The "previous spiritual/moral peak" mentioned in this article refers to the spiritual/moral upsurge of the Chinese people and even the Chinese nation that rose on a large scale in our country in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the mid-1960s. It was a glorious era: there appeared in social life Lei Feng (warrior), Jiao Yulu (cadre), Wang Jinxi (worker), Chen Yonggui (peasant), Peng Jiamu (scientist) and such figures who will forever be in history, and the literary and artistic stage appeared History of Entrepreneurship (novel), Cai Wenji (drama), So Beautiful in the Country (painting), The Liang Zhu (music), The Red Detachment of Women (dance), Li Shuangshuang (movie), Shajiabang "(Modern Peking Opera), "The Window of the Train to the West" (poetry) and other popular works. The political arena naturally bears the brunt, and there have been nine times the "Comments on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (commonly known as "Nine Commentaries"), Peng Zhen's speech at a college in Indonesia (known as "Ten Commentaries"), and so on, but, "Shajiabang" And the "Nine Commentaries" and "Ten Commentaries" directly led to the emergence and outbreak of the "Cultural Revolution".
Well, by roughly stating what a "spiritual/moral peak" is, we also roughly explain why it's called a "cultural depression" relative to what it is today. In the abstract, there must be a valley between two peaks, otherwise the peak would not be. Concretely speaking, although the number and scale of today's culture/art is much larger than that of the previous era, it has not yet produced the deafening works that leaders, leaders and people have been looking forward to. On the contrary, today, even in Poetry and poets have completely disappeared in the whole society of our country. Of course, the moss-like flourishing of this culture/art does not mean that the historical period in which we live is not great, it just confirms, or still confirms, some of the assertions of some predecessors that are still worth recalling today , for example, "greatness is relative" (Plekhanov), and for example, cultural prosperity does not always parallel economic prosperity (Marx).
In the current environment of large-scale economic prosperity and large-scale cultural shallowness, we have read two films directed by Jiang Wen, "Sunny Day" and "The Devil Is Coming". Jiang Wen's film is different from ordinary cultural consumption products. It is a material text that is the basis for discussing Jiang Wen's film and even similar cultural/art works. While watching these two films, the inconsistent words came out again elegantly: "Everything exists is reasonable." These words are like prophecies, ghosts and ghosts, like proverbs, unfathomable and profound.
Generation of meaning: The original intention of "The Devil is Coming" and its effect
"The Devil is Coming" tells a tortuous story. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 1945, Ma Dasan, a farmer who lives in a Japanese-occupied area, was suddenly forced to look after a sack by an unknown person. He opened the sack and saw that inside was the kidnapped Japanese army officer and translator. Ma Dasan and the villagers don't know what to do with these two captives. Let's kill them. They can't let go of that hand, and they don't have the guts. Keep it. The more I felt that this was a mine that could explode at any time. Speaking of which, the Japanese military officer used to be a farmer in Japan. At his suggestion, the Ma Dasan handed over the two captives to the Japanese army stationed there, and actually took back the three carts of food that had been agreed in advance as compensation. At the party attended by both parties, the Japanese commander turned his face in anger at the emperor's announcement of defeat and surrender. He ordered the killing of all the Chinese present and the burning of the village where the Ma Dasan lived.
Question: What was the original intention of Jiang Wen's filming of "The Devil Is Coming"?
Looking through newspapers and magazines, we can hardly find any record of the original intention of "The Devil Is Coming". Here, on the one hand, the reason is that "The Devil Is Coming" has not been allowed to be broadcast publicly, and on the other hand, the reason is that Jiang Wen is almost the most silent director about his original creative intentions, that is, until now, we have not seen Over this frontal material.
Another question: Is it necessary for us to understand the creator's subjective will before or at the time of creation?
When answering this question, we might as well replace the object of inquiry from Jiang Wen and "The Devil Has Come" to "The Iliad" and its author in the ancient Greek era. Not to mention whether it is pedantic to explore the original intention (subjective desire) of the anonymous writer thousands of years ago, rather than that, we should try to understand and interpret the ancient anonymous writer in "Ilia" What exactly is about, and how the work chronicles the ancient Greek era it describes. Of course, many contemporary writers, especially our Chinese writers, are willing to express their original intentions or subjective wishes aloud, but how much of the current discourses explaining their works are of historical value? In this way, we should treat Jiang Wen as an ancient artist. Our best weapon is not the confirmation of Jiang Wen's words, but our own eyes and our true knowledge of history.
