1. Spatial ternary dialectics and urban space
What is a city? In "Cities of Tomorrow", Le Corbusier believes that the city is the geometry of the collective unit houses, and the city relies on straight lines and efficiency. Lewis Mumford believes that cities have both "container" and "magnet" attributes. Kevin Lynch believes that cities are built on a structure of images accepted by residents. When the above scholars or designers look at the city, they either start from the material basis of the city, focus on the city’s streets, buildings, and green spaces... or start from the city’s spiritual culture and regard the city as a symbolic coding system. This is the inherent mode of people's perception of space for thousands of years. The former's understanding of space is Aristotelian "geometric space", while the latter can be attributed to the spiritual space under the Hegelian "absolute idea".
For the question of what a city is, the French philosopher Henry Lefebvre’s answer is that the city is not a material form or an ideal form. The city of Lefebvre is not only a material space, but also a spiritual space, and a social space. Social space is both material and spiritual, but it is not a superposition of the two, but an ascending spiral transcendence. Lefebvre transcended the traditional duality to understand urban space.
Lefebvre is one of the most important Marxist scholars in France in the 20th century, and an important founder of urban sociology. French philosophers Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord , British geographer David Harvey (David Harvey) are deeply influenced by Lefebvre's theory. "The Production of Space" published in 1974 is an important work of Lefebvre's urban research. In this book, he has a cultural understanding of the spatial concepts of nature, landscape, city, and architecture, and gives it social characteristics. Lefebvre’s theory inherited and carried forward the philosophical theories of Marx and Nietzsche. At the same time, he paid attention to the difficulties and problems caused by the economies and cities of the western developed countries after the war, and explored the urban residents’ aesthetic demands and the possibility of space liberation, etc. aspect.
If the core of Lefebvre's space theory can be summarized in one sentence, it is: (Social) space is a (social) product]. Space not only refers to the kind of empirical setting in which the object is in a certain location scene, but also refers to an attitude and customary practice, which can be understood as a spatialisation of social order (the spatialisation of social order). In other words, in the process of urban expansion, space design, planning, and increment are closely linked to capital operations. The production of space is the production of urban planning guided by ideology and a means of capital proliferation. In turn, the urban space as a product of social production affects the process of social reproduction. The issue of urbanization discussed in the following article does not only refer to the pure physical changes of building buildings and paving roads in rural areas. Urbanization also reconstructs the process of people's daily life. Let’s use Lefebvre’s words to further explain: “Space is the starting point of daily life and the product of society. Space is the process of social production. It is not only a product, but also a social productivity or reproducer, and a reorganization of social relations. And the process of practical formation of social order."
In Lefebvre's space epistemology system, the urban space can be understood through three dimensions: perceived (perceived), conceived (conceived), and lived (lived). In the spatial ternary dialectics, the corresponding concepts of the three are spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space.
Perceived space is the space perceived by human senses: people can perceive the material of the space by touching it, and get the size of the space through measurement. Perceived space is a measurable and portrayed material existence, a spatial practice, and the material result of the behavioral process of social activities and communication and the social space created by it.
The conceived space is described as an abstract space that cannot be perceived by the senses. It is a spiritual and idealized space part, and belongs to the concept of space representation. It includes symbols, concepts, common sense in daily life and various professional terms. In Lefebvre's view, this kind of abstract space is composed of knowledge and power. This part of the right to speak is controlled by social elites, and it is a hierarchical space.
The main body of the living space is the living person. It is people's daily life time that constitutes this part of the social space. For the city, it is the residents and users in the city. Residents and users communicate and exchange through social symbols and images, thus forming various cultural customs, social norms, and moral judgments. It is based on the practice of space, is restricted and influenced by the representation of space, and has the dual attributes of materiality and experience.
