In 2013, after graduating from my undergraduate degree, I went to study film as a graduate student. The first-year course was horrible, and it was even more exciting for someone like me who had no basis in filmmaking. After school starts in September, life is like a typhoon that is out of control, and quickly falls into a crazy and messy cycle of endless shooting operations. Not to mention that for a person who has studied liberal arts for four years in a mainland university for four years, which is equivalent to a waste of four years of life, suddenly began the first time in his life such a intensive need to output the rhythm of creativity, and felt that the whole person was mentally squeezed. Dry.
Most of the classmates in the natural class (including me, who are from the mainland) are a little anxious. Everyone is madly imitating whatever they can think of, or all the styles they can touch. On the one hand, you don’t have time to ask what you want to do seriously; on the other hand, competition is also an inevitable thing. . It's not because of what we want, but the education we have received has allowed everyone to naturally enter a state of mind of "I don't know why, but it is better to get as high as possible". So at least I—I'm not sure how others are—started to search all the different kinds of things I've seen and imitate them all. On the one hand, it is called "experimenting", on the other hand, it can also appear to be more tasteful.
The Girls, which was not long after the first season aired, came into my field of vision, and finally became the target of one of my classroom assignments. Ironically, I didn't even watch the first season. To be precise, I only watched the first episode. And don't like it. But I immediately summed up a few key words: feminine, contemporary, emotional, talkative, slightly faded urban scenes that seem to have been filtered by Instagram, cool-looking but not always logical dialogue, and background music Those in Taylor Swift's so-called "indie records that are much cooler". So I quickly wrote a script like a gourd and painted a scoop, and found four female classmates to finish the homework. Then label yourself as a feminist Living Allen.
The finished product is of course very ridiculous. Especially now it seems that I don't know what the girls are talking about at all, and the mentality at the time can only write about the four girls who grumbled about life/emotions together and twisted to the end of an inexplicable chicken soup. So much so that almost a year after the film was finished and the class was over, a female classmate who helped me act in the film occasionally mentioned this film and half jokingly said that I was writing something messy. I don't understand at all.
I think anyone of my generation who engages in literary and artistic creation may find a tragic fact: cities living in the mainland, even in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, face a kind of desperate boredom. On the one hand, from the most superficial level, the construction and planning of cities in mainland China is rarely interesting. So far, the only urban areas that I find interesting and enjoy walking are the Gulou area in Beijing and the old city in Shanghai. And the interestingness of these two places without exception is related to the era far away from the present. As for contemporary society, nothing interesting remains. Secondly, I have to say that the people living in these cities are also disappointing.
The life of the post-90s generation is really boring so far. The feudal oppression in Zhang Yimou's lens has almost nothing to do with us. The reform and opening up and the great changes in urban and rural areas in Jia Zhangke's eyes have ended early, and the surging wave of times in Lou Ye's works has gradually subsided. I think the biggest twist in the life of the post-90s generation is probably the new crown epidemic that is happening now. So it's no wonder that Tina Fey plays a middle-aged woman from Albania in SNL's famous sketch that imitates Girls. After she entered the lives of these four girls, Hanna said, "Seriously, your life is much more interesting than mine" after facing Tina Fey's incredible life experience in an unknown country in the third world. It's simply too politically incorrect.
So I feel that my life and many people who are also in the city lack a lot of poetry. Until the new crown epidemic caused me to face the most serious professional crisis after graduation for more than three years, I also seemed to be one of these boring people: I was basically in a state of working all the time, even if I had free rest in between. Will also be interrupted by the next unexpected job before entering a certain state of solitude. Then at work, there are some welcoming and sending, talking and laughing Yan Yan. You are indeed gaining experience and learning skills, but you really hardly have time to be alone with yourself. Occasionally, the moment when one or two souls come out of the body will be quickly overwhelmed by the unstoppable mundane the next day.
So I feel that no matter what subject matter I write—unless it is a story of a complete peer like Girls—can’t be convincing. I have not personally experienced any situation directly related to the great joys of human nature. My caring will always look pretentious. I can only masturbate by talking about my mechanical cold life. However, trying to produce interesting from boredom is a difficult event with a very small probability.
