**This will contain significant spoilers for the plot of The Untamed**
For the past few months, my wife and I have been undertaking a slow-burn rewatch of The Untamed, the 2019 Chinese live-action adaptation of the novel series Mo Dao Zu Shi, or The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Part danmei, part wuxia, part original fantasy, this bona fide, global smash hit has broken open the gates that usually restricted access to/interest in its, let's say, rather specific aesthetic and thematic milieus. The freewheeling style of its storytelling encompasses multiple decades and skips back and forth constantly, weaving together incredibly rich tales of love, betrayal, retributive and social justice, war, social inequalities, animal phobias, and a whole lot more. Plus it's gay as all hell; approximately 61.74% of its runtime consists of scenes of impossibly beautiful Chinese men staring silently at each other with unbearable longing. And really, gay romance is the story's core; at its heart, this is a love story between Lan Zhan and his once-dead (maybe), but now resurrected (kinda) flame, Wei Wuxian, whom- it is repeatedly implied- was done in by the other clans for turning to this universe's version of the Dark Side.
At any rate, after my wife had pulled me into the show halfway through her first viewing, we agreed to start over together so I could the full- or rather, untamed (I'm so sorry)- experience. Also so I could finalize the rules for the Official Untamed Drinking Game. The show is (as of this writing) available in its entirety on Netflix, so at least until the company crumbles into dust, access remains a non-issue. Which is itself a sign of how far we've come; when I was a kid, this sort of thing could only have been viewed via horrid, fan-made VHS dubs that could only be assembled piecemeal via seedy roadside movie stores. Less interaction with strangers makes just about everything better!
But I digress (again). Really, even for someone with zero past experience with wuxia, or any fantasy genre, this is the kind of grand storytelling anyone can have fun with. And in these bleak times, brief moments of joyous distraction are all the more important. As I've delved deeper into the plot of the show, though, one particularly impressive narrative throughline has stood out to me; the show is a masterclass in depicting the „Nothing ends, nothing ever ends“ mode of storytelling. That is to say, it's entire plot revolves around how justified ends (the defeat of a Bad Dude doing Bad Things) can all-too-easily empower or offer fig-leaf cover to Other Bad Dudes doing Even Worse Things.
I'm not even talking so much about the motivations and arcs of specific characters (though that does play a role), but rather what we see about the broader power structures and inequalities within the Untamed universe. The politics of this alternate reality centers around various dynastic clans that rule their own various towns and feifdoms more or less in loose concert with each other. Warring States Feudalism with Flying Magic Swords, if you will. The first section of the story centers around how one particular clan, the Wen, has jumped the gun and gone all-in on Mystical Fascism, seeking specific magical items to aid its desire to, what else, TAKE OVER THE WOOOOOORLD!!!!!
Classically, this is the sort of plot that would provide the beginning, middle and end of the whole shebang, the logical endpoint being the defeat of the Wen by a coalition of both willing and hesitant allies meant to restore order and balance to the Force, I mean the Four Nations, I mean Middle Earth, I mean....you get the idea.
But here? Child, that literally isn't even the half of it; in the show (I'm going off that, since I haven't read the books yet), Wen „Pig Iron Hitler“ Ruohan bites it in Episode 23.....out of a 50-episode runtime. Now, the very first few episodes of the show start 16 years after this happened, showing us Wei Wuxian's return and dropping all sorts of hints about what a Bad Guy he was. So, we know from the start that the fall of the Wen isn't The End and that other shit is about to go down, but the implications as to the exact nature of said Shit that the show keeps winking at up to this point end up being a whole barrel of pickled red herrings packed with dwarves. In short, by the halfway point you are abruptly informed that this is not the story you thought you were watching. No, „The Untamed“ is playing a much deeper game than I initially thought. And the exact nature of that game is revealed through exactly how the socio-political fallout from the Wen's defeat and Wei Wuxian's fall from grace play out.
Here it must be noted that, while the various clans are at least theoretically no more or less legitimate than others, a couple enjoy „first among equals“ status. The Wen were one, but the biggest, wealthiest, and grandest was and is the Jin, whose decadence, massive palaces, glittery pure-white getup, and literal armies of servants scream „Op-U-Lence, but the Bratty Kind.“ It's ultimately their involvement and bankrolling of the Sunshot Campaign that helps bring together enough arms and resources to topple the Wen. Which, again, was definitely the right thing to do, because the Volcano-Uruk-Hai Wen Rouhan was tossing about were all sorts of yikes.
BUUUUUT, once the battles are won and the dust has settled, the Jin's leader, already established to be both a) an incessant womanizer and b) a wholly absent father to every child of his except „The Heir,“ starts soaking in as much Hero Prestige as he can, and both he and a bunch of other Jin start tossing around Big Dick energy that is, let's say, questionably deserved. That would be grating enough, but of course it doesn't stop there. After all, nothing ever ends.
No, the real kicker comes when it's revealed that the Jin are not just pursuing and punishing (killing) the formal soldiers and agents of the Wen clan itself, but all of the subordinate clans they had had under their thumb, even those who took no part in their crimes. There's no way to sugercoat it; it is an attempt at literal genocide, even including concentration camps and killing fields rolled into one. This is mostly exemplified through the travails of the Qishan Wen, led by Wen Qing and her brother, Wen „Puppy Dog“ Ning. Wen Qing herself very much was involved in the early schemes of Wen Rouhan, but it is made explicitly clear almost from the beginning that this was effectively under duress; her clan's subservience to the Wen was longstanding and nothing she could alter without Wen Rouhan literally wiping her people out. Not that she tries to pull the „just following orders“ excuse; she admits up front that, yeah, she did some shit and she's earned just punishment. Just let her brother and the rest of her people, who she literally shielded from the worst, in peace.