The importance of spatial ternary dialectics for the analysis of urban space is that it explores various possibilities for viewing urban space and the social relations and social production in it from a subjective and objective perspective. The three spaces are connected to each other and belong to the three sides of a whole in terms of cognition form. But in the process of practice and understanding, the representation of space is strategic-it belongs to scientists and designers, to the power class and intellectuals. Therefore, the representation of space often rules and guides the practice of space, while the space of reproducibility is ignored.
This is also an important issue facing Chinese cities. The simplification of our urban space design strategy (characterization of space) has led to the homogeneity of urban space, resulting in the homogeneity of urban image, urban life, and urban economy. As China's urban planning and construction are lagging behind that of developed countries, some of the problems that cities in developed countries have faced are also what China is about to face or have already faced. Jacques Tati is such a director. He is well versed in the ills and ailments of modern urban development. Through the extraction and reproduction of real life, they are reflected in his films. This is the social significance of Jacques Tati's films.
Table 1. The logic of the dialectics of the three chambers of urban space
2. The urban characteristics and spatial orientation of Jacques Tati’s films
Jacques Tati was born in Paris, France, but his influence spread throughout Europe and the world. In the age of sound, Jacques Tati’s films gave a revival of silent comedy. He cleverly combined the visual expressions of Chaplin and Keaton’s vaudeville dramas, while creatively using sound elements. The creation of Jacques Tati was from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, during which period was the "Glorious Thirty Years" (Les Trente Glorieuses) of France's post-war economic development. The GDP growth rate has been maintained at a constant rate. In 1975, the proportion of French urban population increased from 55.4% in the 1950s to 72.9%. In just a few decades, France completed rapid urbanization and entered a stage of steady growth. During this period, the French government led and carried out a series of urban construction and planning projects, including the Le Havre urban planning project in 1947 and the Paris reconstruction plan in 1961. In France, modern and post-modern buildings have also sprung up. Le Corbusier designed the Marseille apartment and the Ronchamp church, and Renzo Piano’s leading design of the Pompidou National Art and Cultural Center are all landmark buildings of this period. In Jacques Tati’s film, we can find that modernist architecture has become a very distinctive symbolic feature, which is inseparable from Tati’s creative era
Jacques Tati directed only five feature films in his life ("Parade" was filmed for Swedish TV), but he captured the prosperity and development of French cities and the urban problems that existed during the period with a keen eye. His "My Uncle", "Playing Time" and "Traffic Accidents" are all set in the city. The city in Tati's lens is full of skyscrapers, highways, cars, and commercial advertisements. Paris does not copy the classics and elegance, and is full of urban forests made of steel and glass. The city is designed for people, but it has become a major constraint on people's daily life and work. Urban space has become a vassal of reproduction and consumption in capitalist society. Material space, spiritual space, and social space conflict with each other, and the three are top-heavy, creating a lot of contradictions and oppositions. Jacques Tati’s humor is based on this kind of conflict. This is Jacques Tati's dual insight into drama and the city.
Tati's other two films "Mr. Yu Luo's Holiday" and "Festival" show the village and town style. However, the style of villages and towns in Jacques Tati's films is largely affected by "suburbanization". As a vassal space of the city, the seaside town in "Mr. Yu Luo's Holiday" has become a "peach blossom source" for urban residents to temporarily escape from the city. The style of the seaside town has become a kind of "realism" for urban residents. After the holidays, the residents have to return to the real life of the urban space. The small town in "Festival" shows the appearance of the American metropolis through the medium of television. There are cars and highways everywhere, and everything is efficient. This has caused the small town postman to constantly squeeze his body and pursue the efficiency of express delivery, reaching a level of madness.
In Jacques Tati’s feature-length films, we can see such a phenomenon—urban themes appear repeatedly. Regardless of whether it is directly used as a movie scene or as a story background. The former Tati expresses his heart and satirizes many urban diseases, while the latter mainly presents a dual structure of urban and rural areas. As a subsidiary of the city, the countryside either provides functional evacuation for the city, or in the shadow of the city, the city is used as a template to learn from it mechanically. Lefebvre's spatial ternary dialectics provides us with a new set of perspectives and analytical methods to study the spatial and social attributes of Jacques Tati's films.