"Sunny Day" is marked as completed in 1994, and its actual shooting/production date is 1993 or even earlier. In 1993, in the chronicle of new Chinese films, it was the tenth anniversary of the filming of "Yellow Earth", and the entire Chinese new film was about to be released. "The Devil is Coming" is marked as completed in 2003, and its actual shooting/production time is 2002 or earlier. The year 2002 marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan. So, from the phenomenal point of view, "Sunny Days" and "The Devils Are Coming" seem to have become commemorations or "gifts" to the tenth or twentieth anniversary, and some people even regard this superficial connection as a To study some basis for the original intention of Jiang Wen's film creation. This kind of far-fetched association seems a bit ridiculous, but it tells people from another side that the meaning of "Sunny Days" and "The Devil Is Coming" is actually for us viewers, readers, and researchers. Attached to them from the outside. In fact, the meaning of a film does not depend on the original intention of the creator (that is only a less important circumstantial evidence), but depends, at least mainly, on the relationship between the film and its playing background. Generally speaking, the meaning of literary and artistic works is constructed in this way. In fact, the interpretation of Jiang Wen's films is not concerned with what story Jiang Wen wants to tell, and the interpretation is more concerned with: by deconstructing how Jiang Wen tells his story, to find and sort out what is hidden in the depths of his story. Social trend.
Through interpretation, we found that there are at least three unusual "Jiang Wen's viewpoints" in "The Devil Is Coming" -
1. China and Japan are not friendly, especially the Japanese side is not friendly to us;
2. Japan The people are not friendly to us, especially when they are organized into an invading army;
3. Facing the butcher knife of the Japanese invaders, the Chinese people's wishful kindness and their ignorance are in fact the palm of the same weak hand and their ignorance. back of hand. In the face of the jackal, the kindness of our people is not merit, but stupidity, cowardice, and Mr. Dongguo.
The problem is that these three "Jiang Wen viewpoints" that are different from the mainstream media are not on the surface of the story of "The Devil is Coming", they exist between the lines of the film, are organized in the film's character settings and relationships, and of course, are also expressed In such subtleties as camera usage, mise-en-scene, actor performances and so on. The so-called "Jiang Wen's point of view" is actually a term we "borrowed" for the convenience of narration. They belong to "The Devil Is Coming", but at the same time they do not belong to this film entirely. The reality of life is that during the filming, production and completion of "Devils Are Coming" for a considerable period of time, the relationship between China and Japan has deteriorated, and Japan's anti-China sentiment is rampant, and it does not admit that there was a Nanjing Massacre, or even admit it. Having invaded China, rearmament, expanding military preparations for war, taking the opportunity to send peacekeeping troops overseas to restore military strength and rebuilding the army, promulgating new defense plans including China, and striving to become a permanent member of the United Nations, the latest proposal, And the obvious realization of its dream of a great Japanese empire that has never been interrupted for hundreds of thousands of years, etc., not only undermines Sino-Japanese relations, but also arouses dissatisfaction, vigilance and dissatisfaction among the people of our country and the governments and people of Japan's neighboring countries. anger. Against this background, "The Devil is Coming" is given the meaning of expressing such dissatisfaction, vigilance and anger. It is particularly worth mentioning that the "borrowing" of the film "Devil is Coming" also These include our people's dissatisfaction with the government's "talking but not practicing" policy of succumbing to Japan's militaristic tendencies, as well as calls for a readjustment or even a re-examination of relations with Japan.
Two Political Fables: The Text and Semantics of "Sunny Day"
"Sunny Day" tells a love story during the Cultural Revolution, and at the same time, it is a passionate political fable.
The text of the film is as follows: In 1967, the young boy Ma Xiaojun felt that life was very boring, so he was naughty, truant, slipped and picked locks, played pranks, acted as a hero, and fought in groups. Soon, he fell in love and fell in love with Milan, a girl who was a few years older than him. In order to attract the girl's attention and get her response to his love, Ma Xiaojun did everything he thought was full of heroic pride, and finally made Milan understand his love in the heavy rain one night. After that, Ma Xiaojun launched an inappropriate sexual assault on Milan, a forced kiss that Milan rejected in horror. When the news came out, those who used to have a close relationship with Ma Xiaojun immediately abandoned him with unanimous attitude. Ma Xiaojun's love didn't work out, and the final incident of the story happened in a swimming pool: Ma Xiaojun was left out by the crowd and struggled in the water alone. He tried to climb up the pool wall to get back to his comrades, but his eyes were clouded by water (tears?), and it was unknown who kicked him back into the water, leaving him alone and painfully floating. The film ended a few years later, when Ma Xiaojun and his friends grew up and returned to their hometowns. At this time, everyone had given up their quarrels, but only Milan, who had embraced Ma Xiaojun in the rain, did not appear. "What about the bottom?" "The bottom is gone."