This, of course, is a No Can Do from the Jin powers that be. Pulling out all the old classics- all Wen are the same, the only good Wen is a dead Wen, a Wen a day, blah blah blah- they either directly agitate for mass murder or go to extreme lengths to shield the worst of their actions from the other clans. Which, let's be real, that's always a tell- anytime you feel the need to hide under pain of death what you're really doing...you're due for a „Are We The Baddies“ moment.
At any rate, this is obviously some bad shyte and you can't help but wonder if getting rid of the Wen only paved over some deeper, more profound sicknesses in this world; even after some of the worst stuff comes out, there is a whole row of lesser clan leaders whose entire characterization is „Lick any floor a Jin trods upon.“ And it's here where the most important thematic turn of the story comes. After several dozen episodes building up the question of what, exactly, happened to Wei Wuxian, we finally find out why a whole generation was raised to believe that he was literally the Devil. The answer is.....he tried to stop the genocide.
Seriously. That's it.
Now, granted, he did dabble in forbidden magic to help defeat the Wen, but at the end of the day that didn't get him much worse than some grumpy side-eye from the other clans. No, what really got the monocles a-popping and the headbands a-dropping was when he basically stood up and said-
WEI WUXIAN: Guys, seriously, mass murder's a no-no. If the Geneva Convention existed in this world, you'd be trampling all over it. Also the Jin are robe-pissing crybabies and I will never stop giving them wedgies.
RANDOM CLAN LEADER #1: Who's Geneva??
RANDOM CLAN LEADER #2: The fuck's a convention????
JOHN CLEESE: E'S A WITCH, BUUURN 'IM!!!!
So, yeah...in the end, the „super-duper bad thing“ Wei Wuxian did was....rock the boat by standing up to say the status quo was not ok. And, in the end, enough (though not all!) of those in power were far too spooked to try and re-examine the systems they were part of. Better to (literally!) shoot the messenger and pretend there never was a message in the first place.
I find this especially brilliant because this so perfectly mirrors the dynamics of our own world. Put aside the flying swords, the wavy glowing hand-magic, the numerous sorts of ghosts and spirits and possessions that happen; at the end of the day, the Untamed universe is just like ours. Those in power will, occasionally, sanction the removal of bad actors. But anything that threatens to truly alter or upend the system will provoke a deep instinct of self-preservation, no matter how misplaced.
In fact, Wei Wuxian's brother, Jiang Cheng, perfectly encapsulates how these pressures can be especially potent for people who are at heart decent and, all else being equal, would stand right beside Wei Wuxian and fight for what's right. For Jiang Cheng, though, all is NOT equal- his parents and nearly all of his clan were horrifically massacred by the Wen, so he is still struggling with his grief and trauma over that. However, the very fact of that massacre makes him Clan leader by default following the Wen's defeat, so he is immediately drawn into the greater power structure by other clan leaders and feels the very, very powerful (and entirely justifiable) pull to rebuild his clan, reclaim its status, and in doing so avenge his parents' death. Oh, and his sister is a) under a longstanding betrothal to the heir of the Jin, and b) actually happens to love the prick for some reason, so if for no other reason than that, he has a very direct and personal reason to keep things at least peaceful between the Jiang and the Jin.
So when his brother starts upending stones and making „good trouble,“ even though a part of him clearly knows something is up and he tries to split the difference....in the end, he does have to choose. And when things get so crazy that their sister is tragically killed, it's not that hard to understand why he decides to stick with the powers that be, at least for that point in time. It's easy to dunk on Jiang Cheng, and he is absolutely a complete dunderhead A LOT of the time. But even then, the show allows you to fully understand all the powerful interests, both from within and from others, that bear down on him. I get him. And I feel bad for him.
This whole conflict makes up Act Two of the show, a meaty and complicated soup where even the nicest and most upright characters have to make some really hard, messy choices that have no easy, satisfactory answer. Where, at the end, even if you try your hardest and have the best of intentions, there sometimes just isn't a way out. Compared to the less-morally-gray opening and closing parts, this is where, for me at least, the narrative is at its most engaging and engrossing. The Wen arc is a great opener, and seeing how the many threads are tied together at the end is immensely rewarding, but it's right in this weird, uncomfortable, and morally hard in-between bit that The Untamed really earns its keep as some of the best storytelling I've experienced over the past two years.
Will this land for everyone? No, most certainly not. Wuxia shows are very much centered around massive amounts of camp, and that's something I know huge chunks of the West still aren't ready for. For, oh child, is The Untamed FILLED with camp. But nonetheless, the show is still making the rounds and the fanbase is only growing. My wife is certainly doing all she can to spread this particular gospel. And like any gospel, even when bits and pieces might not work the same for everyone, there are always some crucial grains of Truth to be gleaned that we all need to hear from time to time. Like, for example, the importance of not letting one kind of evil overshadow or excuse another. Power will always have ulterior motives, so even if it is being bent to an important end, constant vigilance and moral awareness are virtues that everyone must actively cultivate throughout their lives. Only when we can do that can we be truly secure from the ghosts of the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment