I like this "The Act" very much. After watching the last episode, it's a special bonus.
In the front, I explained how the mother Dee Dee controlled her daughter Gypsy, and how Gypsy discovered the lie and escaped from the mother's control step by step. It seems that throughout the story, the mother is always the abuser, the tragedy maker, and Gypsy is always the battered, weak side. The audience's perception is relatively simple, that is, Gypsy is pitiful, Dee Dee is hateful.
But in the final episode, Gypsy deliberately lies and pretends to be innocent, making this character who has always been vulnerable suddenly become terrifying.
In fact, in the process of escaping with Nick, Gypsy has gradually presented a fact: Gypsy can't do without his mother, and has become very similar to his mother.
Gypsy was used to pretending to be sick, stealing, taking medication, and even getting Nick to follow him a few times. When Nick refused, she showed a controlling desire of "you love me, you should be in sync with me".
The family of origin shapes the individual, and daughters will eventually become very similar to their mothers.
Although the film is an extreme case, in life, it is not uncommon for parents to control their children and children to depend on their parents. Both parties are a manifestation of no "weaning".
Children are constantly being worked for and interfered with, and they lack independent personality. On the mother side, behind the constant selfless giving and unconditional giving is a desire for power. When love becomes a form of control, the extreme is sadistic tendencies.
Psychoanalysis believes that the abuser and the abused are dependent on each other and have a symbiotic relationship.
An abuser's sense of power comes from dominating the other, just as Dee Dee's love for Gypsy comes from her total dominance. When Gypsy is weaker, the mother feels more empowered. Once the daughter shows "disobedience", the mother will use various means to control it: violence, deception, showing weakness, "love". Love here is the abuser's emotion for the abuser, not real love.
Everything the abuser does is to keep the abuser from leaving her.
And Gypsy's masochistic impulse comes from the individual's sense of loneliness and powerlessness. Because of the illness, she can only survive by relying on her mother, and she also gets a great sense of security from her mother. When she finds out that her mother is lying, her ego stands up to it. But when she really broke away from her mother, the problem reappeared. She was insecure and always panicked when she faced the outside world alone. So she longed for someone stronger than herself to surrender, so she was dissatisfied with Nick's submissiveness.
The essence of the masochistic impulse is insecurity, and a powerful spiritual protection is obtained by abandoning the self and surrendering to authority.
When Mel goes to visit Gypsy in prison, she asks for Mel to be her mother. This is actually her giving up self-growth and longing to return to her mother's arms.
Growth means the pain of breaking out of the cocoon. Gypsy longs for absolute security, escaping growth, escaping from self, escaping from asking "who am I", escaping from taking responsibility for his own destiny...
Mel addresses the source of Gypsy's problems: "You don't always have to be what she's set you to be, sometimes the only way out is through the flames."
In fact, this is not the first time that this sentence has appeared in the play.
When Dee Dee was young, her mother was seriously ill in a hospital bed, begging her not to leave, and Dee Dee also said this to her mother.
She hated her mother, sent her to jail and took her daughter, and finally let her die. These experiences made her afraid of losing, so she controlled her daughter even more frantically... Eventually she became the one who was hated by her daughter, just like her own mother.
When the original strong party becomes weak, when the weak party becomes strong in a new relationship, the story seems to be hinting at a terrible fact: the tragedy will not end, because you will eventually become like your mother.
There is one shot that is intriguing. Before Gypsy's grandmother died, Dee Dee took little Gypsy to lie on the bed and talked to the feeble grandmother. Then let her die in agony.
And before Dee Dee died, the same shot was given. This time, Dee Dee is the limp character lying on the right side.
Tragedy is in reincarnation, how to break this curse? That is walking through the flames on your own.
Discover yourself, experience growth, and gain true freedom.
This is a required course for Gypsy, and a required course for each of us.
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