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发表于 2008-1-18 16:27
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some comments
After watching Please Vote for Me, the first thing I did was go online and make sure that this was a true documentary, and not a clever mockumentary. Apparently, everything you see and hear in this film is completely legit, which is a truly head-spinning prospect. It centers on a group of third-grade students in present-day China who undergo a simple social experiment -- a democratic election in their classroom to determine who will become the classroom monitor. Instead of paying attention to this project with half an eye or treating it with easy sarcasm, as you would expect most American students to do, these Chinese students throw themselves into the election body and soul, applying to it what could almost be called life and death stakes. All seemingly without the guidance of teachers, they cook up plots to topple competing candidates, enlist fellow students as political consultants, modify their behavior around potential rivals and supporters in order to make things go their way, and exploit vulnerabilities in their opponents that you can scarcely believe a third-grader would consider.
The election is quickly boiled down to three students: a tough and skinny boy, Luo Lei, with a reputation as a classroom leader and bully; another boy, Cheng Cheng, who is somewhat pudgy and aggressively political in nature, seems to plan out every step he takes, and is constantly gauging his own support, and then there's a third candidate, a shy but ambitious little girl named Xiafei. Each of the children are presumably products of China's one-child policy, and throughout the film we see their parents, not so much doting on them as monitoring their progress as closely as a parole officer might monitor a recently released inmate. Only Xiafei seems to feel the intense pressure she's under, and at one point in the film she breaks down crying in the middle of class and is escorted out. One of her rival candidates will eventually use this outburst against her during a debate, asking aloud how she could possibly be the right person to lead a classroom of students if she's not strong enough to keep her tears bottled up.
The campaigning spirit of the students is often negative, in fact, and they are continuously trying to generate a mob atmosphere that will ride their opponent out of town on a rail, so to speak. At one point, Cheng Cheng resorts to making public, personal appeals to students who have been allegedly beat up by the school bully in order to chop his legs off. You can easily imagine these candidates, twenty years down the line, putting out the most insidious campaign ads in real campaigns and having no qualms about it whatsoever. In fact, you have to wonder if Chinese censors might not approve of Please Vote for Me -- the director, Weijun Chen, seems to have found his financing in South Africa -- since it could be construed as casting the democratic process in a negative light. Turning people against each other and letting them tear each other apart for raw personal gain is corrupting to the spirit and to the community, you can imagine them saying, and after watching this film, you might agree with them.
Perhaps the most astonishing moment in Please Vote for Me comes when -- and I'm not making this up -- Cheng Cheng is conducting some informal polling among the student body and decides to excuse himself after a fellow student sheepishly expresses support for him. He then instructs one of his cronies to go back and privately query that student again, to see if she was only expressing support because she was intimidated by his presence. Are you kidding me? We're talking about seven and eight year-olds here. Whether or not you feel there's a moral deficit on display in this film, it will still open your eyes to what young children are capable of, intellectually, if their brains aren't turned to mush by an entertainment-saturated culture and a school system like ours, that practically promotes idiocy with unqualified and unmotivated teachers preparing lesson plans that teach nothing, require nothing from the students, and do nothing to promote independent or creative thinking. If you ever had a doubt about whether there was really an educational crisis in America, then take the time to see Please Vote for Me.
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I caught the last 20 minutes or so of this doc on PBS last night, and I just had to come online today to learn more about it. I agree with everything Ryan said about the movie and look forward to seeing the beginning that I missed. The kids were amazing - the way the parents coached them and the way the kids accepted it. And the classroom methods - with the rote memorization and recitation. Like Ryan, I found myself thinking: Dag, these kids are so much more "on it" than similar-age kids in the U.S.
One thing that really struck me about the film is the "anything goes" attitude of the teacher. There was - at least there seemed to be - no interference on her part and I found myself thing, Is that bad or good? When Luo Lei did his end run just before the vote - essentially bribing the entire classroom with gifts - my American sensibilities wanted to scream: "That's not fair! Why isn't the teacher stopping this?" But then I thought: Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world. Are we in the US doing our kids any favors by trying to pretend that the world IS fair? Corruption is a big part of government - let's face it, here as well as in China. Maybe it isn't so bad for the kids to have to learn that at a young age. And maybe it's time for parents and teachers and administrators to stop interfering to much in kids' lives, trying to make everything perfect and happy for them.
An absolutely fascinating doc - made me come away thinking the Chinese are going to rule the world ... if they aren't already. |
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