Any film has some unique reading symptoms, which are often the key or entrance for readers (especially later readers) to enter the depths of the film. In the long-term process of watching movies, we also found that the most important reading symptoms of a movie with a significant impact are often directly related to the performance of the movie on sex and sexual relations. Although, this oversimplified account may be a flawed, unjustified incomplete generalization. Let's cut into the film from this entrance for the time being, and explore the political meaning hidden in the depths of the film (including the subconscious level of the creator)——
Ma Xiaojun's love story (text) ends when Ma Xiaojun floats lonely and painfully in a huge piece of water. However, this is only the end of the story and not the end of the film. The ending part of the film is a long black-and-white film. The picture shows Ma Xiaojun and his friends returning to the city after a few years, traveling around Beijing in a luxurious Cadillac. The director deliberately subtitles them who is who. Note: Milan is not among the people who appear. At this time, we suddenly discovered that the environment that once produced this love story, the Cultural Revolution, was absent at the same time as Milan. The implication of these two common absences in the pointing relationship is that what Milan is referring to is precisely the Cultural Revolution. If this understanding is correct, then, following this deduction, Ma Xiaojun refers to Mao Zedong, and the love initiated by Ma Xiaojun refers to Mao Zedong's attempt to move towards an ideal society through that revolution, which broke out in China in the mid-1960s. the Cultural Revolution. When we realized and established such a metaphorical relationship, we couldn't help but be taken aback. The whole picture of the film suddenly changed its original form, and even many of the ambiguities in the film that were once puzzling suddenly became clear and clear. . Let's reread "Sunny Days" -
Before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong felt that China was heading for the mud pit of revisionism (Ma Xiaojun felt that life was boring), so he decided to initiate a revolution to lead China (The Emperor's Logic" I am the country") toward a better state...
At that time, Mao Zedong didn't have a very clear idea of what the future would be like, but he firmly believed that tomorrow would be better than today (he fell in love at the beginning of his love, hazy in love Milan, who is a few years older than him)...
For this ideal, Mao Zedong made all the efforts he could realize, including those things he would not have done under normal circumstances, such as overthrowing a large number of cadres, criticizing and delegating a large number of knowledge In Mao Zedong's view, these so-called heroic acts are all necessary in the process of marching towards an ideal society (in order to attract the girl's attention and get her response to his love, Ma Xiaojun did everything he could. Think two hundred and fifty full of heroic pride, such as jumping down from a towering chimney)…
Despite the general chaos in the country, the people responded to Mao Zedong's desire to march towards new goals, such as the emergence of unforeseen events throughout the country, most notably the emergence of a state called "Revolutionary Committee" Form (Finally, in the heavy rain one night, Ma Xiaojun made Milan understand his love, and Milan also embraced him in the rain)...
However, decentralizing a large number of intellectuals and so on later even Mao Zedong himself admitted that it was a major mistake behavior, which exacerbated the confusion and panic of the people (Ma Xiaojun launched an untimely sexual assault on Milan, this forced kiss was rejected by Milan in horror), and the people became more and more aware that the Cultural Revolution was a disaster, and Movements initiated by Mao
Zedong , such as "Fighting Privates and Criticizing Cultivation", were ignored by the people in the form of silence and carefreeness. He never wanted to go back to his colleagues, comrades and friends, but at this time he had almost no colleagues, comrades and friends (Ma Xiaojun was left out by the crowd and struggled in the water alone. He tried to climb up the pool wall to get back to partner, but his eyes were clouded by the water splash
At this time, and only at this time, did we suddenly find the root cause for those voiceovers in the middle of the film or appearing. It's not surprising that those voiceovers do not tell the story or push the plot forward more than once, but only interrupt the dramatic effect of Ma Xiaojun's love. At the tense moment when Ma Xiaojun waved his bottle at his partner at the birthday party, a voiceover told us, "Actually, that fight never happened at all." It turns out that the heroism in the story, even the wrong heroism, is actually a metaphor.
