Although the story takes place in the United States in the early 1980s, the character of the clown possesses a certain magic that travels through time and space. His encounters and rebellions allow people who like this movie to find himself in him. The clown confronts the mainstream with a mocking posture. , So some commentators think this is an "anti-Hollywood" movie. Is this really the case?
"Joker" is easily reminiscent of the topic movie "Parasite" a while ago. Coincidentally, these two genres won the first prizes of two important film festivals this year: "Parasite" won the Cannes Film Festival. Certainly, "Joker" also unexpectedly won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. If the former can still be understood as a film directed by Feng Junhao, the latter is simply born out of DC comics.
As a result, careful audiences must be able to find that this year’s art film ecology has undergone some fundamental changes. The award-winning works of the three major film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festival) are often regarded as high and low, but "Parasite" And "Joker" both got big box office sales, has a very good audience base, and won unanimous praise in the public opinion field. The recently released domestic film "Youth in Youth" resonated with "Joker".
The appearance of these films is like a weather vane, sparking countless discussions. Today, when the boundaries of film art are becoming more and more blurred, what is art film seems to need to be redefined.
Author | Yu Yaqin
01
"Joker" is still a mainstream Hollywood movie
We no longer need to prove the value of "Joker", it has successfully revealed the symptoms of the times, and tried to accurately and accurately reproduce the social structural problems in the United States and the world. The clown not only appears as a movie character, but also exists as a metaphor. As Zizek said, "Joker" can be seen as people's despair of order itself.
But the era icon "Joker" created by this movie-what is left is not true liberation, but the beginning of a greater disorder. The film raises questions, but only gives an ambiguous and open ending. The controversy caused by this has caused a huge tear in public opinion in the real world, which can almost be regarded as irony.
The reason why "Joker" has gained such widespread recognition is related to the creation of an extremely successful character "Joker". This mentally ill patient named Arthur is an absolutely marginal figure in society. He is in poverty. Struggling online, taking care of the mentally disordered mother, and trying to smile back to the world with the work of a clown actor, but his various efforts ended up being shattered with dignity and dreams... The starring role of the film also has the method of breaking his childhood. The actor Joaquin Phoenix (Joaquin Phoenix) portrayed Arthur's sadness and transformation with extremely superb acting skills, and almost established a classic Hollywood performance tutorial. The film’s effort to create characters makes this movie more empathetic and understanding than "Parasite". If "Parasite" is remembered as an event, "Joker" is remembered by others. Characters, this is also the charm of Hollywood movies, and the value of stars is maximized.
Regardless of how stringent standards are considered, "Joker" can be said to be a well-made, well-structured, high-quality film with first-rate fine art. It has restored the character's background and personality well, and is taught by "New Hollywood". The aesthetic style of a generation has undergone contemporary fine-tuning and transformation on the basis of the classic Hollywood narrative and aesthetic paradigm. We can even say that "Joker" is a superhero movie, and he is fundamentally portrayed as another form of "superhero". The essence of the character's growth path is still a classic narrative of "counter-attack": a small character was bullied and lost everything until he couldn't bear it, so he began to create his own glory. Only this time, the enemy of the heroic clown is no longer a bad element endangering world peace. He pointed the finger at the "hypocritical" elite. When he completed the spiritual father-killing and the actual mother-killing, he obtained a kind of transformation and had a truly independent personality.
If it were not for the introduction of extremely violent narratives, the growth of the clown would be logically the same as the Oscar-nominated film "The Birth of a Star" produced by the film's director Todd Phillips. The latter tells about the transition of a country female singer from an amateur to a superstar, and the girl's growth is to some extent predicated on the sacrifice of her husband (not her subjective will). Both films are based on the achievement of the "superstar" and the story needs to be unfolded at the expense of others, and may easily become a false inspirational story. It’s just that "Joker" has achieved the extreme, has gone to a certain extreme. It seems so desperate and rebellious, but it is actually just a kind of false inflammatory (yes, at this level I agree with the defense of many critics, "Joker" does not have a more real provocative).