3. Spatial practice: the result and premise of urban space
An important significance of the city is that human beings transform nature through practice, thus freeing human beings from the long evolutionary process of passive adaptation to nature, but this behavior also separates human from nature. Spatial practice is the perceived material part of space production, a product created through human labor. In the field of urban space production, it includes buildings, squares, roads, vehicles and other living and used spaces. These material spaces are not only the basis of residents' production, but also the result of production. David Harvey believes that through "spatial fix", capitalism injects funds into fixed land in cities. By building skyscrapers, highways, bridges, and ports, looking for reliable growth points for investment, capital has unknowingly reshaped the space with the city as a carrier, and the geographical expansion and reorganization of space has become a solution to the problem of capital annexation.
(1) Architecture
In Jacques Tati's films, architecture is the most intensified and intuitive means of spatial expression. Whether in "Playing Time" or "My Uncle", Jacques Tati regarded modernist architecture as one of the most prominent features of that era. In Jacques Tati's "Playing Time", the Mies-style international-style buildings are everywhere. The square boxes full of windows are arranged in the form of dominoes. This architectural distribution has become synonymous with efficiency and intensiveness, just like a replica of the bright city plan of Le Corbusier. At the level of interior design, this kind of thinking is also used. In the thirty-eight minutes of the film, when Mr. Yu Luo lost his way, he came to the work area. From the perspective of Yu Luo, the audience overlooked the work room divided by countless squares. Each workshop is the same size, configuration, and color, just like a grid plan in New York. Such a space based on capital and efficiency hinders recognition and readability. The staff shuttles between the squares like ants, as Lefebvre pointed out: the ruling class uses space as a tool, as a tool to achieve multiple goals: disperse the working class and redistribute them to designated areas. It organizes all kinds of flows, allows these flows to obey the rules and regulations, allows the space to obey power, controls the space, and manages the entire society through technology to accommodate the capitalist production relations.
In "Playing Time", because the volume and sense of space of the building are fully enlarged, the building has become a miniature urban landscape, and the existence of people appears small and funny. In the waiting room where Mr. Yuluo rests, there are only a few Bauhaus-style sofa chairs in the four corners of the huge glass room. A gentleman in a suit and a top hat walked in. Mr. Yu Luo wanted to talk to him, but because the two seats were too far apart, he could only watch from afar. The boring Yu Luo could only stare at the portrait photos on the glass curtain wall. In contrast, in "My Uncle", Mr. Yu Luo lives on the roof of a three-story building. The corridors of the public space are exposed, and there are open spaces everywhere. Yu Luo could talk in the neighbourhood on the first floor, or tease the parrots raised outside by the neighbors. Unlike the futuristic Paris and affluent areas, the urban appearance here is more of a natural form of a village-in-city model: low space utilization, high population density, and overall lack of planning. But this kind of space is more vivid and full of life.
Figure 1. Interior space design metaphors the monotony of urban space planning Figure 2. Modern urban planning and design in Le Corbusier’s ideals
(2) Square
The square is a vast and flat open space in a traditional city . In medieval Europe, such squares were often located in open spaces in front of churches, palaces or shops. They played the role of "city" and "collection" and were an important part of urban public space. In "My Uncle", there is such a small square downstairs from Mr. Yu Luo's house. In the center of the square are some stalls selling vegetables, and on the sidewalks on both sides are customers leisurely drinking coffee and reading newspapers. There are people walking their dogs on the street, and there is also household garbage. It's completely the face of the market. In "Play Time", the square is completely occupied by roads and buildings. The street only has a pure traffic function, and other communication and interaction are lost in this spatial form. Only at forty-one minutes, an old man selling flowers on the corner of the street was an exception. Tati used this color to decorate the boring and rough city. It is precisely because of the old people and flowers that people stop to take pictures many times, bringing new possibilities to the city.