It was then, and only then, that we suddenly understood that "Sunny Days" was not just a love story, nor even a brief review of the Cultural Revolution. So what is it? It is an understanding and analysis of the fate of Mao Zedong in his later years. In the understanding and analysis of this story in the form of a movie and the hazy love of a half-sized boy Ma Xiaojun as the foreground story, the pains of the Cultural Revolution that are usually talked about in people's mouths are not the content of the film, they were abandoned by the director. The content that the film focuses on can be summed up in such an abstraction: a process in which a good wish is not realized, and the subject's feelings brought about by this failure. Haven't we experienced the process of striving for ideals? Can't we understand the enthusiasm and efforts to achieve the ideal?
What is destiny? Destiny is the form of existence and the direction of life prescribed for the party by a force that cannot be controlled by the party concerned. Have we not encountered the oppression and challenge of fate? Are we under the shroud of fate, and every effort ends with a triumphant ending? Understanding and analyzing Mao Zedong's fate in the Cultural Revolution is the fundamental difference between "Sunny Day" and other films. Here, what the film gives to the great Mao Zedong is not criticism and grief, but sympathy and understanding. We can accuse Jiang Wen of using the Cultural Revolution as the background of his story to violate a certain political taboo, and we can also accuse Jiang Wen of taking the great Mao Zedong as the object of his analysis for some kind of political arrogance, but we cannot but admit that Jiang Wen has the power to do so , because the practice belongs to the basic rights of a citizen.
In fact, the seven characters "sunny day" are the object part of a sentence with the head and tail removed. If the omitted part is fully expanded, the sentence is two sentences like this: one is about the story Yes, that is, although 1967 was a cloudy day in the political concept of most people, it was a sunny day in the first love of the protagonist Ma Xiaojun. Another sentence is about meaning, i.e., while the Cultural Revolution was an unforgettable decade in terms of its inputs/outputs, it was not in terms of its subjective desire for the great Mao Zedong (who played in his place was Ma Xiaojun's love). It's a sunny day. When we said these two sentences, we spontaneously felt the same purpose and the same goal: in our party's great historical resolutions and the great Deng Xiaoping narrative, Mao Zedong was not only an irreplaceable great man in New China, but also guilty of guilt. The irretrievably wrong man whose great loyalty goes with equally great mistakes. "Sunny Days" eschews the value judgment of "winning and losing heroes". The film uses love as an external expression, stitching together moving good wishes and unpleasant failures. This, It must be said that Jiang Wen's film is wise and cunning.
Three Value Positions: Jiang Wen's Film and Its Living Environment
If we express both economic development and cultural development with sinusoidal curves, then, since the cycle of the former is usually calculated in terms of "periods" and the cycles of the latter are usually calculated in terms of "epochs", then, the relationship between economic curves and cultural The curves are not quite parallel in most cases. In foreign countries, Louis XIV, his reign was the peak of French and even European cultural development, but the French economy was at a low point of development at that time; China, Song Huizong Zhao Ji, his reign was out of Su Dongpo, "Qingming Shanghe Tu", lean body calligraphy and other cultural peaks, but it was also the weakest period of the Northern Song Dynasty's national power, and it was the beginning of the collapse of the Northern Song Dynasty's state power. Today, the economic/cultural relationship in our country is the exact opposite of the above two cases. Our current situation is that the economy is at the peak of development and the culture is at the trough of development. Needless to say, we are facing a historical overkill. There have been scholars who have described the current cultural status quo of China in a state of trough: "With the rapid development of the commodity economy, especially since the 1990s, the mainstream of China's culture has gradually deviated from the original ideas, aesthetics and Cultural tradition has begun a comprehensive transformation to popularization, making cultural products more and more obvious new characteristics: in function, it has become a game entertainment culture; in production mode, it has become a kind of Commodities produced by the cultural industry; in terms of text, it has become a flat culture without depth; in terms of communication methods, it has become a national pan-popular culture.” (Yin Hong: History at the Turn of the Century. Witness - On China's Film and Television Culture in the 1990s") Measured against this widely accepted judgment, Jiang Wen's films are clearly not among the cultural products "transforming to the masses", although Jiang Wen strives to make his films more and more game-like entertainment function, although its 2003 "Devils Are Coming" has a more complete story chain than 1994's "Sunny Days", and the plot design is also more ups and downs There is no in-depth planarization, so the works cannot smoothly enter the public circulation channels for the whole people in the way of dissemination, and can only be circulated among the people in the form of "underground movies". After all, this is China.
The reality today is that in the mass media—equivalent to some public place—the leaders of the ruling class, especially controversial leaders, are openly discussed as in "Sunny Day", as in "The Devil Is Here." Openly discussing the state policy of the ruling class in that way, although it is not illegal, is usually not allowed, even, no matter what you are talking about is within the allowable range or outside the allowable range. In this respect, the openness of our culture is the same as the openness of our politics.
