An Ideological Interpretation of "Zoom"

The 1960s of the 20th century was an era of revolution. This diverse revolutionary trend of thought spread to major countries on all continents of the earth. While China was brewing and vigorously launching the Cultural Revolution, the "New Left" movement arose in the West. For a time, anti-colonialism, anti-racial discrimination, women's struggle for rights, and sexual liberation movements emerged one after another. In such a turbulent era, Antonioni shot this film with a different style and theme from his previous films. "Zoom" successfully portrayed the image of Thomas, a photographer, a very typical young intellectual in Western society in the 1960s, and through his eyes and camera, it objectively presented the silhouettes of all corners of the life in the Western society in the 1960s. As the spiritual pillar of the "rebellious generation" in the 1960s, Western Marxist philosophers Althusser, Marcuse and others discovered through their research on the ideology of developed capitalist society that it was more hidden and more hidden than the ideology of feudal society. A more rigorous and insidious way of operation: it is imperceptible and omnipresent, it seems harmonious but hides violence, and the surface is gentle but it makes you powerless to resist. Living in such a social era, Antonioni, as a rational, wise, and profound philosophical director, has his unique perception and thinking of that era. An Gong’s movie themes have always expressed estrangement, and his cinematic lens techniques always make the audience feel estranged from movie images. An Gong is used to shooting movies at the same position with two cameras at the same time. He does not care about the concealment of the camera lens and the continuity of the connection. In the seemingly obtrusive lens group connection, An Gong makes his movie appear right. The deconstruction of the ideology in the film allows the audience to see through his lens the operation of the ideology in the film. As an artist, An Gong vividly demonstrated the same perception as Althusser, Marcuse and other thinkers through his own lens, and expressed his own views and attitudes in narrative operations. Through careful reading of the film, this article attempts to combine the ideological theories of the Western Marxist thinkers Althusser, Marcuse, etc. and the Western social and political culture in the 1960s to analyze and interpret the character images and thematic connotation of "Zoom", and to "Zoom" The director, Antonioni, contained a comparative exploration of the uniqueness of ideological thinking.
1. The image of Thomas: the lyric poet in the era of advanced capitalism
Regarding "Zoom", An Gong once said: "In my previous films, I tried to describe the emotionally fragile aspects of human love relationships, expressing the connection between human personality and more parts of other aspects. However, in In the film "Zoom", I did not express this theme at all. This is very obvious. What I am expressing is the connection between individual characters and reality. Reality and events closely surround the characters. It exists."[4](98) Therefore, unlike other An Gong films, in "Zoom", the protagonist is not part of the film's background. The analysis of the protagonist's image will be the clue for us to reveal the whole theme.
This is a film with the appearance of a detective film. The protagonist Thomas is a well-known photographer, an image similar to the roamer on the arcade described in Benjamin's "The Lyricist in the Era of Developed Capitalism": The structure and alienation of the social and cultural ideology of the advanced capitalism era; as an independent and talented creator of aesthetic art, he deliberately maintains a state of dissociation with the society with his sober rationality, and exposes this with his keen observation The disharmony and reality behind the seemingly harmonious, false and prosperous society. Not only was he obsessed with the superior social living environment he was in, and identified with the various phenomena in the social and cultural ideology; but also because of his rationality and dissociation, he was marginalized by this society, which prevented him from understanding what was behind this seemingly harmonious, false and prosperous society. The real picture.
At the beginning of the film, he appeared as a factor of instability: dressed as a beggar and went to the relief station to take pictures secretly, revealing the truth at the bottom of this society. Photography is one of the six major communication media in the 20th century. Since its birth as a specialized profession, its special media qualities and functions have determined that people engaged in this profession must have a sense of professional responsibility and justice. He saw the boredom of this society through the extension of his vision—camera. He told the publisher that he wanted to escape from this society, but he had to live on the status given to him by this society. The old man in the antique shop is full of indifference and rejection to Thomas. Obviously he has deeply experienced from his boss that the new generation of young people are bored, despised, ruined and abandoning classics and traditions, so he is unwilling to sell them. To those young people. But Thomas is not a young man who is as radical and irresponsible as the heiress in the antique shop. The shot that Thomas wants to take away the propeller is very interesting. The antique shop owner is worried that putting it into Thomas’ luxury sports car will damage his luxury car. What Thomas cares about is the rude treatment of the propeller by the antique shop owner. This can be seen by Thomas. It is not the same as the pursuit of young people of that era. He is not fanatical about everything. His lens serves as an extension of his eyes, and his attitude towards things around him becomes objective and indifferent due to the mechanical nature of its objective reproduction of reality. From his conversations with the owner of an antique shop, his attitude towards various phenomena in society, and his conversations with Ron in restaurants, we can understand that the screenwriter and director set the meaning of Thomas’ image: he does not devalue tradition, nor Not keen on current fashions, he just wanted to pursue the freedom he yearned for, so he couldn't wait to buy an airplane propeller in the antique shop and immediately took it away. From the perspective of Thomas' image, the propeller is an important symbol of freedom in the film. For humans, it can make people have the ability to fly freely like birds.
