This became "gay porn". This porn is not porn porn, it is “ruin pron” porn.
When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, out of nowhere a group of "photographers" with DSLRs (or the latest iPhones) popped up to take pictures of the crappiest places in town. Dirty churches, abandoned middle-class communities overgrown with flowers and plants, old courts with broken glass and broken doors, plus a "black and white" and "western" filter, are like another Chernobyl. The common feature of this batch of ruin pornography and pornography is that it is shocking and interesting enough to make people want to watch it, and can't stop at all. Ruin porn seems to explain the tragic end of commodity culture and urban life, but it turns out to be an old cliché that has been said hundreds of times. Like pornographic films, it cannot create new value.
Back to the movies. This kind of gay porn is no longer creating new value, it is just taking out the chewed-up concepts of the 90s, such as "the more you love, the more beautiful" and "the art of the climax", to show it again like a treasure. Just like Andy Warhol's "Marilyn Monroe", it's beautiful to look at, but after constantly copying and pasting, it becomes a morbid state similar to voyeurism.
"Adele's Life" is very humorous in my opinion, it uses the porn of porn against the porn of ruin porn.
When Adele and Emma first date in the park, Emma, who is still blue, refers to Sartre's philosophy of "existence precedes essence". I guess this proposition is a rebellion against the discussion of human nature in old philosophical texts, while ignoring the understanding of human beings from phenomena. What you do determines who you are, not who you are anymore determines what you do. Man has the freedom to do everything. Sexually expressed as, what gender you have sex with determines whether you are gay or straight. This is the queer theory that prevailed in the 80s: there is no absolute sexuality, only relative sexuality. However, Adele believes that existence and essence are the relationship between chicken and egg, you can't tell who precedes who and who decides who. This is actually the deconstructionist view we often hear, breaking traditional binary oppositions - yin and yang, male and female, homosexuality and heterosexuality, and showing that these seemingly opposites are actually in a constant process of flux , and can never be separated. Queer theory also uses deconstruction theory, but the application of the theory is limited to the level of social identity. It just tells you that the label of homosexuality and heterosexuality can be constantly changed, and you are homosexual and heterosexual. You are heterosexual love. Simple label replacement inevitably falls into simplicity and rudeness. And eager to challenge the essence of tradition, too much emphasis on the value of existence, is still fundamentally Sartre's "existence precedes essence".
In the movie, Adele experienced the surprise of the blue flame, disappointment with heterosexual behavior, shock when entering a gay bar for the first time, from appreciation to infatuation with same-sex emma, and experienced the highest pleasure of same-sex sexual behavior. In this process, existence and essence appear together. Adele first had the essence of a neutral person, and what she developed sexually was an unknown existence. The film continues to advance the plot through the simultaneous evolution of existence and essence, and finally completes self-identification at the age of 18, that is, a complete change in essence. According to the clip, Adele's self-identification did not prevent her from entering the same-sex bar, and the act of entering the same-sex bar also updated her self-identity. The reason why her female friends reject lesbian so strongly is because she identifies with heterosexuality. If she engages in activities related to same-sex sexual behavior, it will cause a deep rupture between existence and essence, causing an identity earthquake.
Emma only talks about Sartre's "existence precedes essence", but she forgets the next sentence "others are hell". Sartre believes that without the shackles of nature, people are absolutely free, and absolute freedom will inevitably affect the freedom of others, so others are hell. This second sentence, which has not been brought up, hints at a sea change in the second part.
The film's new understanding of queer theory is not only reflected in the real deconstruction of the binary opposition between existence and essence, but also the most crucial point is to pull the essence ignored by the old queer theory to the same height as existence.
The anti-essentialism it represented was first shaken in popular culture in 1992 by the queer movement, which believed that gender identity and sexual orientation were not "natural" but formed through social and cultural processes. That year, John Gray's Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus was published. This "reference book" has been sold so far and has greatly deepened the public's understanding of gender issues. The point is that it reveals the biological differences between the sexes, that is, the differences in nature.
In fact, research in this area has been started very early in the academic field, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc. I think the most revolutionary thing about gender is evolutionary psychology, because it's an integrative, intersecting discipline that not only understands the phenomenon of gender, but also how it came about -- from an evolutionary perspective. (One of the most famous topics is the evolutionary hypothesis about homosexuality. There are four mainstream hypotheses. For example, "kin selection theory", in general, homosexual behavior cannot reproduce offspring and reduces the probability of passing on one's own genes, but it can The resources of mating are diverted to caring for siblings' children, so that a quarter of one's own genes are passed on, improving "intraspecific fitness.")
Evolutionary psychology tells you that people have an essence. Humans are not born with a blank sheet of paper to be painted on socially and culturally, but some basic structures have been built, including gender differences between men and women.
The depiction of gender differences in the film is reflected in Adele's interactions and sexual relations with different genders. With men, Adele has a profound conflict with music men over musical interests, and the only way to resolve this conflict is (by lying?) to resolve it. With women, Adele has a huge conflict with Emma on food, but this time, the solution to the conflict is to make it interesting, keep the conflict and make it interesting, and the conflict is resolved. When the music man and Adele were watching a movie, the man made a test of intimacy. When he realized that Adele was obviously embarrassed, he did not stop, but began to ask for a kiss. When meeting Emma for the first time in the park, Emma noticed Adele's doubts about her identity before leaving, so she just kissed Adele on the cheek. In sex, musical men pay more attention to their own pleasure and emphasize sexual dominance. emma knows the needs of fellow women, so she did it for 15 minutes.
Interestingly, in the second part, the difference between men and women was reversed, emma became the music man, and the colleague man and the Arab man became emma. Without this reversal, it would be essence that precedes existence. The purpose of the reversal is to tell you that the physiological structure and social and cultural influence are in a flux, and there is no eternal absolute.
So I say porn of porn against porn of ruin porn. Such a long bed scene creates a new interpretation of gender formation, far more valuable than those black and white photos.
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