A paper (Xiaoping, 2013) summarises Suzhou River as a collection of several love stories, Ma and Peony, Ma and Meimei, and the narrator and Meimei (implied Ma and Xiao Hong), and interprets the film as a kind of synchronicity. Narratives, in which the roles (most notably the Peony-Meimei contrast) are the embodiments of social values in different periods; in the framework of Marxist analysis, socialism in the early 1980s, the transitional period in the 1990s, and the prevailing aftermath. capitalist value. This is indeed a convincing theory and has a certain explanatory power. Under its framework, we can interpret the film’s confusion about social changes in a transitional society and the dilemma of the formation of a new identity, but I think that This theory over-generalizes the film, strips it from its cocoons, selects and analyzes all the intimate relationships in the film, and therefore seems to be over-analyzing. The possible fictional nature of the two characters of Peony and Ma in the film has not been fully emphasized in this analysis. They are simply analyzed as the concepts of the narrator and the level of beauty, and I think the film clearly implies Ma Ma. , the fictionality of Peony, and the status of the narrator, Meimei's relative "meta-narrator".
First, the "evidence" of Ma and Peony as fictional characters is displayed. The narrator mentions his experiences on the Suzhou River in the monologue of the Suzhou River at the beginning of the film. ', which were apparently later woven into the story of the motor and the peonies. After that, after the narrator tells about the encounter between Meimei and herself, the figures of passers-by passing by on the balcony also appear in the back story Ma and Peony - they are obviously the prototypes imagined by the author. The narrator talked about Meimei's yearning for ideal love, and said in a fit of anger, "Anyone can make up such a love story, and so can I", and then cut into the story of Ma Peony, making it more clear about their identities as fictional characters. In the later narration, the narrator also stopped to think about the development of the story many times, during which the pictures flickered and darkened, which seemed to imply the instability of the fictional world the author conceived. Not to mention the arbitrariness and symbolic meaning of the names of things in Ma and Peony, the alliteration and parallelism of "m" and "d" in Ma and Peony are not like mere coincidences , the "always looking" implied by Ma, and the peony's position in Chinese history and the connection with female characteristics also make them more abstract features of fictional characters. In addition, the symbolic features of the characters are also reflected in the character's vision - Ma's dress is a bit similar to Schwarzenegger's appearance in "The Terminator" mentioned by Peony, and Peony's image is also very suitable for girls who have never experienced life. imagination.
Therefore, rather than taking the relationship between the narrator-Meimei-Madha-Peony at the same time, it is better to regard the latter two as the ideological products of real people (brain children), which carry the modern people's desire for good intimacy in a commodity society where consumerism prevails. Longing for the typical and model of condensed into, with quite ideal and fictional characteristics. Contrary to the narrator being repeatedly pointed out by Mei Mei as "lying", Ma Ma is taciturn, sincere, and never panicked - even when social norm justified lying ( Mei Mei felt that Ma Ma did not lie. Injury, "he's not lying to me"), which highlights the otherworldliness and unreality of the motor. The following will illustrate my theory of the Suzhou River story, a deduction:
The narrator and Meimei are a couple who met in the Fengyue venue. Their acquaintance is undoubtedly marked by the times. They meet in a nightclub with neon lights and drink cocktails titled "Hollywood". Meimei is a performer in part of the nightclub landscape. , they frolic and kiss on the Yellow River Road, they experience fast-food consumption-like romance, and the narrator asks "are we now or after sex" when talking about the breakup. But Meimei no doubt longs for (in her imagination) a more ideal love. She mentions Maada's story, sometimes sadly ("Meimei is sometimes inexplicably sad"), and the author portrays her as a man longing for true love. The image of the windy woman. Therefore, the "third party" broke into their love. Ma, Ma is the product of the narrator-Mei Mei's joint fiction, as if stepping out of the rational world, a symbol of idealized love, and a part of their relationship. Unstable factor, as their estrangement grows, the fictional characters seem to gain more power, and the narrator loses control of the motor: in the middle of the film, he admits that he can't make it up, "let the motor complete the story by himself" . It is at this point that Meimei breaks up with the narrator and turns to the motor as her ideal love reality (embodiment). As a result, Mada gained "free will" and moved freely in the world, searching for the peony he was twinned with. But Ma Ma is short-lived in the real world. He seems to be rejected by this world. After finding Peony, fulfilling his fate as a fictional character, and consummating the "story", he and Peony drive into the drunken Suzhou River was sacrificed for love. The death of the rational character makes Meimei disillusioned with intimacy and leaves the narrator, leaving behind a note of "come to me" ironically. When he crossed the Waibaidu Bridge, the afterglow was reflected in the water, and he murmured, "Everything will not last forever... I would rather close my eyes alone and wait for the next love."
In other words, Ma is a frankenstein created by Mei Mei's yearning for an ideal relationship, as "a story", an entity that blurs the boundaries between the real and the fictional in the film, and ultimately pierces the relationship between Mei Mei and the narrator. Layers of fragile window paper destroyed their feelings . I think the reading based on the fictional premise of Motor is more authentic and a more appropriate metaphor for modern intimacy.
Therefore, the story of Suzhou River is not a modern myth of finding true love in a false commodity society.
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