UFOs have always been a very interesting setting in Cohen films. It is even more silent than the male protagonist, flying out just to destroy or even laugh at the seemingly unproblematic daily life. It is the "absurd" written by Camus, the "truth" in Lacan's eyes, and the "monster" in Zizek's mouth.
1 UFO: A prop to express "absurdity"
It represents the real existence essence of things, and the opposite of it is the mysterious law, noisy discourse, and indifferent love in the film, that is, the symbolic order of human civilization. Within the framework of existentialism, the latter is "the meaning and value that people seek in the world", while the former is "the meaningless essence of the world itself". In the conflict between the two, the absurd arises, that is, the contradiction that pursues value and fails.
Therefore, film and television works with existentialism often show the "sense of gap" brought about by this "absurdity" at a certain level. For example, the anxiety and resistance hidden in the cumbersome and mechanical life of the heroine of "Let Nadirman", the emptiness and loneliness that the infinite time travel of "Rick and Morty" cannot fill, the "Blade Runner" that "all the splendor" After all, it's just a drop in the ocean, like tears in the rain disappearing without a trace."
In Cohen's films, it is reflected in "in a chaotic and uncertain world, those who seek certainty are at the mercy of the impermanence of fate."
For example, the box of money stained with blood and sin in Cohen's movie "Frozen" is so cold in the vast snow; After that, there was a reward for a typewriter job.
In this film, it is the out of control of a series of events published by Lexiao. The pursuit of the truth is always in vain, as the lawyer of Ruo Meimen said, "The more they look at it, the more they feel that things don't make sense."
Therefore, in this absurd and meaningless world, the appearance of flying saucers reminds that human civilization is a false appearance after all, that people's identification with symbolic order is essentially illusory, and security, stability and order do not exist in essence.
If you think about it, it is not difficult to understand why even flying saucers appeared, and "Frozen Blood" still insists on saying "this is a true story" at the beginning of each time. The stories are naturally exaggerated and fictitious, but the absurdity shown in it is real and biting
2 Flying Saucers: Expressing "Real" Monsters
"Zizek believes that what Lacan calls the Real is a 'monster': the real is a negative reference to the symbolic order (human civilization), its traumatic core; All the 'monsters' of human civilization are real penetrations. Here, the most important thing is: monsters are opened up by the symbolization and historicalization of human civilization. Monsters are not monsters in advance, but because they transcend the symbolic order The boundary of coordinates, refusing to be included in words, refusing to be a monster of any kind of 'story'."[1]
Therefore, human civilization has monsters such as "flying saucers", and alien worlds do not have flying saucers
So the flying saucer comes from the invisible real world, it is the penetration of "real", the protagonist looks at the flying saucer in prison as if the outsider (the absent person) suffered the symptoms, and then questioned the ontological unreliability of reality, but thus obtained With inner peace and stability (like the protagonist in Camus's "Happy Death"), Enron went to death
For example, in "Goodbye, thank you for all the fish", when she was on the plane, she saw Arthur and Finn having sex on the wing outside the window, and she was very happy when she thought that what others told her in her life was wrong.
3 "Don't Panic!" - A Galactic Hitchhiker's Guide
The flying saucer cuts a "real" wound, or bursts the bubble of reality, pointing directly to the core of the absurdity of life, allowing the various and noisy colors to return to the cold and heavy black and white tones. Enthusiastic pianists do not know the calmness of the black and white keys, but the girl and Beethoven are the beautiful scenery.
In this way, the flying saucer seems to have a sublime meaning, enough to make people feel suffocated and panic about the world. But I still like Peggy's lines facing the flying saucer in the second season of the American drama "Frozen"
"It's just a flying saucer"
References
[1] Wu Guanjun. Discourse Politics and Monster Politics: Rethinking Political Philosophy through Popular Culture [J]. Exploration and Contention, 2018(03):51-65+109-110.
[2] Three special articles: The monster of reality, the temptation of imagination and the expectation of the father - Zhihu column Roof now Shiyan (2019.7.24)
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