The Border under Violence — Interpretation of the Scapegoat Mechanism for the Movie "Border Killer"

: The film “Border Killer” released in 2015 is based on the border between the United States and Mexico and tells the story of an elite team of law enforcement officers and agents who went deep into the hinterland of Mexico to investigate drug trafficking. The borders in the film refer to both the geographical boundaries of the United States and Mexico, the legal and moral boundaries of confrontation between justice and evil, and the imagery of exploration and deconstruction of the spiritual and human boundaries under violence. This paper analyzes the film "Border Killer" based on Rene Kirral's scapegoat mechanism theory, trying to interpret the real theme behind its violence.


Introduction
In collaboration with the three leading masters of the film, Dennis Vilennews, Roger Dickins and original music John Johnson, the 2015 "Border Killer" film was set against the backdrop of the United States and Mexico's borders. The story of an elite team of law enforcement officers and agents who went deep into the heart of Mexico to investigate drug smuggling deals. Continuing the consistent repressive heavy tone and deep-level thematic expressions of Villeneuve's previous films, this film underlies the simple dual binary story of the surface, and makes a deeper discussion on the main image of the "border" in the film. The borders in the film refer to both the geographical boundaries of the United States and Mexico, the legal and moral boundaries of confrontation between justice and evil, and the imagery of exploration and deconstruction of spiritual and human boundaries under violence. In the successful introduction of knowledge sociology to study texts, René Kirar raised his theory of violence to the height of human culture. He believes that his mimetic mechanism in the theory of violence and the resulting scapegoat theory are practical in nature. Can be used to explain some social phenomena. This article analyzes the film "The Border Killer" based on Rene Kirral's scapegoat mechanism theory, trying to deconstruct the real theme behind its violence.
The scapegoat was first seen in The Bible • Leviticus and appeared in people's rituals of atonement for the Lord by offering sacrifices to the Lord. In the Bible and the Old Testament, there is also a story of the Lord's death as a goat instead of Isaac. The earliest term used for the term "scapegoat" was first adopted by the British religious reformer William Tyndale when he translated the Bible from Hebrew into English. Fraser also used it as a reference in his "golden branch". Motifs detailing the scapegoat ceremonies around the world. In the scapegoat ceremony, there is an unconscious scapegoat mechanism: finding an innocent scapegoat, using collective persecution to expose it to sin, and collectively gain redemption and restoration of social order. In his book "The Scapegoat," Kiral classifies the persecution of the scapegoat into four paradigms: "The first paradigm, a description of a social and cultural crisis, a general disorder; the second category The paradigm is the crime of the 'confused'; the third paradigm is whether these suspects accused of crimes have been selected for special marks; the fourth paradigm, namely violence itself." The core of the scapegoat mechanism is violence, The director of "Border Killer" mentioned in the interview that "the more silent majority" in violence and war is one of the themes he wants to show. During the fundraising stage, the filmmaker asked to rewrite the heroine in the script into a The male protagonist, and the director still insists on shooting the film from the female perspective. On the one hand, the female perspective is the embodiment of the human nature in the film. Her passiveness and struggle are the same psychological orientation as most of the viewers. The one who is just is involved in illegal transactions and tries to write reasonable. The existence of the heroine is a witness and judge, and the female identity is more convenient to express and handle the film. This kind of plot and contradiction in the game; on the other hand, the film's construction of the heroine and the spiritual border conforms to the Kiranian scapegoat mechanism paradigm, just like the phrase in the movie poster, "Deeper and Deeper in the Darkness, the Truth It is also getting darker and darker. Like the truth about the story behind the film, the scapegoat mechanism also indicates the hidden truth behind the phenomenon.

