The 48-year-old widowed mother was mysteriously pregnant, and was kicked out of the house by her serious and conservative grandfather, so she had to hide in her daughter's house; her daughter Xiao Wei, a surgeon, was gay and fell in love with the beautiful and confident dancer VIVIAN. These deviant behaviors that go against the traditional Chinese ethics are like a bomb in the traditional Chinese society. The three aunts and six women in Chinatown are pretentious and put themselves in the position of moral arbitration, and they are full of excitement. As a result, the protagonists of the story struggled because of their love for face, and therefore wandered between the dilemma of love and face, wandering on the edge of reality and ideal.
Love face. Chinese people love face, and for this reason, we have always put the words first in our work, and adhere to the principle of "family shame should not be publicized". If something goes wrong, hide it, hide if you can't hide it, run away if you can't hide, and if you really can't escape, you have to tear your face away. He had no choice but to lose face and live with his tail tucked. If you are lucky, things will calm down after many days. If you are not lucky, you will have to swim in the spit pool from time to time. For the sake of a good image in the eyes of others, in order to meet the judgment of mainstream values, the "face" project came into being. The purpose is to save face at all costs. Everyone is trying their best to maintain their face and maintain the happiness on that face. A sage once said, "People are not free because of other people's eyes." For this reason, in "Saving face", the grandfather forced his mother to marry someone she didn't love for his own face; the daughter broke up with her beloved girlfriend for the sake of her mother's face. The mother did not have the courage to say who the child's father was for the sake of her family's face. Who...
But are we truly happy this way?
love, face. People are very contradictory. Sometimes, for love, they try their best to maintain their face; sometimes, for love, they have to tear up their face. Is it to keep silent for the sake of the one you love, keep silent enough to go the way you have to do, or speak up and break the so-called face - even if that may break more things at the same time. "Saving face" finally came to a happy ending. My mother didn't marry herself to cover up her ugliness, and her daughter got back her lover who always thought she was not brave enough. Even the foreign grandfather sat with the young son-in-law and granddaughter's girlfriend... What a A happy ending, full of the warmth of love, with a bubbly warmth.
But in real life, how many people have the courage to break through the barriers of reality, get rid of the shackles of family, morality, and ethics, and truly live according to their own wishes? How many people can completely disobey the direction of mainstream values and go upstream for the so-called freedom and ideals? Just like the homosexual issue involved in the movie, even if today's society has shown enough tolerance and understanding for it, real life may not be as simple and easy as it appears in the movie, and a more realistic situation may be like " As shown in "Dead Poets Society", people can plant the ideal of freedom in their hearts, but they have to face the cruel reality, hone their will in the confrontation between ideal and reality, and obtain short-term happiness, but not forever. Happiness. After all, life is not a movie.
In my opinion, although this film has a relatively happy ending, no matter how perfect the ending is, it cannot hide the embarrassment of face. Some plots and dialogues in the movie also reveal a little helplessness, such as the last few lines, "Fortunately, our daughter finally married a doctor" and "When will you add a grandson to me?" Still living under the domination of "face theory". This has become a kind of subconsciousness of the Chinese people, and few people can really get rid of the worldly vision and live the so-called life of their own. There are many similar stories. Bai Xianyong has written "The Evil Son" and Ang Lee has filmed "The Wedding Banquet". The works of the same type have different depths and joys and sorrows under the interpretation of different creators. When stripping away the external plots and emotions of all these stories, maybe we can see something similar to the core: no matter what kind of lifestyle you choose and what kind of people you love, you need to give your family an explanation, Give the society an explanation, and then you will be free to live for yourself.
Li Yinhe once said: Each of us is more free than we think. But freedom is far from a state that can be achieved by knowing or believing alone. Chinese sons and daughters bear the weight of flesh-and-blood kinship, the heavy responsibility of social cognition, and the imprisonment of morality and ethics for thousands of years, and may continue to bear it for a long time in the future. Although your own life is your own, if you can't fit into the trajectory recognized by society, the way to seek understanding may be far away.
This is an embarrassment of face, and it is also a kind of social sadness...
The edge of culture
This film involves a lot of social issues, unmarried pregnancies, single mothers, immigration, culture shock, homosexuality, etc. Many contents are easily marginalized, Especially gay issues. It is not difficult to find that many films expressing the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures like to use homosexual themes, such as "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Wedding Banquet". Homosexuality has become a cultural phenomenon, more precisely, a subcultural phenomenon. The so-called subculture refers to a culture that is only accepted by some members of the society or is unique to a certain social group. Within this group, they have common beliefs, values, and cognitive models.
