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Nearing returning to China, it is the first time to go out to watch a movie with my roommate. I went to London to play and saw the bear statues in coats all over the street (they said it was fragile...), and then I found the paddington movie poster, and I started thinking about this one all the time. When I watched the trailer, I almost cried and went blind. I thought this film must be a propaganda film about the history of studying abroad and the local customs of London. The opening 20 minutes also cried blind as expected. The warm family drama in the back, although the nose is sore, is very unbelievable. Think of some theoretical questions. So keep calm.
But it was pleasantly surprised. The film discusses issues far beyond the ordinary children's New Year film.
Paddington is certainly an excellent New Year movie. The bears are cute, the Brown family is cute, and the people of London are cute. The story is relaxed and warm. Is that so...), the director and the music are both full marks. In addition to being cute, he also discussed family responsibilities, adapting to the environment and other life issues, warm and touching. But in this article, I want to talk about some unbelievable scenes, some details, some side stories, and some historical fragments. From London, which started the "Dark Peru" adventure, to the current London promotion of "Everybody feels at home". Whether it’s in this story or in history outside of the story, whether it’s a bear that speaks English, or a person who doesn’t speak English, blacks, yellows, aborigines, and animals are all Western civilizations." "The Other", the fragments of the "Western Center" and "Human Center" that did not collapse until the 1970s.
The clue to this idea is not the lovely dark Peruvian adventure at the beginning. At that time, I was still immersed in the sadness of studying the dog away from home for several years, longing to see the world and finding that I couldn't go back-a digression. Paddington came to London and was picked up by Mrs. Brown, a kind and childlike illustrator (only such a person can draw a picture book!), and sat in the attic to write his London adventure and the Brown family's story. A typical middle-class London family. Father is a risk analyst. The eldest daughter, Judy, has a gift for languages. Not only did she learn bear language later, she has also been learning Chinese, dreaming of going out into the world and opening her own shop. She is still a girl who is afraid of the new environment. The introduction of this witty character was thought to be a trivial laugh at the time, and it was an important response to the story as a whole. The director very carefully captured the psychology of Londoners from a little girl.
Is London exclusive? No one said hello to the little bear, everyone rushed to work and rampaged through the subway station. At first, no one waited to see the little bear. The girl and father found their mother talking to the little bear at the train station and found it strange. Greater London is not like the explorer introduced, give the bear a warm welcome. London is very cold and it keeps raining. However, this is the tsundere of London (or in the words of the eldest daughter: embarrassing! This is the source of fear among British gentlemen). The city was shaken by its past pride and glory, and its status as an invincible world, and fell into a deep contradiction. Cubs are different from them, so they are treated coldly and regarded as dangerous "persons" by their neighbors and the family. Isn't London Chinatown a gathering place for dangerous "others". The daughter is the epitome of such arrogance. She is afraid and longing for a new environment, a new world, learning Chinese, like a bear longing to go to London, longing to leave London to see the world. After the bear caught the thief, she quickly accepted it-London was changing.
It was the Browns who showed this change to the audience. Only mother, she has a friend in a strange antique shop, who is not a native Londoner, speaks with a strange accent, and runs the "Asandian" which is usually avoided by small and middle-class Londoners. Such a mother protects the bear from the beginning, not just being kind and friendly, but being tolerant of all "others" from the heart. And Brown's youngest son, a new man, even though he was disciplined by his father in various ways, he also accepted the bear from the heart and became a supporter of his mother. The role of the father is self-evident. He represents the old and rational side of London, with a mouthful of percentage, like the incarnation of Enlightenment. The Brown family staged all kinds of psychological contradictions in London, ambiguity, never accepting to accepting, and growing into a London that truly embraces the "people of the world". And this London, from the great nautical era to today, is not one of the epitome of Western civilization?
