Summary:
Fellini's "Amarqued" is a modern example of what Bakhtin called "grotesque realism." Its grotesque style can be analyzed from three aspects: 1. vulgarization; 2. time awareness and narrative form; 3. themes of "madness" and "mask".
Key words:
"Amakod"; Bakhtin; grotesque realism; vulgarization; time awareness.
introduction
Italian film master Federico Fellini (Federico Fellini, 1920-1993) is undoubtedly one of the most important directors in the history of world cinema. In 1973, he completed the important representative work "Amakod" [i] in the middle of the creation , but this film did not attract enough attention. The author believes that "Amakord" is a masterpiece that not only has wonderful comedy, but also has extremely rich and profound spiritual connotations. It can be called one of the greatest comedy films in the world's film history. It will provide valuable intellectual resources not only for issues in the field of film such as author film studies, modern film aesthetics, the development of Chinese (comedy) films, but also for many important issues in the field of modern aesthetics/art/culture.
1. Bakhtin's theory of "grotesque [ii] realism"
Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) redefines the essence of medieval laughter culture in his research on Rabelais' works and its folk origins, and believes that this kind of culture lies on the other side of the serious official world. The folk culture of China is closely related to the Carnival celebration in the original sense, and its basic characteristics include festival, nationality and all-encompassing, and the duality of profound positive and negative factors at the same time [1]. On this basis, Bakhtin further named the "special aesthetic concept of existence" unique to this laughing culture as "grotesque realism" [1], and deeply analyzed various image systems and expression styles related to it. .
Bakhtin pointed out that "the image of Rabelais has a particular, principled and deeply rooted 'unofficiality' inherent in it: no dogmatism, no idea of authority, no one-sided seriousness can be shared with Rabelais' image. These images are contrary to all completeness and stability, all narrow seriousness, and all conventions and conclusions in the field of thought and worldview.”[1] There is a powerful deconstruction force in this laughter culture. and huge liberating potential.
On the other hand, the culture of folk laughter is also affirmative. In Rabelais' work "images of the material and bodily elements of life - the body itself, diet, excretion and sex - are absolutely overwhelming" and "these images are also in a very exaggerated and exaggerated way. Appearance." [1] And in such a world that is always inclusive, always laughing and growing, "simple negativity" obviously cannot exist. Bakhtin repeatedly emphasized: "Carnival-style satire is far from the purely negative and formal satire of modern times. Carnival-style satire is reborn and renewed at the same time as negation."[1]
Bakhtin emphasized that the "grotesque style" produced by the culture of folk laughter "transcends the illusory (false) uniqueness, indisputableness, and stability of the existing world . . . The golden age and the world of carnival truth. Man returns to himself. The existing world is destroyed in order to be reborn and renewed. The world rises from the dead. In the grotesque style, the relativity of all existing things is always cheerful, the grotesque is always full of With the joy of replacement." [1]
The following is a preliminary analysis of the theme and stylistic characteristics of "Amakord" with the help of the theory of grotesque realism.
2. The "grotesque" style characteristics of "Armakod"
Fellini has been a loyal fan of circuses and folk burlesques since he was a child. His absorption and development of the spirit of Italian folk comedy is based on conscious awareness and in-depth thinking. In Fellini's film world, the representation of circus characters and scenes has always occupied a prominent place, such as the famous parade scene at the end of "Eight and a Half" and the "Joker" dedicated to the characters of the troupe. and so on, and in "Amakod", the author has made a vivid and vivid display of the heritage of this folk laughter culture, so as to present the "grotesque realism" or "grotesque realism" that Bakhtin refers to in an exceptionally vivid and profound way. A series of prominent features of the grotesque" style.
