http://zassili.blogspot.tw/2014/08/blog-post_22.html
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have a heart in Li Fucai reading experience, just like confession failed in my heart left bitter memories - there is Ism. Existentialism as a contemporary trend of thought, if it is only to exert influence in the field of philosophy, it is not as good as I can of course skip it gently, and cross this pile of reefs to avoid bloodshed. Unfortunately, the subject of existentialism is precisely the spiritual crisis of modern people. Many literary and artistic creations are also focused on this, and movies are of course no exception. Because of this, many creations that I have seen and felt, make me instinctively shout "This is existentialism," but it is hard to say. With Li Bucai's wit, even if I were to eat translation rice cakes and watch the fall and look for Martin Heidegger to take a class, it would probably be a duck to listen to thunder. Fortunately, we still have existential literature-the candid words opened by Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Saudi Arabia (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980).
In Camus’s argument, if a person wants to be a real person, he must recognize the absurdity, that is, recognize the disorder of reality: loss of central belief, physical labor is turned into mechanical parts, and there is no real communication between people. Become a reality "outsider". In Marx's language, it is the alienation of man. Absurdity/alienation is a product of modernity. In theological/ethical bankruptcy, human labor skills are replaced by factory division of labor, and humans lose their harmony and unity in mind and body. When a person is aware of his own situation, in an environment of injustice and tearing, he understands that he is not a real person, and that society is like a machine on its own, making him a cold-eyed "outlier". This incompatibility is just a sense of absurdity. And the value of being a human being does not lie in ethics (morality is a socially constructed animal, and it can also be said to be the law of the beneficiary class), but in freedom. This freedom is not the freedom to behave arbitrarily, but the action to courageously confront the system and uphold justice. Free consciousness has achieved human value through action. Facing a stubborn social system, free men are like Sisyphus of Greek mythology, smiling in eternal failure.
As a modern product, absurdity appeared before the eyes of the world in the face of literature before existentialism became a system. There is an important literary image in Russian literature in the nineteenth century-superfluous people. In the era of Tsarist Russia, the superfluous people saw the injustices of the feudal system and faced the wave of revolution in Western Europe. They did not have the courage to participate in the actual reforms and could only follow the trend. This kind of out-of-compatibility makes them sometimes gossiping for pleasure, and sometimes turning unvented justice into absurd fighting. For themselves and others, they are outsiders and useless to society. The ancestor of the superfluous man came from the British poet Byron (George Gordon Byron, 178-1824). Byron was born a nobleman and has a seat in the House of Lords. He sympathized with the laborers and the Irish and made them inadmissible in the House, so he left his homeland and turned to support the revolutionary cause in Europe (supporting the national revolutions in Italy and Greece). Because of this, the superfluous people in his works dare to point to the sky and resist after all kinds of presumptuousness.
Back in Russia, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) promoted the negative and destructive side of superfluous people. In Crime and Punishment (1866), superfluous people kill innocents for the first time as a small experiment against the antibody system. Here we see the image of nihilism infiltrating the superfluous people. Afterwards, nihility/anarchism gradually became the core of redundant people, reaching its peak in Kafka's hands. Camus pointed out in his early works "Caligula", "A stranger", and "The Myth of Sisyphus"-laissez-faire freedom will only invite destruction, but will not restore the existence of human beings; even if redundant people are destroyed Under the system, the spirit should also be kept free and enterprising. In this way, the "superfluous people" officially withdrew from the stage, followed by the "outsiders" who watched the strange phenomena coldly, but were ready to intervene at any time.
With the above discussion, I think that the landscapes that best reflect the absurdity of contemporary society are prisons, courts/government agencies, and stock exchanges. Literary encroachment). The stock exchange is chosen because it does not require labor and production, but it can benefit, and it can also cause people to lose wealth and lives. Prisons and courts/government agencies are all external coercive forces that deprive people of their freedom. (Note: Deprivation of freedom is not just a means of punishment. Broadly speaking, school education, household registration, license examinations, etc., are all external mechanisms that override individuals Will)-It's not that the outsider has passed away, it's that the world banishes you.
At this point, I can finally talk about "Escape from Alcatraz Island" (Papillon, 1973). Although the protagonist, Papillon, was of wrong origin, he (he claimed to be) was wrongly convicted of homicide and served his sentence at the French Guiana Alcatraz Prison (opened in 1852 and closed in 1952). On the way to Alcatraz, Papillon plots to escape from prison and draws in Dega, who forged securities. In order to save Daige, Papillon failed in his first escape from prison. After being arrested, he entered a solitary house to serve two years in prison. At the end of his sentence, he was transferred to a general prison, and Papillon escaped again with Daige and others. When they finally set foot on the American continent, the police found that only Papillon had escaped. After that, he lived a leisurely life in the indigenous tribe, and then left. He hid in the monastery to avoid investigation, but was betrayed by the nuns and locked up in a solitary house for five years. The prison sent the old Papillon to the outlying islands, allowing him to live a relatively free life in exile. On the island, he met Daige again. The unwilling Papillon lobbied Daige and drifted along the tide to the mainland. In the end, only Papillon gained real freedom.
