- a review of Truffaut's film "The Four Hundred Blows"
My analysis and reflection on the old film "The Four Hundred Blows" contains some sociological things. Forgive my lack of knowledge and lack of knowledge. Comments are welcome!
0
There are always unique pieces in the art world that are so dull, incomprehensible, and undisguised to some. For others, it seems so profound, and behind the calm exterior seems to hide the power to ignite the fire in the heart. These works always pour out the cry of some people, which may be long overdue and forgotten by society. French New Wave director François Truffaut's "Four Hundred Blows" sincerely describes the socialization process of a thirteen-year-old boy, but his story is much crueler.
1
Maybe there is a beast, maybe just ourselves
- William Golding's
"Lord of the Flies" [Goldin, William's "Lord of the Flies" Translated by Gong Zhicheng Shanghai Translation Publishing House 1985]
Act 1.
The camera moved slowly, all the way to the Eiffel Tower in the distance. The steel structure of the iron tower is frequently blocked by nearby buildings, making it impossible to see its full face. Does this broken silhouette symbolize social alienation? And does the net-like structure of looking up at the Eiffel Tower symbolize the "artificial web" (Levi-Strauss) of the extremely complex "duties and prohibitions" of the post-industrial society?
classroom. an exam. The restless boys were passing a poster of a woman. It was unfortunately discovered by the teacher when it was passed to Antoine. face the wall.
Children's mischief, merely submissive to the nature of play, is not evil. They just want to have fun, even if it costs something. But in the eyes of social normative forces, children's play is so unconventional that it must be eliminated from the classroom.
This is an exam, but the boys are still lawless (note that the class is full of boys, Antoine's school should be a boys' school), the rules belong to the weak, and the anti-discipline force belongs to the orthodox masculinity. Antoine bravely expressed his dissatisfaction and wrote his complaints on the wall. The socialization process of children started early in school. The decent boy in the film who tipped off Antoine's parents was never treated by "bad kids" like Antoine.
These formal punishments do not rationalize the power of norms in the minds of children with free will, and only increase their distance from the classroom. As described in "Lord of the Flies": "The rules of the game cannot constrain children's imagination of the game. Once the rules constrain the fun of the game, they can be broken." [ibid.] To escape loneliness, adults need to Looking for a home in social norms, children are immersed in their free nature to find solace that cannot be understood by adults.
The classroom can then become a place for games: when teaching declarative sentences, conditional sentences, and the subjunctive. Every time the teacher turns his back is a tacit signal that the game begins...
Yet Antoine is still asked to write a review.
2
If lying is good for us, why should we tell the truth?
——Ludwig Wittgenstein
, "Genius as Responsibility—A Biography of Wittgenstein" [Munk, "Genius as Responsibility," translated by Wang Yuguang, Zhejiang University Press, 2011]
went home.
A French proverb says that it takes four hundred beatings for a naughty and naughty child to get rid of the disaster, to get rid of the devil, and to become a healthy and obedient child.
Marx said: "The bourgeoisie tore off the veil of tenderness that covered family relations and turned them into pure money relations." [Marx, Engels, Selected Readings of Marxist Classics, People's Publishing House, Beijing, 1999 ] The protagonist, Tovan, lives in a middle-class and working-class family. (It can be seen from the poor living conditions of Antoine's residence: the door of his room is even blocked by the bed and cannot be fully opened. Dirty corridor. But the parents are not workers) But Antoine is an illegitimate child and his father is a stepfather. The family is deformed, and the conflict is most exposed.
We see a lot about "money" from Antoine's family conversations. The mother insisted on returning Antoine's change to buy flour; the mother asked Antoine to ask the father for pocket money; the father sternly asked the source of the new pen that Antoine took out. In this family, money is a bond of kinship. The money should be divided clearly. This has become the bottom line of affection. If the relationship of money cannot be explained clearly, this kind of family relationship cannot be maintained. This deformed relationship is based on mistrust.
Look again at the "language code" that occurs in the "family" scene. "Where's the list I asked you to take?" "I lost it." "No wonder you study so poorly.", "Don't forget to take out the garbage and turn off the lights." "I can't stand you lying!" The mother's words Always so sharp and accusatory.
