How Plastic (Mold-able) We Can Be

TL:DR You might only be You because of your circumstances at the moment. This film shows how precious our civil societies are - that most of us don't have to think about making these difficult decisions.

I know this film was a unique example, but it shows just how close some people are to being completely different people - mostly due to resources though (money, legal status, rights, etc). Watching Hsaio-Hung succumb to her brothel-mother, Mary, was difficult. Because it was so possible that Hsaio-Hung could've been that girl that she was "pretending to be".

Just think though... man or woman... place yourself in debt, move to a foreign country without legal status, and try to make ends-meat (And also send money to family [depending on how important that is to your culture]). You can't get a legitimate job, bank account, licences, call the police, and so on. You're basically defenseless except for your own means of retribution. (violence, stealing, manipulation, etc)

I don't know, I just thought this was a great champion for law, order, and rights. How important it is to secure a society's basic needs. Because if they're not met, the result is possibly a dive into chaos and exploitation.

Although we like to think we have "our Self's" and the way we are today IS who we are... to an extant, our environment's can dramatically influence our actions which in turn affects our stress-responses and Reasoning of our actions.

I understand that we always have a choice and Hsiao-Pung's character wouldn't necessarily need to do brothel-work. But what's different is the circumstances in which we MAKE those choices. I think THAT's the difficult point to get across to other people in different social classes.

(This might be a bad example, but...) Like in America, "Why can't the poor, redneck mother just stop using drugs, get a job, stop mooching off the govt, and take her kids to piano lessons?" There's SOOOOO many factors that go into why she might being doing what she does. All the behavior is inexcusable, but the point is... "Could we say we wouldn't make the same bad decisions if we were tested like that?"

The power of this documentary is that it touches that dark place. Hsiao-Hung was actually in a very DANGEROUS situation. I think we owe it to her psychological sacrifice (and also the girls that are legitimately in trouble) to at least think about these things for a second.