From this point of view, Nicole (the daughter of the explorer Clyder in the film), who is opposite to Cubs and the Brown family, is not only a pervert who loves specimens, but also a colonial era. The epitome of power. She is not only a villain. She and his father, Clyder, the explorer who discovered "Dark Peru", are the true tragic characters of the dark side of London comedy. Old Clyder was saved by Uncle Xiong, communicated with them, and refused to make them into specimens, so he was excluded by the Royal Geographers Association. That remembrance killing is the most ironic, tragic and profound in the whole film-the gentlemen of geographers ask, where are the specimens? Old Clyder said, they are not bears, they are humans! They are intelligent and civilized! The gentlemen asked, civilized? Can they speak English? Can they play golf? Do they drink tea? They were learning, they ate jam, they had their own language, they had their own civilization-all of this even Papa Brown couldn't immediately believe, not to mention the gentlemen at the time. Nicole’s father’s understanding of "civilization" was after the foundation of "Western Centrism" was shaken, it was too transcendent, too advanced, not intelligible.
(Interlude: Strictly based on research, Nicole was forty years old in 2014. When her father returned from an adventure, she was a ten-year-old girl. She was expelled from the association in the eighties. Said Orientalism was published in 1978. It seems that the time when the father returned was a period in which Western centralism had been shaken. After all, this shake started after World War II. However, it is reasonable to count from the time the original story series came out (1960s), when the father came back. It was the heyday of ethnographic research between the First World War and the Second World War.)
Nicole's father was a person at the "front of the times", so he was excluded by the Association of Geographers and spent his life in an animal shelter. Nicole swears to be ashamed of his father and hopes to shame his father, but because of this, he has become a person behind the times-now in open London, the streets are animal protectionists, advocates justice for disadvantaged groups, emphasizes racial equality and The call for integration, the right of the Western Center and the colonial era that she represents has long been abandoned, because she also ended up with the same fate as her father: cleaning the animal shelter. This is the end of the Western Center. The dark history of "Dark Peru" is forever frozen in the specimens of the Natural History Museum.
The Natural History Museum is a heterotopia, borrowed from Foucault. Although it has long become a place for public education, children learn knowledge and tourists admire the rare space, it is also a space for others; it is a mirror that allows Western civilization to see its place in the world in the light of others . The "Geographical Association"—and similar associations of landscape architects, zoologists, and ethnography—is not just a scientific research institution in the modern sense, but an imperial colonial institution, an institution of power, where humans oppress other races, And institutions of other species. The word institution is also exaggerated and mocked in the film. At the beginning of the film, Browns’ father proposed to send the bear to a certain place. He searched his stomach and said the word “institution”. The scene of dark clouds overwhelming the city and the big plaque "Orphanage" appeared in the young son's mind. This is a funny point, but after the laugh, it doesn't make sense. This kind of power institutions that oppress the minority—orphanages and similar hospitals, schools, zoos, prisons, lunatic asylums, asylums, and ethnographic research institutes—are the embodiment of human (or Western whites) power. I don't have to repeat what Foucault said. Interestingly, in paddington, this "dark" institution was rejected in the most ridiculous and acrimonious way. London does not need these, animals and people do not need these, what they need is real racial equality, a home and real help. So in the end, even the specimen enthusiast Nicole was not sent to prison, but community service-the final veto of the authority of the institution.
Put aside these heavy history and reality for a while. Little Bear is full of hope, London is also full of joy. The contemporary world seems to us to be pretty good now. London has not repeated the same mistakes. Bear has found the warmth of the family in the present London. I will cry), the specimen family who has the power of life and death of animals has been sent to provide community service for animals. Paddington shows us this kind of hope, tolerance, and harmony, and then how to continue it is our task.
2014.12.17
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PS. There are some laughter points in the film that are really impressive, especially when Nicole took the bear to the taxi, and when she pulled the door, she found that it was taxidermist... I almost fainted with a smile, thinking that this word was simply designed for this film.
Besides, I always think Tony is a laugh...Does anyone understand me. I don't understand orz
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