2.1 vulgarization
Bakhtin pointed out that "a main feature of grotesque realism is vulgarization, that is, the transfer of all that is sublime, spiritual, ideal and abstract to the whole indivisible material and corporeal level, that is, the earth (the world) and the The level of the body. . . . All forms of grotesque realism have their origin in folk laughter, which is never inseparable from the material and the lower parts of the body. Laughter is vulgarization and materialization.”[1]
For example, in a segment that depicts school life, the film uses only a few strokes to craft a brilliant, hilarious comedy through the brief juxtaposition of a series of classroom scenes. Here, the teachers all appear with a solemn and solemn appearance, "the truth is in hand", while the students, a group of ignorant urchins who are fat and thin, show a very uncoordinated atmosphere in this solemn teaching. smell. One of the hilarious scenes is when a suave, kind-hearted professor teaches Greek pronunciation to an urchin in a Greek class. The diminutive urchin has a round baby face, long bangs and short ear-length hair, looking particularly dazed. The professor shook his head and recited a Greek poem (the stupid student stared at him with round eyes) and asked the student: Isn't it beautiful and musical? "Uh—" The student nodded stupidly. The professor then demonstrated to him the pronunciation of a word "Emar-pszamen, read it with me." The silly student learns to read the word, but he always pronounces the airless consonant in the middle into a fart-like "porphyr" sound (below Laughing begins among the students). The professor corrected it with a smile, and explained the pronunciation method and mouth shape again. Again, still with a fart-like "porch"—and the laughter grew louder. The professor's face was beginning to hang on his face (the silly student muttered: "Greek is so difficult."), but he still tried his best to show tireless teaching, and once again explained to him slowly and licked his tongue to demonstrate: "Oh, like this, e -mar-psz——" Before he could make the correct sound, the stupid student could not help but "pork" out again (the students burst into laughter), the professor was furious and could no longer control himself. He slaps the table, widens his eyes and yells, "Get back to your seat! Damn it!" ("I'm almost there." The silly student whispers again.) In this scene, "The silly student ” Responding to the kind image of the professor’s “be kind and persuasive” and “teach others tirelessly” with a stubborn “stupidity”, it was an unintentional misreading in this situation, but in the professor’s feeling, it seems to have become more and more malicious intentional. Provocative behavior (especially "elegant" Greek being pronounced in an extremely "vulgar" fart-like sound) eventually made him furious and led to the automatic disintegration of the image of the "benevolent elder" - which is exactly the This unexpected disintegration of the image gives the audience a great pleasure: an unexpected and meaningful pleasure.
In "Amakod", such "vulgarization" examples can be seen everywhere, can be said to be numerous. It can be said that this deliberately "vulgar" feature reflects the dominant style of the film. Here, "Material and corporeal nature is a very positive factor...to be seen as all-encompassing and universal, and as such a thing in opposition to everything that is detached from the material and corporeal origin of the world, isolated from all It is opposed to closure, opposed to all abstract ideals, and opposed to all value pursuits that are separate and independent from the world and the body.” [1] On the contrary, they are a very healthy, beautiful, and powerful thing, a special kind of Abundance, joy, positivity and affirmation are seen and acted upon. A further extension, "Here, vulgarization is secularization (humanization, landing), which is to move closer to the earth that is an absorbing instinct and a reproductive instinct at the same time; Better to reproduce more and more. . . . vulgarization digs the grave of the body for a new birth." In this way, the "vulgarization" or "penetration into the lower layer of production (the beginning of life)" of grotesque realism destroys, negates abstraction , One-sided spirituality also naturally has positive and regenerative significance. 【1】
M. Kundera has a section on "humour" which he calls "the great invention of the modern spirit", which is quite inter-inventive with Bakhtin's account and the example of the "Amakod" (seems like a coincidence). What's more, he also cites the hilarious story of "Banuri wooing the lady" in "The Giants" to elicit the following argument): "Humor is a divine flash, it is in its moral ambiguity Reveals the world, it reveals man in its inability to judge others; humor is a conscious fascination with the relativity of things in the world, the wonderful joy that comes from the conviction that there is nothing in the world.”[2]
2.2 Time consciousness and narrative form
First of all, from the point of view of time consciousness, the “grotesque image” expresses a phenomenon in a state of change, that is, a phenomenon of an unfinished transformation process, a phenomenon in the stages of death and birth, growth and generation. The attitude towards time and becoming is the grotesque The necessary, i.e., prescriptive (determining) features of the grotesque image. Another necessary feature related to this is the duality: the polarities of the grotesque image in one form or another that embody (or appear) change—the old and the new, the dying and the new, the beginning and the end of the process of transformation.”[1]
The overall chronological clue of "Amakode" starts from the festival ceremony of "burning witches" when winter comes to spring. After the change of seasons and the changes of the world, it ends with the wedding of Grotiska in the play in another spring. for the end. This time structure not only includes the most primitive concept of cyclical time of natural and biological life, but also "further extends to social and historical phenomena...to the height of the sense of historical time." [1] Here, the cycle of seasons and the human world The vicissitudes of life are intertwined, and the cycle of nature is linked with the birth, aging, illness and death of life.
This is most evident in the film's last two scenes: the death and funeral of Tita's mother and Groteska's wedding - in the middle of winter, when her mother dies. After the mourning funeral, we saw the lonely scene in Tita's house... Tita picked up her hat and walked out of the house to the familiar sea wall. There was no one on the empty bank, and under the clear blue sky, Tita stood quietly facing the sea. There was a gust of wind, and there seemed to be something flying in the air, and he turned around and stretched out his palm—it was the fluff of another spring that came quietly—and then we saw a happy open space amid the music It turned out to be Groteska's wedding...that is, the funeral followed the wedding (not even separated by a fade/fade symbol between the two as in the previous paragraphs) ), death is connected with rebirth, just as winter has passed and new spring has come, and everything in the universe is like the vicissitudes of the human world.