Regarding Thomas, An Gong once said in an article: "He chose a new mental state, which swept the British Empire’s lifestyle, behavior and moral values ​​during the revolution of the 1960s, especially important. Yes, young artists, publicists, stylists, and musicians think this is part of the pop movement. Thomas lives an orderly, ritual life, and he didn’t say it by accident. Except for anarchy, he doesn’t know any laws." [5] Indeed, he is a sociopolitical and cultural dissociator. He neither conservatively resists nor enthusiastically participates and supports social changes. He is just a curious bystander who has no creed or any purpose; he is not disgusted with the behavior of hippies and does not participate, but he He was willing to donate money to them; he was a little surprised at the homosexuals he met on the road, but he was also indifferent; seeing the anti-war demonstrations on the street, he neither supported nor opposed, but with a fun and lively show The attitude of asking for a brand to insert in his car, but regardless of it being blown off by the wind, casually discarded on the street; looking for the woman who was secretly photographed by him, accidentally broke into the rock concert, but joined the fun and other frenzy Fans fight for the guitar handle thrown by the musician, and then throw it away boringly. He is indifferent and alienated to this society. If there is one word to express his attitude towards the world, it is "play". There is a scene in the film: Thomas puts his legs on the desk, lying in front of two Irish girls who are admiringly asking for a photo, playing with coins between their palms. Coins are usually props that people use to determine fate. The director deliberately paid a static close-up attention to his coin-playing hands. The symbolism is very obvious, just because he lives in this society, and this society gives Given his power and status, he is destined to have to be played by this society when playing with others.
Photographer is a special profession, different from painter. Painting is a purely subjective creation, and the true condition of the soul can be reflected in the purposeless and unconscious creation. Photography has an inevitable objectivity due to its mechanical participation. When Thomas used his subjective vision and feelings to take pictures of the peaceful park he wanted, the objective existence of the assassination scene in the park was inevitably recorded objectively by the camera. Therefore, once the camera is in hand, the photographer has a power to witness the truth, record the truth and even control the truth, because the truth represents a kind of authority. Thomas recognized this power of photographers and valued this authentic authority. He hates to take photos for commercial advertising purposes. When he has to take photos in order to make money to maintain his career and life, he always feels that he is wasting time. He is constantly angry and swearing. Other things. In order to capture the real life conditions of the people at the bottom of society, he did not hesitate to take the risk and disguise himself as a poor man in the relief station to endure hardship. At the same time, he will use his power to force the woman he secretly photographed to give up her body. And once he left his camera and lost his photo, he became powerless because of the loss of power. When he found the slain body but forgot to take the camera to take it down, and returned to the studio and found that the secret photos and negatives had been stolen, everything he found before could no longer be proven. The real violence was Hidden without a trace.
For Thomas’s emotional observation, Antonioni continued his previous explorations, showing the indifference, inability to communicate, and emotional alienation of people in developed industrial societies. Thomas’ emotional life is chaotic and indifferent. There is no reliable and stable emotional partner. His alienated and indifferent dialogue with female models shows that his relationship with those models is unfaithful and insincere. He is tired of the hypocrisy of those women. . From the ambiguous attitude and language exchanges between him and the painter's girlfriend, it can be seen that the painter's girlfriend likes him, but his attitude towards her is erratic, so she will not make a choice for him. When he witnessed the slayed corpse with his own eyes, and his soul was shaken to find her gentle comfort, she was having sex with the painter. In the paragraph where the woman being photographed came to look for the film, there was a call. Thomas claimed to be his wife, but he did not communicate with him, but passed it to the woman who was photographed. He described his wife incoherently and contradictory to her. We can know from his confused look that this may be his inner desire, but it is more like a real self-deprecating joke.