Chaos -The Description of Social and Cultural Crisis
Kirill constructed a hypothesis about the human desire to imitate. Using this as a starting point to explore the interactive relationship between people, driven by the desire to imitate, there is a relationship between imitation and competition, which leads to violence and persecution. The relationship between people is the same, and the relationship between peoples and nations, nations and countries is also the same. Collective violence has always been accompanied by human society. How to identify this persecution depends on the four types of persecution paradigm mentioned above for the scapegoat mechanism. The first paradigm is a description of a social and cultural crisis, a general disorder. In the "Border Killer", this confusion is always a strong background sound in the film.
The story of the "Border Killer" took place mainly in Mexico's border town, Juarez, which was followed by many reporters, filmmakers, and artists because of the serial murders of the Juarez women who had shocked the world. The artists used almost all types of art to represent the Juarez tragedies, trying to explore the cultural roots and social mechanisms that occurred behind them. In recent years, there have been many films such as "Border Town", "Echoes at the Boundary", "Juarez of Juarez", "The Missing Girl", and "Backyard" that explored and deconstructed different themes from different perspectives, or used humanitarianism. The spirit condemns violence and persecution against women or points to various social crisis phenomena in Mexico. The "Border Killer" chose a completely different orientation. First, the Juarez tragedy was only used as an introduction to the film and in a small direction in the intricate violence of the border city. Among them, drug trafficking and anti-drug operations were selected as the main clues for the film. Because of its geographical location and economic situation, Juarez has become an important drug trafficking channel on the Mexican-American border. There are frequent government and drug trafficking syndicates. Many shots of the film are an unreasonable and unreasonable situation on Juarez. Show. In particular, the hot visual lens in the film was shot with the FLIR SC8300 thermal video camera, which truly restores gunfights and explosions filled with violent information.

The "Confused" Crime
The group's persecution of scapegoats is always based on the allegations of crimes committed by the "confused". The accusations are varied. Kylar summarized the following three categories: "The first is allegations that the suspects used violence to invade others. It is the behavior of those who violate the custom and the strictest taboos. Finally, it is a religious crime.
In the film, the main characters are the simple FBI agent Kate, who has a lot of experience but it looks like an inconsequential leader, Matt, and an advisor with a mysterious and gloomy temperament. Sandro. The two most important figures, Kate and Alessandro, were deadlocked after a divorce. They attempted to get out of the predicament by working wholeheartedly. An undercover sophomore who was once notorious in Mexico had lost his job. Wife and daughter, they are all other people under the normal system and have done something that violates "custom" and "regular". This is not only the case. For the land and the country, they are also nationalities and cultural others, and are invading foreigners. The film does not allow the eyes behind the lens to point to the cause of this border city becoming a drug trading center. In other films about the city, whether it is the "backyard", "Biancheng Town" or "Juarez San The women's language, through lens language, points a certain responsibility to the devastating impact of the establishment of the North American Free Trade Area on the Mexican economy. It is the gradual increase in the unemployment rate that has caused many young people who have lost their economic resources to seek only by joining drug trafficking syndicates. survive. The identity of the heroine of the lead actress undoubtedly caused them to have the destructive effect from the American forces. In the cultural identity they were invaders, which was the cause of everything.

Special Marks Selected as Victims
There is a certain standard for the choice of scapegoat: "In the selection of the perpetrators, it is not the crimes that play the primary role, but the victims are particularly vulnerable to persecution... There is hardly any society that does not discriminate against ethnic minorities and that all people are not unique and unique. Although there are no specific criteria for the selection of scapegoats, they often choose people with "special markers" that are not universally identifiable, and that are unusual in culture, religion, physiology, and identity. It will be the reason for being selected, such as a disabled person with a physical defect, or a religious infidel, etc. As mentioned in the biblical story, Cain was exiled by the Lord after killing his brother Abel, and the Lord is on his head. Made a special mark that can protect him from being hurt by others and at the same time it is a nick of the crime he committed. It has a dual nature. The main characters in the film carry this kind of "special mark". Kate and Alessandro, as mentioned above, are both divorced and undercover, making them the other under the normal system. In terms of religion and religion, they are also foreign intruders and others, and Kate's "special mark" is even more apparent. Kate came to this land with the idea of eradicating drug addiction. Only she is true in all people. I believe that those high-sounding plans and American intervention can change everything. At first she could be said to be fully utilized and excluded from the plan. She knows nothing about the plan. She can also see in several planning and discussions. She was always standing a bit further away from the crowd. In the Bank's action, the person who spoke in Mexican bluntly said "No woman can pass through there" as the only woman in the entire action team. Kate, who couldn't understand, could only whisper about the person next to him, but no one translated it to her and until the last meeting before the action, Kate found himself still concealing part of the truth, and in the face of her doubts, Matt did not hesitate. The answer to her -"because if there is no other government agencies, the CIA cannot legally act within the United States." Everything has finally been candidly On the other hand, her existence was only to conceal all illegality from legality. In the border between the two, she played a role of neutrality. It can be said that throughout this entire operation, she was always a "he The existence of the "person". Some of the few "others" with special signs on their bodies. Their persecution facts are unconsciously moralized with the scapegoat effect. The persecuted party is described as an incarnation of justice, despite violence and expulsion. The facts will remain, but will still be overshadowed by the "justice" described by the appearance. Like the face of Kate's question in the film, her superiors answered her -if you are worried that this goes beyond legal boundaries, I will tell you now. Don't worry, the boundaries have been expanded.

