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Chapter 364: Puppetry and Ideological Work II
Lu Cheng ignored her. She was completely focused on the performance itself.
Very exquisitely made puppet characters appeared on the stage. Unlike the puppet shows she had seen before, this puppet show had no lyrics, only narration. Dao Bai spoke in "Newspeak", and after several weeks of intensive training in Mandarin, Lu Cheng could roughly understand it.
At the beginning, it was a village with beautiful mountains and clear waters, where the people lived a stable and peaceful life. Farmers farmed the land, blacksmiths forged iron to make agricultural tools, and shops sold goods. A peaceful atmosphere.
Below is a casual conversation between several puppet characters about farming and life, which made the students below feel very friendly. Then came the role of a young teacher. This teacher obviously has something to do with the shop owner's daughter. The two puppet characters each sang a long verse of love and concubine love. Then, a little unexpectedly, the scholar began to talk to the peasants about government affairs: the imperial court's defeat in Liaodong, the rebellion in Shaanxi, the Tatars entering the customs, raping and plundering the city in Beizhili, committing all kinds of evil, the soldiers reaching the walls of the capital, the imperial court fearing the enemy Like a tiger, dare not fight
All this is very new to the students, because these things are only vaguely mentioned at home - only those who are literate and willing to subscribe to Lingao Times know about it. Now that there is such a detailed explanation, everyone listens very carefully. Many people feel sad when they hear the tragic situation of the people who have been affected by war and natural disasters.
Wu Mu carefully observed the expressions of the audience, thinking that if there was any play in another time and space that recited the news reports in the newspaper in such a long way, I am afraid the audience would have shouted "refund". After all, it’s a blank piece of paper that’s easy to draw on. Zhao Manxiongski frowned: The publicity effect is good, but this current news can arouse such great interest from the audience, which fully shows that the publicity department is not doing enough.
The more than ten minutes of current affairs news broadcast was over, and the first act was over. A few minutes later came the second act. Accompanied by a sneaky and eerie soundtrack, the curtain opens to reveal the scenery of the county government office. The county magistrates, masters and government officials are discussing how to collect the extra Liao wages this year and how to get more benefits for themselves from the extra Liao wages.
Not only are the facial expressions of the puppets of several characters either vicious or ugly, but the dialogues are also extremely vicious, such as "A poor man can squeeze out three ounces of oil even if he is a pebble", "How can we eat meat if we don't kill the poor man", "Fools are just bitches" , I have to be beaten hard before I obey." All the students looked silent and angry. Wu Mu knew that everyone was getting into the fun.
Even someone like Wu Mu who doesn't care about historical details knows that this scene is different from the real scene, but it doesn't matter. To arouse the hatred of the masses, a little exaggeration and concentration are necessary.
Then there is the discussion of various poisonous schemes to exploit the people. The time traveler has all kinds of materials in his hands, no matter which time and space they are in, they are all condensed and gathered. The students below were all gnashing their teeth.
The third act begins. The government officials entered the village and began to collect grain and taxes. They smashed, looted, and bullied men and women. They even took away the widow's last chicken and refused to let it go. When the widow cried out to herself, When I didn't have any, I started to pick up the straw on the roof of the house and sell it.
"They even demolished the house with rotten straw so that no one can live there. It's really unscrupulous." Someone was muttering. Someone was sobbing quietly.
Obviously the screenwriter didn't want the people to place hatred only on grassroots cadres such as county magistrates and government officials, so as not to encourage their thinking mode of "the emperor is a sage, and it's all the crooked-mouthed monks below who have corrupted the scriptures", so there was another A eunuch riding a horse was summoned. As soon as the eunuch arrived, he read out the imperial edict and said that he would conduct a beauty pageant for the emperor.
Then there is the story of robbing women everywhere, and after the women are snatched, there is a plot of eunuchs and local officials and gentry secretly dividing the women together, and there is even a plot of eunuchs taking concubines. It is well known that eunuchs do not have that function. I heard that eunuchs who marry wives do not have to take concubines. The students present looked very angry, especially the male students.
The next scene of the village changed from beautiful scenery to a lifeless one. Houses were destroyed and collapsed everywhere, and there was even a hanging puppet hanging on the set of a big tree. The music became sombre. The puppets shown in the first act are now dressed in rags to indicate their poverty. When the owner of the only shop was panicking, another government official came and asked him to "become a comprador", so another tragedy happened.
Just as the plot progressed to the point where the shop owner committed suicide due to bankruptcy, his son was kidnapped and his whereabouts were unknown, and his daughter was raped and sold to a brothel, Yao Yulan suddenly heard Lu Cheng beside her sobbing softly, and looked back. , Lu Cheng put the handkerchief in his mouth, suppressing his cry, his face was already covered with tears.
