The text is transferred from: Looking at the Dream Effect in Hollywood Movies from "The Purple Rose of Cairo"--Film Literature--Liang Jianhua
In "The Purple Rose of Cairo," directed by Woody, Allen challenges the peddling of dreamy Hollywood movies with his usual sardonic wit. The story told in the film takes place in America during the Great Depression. The heroine, Cecilia, is a frail waitress. Because she lost her job and couldn't stand her husband's gambling and beatings and scolding, she went to the cinema alone to kill time whenever she had free time. She fell in love with an adventure film of the same name, and fell in love with the film's handsome male lead Tom. Just as Cecilia's 5th time, Tom came out of the movie screen and expressed his love to Cecilia. So the two escaped from the cinema holding hands and had a good time. The departure of the leading man caused an uproar in Hollywood. In order to quell the anger of the audience, the producer and the actor Jill who played Tom traveled to New Jersey to find Tom who escaped. To get Tom back into his movie world, Jill, who looks exactly like Tom, coaxes Cecilia's affections. Cecilia, who was between Tom and Jill, chose the latter out of practical considerations. At the end of the story, Tom returns to the screen, and Jill quietly leaves. The lost Cecilia can only go back to her husband and pass the day in the cinema as the story begins.
Through absurd artistic techniques and poignant irony, the film poses the question to the audience: which one of cruel reality and beautiful falsehood do we need? Is the fantasy produced by this dream factory in Hollywood dessert or poison? The fantasy effect in Hollywood films that dominate the global market has provoked reflection and controversy among scholars and critics. Some scholars defending elite culture scoffed at such cheap and kitsch films, arguing that even if all Hollywood films were to be destroyed, "it would not be a blow to the morale of the people." "But there are also critics who have affirmed this kind of commercial film, believing that They can "enlighten people's lives, broaden people's horizons and boost national morale. "Director Woody, Allen has always expressed his jokes and doubts about Hollywood with his unique film themes and shooting techniques. This article will take Woody Allen's early representative work "Purple Rose of Cairo" as the text, with the help of Frankfurt School thinkers Horkheimer and Adorno's criticism of mass media, postmodern philosopher Baudrillard's "simulation" theory and Nietzsche's view of Apollinian art to analyze the dream effect in Hollywood movies.
1. The erosion of reality by the fantasy effect in Hollywood movies
The representative thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer and Adorno, in their representative work "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", sharply exposed the dream effect in Hollywood movies. He believed that the fantasy woven in the movie is harmful to us. The worried postmodern thinker had long been acutely aware that cinema had threatened our perception of reality: "The more flawlessly it [Hollywood cinema] reproduces empirical things, the more flawlessly it makes the outside world seem like an extension of the screen world. The illusion of is more prevalent today.
French postmodern thinker Baudrillard used the term "simulation" to reveal that TV, movies, advertisements and various network media replaced real reality with virtual reality, and "simulation" turned into reality. It is "no copy of the original, the realm of hyper-reality". In this digital technology and Internet revolution, any code can be copied without limit. In the system of symbols, the referent and the referent no longer exist , only the signifiers refer to each other. In "Purple Rose of Cairo", when Tom, the hero in the play, walked out of the screen and came to Cecilia's real world, the virtual space of the movie was the same as the real space. A positive encounter happened. Cecilia's life turned from dark to colorful with the appearance of Tom, a fictional character, but Tom couldn't adapt to the real world outside the movie. Director Woody Allen learned from Tom's encounters in the real world. Satire the beautiful fantasy in commercial Hollywood movies, like when Tom pays at a restaurant and finds out that the money he used in the movie is fake money, or when he kisses Cecilia in the park and doesn't understand why not A fade-out shot that normally occurs in a movie.
"The Purple Rose of Cairo" tells us the fact that in Hollywood movies, "the hyperheal" is detached from reality, and "hyperreal" replaces reality. In the symbolic system of film and television representation , the signified and the signifier are completely split, and the signifier no longer points to the real world outside, but to other signifiers within the symbolic system. As Horkheimer and Adorno asserted, "We seem to live in double quotation marks. , living in a movie. "The dream effect in movies and TV makes virtual reality more real than reality, and movies teach us what reality is and how to see reality.
2. Anesthesia effect caused by hallucinations
German contemporary cultural theorist Walter Benjamin predicted that a proletarian revolution would be realized on a global scale with the development of mass media. The reproducibility of works of art has turned traditional art elitism into populism, because the audience of art is constantly expanding, and it can be said that "everyone is equal before art" has truly been achieved. Benjamin believes that film is the medium that can most democratize art. "Since the first day of its birth, the film has been designed to satisfy the public's desire to watch and understand the world. The film has simplified the difficult works that only the privileged and the elite had the opportunity to touch or understand into easy-to-accept and easy-to-understand works for the public. Therefore, the film can serve the role of political propaganda and public education. However, in fact, Benjamin's prophecy has not been realized. And the Hollywood commercial film can be said to have conquered the world, including all the places where the film exists. cultural colonization map.
