

The child becomes the whole meaning of her life. When the child wants to be separated from her physically and psychologically, it means that the value of her existence has been lost.

Such mothers do not realize that all the most important problems in their children may be because of this suffocating love.

In the opening scene of "Baby Bao", the husband doesn't even have the time to sit down and accompany his wife to have breakfast, and there is never a scene where the father interacts with Bao Baobao. There is a famous formula:

Absent father + anxious mother = problem child.

A happy family is similar in that the three roles of father, mother and child in the family are both independent and interdependent, forming a stable "equilateral triangle".

However, the family model with Chinese characteristics is the absence of the "father" corner, so the equilateral triangle is out of balance, and the connection between "mother and son" is closer, but there is not much love energy flowing between "husband and wife" and "father and son" .

This also caused the wife to take Bao Baobao as her only emotional solace and poured all her love into it.

If you want to give your children a healthy and happy family, the roles of husband and father are bound to return to the family and take on more responsibilities.

In fact, the father also has a crucial role, which is to "take the child away from the mother", so that the child can be separated from the symbiosis, have more identification with the father, and grow into an independent person.

At the end of the short film, my mother woke up from a dream and was alone in the room. At this time, the father forcefully pushed his son into the room to facilitate a reconciliation between mother and son. In the end, Mom finally tried to let go.

For example, a mother is like a crocodile guarding her cub. In order to protect her child, she holds the child in her mouth and hides it in her fangs.

The fangs cut off the crisis-ridden outside world, but a little carelessness can hurt the child.

At this time, what the father has to do is to insert it, like a stick in the mouth of the crocodile, so as to prevent this motherly love from swallowing the child.

After all, true love points to separation, only symbiotic love points to engulfment.

(Written by: Pei Xuan)

View more about Bao reviews

Extended Reading
  • Mallory 2022-04-06 09:01:07

    There are still quite a few stereotypes about Chinese Americans in North America (and their white counterparts)...

  • Jude 2022-04-06 08:01:01

    The most amazing accompanying short film in recent years has a certain relationship with the setting of the story in Toronto. Baozi = baby son, although this kind of lyricism is very straightforward, but in immigrant families, the selfish and endless love of Chinese parents for their children, as well as the confusion and struggle of children in the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, are all shown to be gentle and touching , and really powerful.

Top cast