After finishing the plot outline, I will establish a few reference points to illustrate Papillon’s belief in freedom:
1. Judgment:
Whether Papillon committed the crime of murder, we must have no definite evidence, some only have the fact of imprisonment and his self-defense. As far as Camus's argument is concerned, absurd people pursue absolute freedom when they deny social value, and this freedom can even be extended to murder. But this reasoning quickly fell into anarchism and nihilism, so it was an unfeasible path. If the pursuit of freedom is turned to the pursuit of revolution to achieve freedom for everyone, then another god will be invited to the altar. This god will eventually deny the promise of freedom and become a new tyranny (bourgeois or proletarian revolution). The third way points out the "limits" of behavior for absurd people-justice-that is, to the greatest extent, respect everyone's freedom and act for it. In this way, the absurd person rejects the judgment of the world and heaven, and takes himself as the coordinate of action. When Papillon was living alone in the house, he dreamed that he was walking alone in the desert and met the judge and pronounced him guilty: "Wasting his life." This is the only guilt admitted by the criminal Papillon. The sin of the absurd is to ignore the status quo and not defend true freedom.
2. Retreat:
As a friend and supporter of Papillon, Daige is also his reference point. Daige's counterfeiting of securities shows that he understands modern crime far better than others-robbers and murders are nothing but classic craftsmanship. On this basis alone, he is a true modern man who knows how to play with the social system to get the most benefit. Therefore, in the face of Papillon’s invitation to escape from prison, Daige always hopes to reduce his sentence through bribery. After being exiled to the island, Deger ran a very comfortable comfort zone, no wonder he refused to escape from prison again. Daige embodies people's fear of fighting for freedom-people are afraid of being outsiders, afraid of his vocation.
3. Resistance:
The resistance of absurd people is different from revolution. He perceives the injustice of reality, and decides whether to take action by himself, and the consequences of actions are generally borne by him-voluntary suffering is an important foundation of Camus's theory of resistance. The necessary evil of resistance must be redeemed, and the tyrant must be killed by fate. pay. In this way, resistance (the pursuit of freedom) can be in line with justice, and it will not become an infringement on others. In the will, the absurd must alone bear the loneliness of being an outsider and the anxiety caused by justice; in the flesh, he must be ready to sacrifice himself for justice at any time. Therefore, the resistance of absurd people is even more difficult. Papillon is not without the opportunity to choose a smooth road: Degg's wealth can make him get a reduced sentence, and he can choose to stay when he drifts to a native tribe, but he still walks towards freedom full of thorns. The primitive harmony of the aboriginal tribes is a reminiscence of pre-modern society. But the resistance of absurd people must return to reality and pursue freedom in an environment of injustice.
Through the above analysis, we can see that the high degree of adhesion between Papillon and the absurd has also made Papillon rise from a movie character to a spiritual model. "Escape from Alcatraz" is different from other prison-themed movies. The acclaimed "The Shawshank Redemption 1995" (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) also has a similar spirit: Tim Robbins voluntarily goes to jail to complete his self-trial. And when he admitted that his sentence had expired, he left happily, which was a distant echo of Papillon.
_______________________________ ◎ small supplement unrelated topic:
the same as the existentialist writer Albert Camus Saudi Arabia and this is literary friends. Both participated in the anti-fascist struggle during World War II and published early works, which were widely loved by critics and the masses. But in 1951, Camus published an essay "Rebel", which criticized the revolution and communism, and broke with the pro-communist Saudi Arabia. In fact, the break between the two was purely inevitable; Camus joined the Communist Party in his early years, and was eventually expelled from the party for supporting the colonial French Communist Party because he opposed the French colonization of Algeria (Camus’s hometown). After Camus recognized the bad practices of fascism and the Russian Communist Party, it was convenient for "Rebels" to conclude that freedom cannot be realized in violent resistance. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia’s political inclination is gradually moving closer to communism, trying to find social motivation for existential philosophy. The two knew each other in their early years, and only because of their early creations, they still stayed at showcasing existence/absurdity.
◎I always think that Zhu Yanping, the father of Taiwanese movies, can only watch two movies, "Exotic" and "Fire Island". But after watching "Escape from Alcatraz Island" and "Cool Hand Luke" (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), I realized that the classic sections of "Fire Island" were borrowed, and I can only sigh: Great ~ Director Zhu!
Bibliography
"The Complete Works of Camus", China: Hebei Education Press
"Existentialism is a Humanitarian", China: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
"Sart's Reader", China: People's Literature Publishing House
"Sart's Code", China:
"Guide Reading" of "Existence and Nothingness" by Tongji University Press , Taiwan: Left Bank Press
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