(3) Roads and cars
The road is the skeleton of the city, and the user in the city is used to, accidentally or potentially moving. "The shape of a metropolis is its amorphous shape, just as the purpose of a metropolis is its aimless expansion. Those who work within the ideology of this social system can only increase the concept of quantity: they strive to Make the building taller, build the road wider, and build more parking lots. They build many bridges, highways, and tunnels to make entering and exiting the city more convenient, but they restrict the land that can be used in the city for other purposes. , Only for transportation facilities." In Tati’s film, the road has such a simplistic tendency-the transportation space that strips away social and event attributes. As an extension of human legs, the car has become a key force in the operation and communication of the city. People's city life is simplified as coming out of a big box (modernist mansion), passing through a small box (car), and entering another square box (modernist villa). In Jacques Tati’s last feature-length film "Traffic Accidents," Tati uses documentary audio-visual language to show how bored city dwellers are in cars: picking their noses, yawning, and doing nothing.
In the building, because the space scale is too large, the elevator replaces the stairs, and the corridor becomes very long and boring. Invisible roads (telephones) have replaced tangible roads. Communication between people can only be communicated through complicated machines. In "Play Time", even experienced security guards almost made mistakes. In the next scene, the receptionist who received Mr. Yu Luo walked over from the end of the long corridor, where Tati cleverly compressed the space through a telephoto lens, and showed the scale of the physical space through the little by little magnification of people in the corridor and the sound of footsteps. The imbalance.
Figure 3. The square full of life is the result of the organic development of the city. Figure 4. The walkway in the building is as long as a road
4. Representation of Space: Symbols and References of Urban Space
The representation of the city’s space is the conceived space, the conceptualized and spiritual space in the process of urban space production and time. The representation of space is the reproduction of space production and production relations through dominant signs and symbolic systems. The characterization of urban space can be divided into inward characterization and outward characterization according to the different characterization methods. Introverted spatial representations are more inclined to personal experience expressions. For example, each person can generate a personalized urban cognitive map based on his or her own knowledge of urban material space. The extroverted spatial representation is more inclined to a public and dominant language symbol system.
(1) Outward-oriented spatial representation:
In "My Uncle", Tati portrays a middle-class Arbel family bound by consumer symbols and space symbols. The Arbel family lives in a high-tech style villa. Both the building itself and the interior are full of villas in a typical internationalist style. Lagrange, the film’s scene designer, said: “I took scissors and paste to make a collage using the illustrations from Architectural Review. Take a little from here, a little from there, porthole windows, stupid pergola... …This is a hodgepodge of architecture.” But Mrs. Albele was proud to introduce this to her neighbors as the most fashionable and avant-garde residence. In order to maintain this "illusion", the Alber family had to cut their feet and fit into this life. For example, in a dry landscape garden, everyone is only allowed to walk on the part with stepped stones, so they have to detour, stand on tiptoe, and cross their home garden. When the guests came to Arbel’s house, they carried the table and circled the garden along the step stones. Everyone was careful not to cross the boundary. Yu Luo even accidentally fell into the real because he didn’t avoid the fake water. In the pool. Therefore, Lefebvre believes that the space table is: "Elites and intellectuals will confuse the representation of space with the space of representation. They wishful thinking that real life should be carried out completely in accordance with the planning and design on the blueprint, but there is always a gap, and It has always been there."
