The film was filmed in Utah, USA from May to July 2006, and the story it wants to tell happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the beginning of the story, hardware facilities such as a 3.5-inch floppy disk and a horizontal case-style 386 computer appear, indicating that I really want to use props to restore the scene of the year. The hairstyles of Chinese students look old-fashioned, and their clothes are blue-gray tones. The most iconic is the pair of large black-framed glasses that are placed on the bridge of the Chinese students' noses. The shape is similar to that of the TV series "The Story of the Editorial Department" broadcast in 1991. " is roughly similar. But as for the Americans, they are completely dressed in contemporary styles, basically the usual makeup in 2006.
I've never been to America in person, let alone America in the nineties. But images can record life. The American drama "Friends", which started in 1994, has been on the air for ten consecutive years. Comparing the characters in the last season and the first season can confirm that what I said is true. The "Peking Man in New York" broadcast in mainland China in 1993 also went to the United States to shoot, which shows that the American aesthetics at that time were just as rustic, not as modern as the movie "Dark Matter".
The most puzzling thing is that the students studying in the United States in the film are actually watching the TV broadcast of Su Youpeng's version of "Eternal Dragon Slayer", sometimes with a voice from Li Yapeng's version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes". These two TV series only came after 2003. How can I watch the 2003 TV series while using the 3.5-inch floppy disk and 386 computer in the 1990s?
What's more annoying is still later. Whenever there are pictures of Liu Xing's family living in Beijing, China, they have to put on a yellowish heavy-grain filter, which is obviously an old-fashioned treatment method, and then a realistic shot of life in the United States. The two clips are connected together, highlighting how backward China is. God, it turns out that the director's world view here is actually steampunk - backward and advanced coexist, but why only show that Chinese people and things are backward, while the United States is advanced? Let's take a look at the Chinese students depicted in it, and deliberately choose many bad behaviors to show. I do not deny the existence of these phenomena, but self-esteem and inferiority are two sides of the same body in people's hearts, and they are bound to be dignified and humble at the same time. Woolen cloth?
Looking around the actor Liu Xing, the entire US laboratory is full of Chinese students, the entire student dormitory is also full of Chinese students, almost even the entire university is full of Chinese students, and there are no students from other countries and skin colors. , what a weird world. The Chinese students in the same dormitory are all dark-skinned, with vulgar conduct and taste, and poor Chinese English. If their image is put into any work on migrant workers, it will be a negative image, and they still insist. They are high-end talents who have been educated in China and the United States for more than ten years, which makes me angry.
Director Chen Shizheng once said in a media interview: "For Chinese students in the 1990s, Lu Gang was a hero. In order to adapt to reality, these students did not hesitate to make the American dream smaller. But Lu Gang was unwilling to compromise, his fantasy, It has become the blood of his life, and when his disillusionment is disillusioned, he will also die." From such a one-sided perspective, and then blending his personal revenge for his past experiences, the above time and space are dislocated, vulgar grafting, and deliberate devaluation are all at once. Brush appeared in such a controversial film.
In order to learn more about this director, I specially watched the Chinese version of "High School Musical" directed and filmed by him in 2010. The original American version of the musical was full of youthful joy, but in his hands, he immediately spoiled it with a vulgar smell and killed Matt's style. Of course, he will not forget to add the Chinese-style parental education and ignorance that he likes to criticize, which is enough to make two generations of Chinese audiences sick, and the maliciousness full of secularization and devaluation overflows off the screen.
I learned more about director Chen Shizheng's past experience on the Internet, and I can only understand more and more that this Chinese American is deliberately taking revenge on Chinese culture: Born in Changsha, Hunan in 1963, when he was a child, he witnessed his mother's death in the turmoil, and his father was killed. He went to the decentralization and learned to sing at the funeral place of Hunan people; in 1987, he went to the United States to study for a master's degree in drama directing at New York University, but he became Chinese-American because of events a few years later; Western theatre troupes were disappointed, until 1999, with his background in Hunan flower drum opera and years of experience in the United States, he followed suit and directed the entire Kunqu Opera "Peony Pavilion" at the Lincoln Center for the Arts, which finally caused an uproar, which was not limited to accusations at the theatre and theatrical troupe level, and even nearly affected it. Sino-US relations at the time. After that, he continued to adapt Chinese traditional masterpieces to cater to Westerners' curiosity about the East with musical meanings, and mixed symbolic Chinese elements. No matter what the theme or genre of the play, he must use Pingtan, Peking Opera, Yangko, acrobatics and drama at the same time. Stilts, the characters have to become like ghosts, gods and demons, which naturally appear hot and lively in the eyes of foreigners.
Director Chen has been away from China for too long, and he no longer wants to pay attention to contemporary China seriously. He probably also forgot Chinese traditional culture. He just remembers to vent his anger in his works and pour malice on the audience. Because his experience frequently involves superstructure issues, I don't want to talk about it any more. I can only sigh. It is precisely with the existence of directors like Chen Shizheng, the cultural gap between the East and the West will only be more difficult to rectify. Stereotypes are only going to get worse. Finally, I borrowed the words of my predecessors and presented it to Chinese-American Chen Shizheng: "The intentional maker of a pseudo-culture that has lost its cultural character."
Speaking of the film "Dark Matter", Chen Shizheng's first film, according to his own statement, stemmed from an investor who was very interested in China's future, who liked the story and sponsored him for independent production. The Oscar winner Meryl Streep was invited because they happened to be neighbors. As for Liu Ye's participation, there are rumors that he was tricked by the director into a pirate ship, which may not be without reason. According to the information found by IMDB, the film was exhibited in 8 small film festivals in the United States and Europe in the first ten months of 2007, and was released on two or three big screens in the United States as late as April 2008. It won $30,000 at the box office, and I don’t know if it’s enough for the actors’ lunch box.
The audience's preoccupation with the archetypal incident overshadows the film's insincereness. Regarding the original incident, the reportage work "Halloween Sorrows" was published in the supplement of the November issue of "Huaxia Digest" in 1992. The author Liu Yujian completed it after visiting many relatives and classmates of the parties and sorting out many materials. The interviewer wrote a letter to refute, but the overall logic can be self-consistent and reliable.
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