The beginning of the film is a video: a pig was taken to the slaughterhouse by several people and killed with an air gun. The viewer (controller) outside the painting repeatedly played back the scene of the pig being hit on the head by an air gun, which seemed to show his interest in this behavior. This person is Benny (he is also the photographer of this video). After Benny took the girl home, he showed the latter the video and the air gun in the video, and expressed his strong interest in the air gun, after a provocative joke between the two , Benny killed the girl with an air gun. From the development of the matter, it can be seen that Benny’s interest in air guns was the first factor in his violence. "The term has no concept at all. He is out of a simple mentality of wanting to know what effect an air gun will have on people. This is also the most terrifying thing). Benny’s potential violent tendency is the second factor: before the film, Benny was immersed in violent images (videos of slaughterhouses and his preference for bloody horror films); in playing with girls, Benny was immersed in violent images. The sudden act of violence (the girl was arrested by the police as a criminal) showed that he had no idea of the scale of violence. The third factor is the deep anxiety in Benny's heart: when Benny first shot the girl, the shot did not cause fatal injuries, but then, the girl's shouts made Benny feel terrified and uneasy, so, He continued to reload and shoot to kill the girl. Regarding his anxiety, we will talk about it later.
Let me talk about the first two factors first. In the film, these two factors can be attributed to one point, that is, the violent image induced this violent incident. But at the same time, the image is both an exit and an entrance. Under this visual representation, what the image conceals is the proliferation of images in a broader sense under the post-modernist consumer culture and popular culture that has a strong penetrating power. That is, the invasion of image violence. In the room where Benny lives, it can be seen that in the center is a TV set, surrounded by various video tapes and video equipment. He lives in it, and is accompanied by images almost every moment. His pale face and godless eyes seemed to engulf him in the surging images. This is a kind of image violence: it forces the viewing subject to be immersed in a state of continuous viewing, unable to extricate themselves, and loses the ability to judge and think, just like walking dead. At the beginning of the film, Benny chooses a video at the video rental store. Two other people next to him are watching the video with him. These two people are as if they were hypnotized by the picture in front of them. Open, as if the soul was sucked away. Just as Foucault put forward the "death of man" when postmodernism was just immersed in all levels of society, this "death" refers to the death of subjectivity. In the fragmented and heterogeneous world, man has become a wanderer, a mentally ill patient. The world is no longer clearly visible and full of logic in front of him, but a chaos and nothingness. He has lost the ability to judge and think. . This is also the world shown in the movie. Man became a captive of the image, he was unable to respond, even less able to break free, the explosive information and images were transmitted to him through the TV screen: home video followed by current affairs news-industrialized cities, environmental protection and frequent wars , Behind this is a bloody and violent movie-there is no plot, only a violent show, and then there is noisy rock music... Everything is disorderly, even the living room of Benny’s house is full of this kind of collage. : From plant specimens to Mona Lisa to Marilyn Monroe of Andy Warhol... Logic and ethics are dispelled, and what is left is just a collage. We can neither find any connection between collages, let alone understand the meaning behind such collages.
Under the impact of images, the text gradually becomes redundant and even meaningless. The ability of language becomes laborious and difficult for the characters in the film (especially for Benny). Benny is an aphasia, a wanderer (he wanders in non-stop places) (to a certain extent, he is indeed a mentally ill person), he does not know how to express his heart (except showing images), he cannot express , The lack of speech caused the lack of communication (the dialogue became weak and the events and emotions could not be stated), and the intense anxiety caused by the resulting depression constituted the essence of his subsequent behavior (this is why Benny did Report to the police the reason for his parents).
Benny wanted to seek a kind of protection to eliminate his inner anxiety. However, his "confession" to his parents (with the help of images) did not achieve the effect he wanted, but his anxiety was further enlarged. His father's questioning left him at a loss (because he only wanted to avoid this); during the vacation, his mother's sudden emotional breakdown and crying made Benny feel at a loss. On the other hand, we can realize through the film that for Benny, his room (video tape and TV) is a symbol of his inner world. They are tightly wrapped in curtains, as if it were a layer of protection for him. membrane. When Benny returned home from vacation, he found that everything had been pulled away, and found that his room was exposed to direct light from the outside world, as if his own heart had been forcibly stripped away, and there was no "safety" at all. . After that, Benny discovered the conversation his parents had previously discussed about dealing with Benny that his camera had accidentally recorded. This conversation forced Benny to face a problem he had never thought of before, and one that he has been avoiding. This sudden face frightened him. In the face of this fear, he chose to escape again. He hoped that he could make him feel uneasy in a group-the police. However, this kind of uneasiness will not be alleviated by the change of the target for help, because it has never been caused by a particular individual or group. If the situation of "aphasia" and visual violence cannot be fundamentally changed, then this kind of anxiety will always exist, and there will be the possibility of outbreaks at any time. People will have nowhere to hide. Therefore, in fact, there is no difference between Benny confessing to his parents and confessing to the police. Benny has been plagued by uneasiness all the time, and has been avoiding this uneasiness all the time. But he had no knowledge of his behavior. After the statement to the police was over, Benny even asked: "Can I go?" It is this subject's almost absolute indifference (and sadness) that makes people feel To a kind of suffocating despair.
In addition, television (machine) is also an element that cannot be ignored in the film. First of all, it is an extremely important object. On the one hand, it is not only the central element of the information explosion era, but also a symbol of the post-modern consumer society; on the other hand, it is the birthplace of the image world and image culture. It is both presenting and producing images. Secondly, after the television (machine) has established and emphasized its symbolic meaning in the film, it has further become an important tool for film scene scheduling. For example, when Benny was violent, the film was not directly shown, but captured by the camera in his room, and the TV screen was presented to show the whole process to the audience. This is actually to create a "Barney-like" point of view for the audience. Through this point of view, the audience enters Benny's world. They are like Benny who lives in the world of images and observes life, watching the whole thing. . Through this recording method, the film gradually changes the television (machine) from reflecting the fiction and reflecting the other into a window reflecting the reality and the subject itself. However, the meaning of this window, like its entire cultural background, the lack of subjective meaning in turn can only make the meaning of the image (television) itself even more lacking. It's like Barney's hairstyle. After the girl's incident, he shaved all hair off, as if as a symbol of prisoner serving sentence, but in fact this is only a visual stimulus, and there is almost no meaning behind it.
It must be admitted that in the film, Haneke's attitude is very pessimistic. Although there have been blood stains in the white bathtub, it is still white as soon as the water is flushed; the white milk stain on the black table is wiped off as if nothing has happened; the only panoramic view of the city (multiple night scenes) took over. At the end of the paragraph when the Nepalese parents talk about handling the corpse, the meaning is self-explanatory.
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