(2) Introverted spatial representation:
Compared with the publicity and dominance of the outward-looking space representation, the inward-looking space representation is more personal. In Tati’s films, it often presents a space that is out of reality and wishful thinking. For example, in "Traffic Accidents", as a car designer, Yu Luo designed a camper that is out of real functional requirements: when its trunk is opened, it is a raised tent, which has a kitchen and a shower, and is hidden in the steering wheel. There are electric shavers. If in "Playing Time" Tati realized the metaphor of modernist architecture for the modern city, then in "Traffic Accidents", Tati realized his metaphor for cars and modern architectural space through the mouth of Mr. Luo. But Tati himself has a negative attitude towards such "composite spaces": "What they call comfortable, new technology, and the car I tried to create is so absurd that you can take a bath in it. , Drink coffee, shave-but in the end it seems so impractical, it has become the worst choice for vacation, because it will bring so much trouble. And only when you stay away from those tailored for you When things are happening, the relationship between people starts to work."
In "Playing Time", Tati expresses another spatial representation through mirror reflection: the same urban planning has transformed the city into a thousand cities, and Paris has become the same as London and New York. But the audience can only see the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Sacred Heart Basilica, these landmarks of Paris, in the reflection of the glass doors and windows. But the mirror image on the glass is essentially a kind of simulacrum, it is not the real projection of the city, but the projection of the inner symbol. So Tati’s lens avoids shooting the real Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, preferring they exist as mirror images. As Baudrillard said: The mirror is actually the end of space. The glass mirror makes Paris more radiant, but also more self-enclosed.
Figure 5. The Villa of the Arbel family Figure 6. The glass mirror reflects the landmark of Paris, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart
5. Representational space: the living elements of urban space
The symbolic space of the city is the external space used by urban users and inhabitants through signs and symbols. The space of representation must be based on the practice of space, and at the same time be influenced and governed by the symbol system of space representation. For urban residents, the represented space is the place where urban life is produced, and is passively affected by individual actors. Therefore, the represented space itself has a high degree of individualization and localization. In Jacques Tati’s films, we can find that the interaction of human images constitutes an important element of the space of representation. Tati gave the characters in the movie a certain degree of drama, creating an invisible gap between the characters and the lives of the characters, and through this spatial interaction between the characters, satirizes the domination and domination of people’s daily lives in the production of material and spiritual spaces. Influence. Tati expresses this kind of alienation of living space through the form of "exhibition".
(1) Image interaction in the exhibition space
In "Playing Time", Tati made Mr. Yu Luo stray into an "international fair". In the scene of the exhibition, the interactive images of people are divided into "audience" and "actor". A salesperson needs to perform like an actor, show the product, but also make the audience and consumers unaware of the existence of the performance, but this in itself is a kind of absurdity. For example, at the exhibition, a company made a trash can into the shape of a Greek column, and many large and small models of Greek columns were placed in the exhibition area. But when the shopping guide opened the trash can with his feet on the Greek column, the illusion of such a drama was broken, producing a kind of irony and humor. When Mr. Yu Luo strayed into such a large-scale drama, Tati also used his identity dislocation to create a lot of jokes. Since Yu Luo could not speak English, he was in a state of aphasia at such an international fair. He will be mistaken for a competitor who has come to steal information, a factory maintenance worker, and a shopping guide at the fair. This way, his identity goes back and forth. Every time his identity changes, he is mistaken. This led to the formation of a new social form, a new social space. Tati expresses a kind of humor of dislocation of social space under the failure of language symbol system. Similarly, Tati also used the social space dislocation in the exhibition in "Traffic Accidents". In a traffic accident, the exhibition picnic car that Yu Luo was in charge of was transported by the car. At the auto show, the shopping guides had nothing to do, they could only eat sandwiches in the birch forest constructed by the set, like a real picnic.
