跟读练习: The Last Documentary: You Can See Everything - 通过视频学习英语口语
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I have been extremely busy in the past few months.
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And so I finally, after way too late, finally saw the movie, you can see everything that everyone was telling me to go see.
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And now I understand why.
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It is quite brilliant.
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It is a brilliant piece of storytelling.
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And it is a brilliant questioning about the reason or why is it that we engage in representation?
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And how is it that we can do that?
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That is, what purposes can we accomplish in the act of representation?
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So what I want to do is, of course, you know, this is first going to be full of spoilers.
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So, you know, always my reviews are always full of spoilers.
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I want to go a little bit through the movie, not too much,
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but mostly talk about some of the implications of what the movie is doing
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so that you can understand what is it saying about the question of representation? what does that mean for symbolism
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and what can we learn from that in terms of people that are engaged in symbolic interpretation
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this is Jonathan Pajot welcome to the symbolic world
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So the movie is, of course, a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, CEO of Terranos,
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who is got these documentarists to come to her house.
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Nathan Fielder, of all people, which is that's already a very strange idea
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that she got someone who is known for kind of trolling
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and being a jokester to come
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and spend the last 30 days with her family the last three days before she goes to prison.
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Of course, the idea is that you can see everything.
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They, at first, have this pretense that the filmmakers will have access to their entire lives, will be there in their house, living there.
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Nathan sleeps in the house and that they'll be able to see everything.
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And therefore, they should be able to transparently see the dynamics of the family, the dynamics of what's motivating Elizabeth Holmes.
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And this, of course, is taken to extremes
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In the early scenes of the movie, there's a pretty shocking scene that you don't expect, which is you see her husband naked in the shower.
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It's rare in American cinema that they kind of show full male nudity that way.
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So it's a little shocking because you're like, what is it?
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Why are they showing this in the documentary?
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What's the point?
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And then as you watch, you realize that, in fact, you know, this kind of full access capacity to see everything,
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almost like the pornographic gesture, doesn't mean that you see everything.
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In fact, it is a kind of veil for trying to see what is true and that, in fact, the access to factuality
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and the kind of access to data does not mean that you will be able to understand what is happening.
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That is, the question that you're asking, the reason why you're investigating cannot be fully captured in the transparency and access to the facts.
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So this is, of course, something that is very much the theme of the entire movie.
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As the Fielder character starts to investigate, you know, you also, as a person watching the movie,
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you're taken through these stages where at first you have the sense that this woman is,
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you know, obviously manipulative and is trying to kind of control the narrative,
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is trying to represent herself as being completely innocent and maybe is also trying to seduce the interviewer.
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And so this first sense, you were like, oh yeah, this makes sense.
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This is what is happening in the story.
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Then it shifts and suddenly you start to realize that her husband is possibly manipulating her,
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is controlling the narrative, is trying ultimately to start, he starts gatekeeping the access to her.
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And so you start to question that.
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And then ultimately, the whole thing becomes a meta experience where you realize the documentary itself is trying to make you realize
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that you're watching a documentary and the mechanisms of the documentary are exposed.
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They're already there at the beginning, but we're so used to watching documentaries that we often don't question.
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Why am I seeing this?
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You know, why?
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Why am I seeing the interviewer?
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Why are there scenes of him, you know, in bed trying to demonstrate certain things?
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So he realized that the entire thing is almost like a theatrical performance
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and there are many layers of theater that are layered on top of each other.
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There is Elizabeth Holmes that might be pretending.
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There's her husband who is also might be pretending.
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Then there's the actress who played Elizabeth Holmes in the original TV show that featured her,
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The Dropout, being used as an actress to represent the moments that the documentary...
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guy doesn't have access to.
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And so there's this new layer that is this kind of diving into the actor who played her in the series,
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now playing her again in a different guise.
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And then finally at the end, you have this final layer where you totally realize the documentary itself might also be a kind of fiction
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that is motivated possibly by Nathan Fielder's affection for Elizabeth Holmes
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as the actress towards the end of the movie is questioning his participation in this movie
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and the way that he's trying to portray Holmes.