Secondly, from the perspective of narrative form, "Armakod" tells many interesting stories in a dizzying variety of forms in more than a dozen scene paragraphs throughout the film. The content of these stories is varied and imaginative, ranging from more realistic family disputes, political demonstrations, juvenile affairs, to highly stylized romantic fantasies or legends full of whimsy, such as anecdotes about the "Grand Hotel" , "The Great Ship at Sea" and "Snow Peacock" stories and more. But no matter what kind of story it is, almost all of them contain a kind of extremely free and light artistic imagination, "this freedom makes people feel a kind of joyful, almost laughing at will", which is particularly prominent in the Some kind of non-static story structure that often involves fantastic movements and transformations.
Such as "The Story of Groteska's Name" related to the "Grand Hotel", a rare luxury place in town, and "The Story of Bissin and the 30 Chiefs' Concubines": the peddler Bissin boasted that he was in a Arabian Nights The adventures of a certain kind are feasted on by the favor of 30 concubines of an exotic chieftain—all of whom contain an ecstatic imagination in their rib-like, seemingly vulgar laughter.
2.3 On the theme of "Crazy" and "Masquerade"
Bakhtin points out: "Characters like clowns and fools are typical of medieval laughter culture. They were a constant, fixed carnival factor in everyday (ie, non-Carnival) life."[ 1] Likewise, the theme of "madness" is typical of grotesque realism, where "madness is a jovial parody of official wisdom, of the one-sided seriousness of official 'truth'. It's a holiday madness." [1]
In the passage of "Uncle Theo", the Tita family takes "Uncle Theo", who lives in a mental hospital, to their farm to play. The kind uncle seems to be "normal", but when he talks, he is confused and indifferent, and he forgot to "open the door" when urinating on the side of the road and pissed in his pants and didn't care; while everyone regarded him as a person. When he was a silly baby, he jumped up a big tree by accident, and kept shouting: "I want a woman!" The person who climbed up the tree made the family laugh and cry, and even though the family racked their brains and tried hard and soft to think of various ways, they could not let him down. However, after a few hours, a dwarf nun from the hospital climbed up the tree with ease, and made him obediently follow her down the tree home, like a naughty child facing a severe Like my mother... This is a completely realistic story, but it contains a wonderful transformation of "normal" and "madness", wisdom and ignorance, and thus has an intriguing whimsical color.
Bakhtin sees "masks" as "one of the most complex and meaningful subjects of folk culture" because "masks are associated with the joy of alternation and change, with absurd relativity, and with sympathy for hope. The denial of identity and univocality, the denial of self-conservation and immutability are linked; the mask is linked to transition, transformation, the breaking of natural boundaries, as well as to ridicule, nicknames (aliases); mask embodies the game principle of life ...In the folk grotesque style, behind the mask is always the inexhaustibility and variety of life." He also pointed out, "The symbolism of the mask is multi-valued ... like satire, comics, Exaggerated faces, posturing, coyness, etc. are, by their very nature, derivatives of masks.”[1]
From this point of view, the factor of the mask can be seen everywhere in "Armakod". For example, Ninola, who likes romantic fantasies, was made up by a good person to accompany the "Prince" and gave her a funny story. Nickname "Grotiska"; rosy-faced peddler Bissin conjures up masturbation by fantasizing about his affair with 30 Muslim noble concubines; teenagers Tita and Siko daydream while watching race cars, Imagine yourself becoming a sought-after racing hero and easily capturing the hearts of beauties, etc. The comic-style satire and exaggerated brushstrokes are actually used on almost all the people and things in the film, so that the innocent people laugh at the innocent people, and all the fixed, institutionalized, abstract, The devaluation and negation of ideological things and the praise and affirmation of the eternal movement, generation, freedom and infinity of life itself are also fully presented at the same time.
Epilogue
To sum up, as one of the greatest representatives of modern comedy films, "Amakode" not only consciously learns and inherits the long-standing but marginalized European folk laughter culture heritage, but also integrates into it. The profound reflection and criticism of modernity can be called the masterpiece of modern grotesque realism, and the ideological resources and cultural enlightenment that can be drawn from it are rich and far-reaching.
references:
[1] (Russia) Bakhtin. "The Creation of François Rabelais and Folk Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" Introduction (A), translated by Feng Ruisheng. "Bakhtin Collection" [C]. Shanghai: Shanghai Far East Press, 1998.141, 149, 132, 148, 141, 177, 150, 149, 150-151, 154, 155, 138, 168, 169.
[2] Milan Kundera. The Betrayed Will (M), translated by Yu Zhongxian. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2003.33.
[i] Formerly known as "Amarcord", which means "I remember" or "I remember".
[ii] Grotesque: Italian la grottesca, from the word "underground" (grotta), originally refers to a basement painting pattern in the Roman period, famous for its free combination and change.
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