Let's analyze this family in terms of conflict theory sociologist Bashir Bernstein's "language code" theory. He believes that "the speech of working-class children represents a limited code, which, as a type of speech, maintains the speaker's own cultural background." [Anthony Giddens "Sociology" fifth edition translated by Li Kang, Beijing University Press 2009] Mothers are accustomed to using direct, crude "family corrections" to correct their children's behavior. This "working-class" approach to education is an act of forced socialization, where "words point to the norms of the group." [ibid.] Children who grow up in this coded environment are more prone to rebellion.
Not his father's biological son, who was fostered for a long time when he was young, his mother beat and scolded him for no reason, his father's temper was irritable, and his education method was unreasonable. Judging from Antoine's self-report later: Parents always leave no room for forgiveness when it comes to lying. In this environment, Antoine "lied because his mother didn't believe what he was telling the truth". It can be seen that the factors of family disharmony existed a long time ago.
How can Antoine find a sense of belonging in this home, which makes him feel frightened, extremely insecure, and lacks warmth? This home is a barren soil where nothing can grow and sprout.
A home that is not very harmonious is not a reason for Antoine to flee.
3
“All people need is the desire to be independent, whatever the price and the consequences of that independence.”
——Dostoyevsky's
"Notes from the Basement" [Dostoevsky, "Notes from the Basement", translated by Yi Xin and Wei Gan, Commercial Press, 1995]
Thinking of being late for class and having to deal with yesterday's review. Antoine and his companions skipped school once. They play recklessly in the playground, releasing too much suppressed child nature. Instead, Antoine found a happy home-like atmosphere in the spin-drum games played by strangers.
On the way back to school, Antoine meets her mother and witnesses her infidelity to her marriage. kiss.
Perhaps Antoine vaguely sensed that this was a symptom of a broken family. Perhaps Antoine was worried about the revelation of his truancy. In short, this matter tore a crack in his heart.
Back at school, Antoine uses the excuse of "Mom is dead" to prevaricate the teacher. escaped.
But the lie was soon revealed, and their truancy and forged slips were reported to Antoine's parents by a "good student". Both parents came to the school, found him and slapped him in public. He was a joke in front of his classmates.
In the evening, he left a letter to his parents and stayed with his classmates. We see him, hungry, committing his first social deviance: stealing milk. The family is, in a sense, a buffer against social deviance. A harmonious family is able to slowly socialize the immature minor in a way that allows him to acquire social status in a "decent" way (eg, get a degree, get a good job). Once the minor loses the protection of the family, it is obvious that his ability is not enough to allow him to enter the society. Then he is more likely to transform into a deviant. This is why juvenile delinquents always find their roots in discordant families.
However, the impact of the incident was not as big as imagined. The mother played a moderating role. Antoine did not expect that after he knew his mother's secret, he changed her mother's attitude. What matters to her is not Antoine but maintaining the apparent marriage. Mother is also considered based on a utilitarian calculation. Antoine's truancy is trivial. But the loss of an entire family's rupture is unimaginable. Son becomes a bargaining chip here.
The mother's cover-up even allowed Antoine to escape punishment for creating a small fire. They go to the movies to watch movies. The family was happy for a while. The audience is even confused when they see this. is this real? It seemed that all the estrangements in the family had vanished in an instant. Is this still the family full of suspicion, surveillance and surveillance? In fact, it was a secret exchange: I have your secret here, and you have my secret there. We promise to remain silent. cover up each other. Peter Blau said that "inequality of power establishes reciprocity in exchange". [Peter Blau, "Exchange and Power in Social Life", translated by Li Guowu, Commercial Press, 2008] Antoine's power at this time prevailed over his mother. The mother's attitude rested only on the knowledge of the secret.
But it was a double grief for Antoine: if he hadn't seen his mother cheating, her mother would still stare blankly. But witnessing the derailment of the mother means that the mother does not love the stepfather, and the family has the possibility of breaking up.