The reality today is also reflected in the industry. Most film and television creators have automatically given up their psychological resistance or vigilance against industrial reproduction culture, and willingly turned their creations into a process link in the production line of the film industry. More and more film and television works no longer regard the aesthetics of their works Value and spiritual value as ideals, but the exchange value and use value of commodities as the primary and most important purpose. This trend is the most important and most striking geographical feature of this cultural depression today. This social environment surrounds Jiang Wen Films with barrier-like mountains. This industry environment puts Jiang Wen Films in swamps everywhere. A prospectless muddy place.
Jiang Wen is a person who advocates individuality. He advocates individualized performance content and individualized performance skills. Although the latter is not at fault literally, in practice it is often disputed due to different understandings. We clearly remember that in the days of preparing for "Sunny Days", it took a lot of trouble to find and select the teenager Ma Xiaojun, and even became the biggest gossip news at the time, and Jiang Wen's final choice of actor Xia Yu, At the beginning, he didn't have any acting experience, just because his appearance was similar to Jiang Wen. Matching this, there is a flashing image of Ma Xiaojun as a boy in "Sunny Days", and the most striking performance of that little guy is to imitate Jiang Wen himself, winking his eyes forcefully. Ten years have passed, and this blinking action reappeared on Ma Dasan, the protagonist of "The Devils Are Coming". However, Ma Xiaojun in "Sunny Days" and Ma Dasan in "The Devils Are Coming" no matter what. Either way, they are completely different characters. We are not experts in the study of performance, and we cannot correctly comment on the dozens to dozens of characters that Jiang Wen has created. We prefer to regard the above information in Jiang Wen's films as Jiang Wen's requirement that the humanistic content of his works must be "Jiang culture". Performance.
It is far from enough to say that the swampy, unpromising muddy area highlights Jiang Wen's film, which is a thorn in this cultural depression. The "thorn" refers to Jiang Wen's film's refusal to be vulgar, to be impersonal, to be subservient and to be congenial, and to reject superficiality, flatness, and vulgar taste. "Rose" refers to Jiang Wen's film in an environment that is invincible to the public, inheriting the essence of new Chinese films, insisting that flowers will open for tomorrow and for the next spiritual/moral peak that will inevitably come. Yes, this kind of opening for tomorrow is the uninterrupted and unyielding effort of today's artists to welcome tomorrow.
China's new film is a splendid flower in my country's film and television industry after entering the era of reform and opening up. There is no problem with this. The way of ideological expression created by new Chinese films will shed its self-protective shell of chilling in the next cultural era and walk under the bright sunshine. There is no problem. The question is how we should interpret the value of Jiang Wen's films - this kind of cultural/art work in the middle stage.
Let us sketch a historical picture that has appeared countless times in Chinese history:
in the last years of an old dynasty, a large-scale war swept the country, and wherever the troops of the new dynasty went, they destroyed and burned the old. There is everything. In this unstoppable war, the national library of the old court was also burnt down. This process, repeated more than once, is the process in which countless cultural classics such as "Shen Nong Baicao" and "Sun Tzu's Art of War" have been lost.
Then, how did the books that recorded the culture of the previous dynasty and even the ancient culture spread to the next dynasty, or even later generations? At that time, there was no such thing as peaceful liberation and peaceful handover.
We guessed that in addition to the National Library, the books burned by the army of the next dynasty had a valuable place to rest - the minds of those intellectuals at that time. isn't it? Books were written by them, and at that time, probably only they had the ability to read. It is they who, during or after the large-scale war destruction, used their minds, their pens and hands to restore these war-burned books, thus completing the achievement of preserving and inheriting cultural classics.
This small historical process is repeated in our motherland today: when the economic war burns the earth, when the new Chinese film is completely defeated by the tide of the commodity economy and ceases to exist, at this time, a director named Jiang Wen, with His Jiang Wen films survived the war and continued the new Chinese films.
If you do not deny that the spiritual/moral peak of the Chinese people will come tomorrow, if you are convinced that the next cultural era will contain all the essences created by the previous cultural era, then please protect and pay attention to Jiang Wen's films, because, This anachronistic but tenaciously surviving culture/art flower does not belong to today's low-lying cultural valley, they are open for future China, they belong to China's future.
(End of full text)
2005-2-1 draft
revised 2006-11-2
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