Many people, especially young men, like "Suzhou River". I really don't understand. Perhaps this film not only satisfies their erotic perspective on women's voyeurism, but also the pleasure of playing with women like dolls. The narrative presented in the film The way also appropriately labeled them with the tone of literary and artistic youth, but whether it is Peony or Meimei, all I see are all they have lost in the so-called love. Holy and worthy of praise, all this only increases my disgust and disgust for "Suzhou River".
Ai Xiaoming from Sun Yat-Sen University has a famous academic paper "The Bathing Water That Was Soaked for Two Thousand Years", an excerpt is here, not much to say:
"The sixth generation of Chinese director Lou Ye, his works are also not detached from this. Although his film "Suzhou River" has not yet been screened in the mainland, it has won several international awards, which is undoubtedly a great affirmation of the director's personal style. Because of this, the gender and viewing issues in the film , it is worth discussing here.
On its VCD envelope, there is a slogan like this: "When Xizhige and Chislowski happened to meet in Shanghai in the past two thousand years, when Wang Jiawei first met and wandered in the Chongqing Forest. Is the Two Flowers an ancient myth or a postmodern legend? "Five director and film symbols have emerged here, reminding people to pay attention to the involvement of "Suzhou River" and other film codes. Indeed, Hitchcock-style murder suspense, Chislowski-style spiritual twins , Wong Kar-wai's alienated urban images, there is a bit in this film. But in terms of the structure of gender relations and the expression of female images in the work, it may be better to say that it belongs to the same vein as the visual works of the nude, bathing, voyeur and identification series. I am referring to the thread through which men gaze at women and identify women in accordance with this gazed mirror image.
"Suzhou River" designed these two stories, both told by an individual photographer with a camera. In the first paragraph, a young man named Ma got a motorcycle. During the delivery process, the customer gave him a special item, an underage child Peony. Whenever Mudan's father called a woman, he sent Ma to send Mudan to his aunt. In this relationship, Peony fell in love with Ma Ma, and she even ran to find Ma Ma on a rainy day to express her need for love. To extort money from Mudan's father, Mada kidnaps Mudan. After learning that she was only a hostage for 450,000 yuan, Peony jumped into the Suzhou River with the mermaid given to her by a motor. In the second story, Ma Ma returns to the city after being released from prison. He searches for lost love in the city and meets Mei Mei who plays the mermaid in the bathtub of a bar. Meimei and Peony look the same (also played by Zhou Xun). Ma Ma kept narrating peonies to Mei Mei, and Mei Mei was so moved that she began to stick peony flowers on her thighs, a sign that she had identified with and began to imitate the characters in Ma Ma's narrative.
The photographer, sensing the intervention in his life, confronts him when he suddenly announces that he has found Peony. The camera cuts into a recognizing scene. Peony is now an ordinary salesperson, and she finally reunites with Ma Ma. But on a rainy day, their motorcycles crashed and they both lost their lives.
There are several symbols in this film that relate to the "Suzanne" series I analyzed: water, bathing, peeping, and the woman who is lusted. First of all, water, here it is the Suzhou River water slowly presented in the new realistic film style. Secondly, it is the water in the fish tank of the bar, and Meimei is admired in this tank of water. Third, this water is the water that first made the girl Peony throw into the river, and finally drowned the motor and the adult Peony. The first time Peony threw herself into the river, it was because she was angry that Ma Ma betrayed her. Her second death is a reminder of the improbability of love reunion—the danger of desire.
The mermaid is a prop that ties together a two-act story with two identical-looking characters. The film emphasizes the obsession of men looking for and the touch of women to this obsession. In this moving, all deception and destruction are resolved. The myth of the mermaid is: the love of a man is higher than life itself.
"Suzhou River" uses a frustrated and neurotic man as the protagonist of the love myth, as if to deconstruct the non-existence of love. This design also echoes the narrator who is alienated and never shows his face. It emphasizes the fictional nature of the story and seems to preclude serious cultural analysis. But what I can't let go of is that in the story, both women are designed as love pets to be adopted (against abusive adoption), intentionally obscuring the male protagonist's responsibility for causing death. Why is this? The film's narration tells the audience that it is a futile search for a romantic love that it knows does not exist, the death of Peony throwing a river into the river immediately ends the first act, and the neurotic search for Motor (which manifests as a series of stalking, peeping, and peeping images) ) is the highlight of the second act. It is obvious that the underage girl Peony is the victim of a fraud, but in the movie she is shown as an active sexual seducer, and the adult man Ma is shown as passive, his crime seems to be out of his own hands, and A woman in a criminal gang. Since the film completely ignores any physical and psychological trauma caused by the girl Peony's throwing into the river, its cultural message is irrational: finding love seems important, no matter how futile; unimportant.
In the process of the male protagonist's search for love, women play the roles of seducer, enlightener, recognized and sought target. Their existence highlights the male seeking and reflects the importance of males. "Suzhou River" can finally make the peony who threw in the river in the early years, once identified, immediately return to the embrace of Ma Ma, it is precisely based on this recognition of the importance of men. The problem with this misleading information is that it takes away the suffering of women, the cost of women's lives. And the value of a woman is only that she finally has a loving master who came to adopt her.
There is also a seemingly inadvertent message in the movie, that the female liar who commanded Ma to commit the crime is actually called Xiao Hong (looks like Xiao Hong). It's hard to believe that the artist Lou Ye doesn't know who Xiao Hong is, so I can't interpret this as a coincidence. Imagine a film made by a female director in which a criminal is named Lu Xun or Qian Zhongshu, Lou Ye would feel weird too. It's not that you can't use celebrities to play games, but that the spirit of the game is to tease authority and eliminate power; if the game is not good for the group, who is it helping? "
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