4
"Your home in Paris has
become an altar for your hands"
- Paul Celan [Celan, Paul's Selected Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Meng Ming, East China Normal University Press, 2010]
In the time of loneliness , Antoine also wanted to find sustenance from literature. He drew inspiration from the works of Balzac. He wrote a very good composition. But a student who misbehaves in class, scribbles on the wall, and deceives the teacher has long been labeled a "bad boy". Of course, a good composition cannot come from him.
The composition was called "plagiarism" by the teacher, and Antoine couldn't stand the environment, and he ran away. Wanting to step into society, he ran away from his family, like Julien Sohaire, from the little bourgeois air that suffocated him.
runaway.
Antoine looks like a lost vagabond: staying at a friend's house, sleeping in a factory at night, still a little childish in the way he smokes.
theft. Antoine is on a further deviant path: he and his friends plan to make money by stealing a printer from his father's unit. There is a scene where Antoine and his friends are running down the street with a heavy typewriter, almost hitting passers-by. They were at a loss as to what to do with the weight of hope or doom in their hands. As if any passerby on the street understood their intentions, as if every eye was on them. When they sold the stolen goods, they were almost deceived by the guys in the black market. He backed away. He regretted it. When returning the printer, Antoine was discovered by the unit's security.
I'm not saying that children are a class and rebel against adults. Rather, children who rebel against adults are the product of the "class struggle" in this society. Not that Antoine's parents were oppressed. Rather, in the era of liberalism where money is paramount, interests have alienated bonds based on "blood" such as family affection, customs, and family. It is because of "inequality" that people's desire for class mobility is created. But money limits the bottom family. This means that parents may spend less time educating their children for work. This will disintegrate the "Emile"-style family education environment suitable for children's growth from the inside, and replace it with the disciplinary function that the family did not have in the past. Discipline is not something that can be changed by human beings, it is rooted in the entire social power structure. Once it changes (as a mother does through her dealings with her son), there is bound to be a family explosion. A family is a set of contradictions. "The development of all aspects of the contradiction is more and more incompatible, more and more mutually damaging, and more and more irreconcilable. The result is that one side wins completely, the other side completely fails, or both opposing sides die together."[ Hegel, "Little Logic", translated by He Lin, Commercial Press, 1996]
5
You can avoid the suffering of this world, you have every reason to do so, it is also in line with your nature, but it is this kind of avoidance is the only misery you can avoid
- Franz Kafka
"Proverbs" [Kafka, "Kafka Collection", Selected by Ye Tingfang, Shanghai Far East Publishing House, 2003]
Although Antoine's purpose was "redemption", he was still caught. Her parents were never gentle to her again. It was his father who turned him to the police station like a real criminal. Then he was put in an iron cage, like a real criminal, and taken to a prison van with the adult prisoner. I'm afraid, at this moment, he also recognizes himself as a criminal in his heart. The parents finally got rid of him, to the mother, Antoine was a discordant factor in the family, to the father, he was a mouth to eat for nothing. His final destination is the "Juvenile Offender Observation Center".
We should compare the place to the school. A juvenile detention center is more like a prison, where punishment for small things is the norm. People who discipline juvenile delinquents are more like police than teachers. Also, as one cellmate told Antoine, the psychiatrist would take files for everyone. Make a note of any previous behavior that breeds crime. Foucault said: "From the moment a person becomes a bad person, he is potentially medicalized." [Michel Foucault, "The Abnormal", translated by Qian Han, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2010] "Psychiatry can Psychopathize every behavior without reference to psychosis.” [ibid.] Psychiatry, which functions as an “archival record,” is also a process of labeling “stigmatized” groups. Psychology that was supposed to care for the weak can sometimes become an instrument of power in the bureaucracy.
In the end, he escaped, escaped once and for all.
He fled to the sea. The sea in this film is a symbol of unprecedented freedom without limits. This ending, like the rye that Holden, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye," wants, has a sense of detachment from reality, both for the people in the film and for the audience.
But obviously, our world is the only one without utopia. The idea of Antoine's not being able to find an escape is just an escape that can be avoided.
Maybe it wasn't such a brutal story, it wasn't bloodshed and war. But "socialization" can be an extremely brutal process for an unworldly child. The children could only watch it all happen with grim eyes. There is nothing they can do. In this sense: the child becomes a puppet sculpted by society at will.
View more about The 400 Blows reviews