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We cut to a scene where you see him
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and Elizabeth Holmes swimming in the water together
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and them acting in a way that honestly is very strange for a married woman to act.
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She's kind of touching him.
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She's pulling him in the water.
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There's a kind of weird intimacy that they are dealing with.
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And so the filmmaker himself is somewhat trying to question his own motivation in portraying the movie.
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And so when the movie ends, you end up in a kind of maze of mirrors where
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you don't really know what is true in the sense of the investigative aspect of what is true.
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You know, if this documentary was there to show the truth of something, that is, is she guilty?
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Is she the one? almost like a court would do,
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then it utterly fails and it also exposes the problem of using representation to try to get to this capacity,
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to get to the facts, right?
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You know, we have lived in a world where we use fiction
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that is based on real events and that fiction affects the way that we understand the original events that are being portrayed.
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We are also used to the documentary, to reality TV, to the possibility of representing ourselves, representing ourselves, representing others through social media,
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through all these different means.
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And what the documentary is able to expose is the way in
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which this actually dissimulates that it is not so much an act of revelation of factuality, but it actually dissimulates, you could say,
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the intention of why it is that we are showing things.
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And this is, I think, a really wonderful kind of exploration.
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I think that it will send long ways in culture
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if people are able to pay attention to the problem
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that it is exposing and how it is exposing the fact that when representation is used,
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it is used to bring about an experience and it is used in some ways to make you experience a story.
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And that is very different from the fact -based notion of exposing what really happened, you could say.
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And in the movie, they do it in an amazing way where they demonstrate on several occasions
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and at several layers of the documentary how if you change only one word in a sentence, you can change the meaning of that word.
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And so there's a New York Times article at the beginning of the movie
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that is brought up where Elizabeth Holmes says that they changed one word in her statement, which has to do with the fact that,
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you know, in the New York Times article, it says that the people believed in the character she made for herself.
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I forget exactly how it's phrased.
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And then Elizabeth Holmes said, I didn't say for myself, I didn't like say that I myself made that character,
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that is a character that was made, right?
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Like they believed in the character.
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So just these two words, this like little change in the statement completely changes the meaning.
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Then later in the movie,
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when Elizabeth Holmes says that her machine can do the things that she said,
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Fielder realizes that what she means by can is the possibility.
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And so the machine, because it's a platform, it has the capacity to basically analyze any disease,
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but it doesn't mean that it's actually doing it now.
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You have to basically fill up the data so that the machine will come to do it.
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And so she seems to imply that when she says that the machine can do this, she means in potential.
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And what people are hearing, and one of the reasons why she was condemned is
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that what people understood that was meant by that was that in actuality that the machine can do this.
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And so just now it's even the same word, that even the same word with one little difference of interpretation of that one word,
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you actually totally flip the meaning of the sentence.
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You completely invert the meaning of the sentence.
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And this, of course, is taken up later when Fielder himself seems to misremember one word in her testimony in the prison,
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you know, and he hesitates.
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And not only does he hesitate in the meaning of the word, but when the actress is playing the text the way
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that she plays the text will affect the meaning and the understanding
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and so as she reads the lines he says no no don't say it
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that way and then she changes the way she says it
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and it completely changes the meaning of what it is
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that is happening and
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so what the movie is doing is of course almost in in the most radical kind of post -modern way
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it is exposing the impossibility of representation to be mimetic in an objective and completely neutral sense.
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And there is even a suggestion, something that I've believed for a very long time,
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which is that because realism in the sense of either painterly realism
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or realism in terms of the way that movies are made or the way that documentaries are made,
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because realism in some ways hides its artifice, right?
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It uses an artifice of spontaneity.
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It makes you feel like you're watching real life and that you're watching something that isn't controlled, isn't edited, isn't directed.
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Then it actually comes closer to lying because it dissimulates its artifice in a kind of realism.
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And so there are other methods of representation that,
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of course, do not pretend to be accurate portrayals of something that happened, but rather use representation for other means.
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A simple example of that in history is, of course, when Plutarch writes his Lives of Great Men.