But what's more sad is that I don't even have the "boring" in Girls. The people around me are not as "fun" as Hanna's friends. My city does not have the kind of "epic party" described in the entire Brooklyn and half of Manhattan. The university teacher I like would not invite me to any reading session he held to read his own writings. I couldn't even overslept on the subway like Hanna at the end of the first season and got lost in an unknown corner of my city with a friend's wedding cake. The most similar thing I have ever done was probably when I was studying in Hong Kong on a weekend with a group of friends who had just known each other for a long time and had a few turns in the relationship. After drinking in Lan Kwai Fong, it was almost dawn, wandering in the hot and humid air. On the almost unmanned streets of Hong Kong Island with a few cool breeze before the sun came out, I found that the subway would take an hour to open. Finally, I found a McDonald's and slept on the table.
Some people will probably refute that in your city, there must be other similar things you can do. After all, we don’t have a party culture, we don’t have a date culture, and our nightlife is basically beer barbecue crayfish. We just don't have those capitalist lifestyles.
It seems to make sense to think about it. So am I unable or unwilling now?
In "New York Parade", Tim, a secular identity as a tourist car tour guide, is probably a quirky boy who is a poet sent by God, facing tourists from all over the world, he can tell you that the United States is not long. Historically, there must have been someone who was quite influential in the cultural field who lived in a certain block where the sightseeing bus is now driving. He can sigh at the Empire State Building, "It's so masculine", or he can indulge in the lines on the outer wall of the municipal building and its unique materials, so that he almost climaxes. He can think of the ultimate meaning of life when he sees a tramp sleeping under a dirty quilt on the street. He can also easily praise the dress of a female tourist from Argentina on his sightseeing bus.
Of course, he was indeed on the Brooklyn Bridge and had a debate lacking opposition with all the people in his life who had caused him pain. Finally, he walked to the center of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were still intact at the time, and rotated in place, then looked up, letting the two towers fall and collapse in front of his own eyes.
So in my last job, I went to Helsinki on a business trip, and for a few nights, I wandered aimlessly. Sometimes it’s walking (the central city is not big anyway), sometimes it’s a tram that I have bought a pass for. Sometimes I go to some places I haven't been, but sometimes I also walk the road that I have traveled several times. Sometimes I searched for a movie theater or bookstore on Google Maps, and when I arrived, I found that it was closed (the working hours over there were really too short), so I had to look outside the door and spend dozens of minutes back to my residence, seemingly nothing. Most of the time I long to meet others, but most of the time I am alone. Most of the time I was speechless, but most of the time I took off in my head again.
I feel a contradictory and strange sense of alienation. I am in a foreign country with no more than 10 people I know. I am obviously alone, but I also clearly feel that I can have some kind of connection with everyone passing by. In other words, I am lonely, I am not alone.
Tim tells me how you get along with the city, you will get along with yourself. In New York, this notorious twin of heaven and hell, some people must leave last and some will stay. Tim makes me envious, he at least made peace with his city, although it is not clear whether it was a bad fate or a good marriage.
The story of Girls also takes place in New York, and you can see it almost without thinking. When the first episode started, Hanna had just graduated from college for two years and was 24 years old. I was still reading when I first watched it in 2013. I was 22 years old. Now that I think about it, it’s normal if I don’t understand it. After all, I was still in the “chained to the rhythm” student age, and there was still very little real independent life experience. Chinese children are too long in their school days, so most of them mature late. It's no surprise that I am almost 30 years old now. After a period of life crisis, I feel a lot of empathy for Hanna. Hanna is not only a senior to whom I deserve to ask for life experience, but also a child who has experienced all the new and old struggles brought about by this explosive era.
Hanna's life has not been misplaced. I looked at her and then looked at myself and found the misplacement.
It is indeed a bit too narcissistic to say that you are out of place.
I think the biggest failure in imitating the short film written by Girls is that I did not realize the fact that these four girls are still lonely with each other. In my script, I let them mix together, like muddy mud. Whether they want it or not, I force them to boil a pot of chicken soup. Of course, it is terrible in the end.
After writing this, it is estimated that someone is going to curse. So what am I trying to say? Longing to connect for a while and still lonely for a while, are you sick?
Everyone is sick, but while lonely, they also long for not to be lonely or contradictory.
So I think for Lena Dunham, writing Hanna is a good medicine for her to relieve her autism. Although autism can only be relieved, it cannot be cured. And the advantage of writing a series is that it is not a closed loop, but a flowing body similar to the life itself. You can continue if you want to continue, and stop wherever you want. Because any stop does not have any stop significance from a macro perspective. You just crawled out of the water, and the water is still flowing.
Wipe your body, wipe your hair, and move on.
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