Yao Yulan knew that this plot aroused her sadness, so she comforted her and said, "Stop crying, this is a show."
Lu Cheng shook his head and suppressed the cry in his throat - Yao Yulan couldn't understand it. She didn't know what it was like for her whole family to wander on the road and starve; she didn't know that her relatives were dying of illness but they couldn't even eat porridge. I don’t know the feeling of not being there; I don’t know the fear and despair of losing everything and embarking on an unknown journey.
She had gradually forgotten these feelings in the past, and sometimes deliberately did not think about them, but this time they were all brought back by the play.
"Oh, you are really -" Yao Yulan was just about to say that she was too sentimental, but she looked around and saw a few people sobbing. Some people had tears in their eyes even though they were not crying.
"Stop crying and enjoy the show." Yao Yulan comforted her. She sympathized with the characters in the play and her classmates, but her sympathy was general, and it was different from what most people felt.
Then the scholar went to Fucheng to complain, was kicked out, and then was framed. Finally, the scholar led the blacksmith in the village to rise up, beat away the government officials, killed the book office, and rescued his lover from the brothel. At the end of the first half, although the village was in tatters, it began to regain its vitality. The displaced people came back to rebuild their homes. The scholar and his lover finally got married. The lighting that symbolized the sun illuminated the stage extremely brightly.
Wu Mu was so surprised that he could hardly close his mouth. The level of this puppet show was so high. The plot was a bit patchwork, but the puppet's movements, the dialogue and the stunts used were all beyond his expectation - in Wu Mu's In concept, puppet shows are just for children. I didn’t expect to be able to perform such a complicated plot
Taking advantage of the light returning in the room, he observed the students and found that many of them had cried just now - the effect was really good. Most of the girls team burst into tears. There were only two people who didn't cry. One was Yao Yulan, who looked quite embarrassed because she couldn't express sadness and was out of tune with the people around her. The other one was Yang Cao, completely expressionless.
Even such powerful tear gas was ineffective. Is there really something wrong with this Yangcao? Wu Mu couldn't help but raise a big question mark in his heart.
At the beginning of the second half, the village, which had restored peace and harmony, looked prosperous and peaceful. The village has its own weapons - five puppet villagers, led by the blacksmith, are showing off their swords and guns on the curtain with great enthusiasm. At this moment, a warning was sent, and the officers and soldiers arrived. Everyone sounded the alarm and fought against the enemy together, and the officers and soldiers were quickly defeated. There was a joy of victory.
What follows is a scene in which the government, seeing that it was impossible to fight, plotted to recruit troops. Then there was a heated debate in the village over whether to accept the recruitment. The blacksmith and the scholar insisted on "fighting to the end", but the villagers who had regained their strength believed that "you cannot violate the king's law and live in fear all your life."
The argument was so intense that even Wu Mu looked fascinated. At this critical juncture, government spies who had infiltrated the country were lobbying the villagers everywhere, promising to "let bygones be bygones" and "no conscription for three years." The villagers began to think. Finally, under the instigation of spies, the villagers arrested all the scholars and blacksmiths who presided over the riot and tied them to the government.
The scene in which several leading figures were captured by the villagers and sent to the government caused a commotion among the audience below: "What is this?", "Ungrateful", "We are surrendering now, and we are not afraid of the government settling accounts later." The students betrayed the revolution to the masses. Showing distress.
Then there was another courtroom scene with fierce words from both sides. Wu Mu felt that this scene, from the lines to the plot, was similar to the reactionary interrogation in the revolutionary movies he had watched when he was a child. It even included the words "We can't kill them all."
The next scene showed the scholars, blacksmiths and others being pushed to the execution ground and beheaded. There was a scholar among them who said righteously like a member of the Communist Party in the movie: "Your doom is coming. The fire of retribution is at the end of the world."
After the leader was executed, the government officers and soldiers returned to the village. The villagers who betrayed the leader of the riot also did not end well, and received intensified revenge. The village has returned to a desolate and gloomy scene, with many deserted graves, corpses and more people hanging from trees on the set.
In the last scene, the blacksmith's son and the scholar's wife were seen off by several people and fled to the south, where he was going to find "the hero who saved the country and the people." So the curtain ended with the song "Send you off to the roadside".
When the light came back on, the audience was still stunned - such a gloomy ending was different from the plays they had seen. Traditional dramas always have a bright ending, either "the number one scholar after studying hard" or "the husband and wife both succeed" Return home." Although the ending now gives some expectations, it is too miserable and many people feel dissatisfied. Some even said loudly: "Good people shouldn't end up like this."