The place where the movie's blood is dazzling appears after the clown's "counterattack". He ignores the rules and retaliates in his own way. He said, "I thought I was a tragedy, but in fact I was a comedy." Many people on the Internet agree with this role. Zizek believes that the killing of the clown is not directed at violence itself, but "despair." The implication is that the social allegory of the clown is greater than the social effect of the movie. However, who can deny that the movie's ambiguous attitude towards this character makes the signifier of this movie hollow.
In fact, the clown’s violent acts are not legal in the true sense. If he is a self-defense resistance to the violence of Wall Street elites who insulted himself on the subway, he is a vent of personal anger towards the violence of his mother and colleagues. Revenge, but his atrocities against the female neighbor he likes can only be said to be a terrible selfish desire, which makes the call for violence disappear. Undifferentiated violence is converted into the film’s sensational stimulation to the audience. This is actually the law of attraction commonly used in Hollywood movies, and excessive violence will cause the clown’s action to become invalid.
It is not difficult for us to find that the clown’s expectations of his own destiny are not beyond the norm. He wants to bring laughter because he needs to be affirmed and become the person who is noticed in the center of the stage; he hates the rich, but not because of him. Recognize the structural injustice, and because of the personal grievances with Wayne, a rich man in Gotham City. There is a scene in the movie where the clown mistakenly thought he was Wayne's illegitimate son, so he ran to Wayne's mansion to ask for an explanation. In fact, the way the clown wanted to gain recognition at the beginning was to enter the upper class and become the "son" of the rich. , Become the idol of the mediocre. Therefore, in terms of narrative logic, the story of the clown is a self-realization story of the loser. This movie is still a standard Hollywood movie in essence, without real rebellion. At the end of the movie, the violent incident could no longer end, and the clown was still in narcissism. In the carnival of everyone, he never had a clear idea and purpose, but he got on the roof of the car, wiped his red lips with blood again, and enjoyed The crowd cheered and danced again, all he wanted was a personal highlight moment. Under the seemingly gorgeous packaging of the clown, it is actually an empty wounded heart. This story is destined to not correspond to complex reality, but is just a black myth of Hollywood. The film shows that the structural disorder is transformed into the mutual influx between the bottom layers, but the undifferentiated violent carnival brought about by this will definitely not be a reasonable way to solve the problem, but a kind of internal friction.
02
The "hormone" of "Parasite" is a spectacle that uncompresses the audience
When it comes to "Joker", I have to bring up the "Parasite" that has been hotly debated in the past few months. The straightforward imagery of the film makes the metaphor of this work no need to "hide". The movie uses the rich man’s mansion as a metaphor for the social structure. The rich enjoy the sunshine, while the bottom layer lives in the basement. Eventually, the bottom layers hurt each other, and seeking revenge from the rich is just to transfer the owner of the mansion to another wealthy family. …The background of the story reflected in "Parasite", of course, also has a profound social background. According to news reports, South Korea’s economy continues to decline, the unemployment rate remains high, and people’s livelihood issues are thorny.
In this way, it is expected that "Parasite", which reflects the gap between the rich and the poor, is so popular in South Korea. But is Bong Joonho really a director who pays attention to social issues? On the one hand, his works implant these elements, on the other hand, they turn these realistic elements into film symbols, so that they lose their original realistic meaning and become tools for genre films. I have to say that this shows that Feng Junhao is indeed an excellent genre film director. He has reprocessed reality. Under his skills, the truth is not important, but how to play with the pain and excitement caused by reality. The mood of the audience. Perhaps we can understand that "Parasite" is actually a film for the middle class to show the "spectacle" of the upper class and the lower class. In the movie, the rich are innocent and lead a luxurious life, while the protagonists at the bottom are clever and capable, but they cannot change their own destiny. The characters inside lack authenticity, and are more like emotional models in a forced social landscape.
"Parasite"'s display of class issues is extremely exaggerated (the same is true for "Joker"). We can't see the true character of the characters in the movie, and it is difficult to have real empathy for the characters. In such a movie, empathy seems unnecessary. What the movie wants to show is a highly conceptualized social model that allows us to release our dissatisfaction with the real world while watching the spectacle.
To put it bluntly, "Parasite" cannot be mentioned as a reflection and criticism of class issues. It just caters to the middle class's imagination of social structure, or it is simply a work filmed for the middle class elite to use for "prostitution". The logic of the movie seems to say that the position of the middle class is always the safest. Because this group neither has the ability to buy luxury houses with secret basements, nor will they "degenerate" to the point where they live in basements.
