"Green Book" is essentially a lighthearted, playful comedy film with a certain quality of an intellectual film, not dominated by rambling dialogue, but just as Woody Allen's Like the work, it completes a unique and profound ideographic structure in the gentle and soothing comedy-the ideology of political correctness.
The comedy effect of this film mainly comes from a kind of dislocation: it is not a misunderstanding of chickens and ducks, but more of a displacement of social identity, class, dialogue state, and cultural attributes. The most typical example is, of course, that the protagonist who is a white person is actually a poor and poor lower-class people, and the musician is a black person although he is rich in knowledge and material.
Similar to the previous year's "In Columbus": as an immigrant Korean protagonist, he occupies a white position in class status, while the native heroine has a poor family and faces many difficulties in such a family. This form of displacement and dislocation has been frequently seen in Hollywood in recent years, and even "Black Panther" has similar content. Accomplishing a certain great cause, so that the audience of the same class can reap the pleasure in the process?
Of course not, it's just Shuangwen's obscenity - the purpose of this form is always to create a situation that fits the real but special enough of the society, and completes the beauty of the image and the enrichment of thinking in it.
In "Green Book", this dislocation most importantly serves an expression of emotional meaning or comic effect, and also provides more possibilities for expression.
Although Tony Lip is the protagonist, it is still Dr. Shirley who takes on more ideographic functions. As a black man, Dr. Shirley is completely unfamiliar with the living conditions of the black poor, and has never understood the more popular black pop culture. He is in the upper class dominated by white people, so he is more inclined to a white life style, but at the same time, he cannot be recognized by white people, so he has to seek to complete his self-identification from the perspective of black people.
From the first shot of his appearance, in the modern society, but in the dress of an African chief, with an ivory sculpture next to him-Dr. Shirley bet on black culture and wanted to create an elegant and noble image of black people, but in fact , this black image is nothing more than the product of white eyes and white cognition. In the camera, in the dialogue, in the performance of Mahershala Ali, such a black image is displayed extremely deliberately but also extremely unnatural: Dr. Shirley's construction of her own image is actually similar to "Black Panther" for Wakanda black people The construction of the image, which is actually just the effect of the white gaze, is always lacking in vitality.
Dr. Shirley reinforces her self-construction on this trip: being influenced by Tony Lip's subservient black culture, being treated unfairly in the South, fidgeting gazing at the poverty of black civilians, and being in a black bar carnival. After he has a deeper understanding of black people and understands such an era, he has reconciled with his own racial image, his own class image, and his own social image, and has also completed his self-identification.
It has to be mentioned that, at the same time of its self-construction, his addition actually makes the black culture have another possible transformation, not just fall into the essentialism of American black culture: a kind of classical beauty, with The addition of cultural complexity to the possiblity of things - this is on full display when Dr. Shirley plays Chopin's "Winter Breeze" in a bar.
In this film, issues of race and class, in the case of dislocation and displacement, are mixed together in an ambiguous but extremely realistic way: for the American society in this film, it is not to say The issue of race is only an extension of the issue of class, and it is not possible to simply apply marxism to interpret the issue of race; at the same time, the issue of race has never been above the issue of class, and it is not "all problems in America are, in the final analysis, racial issues."
No issue is decisive. In such a social situation, specific social events are both guided and generated together. In the sense of this film, the racial issue is more ideological: black people are in a lowly and inferior position in social cognition, so they are discriminated against. But there is no absolute separation between black culture and white culture in this film.
Just looking at Tony Lip's acceptance of black culture and Dr. Shirley's acceptance of upper-class white culture, this cultural confrontation seems more like a class type - but in this film, whether it is the culture of the black community and the white community In fact, there are differences in the culture of the society, or the perception of whites or blacks in the mainstream ideology of society.
So in this kind of social and cultural structure with similarities and differences, any Tony Lip's coverage of black culture, the common people's coverage of Dr. Shirley, or Dr. Shirley's coverage of Tony Lip's white upper-class culture, it is It is no longer simple, but a fusion, complex and ambiguous, with more representations of American cultural integrity
In fact, the core meaning of the film's utilitarian nature is that it seeks to express the unity of American culture stripped of many negative factors. And this really relies on the fusion of upper class culture and commoner class culture, and the fusion of white culture and black culture. This is reflected in the two protagonists - it does not mean that one culture will completely cover the other. kind. At the same time, this is not to say that this will create a simple hybrid that completes the so-called solidified "definition" of American culture and forces a character to be an absolute showcase sample of that culture.
This is always a film that emphasizes the content of self-identification, and it must also emphasize the standpoint of the individual. Therefore, this film will also leave an individual position in the representation, allowing a kind of representation of the self.
As a film of political correctness, its success in awards, word-of-mouth and business is ultimately limited by its emphasis on reality: the multi-dimensional and multi-situation display of social conditions. Thus, it can also constitute a display of racial discrimination, a display of the experience of black people in that era, a display of the integrity of American culture, and a display of the possibility of individual self-construction.
Political correctness should always be realistic.
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