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His purpose in writing the Lives of Great Men is not an accurate portrayal of the person,
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especially the fact that they lived hundreds of years before him, but that, in fact, the purpose of the representation is to create models
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that people can look at and identify with and follow.
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And in doing
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that, the use of representation is aimed at a different purpose
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than what we tend to think in terms of kind of reductionist materialist.
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We believe that the purpose of representation is accuracy.
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And this is extremely important at this moment.
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It's important as you kind of think back at the way in
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which I talk about Bible stories or the way if you look at how icons are represented,
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what you realize is that in many traditional modes of representation, whether it's icons, whether it's ancient storytelling, even if it's
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Hamlet or the way that Shakespeare told stories, the artifice of representation is aimed at something different,
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is aimed at the manifestation of truths that are deeper than factuality,
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the manifestation of truths that are there to resonate with us in terms of models or counter models,
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in terms of things that we can identify with and
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that we can feel discussed for or that we can be aligned to.
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And that this honestly ends up being a more truthful mode of representation and you could say a...
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A less deceitful mode of representation,
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you know, and the movie is very fascinating because it feels something like you could say it's like the last documentary.
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I'm not saying there won't be documentaries after it, but it is a documentary that fully exposes the mechanism of documentary making
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and questions the notion that documentaries themselves can lead us towards factuality.
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It's a kind of deconstruction of the documentary process,
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but in doing so, it might also open space for another type of documentary telling,
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a kind of self -aware documentary where the documentary can be
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used in some ways consciously without trying to deceive people as a way in which to create stories that people resonate with.
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You know, there's an amazing moment in the story where, I mean, there's so many meta levels.
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You can't even stop seeing them once you start to see them.
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There's an amazing scene where the actress, Amanda Seyfried, who plays Elizabeth Holmes in the TV series,
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The Dropout, but then now is playing her again for the documentary, plays Elizabeth Holmes in prison,
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telling Nathan Fielder how Amanda Seyfried's representation of her,
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in the dropout was extremely damaging to her. And so, I mean, can you even count the levels of representation
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that are being represented in this and the levels of irony and of twist that are being represented in this moment?
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And as she's representing Elizabeth Holmes,
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that is, uh, complaining, not complaining or expressing how much pain and suffering she's experienced,
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um, because of that actress's representation of her.
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Then you cut back to the actress in the documentary who is defending herself, right.
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And trying to defend the use of the, uh, the, the, the thing that she did, the fact that, you know, her acting her, you know,
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that the things that she represented, obviously they weren't there.
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They can't know what happened, She even says, well, that could have happened.
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Right.
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And it is captured, you know, that even though I don't know how she lied and how she pretended, we know that she did.
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And therefore, representing her in this different in these different ways is completely appropriate.
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And then as you're watching, you realize, I mean, at least I kept asking myself, I mean, is that also a script?
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That is, are the parts of the documentary that are meant
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that when the actress is being herself and is speaking to Fielder, was that scripted?
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Was that planned?
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Or is that truly spontaneous?
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And there's absolutely no way to know that.
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And you know that how anybody who's participated in a documentary, I participate in documentaries where the documentarist tries to guide you and tries to say,
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oh, well, maybe you could say this because you know that it'll fit in in his narrative.
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It can be very frustrating, but this is obviously how documentaries are made.
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And so you keep jumping out of the documentary if you're very attentive and you keep asking yourself, you know,
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how far removed do I have to stand outside of this experience to be able to wholly realize what really is happening?
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And the answer is you can't.
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You can't step far enough outside the documentary to understand what is really happening
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and how much the director is playing a part in the artifice
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and how much the interviewer and how much the actress
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and how much Elizabeth Holmes and how much of her husband are playing parts in this representation.
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And so the whole thing is this fractal kind of deconstruction of representation in ways
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that are so surprising that these things came together.
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And a whole level, a whole layer of how this representation is there is this
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whole other layer of how the husband pretends to be Elizabeth Holmes
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and how the husband also has made an AI version of Elizabeth Holmes
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that he has in his house as this giant screen that he can talk to and engage with.
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And he sees that it's completely normal.
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And as if he doesn't actually need to be in a relationship with his actual wife,
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you know, this AI and his internal representation of her is sufficient for him to be in communion with her.