Marcuse analyzed how the capitalist ruling class controls people’s thoughts in "One-dimensional Man". "Here, the so-called equalization of class differences shows its ideological function, which is used by the same kind of popular cultural product. Assimilation does not indicate the disappearance of classes, but indicates the extent to which the needs and satisfactions used to maintain the existing system are divided by the lower classes of the people and the control of popular culture." In a developed industrial society, criticism Consciousness disappears, governance becomes comprehensive, and individuals have lost the ability to rationally criticize social reality. In "Zoom", the director showed us the mysterious and powerful control of this ideology, but by paying attention to people’s mental contradictions and struggles in the process of being alienated, Antonioni discovered that this ideology could never be comprehensive. The crack of control, social, political and cultural wanderers like Thomas, and lyric poets of the advanced capitalist era, they use as a unique extension of their blinded senses to always pay attention to the real world in pain.
2. The theme of "Zoom": the truth being covered up is itself a kind of truth
"Zooming" tells a seemingly very simple story, but in the process of telling this story, the rational arrangement presents the rich western social, political and cultural phenomena in the 1960s. If we put aside the pursuit of this simple story, and notice the seemingly inadvertent but apparently carefully arranged background shots and video passages, the overall theme of the film "Zoom" built with this simple story will be discussed. Give a clear and broad understanding. Did Antonioni provide us with the truth? Our eyes travel between these intermittent plots and metaphorical shots, seeming to feel very confused. The first thing that makes us wonder is that Thomas did discover a real murder case through the photo. Although he was the only one who witnessed this fact, why this truth could not be revealed, and so easily overnight Disappear without a trace? Under the control of the capitalist social ideology, people live in the imagination of reality, and become unconscious and one-dimensional under the various persuasion and coaxing of commodity economy, advertising news, education and propaganda, and social and political consciousness. The form and cultural atmosphere, the soft but ubiquitous hidden web that shrouds the developed capitalist society, makes it impossible for any disturbance in people's beautiful imaginations in this society to show real instability. Maybe they have existed before, but under this big hidden net, they will be cleared and destroyed by the endless gentle violence hidden behind this prosperous city the moment they show up.
After the formation of a society, human beings have a disguised nature. Kurosawa Akira's "Rashomon" reveals this kind of humanity very deeply. From the root of human beings, due to their innate disguise nature, which derives disguised social, political and cultural ideologies, coupled with the beautiful dreams promised by capitalism, it is destined that people in human society cannot see the true face. The truth is not non-existent, it is just a passing moment. People have nothing to do with their own interests and are unwilling to persist in revealing the full face of the truth, or they do not have the courage to face the truth. From the day when human beings realized their disguised nature, they began to fear the truth. Reality is what people seek to restore the original nature of human beings, but it will also bring people to tears away the disguise. Labor pains. As early as in Greek mythology, the story of Oedipus warns people that they are obsessed with searching for the truth, and the final evil results can only lead to their own destruction, so they are only curious when the veil of truth is occasionally blown away by the wind. People just voted for it.
Starting from the story told in "Zoom", we are convinced that the truth did exist. Just as the director Antonioni said, at some point we could indeed see the truth, but in a flash it disappeared. So what is Antonioni thinking about this proposition? He once said that he showed an abstract reality in "Zoom". What is this reality? Antonioni once said: "True or fiction, or lie. Will precedes the narrative. Narration triggers the will. The connection between the two becomes a common reality. The lie reflects a truth that needs to be discovered." [Last in "Zoom" A paragraph has become a classic paragraph in the history of film, which not only makes the face of the film clear, but also makes the audience confused. Many researchers think hard about its metaphorical connotation and make various interpretations of it. It is clever for Antonioni to use such a mysterious ending as the answer to the film. This passage actually sublimates the abstract reality he wants to express. From the perspective of ideology, we analyze the reason why the truth magnified in "Magnification" is hidden, and the interpretation of this passage is easy. Hippies, as heretics and rebels in social politics and culture, they have a strong desire to be true and restore their original nature. In the process of rebelling against this society, they strongly felt the false and hidden violence of this society, and they deliberately painted white powder on their faces. , Put on strange costumes to satirize the disguise of civilized people to themselves; deliberately take the illusion of nothingness seriously to satirize people in society who don’t care about the truth, cover up the truth, and live in falsehood; their ridiculous performances are grotesque The look in his eyes and the weird atmosphere are precisely the most brilliant abstract imitation of the reality of human society. Thomas was lost because of the truth but for some reason. The pantomime of the hippies told him the truth, that is the rules of the game in human society. So when he comprehended the rules of that game and joined, he really heard the echo of the truth-the slap of the tennis ball.
