History teaches us valuable lessons. When we watch historical movies and dramas, we can look back upon the past, realize what went wrong at that time, and learn not to repeat the same mistakes our ancestors made. In that sense, history reflects the present and illuminates the right path to the future.
The 2018 Chinese television series “Ever Night” enables us to perceive the nature of problems we are now facing by reference to historical events. Set in the Tang Dynasty, this award-winning drama powerfully indicts contemporary society by portraying a world where everything is divided by light and darkness, right and wrong, or strict opposites of true and false. In such a society, self-righteousness is prevalent, vengeance is rampant, and the elimination of those who are different is a matter of daily occurrence.
In the drama, people believe that they are orthodox and civilized, and others are heretics, barbarians or demons. In ancient times, the Chinese people thought of their country as the center of the world, and their neighboring countries as peripherals. Indeed, they called mainland China “Central Plain” and other countries “Barbarian Sectors.”
Many people in the show hail “Guangming (bright light)” and condemn “darkness.” Those who think they belong to “light” believe a dubious prophecy that the son of Hades will come into the world, and if so, eternal night will follow, turning the world to complete darkness.
Therefore, Wei Guangming, the grand priest of light from the Xiling Immortal Shrines, masterminds the massacre in the Tang Dynasty led by General Xia Hou under the excuse of eliminating the son of Hades, the reincarnation of darkness or eternal night. Ironically, General Xia Hou himself is a member of the demon sect who secretly disguises his identity.
Ning Que, the protagonist of “Ever Night,” is the only child who has escaped the massacre. While running away, he finds a baby girl in the cradle among slaughtered corpses, names her Sang Sang and raises her. People are suspicious that Ning Que might be the son of Hades because he is the only person who has survived the massacre.
Meanwhile, Wei Guangming, the grand priest of light, appoints Sang Sang as his official heir just before he passes away. Thus, she is now revered as the grand priest of light. Later, however, people suddenly begin to accuse her of being the daughter of Hades and try to kill her to prevent eternal night. At the end of the drama, Sang Sang is called both a heavenly woman and a demonic woman, depending on whether the person sympathises with her supporters or opponents.
The predicament of Sang Sang is a wonderful reminder that the world is made of both good and evil, or light and darkness, and so are humans. Without evil, there is no goodness. Likewise, if there is no darkness, there will be no light. In that sense, light and darkness coexist in the universe, interacting reciprocally. Sang Sang is an embodiment of it.
Referring to Sang Sang, Mo Shanshan defends her, saying, “Disasters and darkness are caused by unleashed power, avarice, manslaughters and disputes. Sang Sang is not the one who will bring such disasters or darkness to the world. Those who have evil in their minds are. They hide their wickedness and darkness under the flag of bright light.”
Fuzi, the Academy’s founder and headmaster, too, tells his 13th disciple, Ning Que: “Absolute light is the same as absolute darkness.” In other words, “If we think we are absolute truth, we are in fact absolutely false.”
In other words, if you push your belief to the extreme, it will turn into a dogma. Indeed, we know that the far left and the far right are ultimately the same dogmatic ideology that has annihilated human civilization.
Fuzi continues, “The difference between good and evil is determined not by morality, but by benefits. If something benefits the masses, it becomes good. If not, it becomes evil.” Indeed, populism or mob democracy is often mistaken for something good because it benefits the masses.
Sang Sang is a threat to the masses, thus she is deemed an evil that must be eliminated. Whether she is innocent or not is considered neither relevant nor important. In fact, Sang Sang herself is good and innocent, never harming others in her entire life. Even though she might be possessed by Hades, it is not her choice, so we cannot hate or kill her.
Still, however, Sang Sang encounters death threats wherever she goes. In one episode, the capital city of the Full-Moon State exhibits the familiar ritual of a witch hunt: the villagers are chasing after Sang Sang, throwing stones at her, and trying to execute her in public. As the sequence illustrates, humans always try to find a scapegoat to blame for their misery.
“Ever Night” offers profound insights and powerful criticisms of today’s world, where we are standing between the left and the right, good and evil, or light and darkness.
Kim Seong-kon
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