The Violence
Kiral points out that myths and scapegoats in rituals generally go through two processes: First, the worsening of sin. Second, the sacred process. In the process of the worsening of sin, the scapegoat was considered to be the initiator of all chaos and order, and was given unfounded charges. The film seems to have selected the main contradiction between the drug scorpion and the scorpion squad, but in fact it mainly expresses the relaxation relationship between the three protagonists. The first is Matt's concealment of Kate's truth. In the bank's actions, Matt Marshall exposed Kate as a bait, making her the trigger for the entire conflict and the only one exposed to both sides in this violent and violent confrontation. . In addition, the head of the scorpion who was the root of sin did not appear for the first time until the end of the film. He huddled with his children and ate dinner at home in his warm colors. In comparison, the lens composition of the heroine of the righteous party is exactly the opposite. From the gray in the opening tone, the murderous scene is constantly conflicted, fought, wounded, and finally entered into the lens of the tunnel-the border is empty. Gradually sank into the darkness, the icy blue sky canopy is deep and deep, leaving only the silhouette of everyone in the team. In the fully armed team, Kate's thin and thin figure, which is the only female figure, is especially lonely. The camera as a whole conveys a wave of inner self-restraint that is steady and steady, demonstrating step by step the transition of the heroine's innermost border, approaching her innermost state of abyss when approaching the end. The characters in the lens walk forward and paint slowly, as if blending in with the darkness, also foreshadowed the story of the film and will enter the darker abyss.
When Kate finally reloaded the gun and pointed to Alessandro, it was driven by the just border that she still had in her heart. However, she did not pull the trigger in the end. She did not give a total veto over her own borders, but she vetoed the border with her helplessness and pain. Alessandro killed the drug lord and ended "violence and chaos" with an unordered method that Kate could not recognize. In this war, she and her "justice" were useless. The border in her heart was "killed." Under the calm appearance, it seems that the chaos is over. One of the characteristics of the Veleneuil film is that he never gave a special understanding of the story. He gave the audience a background of the Mexican drug trafficking war. He gave us the perspective of the heroine to watch and participate in everything but did not really talk about how In the story of poisoning, he only brought the whole atmosphere to us through the editing of images. The others were imagined by the audience themselves. Behind the story, he actually described deeper violence. In the final scene of the film, a group of Mexican children played together and a series of gunshots suddenly sounded in the wilderness. When the boy returned from his father couldn't wait to see the sound of gunshots in the distance, he looked at it for a moment and his expression did not change. Start playing. Everything has not changed. Violence and injustice are still there. The border in the heroine's heart has already died. This makes it even more sad and helpless for the heroine to come to this land and make up his mind to eradicate drug addiction. From the perspective of the heroine's perspective as the viewer's point of view, through the deconstruction of the scapegoat mechanism, we found that in addition to the explicit atrocities in the narcotics process, the other non-surface atrocities of the persecutors were concealed and truly victimized. They are the silent actresses and the majority of these silencers living in Juárez who have turned a blind eye to everything unreasonable. They are both victims and persecuted, with dual status and attributes. Juarez, a small town on the Mexican border, seems to be far away from us. Kate's involvement in the conflict seems to be not a universal story as he struggles between the spiritual and human borders. However, when Kate and the audience outside the screen have recovered When you come, you may find that even though it is terrible, these "violence" may not be as far away from us.