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So it brings this image of representation and the accuracy of representation, not only in terms of the documentary,
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but even in terms of the mental images that we have of others,
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the mental representation that we have of the other person and how we in some ways are engaging in that mental representation,
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even obviously as we are talking to the person in front of us, that even as we're speaking to them,
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we are also at the same time engaging with the mental representation of that person.
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And so the ultimate finality is that the purpose of communion, right?
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And the purpose of being in a relationship, the purpose of telling stories, the purpose of representing something cannot be accurate portrayal
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because you can never step enough outside of your experience to get to the objective portrayal in the first place, right?
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And the whole frame, even the frame of the documentary, and of course, even the frame,
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you could say, of the trial is not really to arrive at a completely neutral, objective, you could say, representation of reality.
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But even the trial itself is pointed.
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That is, we're trying to discover some truth.
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And the means by which we're going to represent
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and to mediate these facts is always going to come together towards the discovering of something particular,
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like of moving towards a direction.
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And of course, a court has its own means of doing that.
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And sometimes we confuse the way in which the court does it,
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which obviously sometimes misses, but still has developed the right way of presenting evidence
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and of doing it in a forensic manner that can help lead to a verdict of guilty or not guilty.
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But sometimes we pretend, we think that the social media and media representations are equivalent to the court.
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And we've seen that, of course, in the way in which
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You know, people often go to the court of public opinion during the Me Too era.
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You saw a lot of that where people would basically use narrative, use representation in order to create certain effects.
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And people were confusing that with the way in
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which a court functions and the way in which you can arrive at an actual, truly, you could say, guilty verdict in a legal manner.
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And so we have to, you know, as we watch the movie, you know, these are the questions that are still kind of haunting me.
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thinking about, you know, what then can be the purpose of documentary?
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You know, is it only propaganda?
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Because this is, of course, I think one of the problems that the movie is exposing is that,
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in fact, you can manipulate reality, right?
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If your purpose is to discover what's real,
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the mimetic element of the documentary can actually simulate a narrative in order to bring about a conclusion
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that ends up being more something like propaganda.
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And so how do we get out of it in a documentary purpose?
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You know, that's why I tend to like narrative storytelling more, that is, films and books and,
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you know, ancient stories, because already in its own representation,
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there's a manner in which we're pointing towards a purpose that is the manifestation of true patterns, right?
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The participation in them
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And so I don't know what the future of documentary
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Storytelling can be After this kind of movie
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It has to be probably
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More clearly about inspiration
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Maybe about trying to kind of Help people see something beautiful
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That they can follow, that they can emulate
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Or something that they can despise
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Or criticize, but also
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Always understanding that it's always
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It's not just the facts
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That you have to be able to, that it can't just be about the understanding of new neutral factuality,
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but using factuality and weaving it together towards something
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that can inspire us or help us see a truth that is higher than the factuality.
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And so it leaves me very puzzled about, you know, what a documentary can be, but at the same time,
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it is an absolute gem of a movie.
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If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it you know you there are
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so many more questions to be asked
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and there are all these levels of of representation
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that stack on top of each other um
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that really leave you disoriented at the end not sure of what it is
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that you have actually watched and not sure exactly what it is
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that just happened to you and
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so uh i hope this was useful this was just a few thoughts on the subject
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and uh thanks for your attention everybody and i'll talk to you very soon bye -bye hello Hello, everyone.
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I'm excited to announce that the fourth book in our Tales for Once and Ever series is out, The Valant Little Tailor.
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This was one of my favorite stories as a child.
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It's a story of trickery and of giant killing.
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And if you get it now until November 21st, you will get a free copy of the audiobook read by myself.
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So I cannot wait for people to see it.
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It is beautifully illustrated by Eloise Scherer, who had illustrated our Jack and the Fallen Giants.
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And you will see that she did an amazing job.
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It feels like these illustrations are getting better and better at every book.
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So I cannot wait for you to have it in your hands
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and especially to know how your children react to this new story.
