Big sister asked Qingshan Jun: Young man, why do I appear in this world?
Aoyama gave no answer until she disappeared. He knew why, but there was no point in explaining it. In front of him is another “research topic” – when Big sister will be able to return.
From a lot of people cry “don’t take the children to see”, we can see that the big sister of our society is not afraid of coming back in the short term, not only that, our children’s big sister is afraid of difficult to appear, and to understand who the big sister is, and how to return. It starts with cracking Penguin Highway’s triple metaphor.
Number one: growth
Chekov famously said that the gun that appears in the first act must be fired in the third. If the author repeats an image, it must have a symbol. In the first third of the film, three images are repeated: teeth, breasts and exploration. In my opinion, they represent three essential elements of a child’s development: frustration education, gender awareness, and curiosity about the world.
The young Aoyama must face all three in order to have the mental foundation to grow into a man, which is why his growth plan appears throughout the film.
This is easy to understand, but it is not acceptable for most Chinese people.
Number two: Shattered
Go through the simplest level of imagery and enter the next level, which is represented by the sea, the XX beast (the one who eats penguins, but forgets its name when it comes out) and the penguin. From this level, different people have different understandings. What I said only represents my own views. I am looking forward to communication.
The sea had better understand, as the film makes clear, that it represents another world. But which world is it? Personally, I think it is the world of innocence, representing the consciousness of children. It is the world of “grown-ups won’t believe” (the original word). And it has no contact with the real world, even a little conflict. As the child grows up, the childlike world is hidden in a struggle (the sea changes in size) (the fairyland in the dense forest) until it dies.
Penguins, I see them as childish pleasures. Throwing objects and turning into penguins is a very childish thing to say, and it’s what we used to do when we were kids. My little niece would point to the ground and say, “If this were a sea, we were swimming.” But why would childish happiness destroy the “sea” representing the childlike innocence of the world? Because the child is growing up, Aoyama won’t let Big Sister summon the penguins for a simple reason — Big sister would be hurt. This hurt comes from the real (adult) world, which laughs at us every time we show a little naivety. Every exposed penguin takes away a little of its innocence.
XX beast, eat penguin, eat childish happiness is what? Not the malice of others, but the fear of our hearts. We are afraid of being made fun of childish; afraid of innocence is laughed at, simple as that.
So when we grew up, the penguins, the monsters, and the sea were gone. But here the film left a small door, our innocence may never come back, but naive happiness still has a chance to find.
What does that mean? Or what does the return of penguins mean?
The third is regression
Before the final interpretation of Big Sister, I think it is necessary to interpret an easily overlooked but important image — Aoyama’s father’s bag. At the cafe, Aoyama’s father used a cloth bag as a metaphor for the world. This cloth bag echoes the mess created by the breakup of the tail sea.
If the price of growth is that the childlike innocence world represented by the sea is bound to break, then it will bring chaos to the real world. For the great change (growth) of one’s inner world is also the reconstruction of the real world.
And finally, big sister, the nonexistent image that runs through.
As a product of both childishness (throwing things into a penguin) and maturity (boobs), she is clearly a guide, able both to enter a child’s world and to teach him to understand it. She is our first aspiration, the first adult friend, the first growth teacher. As happy as first love, as sweet as first kiss
But she is usually not a specific person, can be parents, teachers, classmates, and even society. A society with an affinity for children is fortunate that many people can be big sisters to their children. In a society that is not friendly to children, everything is off limits. You can’t talk about this, you can’t talk about that.
So many Chinese fear there is no big sister, there is no big sister’s return. “Penguin Way” left hints that penguins will return, and big sister and penguin are symbiotic, then big sister will return, of course, she came back even in a different form.
What is regression?
The Penguin Trail is the route of a penguin’s migration, which means it’s over and over again, and each encounter is different. Represents the naive penguin, how can return, there are two ways – soul mate and inheritance.
Adults return to childishness only in two situations: in the face of love and children. The former is an individual attribute, while the latter is a social attribute. Frankly, as people who don’t have a big sister, it’s hard to get her back, but we can be big sisters to our kids. Tenderness, patience, company and urging, how nice