It seems that "Parasite" is like a wake-up call for the middle class, allowing them to maintain a proper awe of the social reality at the moment when social contradictions are quite aroused. The last violent incident of the film occurred between the bottom and the bottom, and the bottom struck back against the upper class. Bong Junhao obviously didn't want to scare the audience. After a small warning, "Parasite" gave the audience an appropriate placebo.
If you compare carefully, the themes discussed in the two films "Parasite" and "Joker" are also consistent, focusing on the class consolidation of the society, revealing a kind of structural violence, and the stories emptied the real world to a certain extent. Therefore, it is not so much a realist work as a fable.
Even, we can think that a new type of film-"hormone" film has been invented. "Parasite" is indeed a consumer movie with excellent movie-watching pleasure. The movie mobilizes various elements and always attracts the attention of the audience. With a suitable rhythm, it leads the audience into the logic of the movie one by one, which is the ultimate fatal one. When the attack occurred, the audience's nervous nerves were relaxed, and the resentment was wiped out.
03
"Young You" successfully carried out a variety of film genres
So far, we might as well take a look at the recent hot domestic film "Youth in Youth", which was also nominated for the new generation unit of the Berlin Film Festival. Since the film also tells the story of two low-level children fighting the violence imposed on them in their own way, it seems to correspond to "Joker".
There are many overlaps between the story of "Young You" and "Joker". They are both stories of insulted and harmed people resisting. However, for various reasons, the former did not overstate the homicide in the movie. It is an accident as a means of "excusing"; while the latter is more free, showing the violent element vividly and vividly. Under different social backgrounds, audiences have different emotions towards movie characters. If we are more sympathetic to Chen Nianxiaobei, we can have a sense of substitution for the clown. This may be because the role of the clown is more complicated and representative; but maybe it is more because he succeeded in the "counterattack" in the end. The audience's desires are satisfied.
The protagonist of the film Chen Nian and the young Xiaobei accidentally formed a small community with their own traumas. They wanted to support each other and get rid of the bottom life through mainstream means such as college entrance examination. Unexpectedly, because Chen Nian encountered campus violence, she suffered a lot of injury but was unable to obtain justice through proper means, and later killed her insulting classmate by mistake. In order to protect her, Xiaobei chose to bury her body and convict her. The fate of the two people therefore had to face a more cruel future and face the punishment of the law.
The more successful part of the film is that it does not stop at telling the story of a young girl being bullied, but tries to draw the individual's experience out of the wider society. Therefore, after the film was released, relevant discussions were almost endless, ranging from the harm of campus violence to whether the age of criminal responsibility should be redefined, from sophisticated audiovisual language to criticism of social reality, different audiences have different interpretations due to different life experiences. Some of the practical meanings are actually new meanings spontaneously derived from the audience that are not in the movie text itself. "Young You" consciously or unconsciously engages in inter-classical speaking with social reality, but makes the film's ideology more complete, which has nothing to do with the film itself.
Chen Nian and Xiaobei are rare in the current film mechanism. The little people do not rely on external forces to use their own abilities to resist external damage in the form of a community. The film has successfully achieved no pretending grief and narcissism. Turn the tragedy of the characters to thinking about the social structure. Therefore, it has a pattern and care that ordinary domestic movies do not have. Movies are ubiquitous to show the harm of a structural power relationship to people: teachers to students, mothers to children, rich people to the poor... all of them, and the tragic ending of the movie produces a kind of power. The calling effect of stimulating the audience's thinking and action.
However, it must be pointed out that "Young You" does have a social effect that the author may not have anticipated, but this movie is still a clichéd drama. The movie uses traffic idol star Yi Yang Qianxi, etc. People, and use constant close-up shots to sell idol charms, there are also many plot loopholes and unreasonable points, and the shaping of characters is relatively simple. The emotions of the two teenagers were not well prepared, and it would be difficult to convince people if it were not for the success of the actors' performance. From this perspective, the reason why this movie has received rave reviews is related to the movie’s use of violence as a selling point to attract the audience, and cruel reality as a further bait, so that the audience can obtain the greatest satisfaction of watching the movie. This movie has earned enough tears from the audience, but apart from being moved, I am afraid that only the fairy tale-like dream at the end (Chen Nian and Xiaobei still persist for many years) can comfort the lost nerves of the public.