Horkheimer and Adorno relentlessly criticized popular culture represented by film and television. They point out that Hollywood commercial films defend ideology and mainstream values from subversion by virtue of their narcotic and dreamlike effects. This effect is manifested in stylized Hollywood commercial films, stylized film plots and character dialogues, realistic visual effects, and unmarked shooting techniques. The purpose of all this is not to inspire the audience to actively think and criticize social issues, but to further affirm the established ideology and values. For Adorno, the danger of Hollywood movies, that is, its magic power, is to gain pleasure from watching movies. Watching, it is difficult for the audience not to drown their own reality in the flow of light and shadow, and follow the flow of light and shadow. Passively identifying with prevailing ideologies and values through the manipulation of the cinematic camera, rather than dispassionately pondering or questioning them. The film makes the audience look at the inner world that is both real and fake, rather than the objective reality outside. The "alienation" advocated by Brecht is exactly what Hollywood commercial films strove to avoid, because it lifts the veil of Hollywood's mysterious romance and makes a sense of fantasy disappear.
In the film "Purple Rose of Cairo", the director placed the story in America during the Great Depression with ulterior motives. Cecilia, a waitress in a restaurant, unfortunately lost her job and married a husband who gambled and abused her. For a weak woman like her, who has almost no survival skills, the only place that makes her happy is the movie theater near her home, which happened to be showing an African adventure romance film called "Purple Rose of Cairo". Cecilia stared at the picture on the screen while holding popcorn in the projection hall where the lights were turned off. From the film's close-up of her sluggish face and wide-eyed eyes, she's completely engrossed in the thrilling adventures, romances, lavish balls, gorgeous evening gowns, and intoxicating charms of the screen. In champagne, even though she watched this film over and over again, she could even blurt out the lines.
The narcotic effect of Hollywood movies is also reflected in the audience's movie aesthetics. In the movie "Purple Rose of Cairo", the audience could not accept the sudden absence of the male lead in the movie, and could not accept an absurd and incomplete ending. What they want to see is a romantic, happy ending, even though this is the cookie-cutter ending in commercial Hollywood movies. Horkheimer and Adorno believe that the audience's aesthetics are actually 100% presupposed and manipulated by the film, but the monopoly that serves commercial interests is concealed by the diversity of the cultural industry. It is "a triumph of standardization and mass production." So they urge the masses to join forces against the paralysis of the media: "Even if most of the radio stations and movie theaters were shut down, the consumer would not suffer much.
.3. Beautiful fantasy under the art of the god of the sun
Contrary to the views of Horkheimer, Adorno, Baudrillard and others, Nietzsche believes that our lives have been inseparable from dreams and imagination long before the advent of cinema. In his titled "On the Birth of Tragedy", he attributed the prosperity of ancient Greek art to the two artistic impulses and states of the sun god and the god of wine. Apollo, the god of the sun, symbolizes dreams, while Dionysus, the god of wine, represents a state of pain and joy. Both states reflect our instinctual needs. Apollo, the god of light, "governs the beautiful dreams of our imaginary world," "so in the art of the sun god we experience dreams and dreams. Nietzsche pointed out to the world that it is in dreams that God first appears in people's lives. It appears in the mind. Under the influence of the art of the gods, the ugly reality is decorated into beautiful dreams and dreams, and people also feel happiness and hope from these two.
The state of the god of the sun can also be achieved while watching a movie. Dreaming and watching movies are similar in that both satisfy long-repressed, unfulfilled desires without the strict monitoring of reason and without posing a threat to others and reality. Watching a movie in the cinema is like group dreaming. There, each audience member forgets the true self of Dasein and substitutes the self into the characters of the story, experiencing joy and sorrow with them. Just like appreciating a tragedy, watching a movie can also get what Aristotle called the "catharsis" of the soul, and regain the power of life. When Cecilia fascinated to watch the film of the same name, "The Purple Rose of Cairo", she entered the state of the sun. Sitting in the movie theater, Cecilia is no longer the unfortunate one who was fired by her boss and beaten by her husband. She has become the heroine of the movie who is gorgeously dressed, enjoys high-society banquets and is surrounded by romantic love. The Manhattan in the movie is not the Manhattan of the Great Depression.
4. Conclusion
At the end of the film, the abandoned Cecilia has no choice but to return to her more demanding husband. Her life did not change at all as before, and she returned to the cinema to kill time, but it was no longer "Purple Rose of Cairo", but a musical. When the singing and dancing sounded, Cecilia's face showed her old smile again. The film expresses a helpless fact: "The movie is still beautiful, and the reality is still cruel". Instead of letting a person like Cecilia who can't control her own destiny wake up from a beautiful dream, it is better to let her get the only solace in the movie and pass her life in the movie.
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