That, among other things, is the lesson of a crushing exchange between the filmmaker and a 14-year-old shoeshine boy, Henry, whose face looks more emptied out than empty and, who, when asked if he has any nice memories, flatly answers no.
"To this day, many people don't understand why I came back to China," he said recently between a crush of visitors to his Tsinghua office.
First a sip of mezcal, in this case barrel-aged Sombra, a mouthful of smoke, cream and scorched violets; then a lick of worm salt, tasting of mushrooms; and, last, a crush of blood orange between the teeth.
It was about a teacher, and a janitor who had a crush on her, and switched between their two perspectives.
Nearby, at the booth of Lima-based gallery Revolver, José Carlos Martinat's Experimental Protoype Community of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow offers a look at the dark side of Disney, with images of strikes by Disney staff, a rapist who wore a Mickey Mouse costume and a girl crushed between two rides at the Epcot centre in Orlando.
A hand crushed between two packages, a sprained neck from lifting boxes.
Most of the accidents are survivable, like a finger crushed between two pieces of steel or an ankle snapped under a fallen beam.
The difference is that everyone in TTOI – even Malcolm Tucker – knows and fears they can be dispensed with in a moment, crushed between the cruel forces of the media, the opposition and their own government's Machiavellian whims.
Much of the footage is painful to watch: bleeding whales, flanks raked by the teeth of their fellow captives; a trainer crushed between two gigantic beasts with only his wet suit holding him together; another trainer dragged repeatedly to the bottom of a pool until he manages to escape.
Smeared on the body, it forgave sins; taken in water, it helped digestive complaints.Sceptics were always trying to show how it was done, saying that the Ash was a pellet crushed between His fingers, or that the gold and silver ellipsoidal lingams (the Form of the Formless) that He coughed up at certain festivals were in fact hidden in His handkerchief.
