In the first half of the film, the black humor is the theme of the film, and Roy Anderson's fallacy reveals the absurdity of reality. On the one hand, contemporary art occupies the commanding heights of morality; on the other hand, contemporary art is dependent on the reality of social rights and capital operation; on the one hand, it is the middle class who advocates social morality and rationality; In the second half of the film, the art curator Christian is caught in a moral crisis, and the fuse of this crisis is a publicity video that was not strictly guarded on social media. Christian had to resign as the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the press conference where he announced his resignation, the curator who had lost his moral discourse was completely turned into a target of criticism.
The plight of art is a microcosm of the plight of the middle class. Rationalism advocates morality and social order, and facing the fractured and post-modern era, the artist tries to reconstruct the lost social morality through the return to rationality in Freedom Square. At the entrance of Freedom Square, people need to complete their own questioning whether they trust others. Two types of people who pretend to trust others and distrust others enter Freedom Square through two entrances, and finally meet in Freedom Square. Liberty Square is a square space surrounded by a city. In this space, people have the same obligations and powers. The artist hopes that this place will become a sanctuary of trust and kindness, so as to complete the reconstruction of morality. However, art was ultimately reduced to a utopian fantasy. In the film, even Christian's unintentional kindness became a tool for thieves to steal. Such irony seems to tell us that art cannot even be saved by itself, let alone talk about it. And redeem others. In this context, the return to traditionalism has naturally become Boim's reflective nostalgia (reflective nostalgia).
The plight of the middle class is the epitome of the plight of social order. We cannot deny Christian. He is undoubtedly the most ordinary member of the social order. Whether it is from the responsibility for the family or the enthusiasm for work, we cannot use moral loss to sanction Christian. However, such a middle-class person is in a dilemma today. In order to retrieve the stolen wallet, he played a trick that was not a big mistake, and was punished by a primary school student; in order to catch up with the trend, he tried to use the explosive effect to achieve The purpose of propagating the art exhibition was unexpectedly criticized by public opinion; and even one time that seemed to belong to a middle-class man was inexplicably condemned. This kind of predicament is like that of contemporary art, directing us to the troubled social order.
Some people say that this is the hypocrisy of the middle class. Indeed, we cannot deny the fact that Christian is hypocritical, but what needs to be made people think is the source of the hypocrisy of the middle class. The Christian-style middle class is trapped in an illusion. On the one hand, new clothes and shoes enter and exit the seemingly high-end art museum, which holds the commanding heights of social discourse; on the other hand, it is vulnerable and loses its job in the face of public opinion. This is the plight of the middle class. They do not have power in the current social order, but the social order creates an illusion that they are in a high position. Of course, the middle class cannot complete the salvation of themselves and others.
The rationalism of "Freedom Square" is also a kind of rationalism alienated by the times, and the meaning of rationality here is no longer to create social wealth. The huge donation received by the art museum and the so-called rational inspiration of "Freedom Square" form an ironic contrast. The era of rationality has long been completely different now, and art is nothing more than a tool under the operation of capital. We can examine this rational return in the context of postmodernism. This is not a true return, but rather the use of a shell to conceal the corrupted morality.
Originally published by Phoenix Entertainment: http://ent.ifeng.com/a/20170521/42936492_0.shtml
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