In fact, homosexuality has long existed as a social phenomenon. In ancient China, King Ding of Zhou "slept naked together", Emperor Ai of Han shared a bed with "broken sleeves", and Wei and Jin "played naked in bamboo forest"; and it can be found in the poems of many famous scholars. to the shadow of homosexuality. Another example is the embrace of the same sex in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the hand-to-face touch in the Song Dynasty, and the overly close relationship between the same sex in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all of which are evidence of the phenomenon of homosexuality in history. Not only in China, but also in the West, there are many such examples: the famous ancient Greek figures Plato and Socrates were both homosexuals. In their concept, the love between an adult man and a young man is more noble than the love between a man and a woman. Nowadays, everyone has given a lot of understanding and tolerance to the phenomenon of homosexuality. With the further expansion of the marginal space brought about by the opening of society, the narrow theme of homosexuality has also become a theme that artists are willing to pay attention to and involve. There have been more and more artistic creations with this theme in recent years. But we have to admit that their initial concern about homosexuality may not lie in itself, but its status at the time and people's sensitivity to this topic.
Chinese filmmakers have also paid attention to this issue in the early years, but in mainland China, due to the marginality of this subject matter, with the exception of "Farewell My Concubine" entering mainstream theaters, several other films are fully involved or one-sided. Movies involving homosexuality, such as "East Palace West Palace" directed by Zhang Yuan, "The Postman" directed by He Jianjun, "Who Has Seen Wild Animals Festival" directed by Kang Feng, and "This Year's Year" directed by Li Yu Summer" etc. In the eyes of the artist, homosexuality is an individual who needs their attention, a small group of people. But this may be a misunderstanding. Scholar Li Yinhe once said that homosexuality is actually a large group in China, but it has not been discovered and recognized by society for a long time. They may be weak, but their number may be is huge. Therefore, many of the works we see are not justification for homosexuality or in-depth excavation of this social phenomenon, but a superficial description or conjecture.
Perhaps due to differences in physical and psychological conditions, the blockage of communication channels and the lack of information, there will be many speculations and suspicions about homosexuals from the outside world. Eliminated from the list of diseases, realizing the non-pathologicalization of homosexuality in China. But it is undeniable that many people still maintain the idea of "homosexuality is sexual perversion". Therefore, whenever a work of art touches on such a subject, it is rare for people to look at the issue without colored glasses or curiosity, so that gay culture has been marginalized again and again, even if some people say it is a subculture. will be criticized.
In fact, we always say that our attitude towards issues such as homosexuality is very "tolerant", but it is really difficult to achieve the so-called "tolerance". The reason why human beings have a tendency to suppress certain forms that stray from the mainstream culture and survival mode actually originates from the fear of "species mutation" in the depths of human beings - in the face of homosexuality, people will intuitively respond: this is a right The great impact of human reproduction is the betrayal and subversion of the marriage between the sexes that has maintained human society for millions of years, and it is related to the future of human beings. Instinct rejection combined with cultural heritage makes most people think homosexuality is against social development, just as some religious people see abortion as a crime against God. After all, human beings are prisoners of thought subject to bounded rationality. If he does not know what change means, then immutability is the best choice. Homosexuality has long been shrouded in mystery in China, which is regarded as a forbidden area and is kept secret. In fact, this phenomenon has existed objectively since ancient times, it cannot be avoided, and it should be concerned and valued by all aspects of society. Now, we have to make some changes to our adherence, we cannot ignore gay people, and they will not disappear because we turn our heads and pretend to be invisible. Learn to recognize homosexuality as we know ourselves, as Democritus said, "In the dark, I only want to see myself clearly. In the light, I can only humble myself to find myself." See yourself clearly, and then you can see Clear the world.
Try to understand and identify with it. Only on such a psychological basis will we seek cultural exploration - subcultures are often not born, but the content and form endowed by the mainstream culture - Endowment is a kind of recognition , a kind of understanding, a kind of tolerance.
When the marginalized culture is accepted by the public, and when a certain cultural phenomenon is no longer arbitrarily marginalized by us, we will be able to understand the wider world and know the more connotative culture, and human society and artistic creation will move towards a more To develop in a bright direction.
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