The epitome of cultural development

Emory 2022-03-23 08:01:02

In fact, compared to "Human Statue", I personally prefer the translated name of "The Pursuit of Immortality". Because from a certain point of view, this seemingly bland translation reveals more of the connotation of the film. Although I haven't appreciated director George Balefi's debut work "Pastoral Spring", from his second work, we can feel the director's superb control ability and ambition for culture and images, of course, grotesque and bizarre It will also be established as the director's style and symbol with the gradual popularity of the film.
The film consists of a typical three-stage structure, but this does not mean that the director is obsessed with the KitKat structure, but only serves the director's interpretation of the so-called advanced culture. The three images correspond to the three typical cultural phenomena of human beings, sex, food, and art. Through the stripping and screening of cultural development history, the director touches the context of human culture.
For the audience, although the tail-cutting behavior between the sex and the video-eating segment in the film has a strong symbol of cultural evolution, the two videos can be combined for analysis. As the two pillars of human culture, sexual intercourse and diet are the origin of all human cultures. As Levi-Strauss said: Human society and culture are constructed on the basis of the synchronous development of human language and human thought, with sex and food as the two main axes, the basic mode of binary opposition. The film's performance of sex and food simultaneously shows the two major elements of nature and culture. Sexual relationships and food are the first cultures created by the earliest ancestors of human beings who separated from nature and transitioned to culture. At that time, the biggest problem faced by human beings was the survival and reproduction of human beings and their hunger. In this, sex and food pointed to two different cultures. Sex, although there was a utilitarian need to reproduce offspring , but, more often, sex is the naturalized pleasure release of the senses, and sex plays the role of spiritual and cultural production. But this is different from food, which is more of a material cultural production. Therefore, the description of oppressive sex and forced food in the film just confirms Foucault's discourse on sex and power. Foucault believes that: in the traditional concept of power, sex is completely regarded as a serious matter of reproduction, and people's concern for Sex is generally silent. Power over sex is prohibition, rejection, and denial. For food, it is to promote, accept and affirm. At a deeper level, the opposition between sex and food reveals the fundamental problem of human cultural development under the operation of power, that is, the different development of material culture and spiritual culture. Under the power mechanism, sex is oppressed and food is forced through various rules. Caused the imbalance of cultural reproduction, but the operation of this right is not passive and retrogressive, as the fundamental driving force of cultural development. He directly contributed to the next stage of cultural development, the formation of art. From ancient times to the present, art has been regarded as a bridge bathed in the radiance of truth under the sensual pleasure, so as a product of cultural imbalance, art has played a role in bridging the gap. Through the affirmation of sensibility, art strengthens the development of spiritual culture. Whether it's Freud's about art as sexuality and the unconscious, or Heidegger's art as a truth that puts itself into the work. You can see the role of art. But with the development of art or culture, material culture and spiritual culture are incompatible. This is because with the gradual self-discipline of art, art gradually parted ways with everyday life. In the process of critiquing the banality and vulgarity of the material world, art gradually became a game of self-appreciation. In the third paragraph of the film, as the artist The lack of love for the protagonist is a manifestation of the alienation of art and daily life. This alienation will lead to more radicalization of art. The passages in the film that use infants as works of art can find prototypes in the history of art development- The avant-garde, at the end of the film, the protagonist turns himself into a human statue, and the avant-garde of art reaches the extreme. At this time, a paradox has arisen. Art that needs to be recognized by someone has turned to the road of abandoning those who recognize it. Will this extreme culture be recognized? Is this the end of art? At the end of the film, the director vaguely gave the answer. In that surreal museum, which is a metaphor for the future, the protagonist's human statue is worshipped and avant-garde is recognized.

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