The truth exists, and objective mechanical media help people discover and record the reality that is blinded by people's subjective expectations and the limitations of the naked eye. However, people start from their own supervisory thoughts and interests, and do not care about the truth, or cover up the truth. The real face flashes past and disappears from the eyes of strangers. The photographer discovered a murder case through the photos he took, and when he told the people he trusted that he wanted their support and help, no one wanted to believe him and confirmed the murder with him. Everyone is unwilling to intervene in such things. Whether they are true or not, they have nothing to do with their own interests. They would rather be immersed in the drunken drugs and forget everything temporarily. This is the ruling attitude of the ruling class. All the uneasiness and violence they would rather have happened are fake and never happened. And another group of awakened youths disguised themselves to face the world with a masquerading. They performed pantomimes with virtual tennis, but they asked the photographer to verify the authenticity of all this. In this way, in people's imaginary existence, truth and falsity have been completely reversed in this world.
Individual individuals cannot give meaning to truth. Truth can only become truth when it is approved by the group. At the most impressive ending of "Zoom in", the photographer saw a group of young people playing tennis on the tennis court in the park with imaginary rackets and tennis balls as if they were real. The invisible tennis ball fell in front of the photographer, and he unconsciously participated in the imagination of everyone, picking up the imaginary tennis ball and threw it to them. Althusser stated in "The State Apparatus of Ideology and Ideology": Ideology is a kind of appearance, in which the relationship between the individual and his actual living condition is an imaginary relationship, and this imaginary relationship itself has The existence of matter. "Zoom" enables the photographer to discover the truth of life, but everyone except him is still living under a false appearance of life. People's beautiful imagination of life conceals the truth of life, and the director has this imagination at the end of the film The metaphor of tennis is to imply that imagination in our lives is decisive, not whether things are true or not. The photographer discovered the truth of life through his advanced scientific photography equipment. He wanted to reveal it, but all people in life were immersed in imagination and dismissed his discovery. Those in power who wanted to restrain people from awakening from the imagination of life also took away his evidence. After the futile and powerless struggle, he was once again overwhelmed by the powerful imagination in life, and he couldn't distinguish the life in life. The truth and the lie. When he picked up the imaginary tennis ball and threw it out, the director ruthlessly judged his failure of the struggle.
Looking at "Zoom" with Althusser's ideological theory, we find that this movie no longer makes us feel confused. The truth revealed by "Zoom" is obvious, that is, a metaphor for the true operation of the ideology of developed capitalist society. . The concealment of the ideology of advanced capitalist society makes people unable to perceive its existence. However, its concealed powerful control power has led to the absurdity of people's lives. "Amplification" reveals this truth in the absurdity through ideological metaphor. As a lonely wanderer in a one-dimensional society, Antonioni pays more attention to the insignificance and powerlessness of individuals under the ideology of developed capitalist society through his eyes, and behind this hidden and powerful ideological imagination. The real violence covered up.
In short, "Zoom" provides us with an open space for experimenting with various theories. This article captures the combination of the ideological theories of Althusser, Marcuse, etc. Reading the interpretation, I found the theme of the "Zoom" text under the ideological theory: the truth is concealed, and it is a truth in itself. This mirror image of Antonioni was later obtained in more detail in Zizek's research on ideology. The argument. At the same time, through the analysis of the video text of "Zoom in", the author also made a comparative exploration of the unique thinking that the director Antonioni showed in "Zoom in" is different from the ideological theories of Althusser, Marcuse and others. . "Amplification" reveals the true operating mode of the ideology of advanced capitalist society, but unlike Althusser, Antonioni pays more attention to the insignificance and powerlessness of individuals under the ideology of advanced capitalist society through mirroring, as well as this secret and hidden The real violence hidden behind the powerful ideological imagination. Also different from Marcuse, Antonioni pays attention to the rupture of one-dimensional society: the contradictions in people's spiritual world, and the lyric poets of the advanced capitalist era make this world never completely one-dimensional.

View more about Blow-Up reviews