(2) Image interaction in urban space
The use of large-area glass curtain walls is one of the iconic materials of modern architecture. In addition to the reflective properties mentioned above, Tati also makes full use of the projection properties of glass to maximize the theater of the city. As Mumford said: "The city center is actually a theater... The actor needs the help of the audience to enhance his self-awareness and make his role more important." In "Playing Time", Tower Ti was invited by a friend to visit the apartment. The wall of the apartment room facing the street is a whole piece of floor-to-ceiling glass windows, allowing people outside the house to clearly see the actions of the people inside. This glass window is a metaphor for the fourth wall that is invisible to the drama dance. The audience and pedestrians can observe the life of the apartment people through the window, and Mr. Yu Luo’s friends continue to show off the furniture of the house to him. Field shows and reality shows. Then Yu Luo and friends watched TV in the house together. They pointed their eyes to the wall, and the other side of the wall was the life of the next door: In this way, the use of lens inner montage in Tati broke through the material space limitation of the representational space. People observe each other's lives through the televisions on the invisible walls (floor-to-ceiling windows) and visible walls (wall-mounted TVs), forming a dialectical and unified interaction of view and performance.
Figure 7. Exhibition space filled with Greek image symbols. Figure 8. City becomes theater and residents become audience actors
Six, conclusion
Tati’s films themselves are very visual and symbolic. His works are more visual and less plot. Some scripts such as "Playing Time" and "Mr. Yu Luo's Holiday" basically have no clear story line, so the space becomes Understand the important elements of reading and watching Jacques Tati's movies. Jacques Tati’s film creation cycle basically coincides with the peak of the development of internationalist style architecture. Through the spatial analysis of Tati’s films through the ternary space dialectics, it can be found that Tati accurately captured the Western world architecture in this historical period from the perspective of the director. And even the evolution and evolution of political economy. Through the perspective of this little figure, Yu Luo shows the alienation of people in the urban space, and satirizes the flaws and morbidity of modernist design under the capitalist system. Today, the modernist concept has been deeply integrated into our social life today. Tati’s film is a mirror. It not only reflects the ills hidden under the western world’s urban and economic development, but also reflects some of the upcoming or existing difficulties of China under the current high-speed urbanization. This is Jacques Tati’s film. One of the charms that spans the latitude of time.
1. [法] Le Corbusier, "Cities of Tomorrow", translated by Li Hao, Beijing: China Construction Industry Press, 2009 edition, p.5
2. [United States] Mongford, "History of Urban Development", translated by Song Junling and Ni Wenyan: Beijing: China Construction Industry Press, 2005 edition, p.6
3. [美] Kevin Lynch, "The Image of the City", translated by Fang Yiping and He Xiaojun, Beijing: China Publishing House, 2001 Edition, p. 4
4.Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space, Blackwell Ltd:1991,pp.26
5.Shields R. Lefebvre. love and struggle: spatial dialectics. London and New York:
Routledge. 1999
6. Zhao Haiyue, He Xiying, "Identification and Construction of Lefebvre's "Space Ternary Dialectics""[J] Journal of Social Sciences of Jilin University, 2012 Issue 2
7.Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space, Blackwell Ltd:1991,pp.38-41
8. Tang Shuangshuang, "Rural Policy and Enlightenment in the Process of Rapid Urbanization in France", "Agricultural Economic Issues" 2012, Issue 6, page 1
9. David Harvey, Zhou Xian, He Chengzhou, etc. "China in the Process of Space Turning to Space Restoration and Globalization", "Academic Research". 2016, Issue 8, Pages 144-148
10. [French] Henry Lefebvre, "Space and Politics", translated by Li Chun, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2008 edition, page 9
11. [United States] Mumford, "History of Urban Development", Song Junling, Ni Wenyan translation: Beijing: China Construction Industry Press, 2005 edition, p. 400
12.Jonathan Rosenbaum, Tati's Democracy: An Interview and Introduction, Film Comment, 1973
13. [French] Henry Lefebvre, "Space and Politics", translated by Li Chun, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2008 edition, p. 28
14.Jonathan Rosenbaum, Tati's Democracy: An Interview and Introduction, Film Comment, 1973
15. [法] Jean Baudrillard's "System of Objects", translated by Lin Zhiming, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2019 Edition, p.16
16. [America] Mumford "History of Urban Development", Song Junling, Ni Wenyan translation: Beijing: China Construction Industry Press, 2005 edition, p. 54
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