The distance between us and evil: Don’t let yourself become the invisible perpetrator

There are absolutely no spoilers in the following content, so feel free to chew on it*

I have never been very interested in Taiwanese dramas. I still remember that in the early years, Manbi Chu recommended some romantic Taiwanese dramas for girls, which made me stay away. I had already planned my sister’s wedding and had to take a long-distance flight of more than 10 minutes to Vegas to see HBO. I watched 10 episodes of the Taiwanese drama “The Distance Between Us and Evil” in one go. It certainly hasn’t reached the status of a drama, but its high standard can definitely make people look at Taiwanese dramas with admiration. It also deepened my observation that “HBO’s productions are mostly excellent”.

The advantage of our distance from evil is that there is no nonsense

Mainstream dramas in Asia rarely have criminal psychology dramas, and even if they do, they all have romance as the main theme. On the other hand, although Japanese and Korean crime suspense dramas have been popular in recent years, their shortcoming is that they are so good that they are too long. The plot is stretched from 5 episodes to 10 episodes. If you want to go at 2x speed, you can barely finish it… Loose scripts and weak sentences are the cause of death of most TV dramas, and history often repeats itself.

“The Distance Between Us and Evil” is one of the few cases in Taiwan where the screenwriter was the first to write the script, and only after the script was completed, the production team was invited to bid. The 10-episode series cost a total of 43 million. It has created many firsts for Taiwanese dramas in terms of filming, execution, art, editing and marketing. The early test films have received a lot of positive reviews, and some people even praised it as “setting a new high standard for Taiwanese dramas.”

GQ taiwan

Self-media responsibility: Take responsibility for every word you write

Ever since I started making beauty videos, I have overthought every word. As a public figure, a wrongly focused title is equivalent to indirectly conveying the wrong message to the audience. Just one share button can be forwarded thousands of times overnight. Not everyone has relatively independent thinking and judgment, and wrong ideas may be implanted here. It is not difficult to find that in every episode of “The Distance Between Us and Evil”, the “media rendering power” will be expressed to the audience, but how to distinguish between good and evil?

Is that far away? In fact, this is not the case. “The Distance Between Us and Evil” is based on the “Random MRT Murder Case” in 2014 and the “Little Light Bulb Incident” in 2016. The word mental illness has always been reported in the media as “catastrophic”, causing most people to take three steps back when they hear the word mental illness. When the audience hears about mental illness, most of their first impressions will be: “Wow, a mentally ill boy killed someone, and his brothers and sisters must not be good people!” “My parents must be uneducated, and they will get the boy first.” “It’s not easy to talk to them, you don’t even know how to kill someone…”

Mental illness is caused by “people”: don’t let yourself become the perpetrator

The fact is that most mental patients are normal people in the eyes of ordinary people. Due to all the pressure of social public opinion, even if they realize that they have a problem, they will repress and accumulate their inner feelings and thoughts… until one day they explode. And your unintentional words may become a fuse without knowing it. Lin Junyang, the director of “The Distance Between Us and Evil” believes that it is difficult to define what “evil” is because we all live in a gray world.

Rome was not built in a day, and the same goes for mental illness. Too many plots about mental illness have always been the target of bullying. People who have asked for help have been treated worse and verbally bullied. While you can shake your head and cough at the victims of the news, will you turn around and say bad words to others?

I wish I couldn’t solve the problem

I would like to quote one of the dialogues from “Billboard Murders”, another movie that dominated the Golden Globe Awards and won four awards for drama films: “Best Picture”, “Best Screenplay”, “Best Actress” and “Best Supporting Actor”.

Because through love comes calm, and through calm comes thought. And you need thought to detect stuff sometimes, Jason. It’s kinda all you need.Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Little Bulb’s mother talked about the psychological changes in the past few years after the murder. She emphasized that she did not feel hatred. She hoped that this type of victimization could solve the problem from the “roots” instead of ending another person’s life through public trials and political means. She said: Because hate cannot solve the problem.

Only calm can bring calm minds, ideas and solutions to problems. “The Distance Between Us and Evil” does not have any answers, only endless space for reflection.

Erica Yuen