The film talks about many topics involved in Western philosophy: value system, existence, life activities, social production activities, etc. To discuss philosophy, it is necessary to set up a metaphysical premise. Subjectively, if Bergman treats the film as a philosophical discussion, then his metaphysical premise is that the world is generated. Based on this metaphysical premise, I combined the content of the film to demonstrate the philosophical ideas that the film may express.
In terms of oral language, the two protagonists of the film-Elizabeth and Emma, the former is silent and the latter chattering endlessly. From the plot point of view, Emma's motive for Elizabeth's violence stems from this. From the perspective of social relations, Emma is a doctor and Elizabeth is a patient. It is very abnormal for this conflict to erupt between the two. To normalize it, one must get rid of social relations and discuss this conflict from the perspective of life activities. origin of.
From a philosophical point of view, the referent of oral language is nerve stimulation, and the signifier is sound. The specific process of "neural stimulation" is that sound acts on people's feelings, and people then visualize the feelings through intellect. This is also the process by which people recognize an event. In the human ontology of epistemology, human beings act as noumenon in the process of cognition, and events act as objects, and the whole process of cognition is the substance of objects, and then there are concepts of "essence" and "being". The language to which spoken language belongs is actually human beings as the subject, the world as the object, and the world as the product of object materialization. When people create language, they do not rely on experience or transcendental concepts, but their own utility instincts, which are specifically expressed as Conquer impulse and conquer will. The few scenes at the beginning of the film that are not logically related can be a person's memory in a narrow sense, but in a broad sense, a product of a person's impulse to conquer-image, that is, existence. "Existence" is the opposite of the metaphysical premise of the film-"Generation". This is the limitation of the utility instinct on human's cognitive ability. Human cognitive ability will not exceed the scope that is beneficial to human survival. Humans create language out of the impulse to grasp the world and survive. Also driven by this impulse, mankind I want to raise my own meaning in the appearance of the world, and try to continuously expand the scope of human understanding. In this process, language becomes the key, and the result is that at the beginning, it was only a category of language that humans simplified the world. In the hearts of some people, it has become the "truth", that is, the "unique". The reason why the external world is "generated" is because there are many categories to explain the world, and language is only one of them. The "part of the people" here refers to those who are weak to conquer. They are too lazy to establish a category of understanding the world and rely on the established category, that is, language. But the weakness of the will to conquer does not mean that there is no will to conquer. They took a shortcut-built a "real world" outside of the appearance world. The shortcut is because the "real world" is essentially a kind of existence. , In contrast to the "generation" of the appearance world, because they only capture one state of the event in the process of generating, and regard other states that are not captured as the essence of the event, that is, the non-generating carrier of generation. Emma expressed this illusion when she failed to take care of the patient. She felt that she could not communicate with the patient because of lack of experience and because the patient was an artist. In Emma's fantasy, there are two "real worlds", one is the world of intellectual construction, and the other is the world of artistic aesthetics. So Emma belongs to "this group of people", and so do most of the audience. Bergman used this technique to tease the audience at the beginning of the film. film At the beginning of the film, there is a set of shots showing the state of the old man lying down. The sound of water droplets as the background sound dispels the speculation of the audience's "stillness of the image", and promotes the speculation of the "stillness of the old man". Stillness becomes the characteristic of the old man under the processing of the audience's weak will to conquer, and the audience speculates that the old man is dead. Soon after the audience gave the old man the meaning (death), the movie suddenly interspersed with the scenes of the old man with his eyes open. The meaning given to the old man by the audience before proved to be meaningless, and the prover was the audience himself, and the audience was shocked. What makes the audience even more frightened is that in the process of watching a movie, not only the audience is the subject, but the movie is also the subject. Like the audience, Emma gave Elizabeth a listener meaning in her interactions with Elizabeth. Later, she discovered that Elizabeth gave Emma the meaning of experimentation during her interactions, which was in line with Emma's will to conquer. Violating, and she discovered that she and Elizabeth are both subjects, there is no object, and therefore there is no entity. When the world that exists loses its quality and only empty quantity, then this world does not exist, and Emma does not exist. She fell into negative nihilism, but her weak will to conquer still existed, so she relied on a very simple method to conquer Elizabeth-violence.
Since meaning itself is not just a material concept, physical conquest cannot be regarded as a complete conquest. Aiming at the spiritual conquest, Emma's strong will works. Returning to the metaphysical premise of this film as a material for philosophical discussion-the world is a generation. The reason for this definition is that the world is essentially a relational world. Defining as a generated world seems like a contradictory concept. This is because "definition" is reasonable in the human category, but it is questionable for the world. According to the plot of the film, most of the story takes place on the beach. The reason why the beach has become a treatment place is because in the eyes of the attending physician, Elizabeth’s abnormal behavior is due to her relationship with the world, not her pure consciousness or emotional impulse. As a result, the formation of Elizabeth's original relationship world is interpersonal communication. In contrast to nature, the beach can make Elizabeth forget the previous relationship world and establish a relationship world whose nature is opposite to the original relationship world. As Emma with the same profession as the attending physician, she also realized this, so she wanted to completely conquer Elizabeth by creating a imaginary world of relationships for Elizabeth (giving Elizabeth a meaning that can convince herself). So Emma used her impression of Elizabeth to reason about her family relationship. In Emma's view, Elizabeth is cold, ruthless and neurotic, and she tore up the photos of her son in front of Emma, and Emma has never seen her husband. Based on this, she fictionalized the discordant relationship between Elizabeth and her son's husband, and used it as a bargaining chip to rebuke Elizabeth, and she believed in it. This is the product of her strong will. But this kind of fiction is meaningless to Elizabeth. Through comparison, it can be seen that when Emma was about to attack Elizabeth with boiling water, Elizabeth yelled out of the inherent utility instinct of human beings. This is for Elizabeth, who usually doesn’t say a word. Very rare, and when Emma was exposing Elizabeth's relationship world, Elizabeth did not react as strongly as that. Isn't a person's relationship world inferior to the physical body? This is not calculated by human consciousness, but by utility instinct. Emma’s fictional world of Elizabeth’s relationship only affects Emma herself. In this event, Emma acts as both the subject and the object, and what is materialized is a fictional illusion of hers, when she realizes it on an intellectual level. When she was convinced that it was an illusion, she fell into negative nihilism again. The truth is only her weak impulse to conquer.
The title of the film is "Masque", and most explanations of the title are "the false side of people in life". Since there is a falsehood, there must be a truth, so what is the truth? Can people find their true side by virtue of their intellect? The answers to these questions need to look under what premises. Under the metaphysical premise of "the world is generated", the interpretation of "masks" is actually "fiction", that is, human beings seek the meaning of the world out of utility instinct, so the world is simplified and imaged. But now the spiritual crisis of mankind is like Emma in the film. Due to the weak impulse to conquer, he is caught in the product of simplifying and pictorializing the world. The strong will is only a flash in the pan. If people can maintain their strong will and the courage to reassess all values, then there is no such thing as Emma falling into the negative nihilism twice.
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