FOR YOU
推荐视频
本课的词汇与口语要点
这节口语课以视频“The Last Documentary: You Can See Everything”为素材。 视频中反复出现的词有:representation, documentary, movie, Holmes, Elizabeth。 这段视频共有 273 个句子、3729 个单词可供跟读。 讲话部分时长为 23:32。 说话人语速自然,每分钟约 158 个词,接近日常对话。 86% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词,其余的词建议在练习前先学一下。
视频中的重点词汇
视频中 15 个值得学习的单词,附发音和释义:
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| documentary 名词 | /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/ | 紀錄片 /纪录片, 記錄片 /记录片 |
| actress 名词 | /ˈæk.tɹɪs/ | 女演員 /女演员, 女優 /女优 |
| expose 动词 | /ɪkˈspoʊz/ | 揭露, 暴露 |
| layer 名词 | /ˈleɪ̯ɚ/ | 層 /层 |
| narrative 名词 | /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/ | 記敘文 /记叙文 |
| realism 名词 | /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/ | 現實主義 /现实主义 |
| fiction 名词 | /ˈfɪkʃən/ | 虛構文學 /虚构文学, 小說 /小说 |
| discover 动词 | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | 發現 /发现, 發覺 /发觉 |
| objective 名词 | /ɒbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/ | 目標 /目标, 目的 |
| neutral 形容词 | /ˈnuː.tɹəl/ | 中立 |
| interviewer 名词 | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | 訪問者 /访问者 |
| defend 动词 | /dɪˈfɪnd/ | 保衛 /保卫, 守衛 /守卫 |
| shock 名词 | /ʃɔk/ | 衝擊 /冲击 |
| capture 动词 | /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/ | 捕獲 /捕获, 佔領 /占领 |
| participate 动词 | /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/ | 參加 /参加 |
视频中出现的短语动词
| 单词 | 发音 | 释义 |
|---|---|---|
| come together 动词 | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | 集合, 联合 |
| end up 动词 | 到达 | |
| bring up 动词 | 撫養 /抚养, 養大 /养大 | |
| fill up 动词 | 裝滿 /装满 |
值得反复跟读的句子
视频中简短而完整的句子,可以直接用在日常对话里:
- That is, what purposes can we accomplish in the act of representation?
- Why am I seeing this?
- Why am I seeing the interviewer?
- I forget exactly how it's phrased.
- You know, is it only propaganda?
视频中的语法
说话人最常用的结构,并附上视频中的原话:
| 结构 | 视频中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被动语态 be + 过去分词 — 强调发生了什么,而不是谁做的 | is known · is taken · cannot be fully captured |
| 现在完成时 have/has + 过去分词 — 过去发生但与现在仍有关联的事 | have been · have lived · I've believed |
| 定语从句 who / which + 从句 — 补充说明人或事物 | people that are · people, which is · someone who is |
需要注意的发音
说话人用了 45 次缩略和弱读形式,例如 you're, don't, can't。请按听到的简短形式来说。
- “th” 音: theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/, truthful /ˈtɹuːθ.f(ə)l/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/
- 长单词——注意重音位置: documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/, participate /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/
中文母语者容易读错的音:
- /v/ — 不要读成 /w/,上齿轻触下唇: narrative /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/, discover /dɪˈskʌvə/, objective /ɒbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/, interviewer /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/, arrive /əˈɹaɪv/
- 词尾辅音 — 要读清楚,后面不要加元音: actress /ˈæk.tɹɪs/, expose /ɪkˈspoʊz/, narrative /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/, pretend /pɹəˈtɛnd/, engage /ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的区别: realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/, portrayal /ˌpɔɹˈtɹeɪ.əl/, neutral /ˈnuː.tɹəl/, illustrate /ˈɪl.əˌstɹeɪt/, radical /ˈɹædɪkəl/
如何用这段视频练习
- 先完整听一遍视频,不要开口,记下不认识的单词。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读,熟练之后再回到正常速度。
- 录下自己的声音并与原声对比,特别注意 documentary, actress, expose 这类单词。
什么是跟读法?
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧,最初开发用于专业口译员的培训,并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大:您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同,跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性,语调,节奏,连读,听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。