04
The boundaries of art films are blurring, and the way in which topical works respond to the times is ineffective?
In the face of these movies, it may be unnecessary to interpret the dismantling of the text. After all, these movies are very entertaining genres, and they are some very uncompressed movies with commercial appeals. This is not a certain kind of "discrimination" against commercial films, but mainstream films for profit are incorporated into certain frameworks and rules. What these films have to do is to comfort the public, rather than a more deconstructive problem. Conscious or rebellious thinking.
What's interesting is that in today's judging standards, these films have been affirmed by the art film evaluation system. With Martin Scorsese's criticism of "Marvel movies" not long ago, there are endless discussions about what a cinema is. The boundaries of art films are blurring. Today's world pattern has greatly changed the art film evaluation system represented by the "three major film festivals". It seems that pure art has been unable to accurately respond to the hugely changed and torn discourse world pattern.
In a positive sense, the current art film system is actively responding to the real world. It seems that today, formal innovations and deep themes can no longer meet the political demands of the film evaluation system, and the ambiguous and personal expressions are also It is not direct enough. Therefore, these works that have not been explored in art but have clear issues are easier to be selected.
Unfortunately, due to the rigidity of the film festival system itself and the selection criteria imposed by external discourses, the more poetic and ambiguous traditional art films we admired in the past are being replaced by slogan genre films, the latter being more direct. Become an excellent outlet to relieve the public's emotions. This type of film has established a set of effective standard models. They intersect with reality. The audience always sees the meaning outside the film text in the form of brain supplement. This phenomenon has become a normal state of the current art film ecology. . When people have no way out in the real world, they expect art works to give a way of catharsis. Works such as "Parasite", "Joker" and even "The Thief Family" provide a space for real anxiety. These movies reflect It's not the real world, but the real world "theme park", which is similar to the "haunted house" in the amusement park. These movies are easier to enter the theater and become an enclave that takes the audience to fly and escape.
In the imaginary space created by the movie, venting does not require the laws of reality to discipline. As long as we project our own anger, the movie will give the most pleasant way to solve the problem-violence. Nothing can get pleasure faster than violence, but this pleasure cannot suggest any constructive thinking. Just like drinking sugar-free cola, you can get pleasure at the moment you eat it, but it cannot provide any nourishment. Therefore, these kinds of movies can be classified as what I call "hormonal movies".
Throughout the past few years, we have focused on expressing issues of social issues such as class. It is not difficult to see that the current film manufacturing industry is split in dealing with this issue. On the one hand, it incorporates care for the bottom and minority groups into the mainstream discourse. On the other hand, it tries to Concealing and transforming issues, the law of mainstream movies has always been good at building a cultural utopia to meet the expectations of the audience, allowing the cruel reality to obtain a false possibility, and accidentally falling into a kind of hypocritical humanistic care and political stance (Not necessarily intentional).
As a result, we seem to be caught up in the arrogance of criticizing the film industry for overly pursuing "political correctness". In fact, the author believes that it is understandable that mainstream films are pursuing the so-called "political correctness". Whether or not the issues discussed in the several films discussed in this article are old issues, they must have the meaning of continuing to write and re-excavate. Perhaps the problem with this kind of film creation is not that it is too ideological, but that there is hypocrisy under the so-called care. "Hormon Movies" don't care about real problems and the situation of real human beings. They are still obsessed with creating dreams, creating artificial conflicts and oppositions, and selling lie-like myths.
If we continue to think about the increasingly boring art film ecology from this perspective, we may have unexpected gains. When we criticize these film awards that try to balance artistic form and fine art, and conduct text analysis of popular films, we seem to be able to illuminate the dark places of forgotten history to find the truth worthy of being discovered. The only gratifying thing is that outside these old-school and noble award clubs, the meaning of movies is being redefined. We can still expect the film to become the best recorder in history, not a stimulant or anesthetic.
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This article is exclusive original content. Author: Yu Yaqin; Editor: Walk Around; Proofreading: Zhai Yongjun. Reprinting is not allowed without the written authorization of the Beijing News, and you are welcome to forward it to Moments of Friends.
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