From such a plot, we can infer the difficulty of film adaptation of the novel. After all, it is difficult to express the sense of smell, which is another dimension of sense, in an audio-visual way. The famous director Kubrick had wanted to adapt the book into a movie, but after some research, he finally admitted that the story could not be expressed in a cinematic way (1). This also shows the genius of the director of this film from the side. German director Tom Tykwer was best known for his 1998 film "Lola Run." The film breaks the traditional linear narrative, dissolves time with postmodern methods, and shows many different possibilities of the same event. In addition to showing his innovative and rebellious spirit, the film also uses a large number of moving shots, fast-paced editing, and jump cuts to show Tom Tykway's proficiency in film audio-visual language. Also worth mentioning is his strong authorship, he not only wrote the screenplay himself, but even composed the music for his own films, so his works have a strong personal character.
For the film "Perfume: A Murderer's Story", Tom Tykway's advantages have undoubtedly been inherited and carried forward. First, his mastery of the language of film helped him develop a visual rhetorical strategy that could describe taste in pictures. This visual rhetorical strategy is based on point-of-view shot editing, describing a world full of flavors through recurring subjective shots that span geographic spaces and do not rely on spatial continuity. Secondly, the film's narrative strategy is very clever, successfully telling a male growth story. The film’s narrative revolves around his desires, driven by his desires, as he overcomes all threats of castration and finally achieves his goals. In the end, the ending of the film is full of rebellion. After smelling the perfume made from the oil of thirteen girls, the crowd watching the execution was infected by the smell and could not help but fall in love. This Dionysian scene criticizes Christian morality, and at the same time empowers the artists who were driven out of the Utopia with unprecedented moving power, breaking with Plato's tradition of rationalism.
However, everything Tom Tykwer does in this film is from a male perspective, where women are in a completely passive, completely objectified, and completely degraded position. Feminist theory has long recognized that by analyzing ideas, language, and images, it is possible to discern how women's lives are shaped (2). The film is an excellent example of how a dominant male-dominated culture uses women and their bodies to continuously produce and reinforce existing gender power structures. Therefore, the gender discourse in the film is worthy of study and analysis.
Visual rhetorical strategy of the film: Isomorphism of smell and viewing This
film has tried to create a visual rhetoric strategy from the very beginning to express the colorful flavors in the film in a cinematic way. In the scene where the protagonist Grenouille is born, a montage of the filth in the fish market is edited with the baby's face, alluding to the effect of smell on him. From this moment, the film is trying to establish the connection between the protagonist and the smell. In his childhood, as he explored the smells of nature, Tom Tykway also chose to start with his face, cut to moving shots gliding through wood and grass, show the source of these smells, and then go back to his Close-up of the face. This pattern runs throughout, linking all the scenes in which he is drawn to the taste.
The ingeniousness of this visual rhetorical strategy is that it borrows entirely from the principle of viewpoint editing, which is to “cut from someone’s gaze to what he sees” (3). In the film, Grenouille's subjective olfactory representation relies on editing from his face to what he smells to underscore his subjectivity. The only difference is that the sense of smell is not limited by spatial continuity and therefore has a more liberal expression.
When the equivalent relationship between sight and smell is established, with the encounter between the protagonist and the female character, the film inevitably falls back into what Laura Mulvey criticized as having "a woman as an image" and "as a sight" the man of the heirs” of the patriarchal order (4). This provides not only the pleasure of viewing, but also the pleasure of smell in the symbolic sense. The use of a mechanism like a subjective camera pulls the viewer deep into Grenouille's position, allowing the viewer to share his sight as well as his sense of smell. Through him, "the audience gains control and possession of the women in the play" (5).
As a result, women are once again the source of visual pleasure, and the women the audience sees are displayed as objects of sexual desire, full of eroticism. The close-up shows the woman's bare skin from all angles, from the red lips he peers through the window at the young woman trying on the perfume, to the moment he follows the plum-selling maiden away. In these moments, the erotic gaze becomes the spectacle, freezing the flow of the plot (6).
This erotic gaze is further accentuated in his peek at Laura, the most important female character in the second half of the film. Laura's appearance is made up of a series of close-ups like this, half-naked bosom, glasses, mouth. Grenouille then peeps outside her courtyard, with a close-up showing Laura's bare feet, shoulders and red hair and face as she bathes. These shots connect discontinuous spaces with odor molecules, expressing his desires represented by the sense of smell. Laura Mulvey argues that these close-up shots of women's bodies incorporate "another mode of sexuality into the narrative," breaking with the notion of perspective since the Renaissance. These shots are not about fidelity, but about bringing women in film. The image gives a portrait or decoupage quality (7).
Under this kind of gaze, the female characters are undoubtedly powerless to resist the gaze of the male characters and the audience in the play, and powerless to get rid of their position of catering to and referring to the desires of men. Because of this, the lines and bare skin of their bodies can only be the object of fetish viewing, comforting the anxiety of men facing the threat of castration.
The film's narrative strategy: the growth of men and the complete objectification of women are
similar to countless mainstream narrative films, and the film's narrative also revolves around the growth of men. The story begins with his birth, ends with his quest, and ends with his death. And in his coming-of-age story, male desire unabashedly becomes the central driving force of the narrative. Therefore, in this film, the active/passive heterosexual division of labor also controls the narrative structure (8).
Although he was born poor and did not have the physique and intelligence of ordinary people, his extraordinary sense of smell undoubtedly represents a more ideal self, so he can be recognized by the audience. Only his superhuman talent can make the audience transcend the barriers of space, focus on the female body in the close-up, and obtain a sense of omniscience and omnipotence.
But the audience shares not just his pleasures, but also his anxieties. This anxiety comes first from the threat of castration faced by Grenouille. Not only does the female image lacking a phallus invoke male castration anxiety (9), but in the film he is also often under the coercion of other men who represent the patriarchy, the subject of the actual threat of castration. As Freud pointed out in his analysis of the case of Little Hans, the source of Little Hans' fantasy that what he really feared was his father (10). Little Hans's father hinders his possession of his mother, and the male characters in "Perfume" undoubtedly play a role in hindering Grenouille's desire, as a source of anxiety in real life.
Grenouille has faced male threats throughout his life since the end of his childhood, when he was sold to work in a tannery. Grima, the manager of the tannery, was a far stronger man and forced him to perform heavy manual labor; the perfumer Baldini despised and exploited him, and did not teach him how to preserve human odor; When he arrived in the perfume town of Grasse, he had just won the praise of the female master, but was met with the jealousy and hostility of her lover Drew. He almost discovered the corpses of women distilled by Grenouille, and even the traces of Grenouille's crimes were finally revealed by him. of. The arrest of the murderer by the town council and the bishop headed by Laura's father undoubtedly directly hindered his desire, and was a direct threat of castration to him. The symbolic order represented by this pivot of power in the town of Grasse was beyond his power, and in order to escape the anxiety of the threat of castration, he could only "balance by degrading, punishing, or saving sinful objects (11)" , which of course also includes his murder of girls because of his fascination with their taste.
On the other hand, in his unconscious, subconscious sadism, there is more than just sexual desire lurking. He also shared with the audience the anxiety caused by the ambiguity and powerlessness of the self. In the film, he's not looking to convict women and gain control over them. It was not their physical bodies that attracted him, but the desire to permanently possess their scent. The female body is not the target here, but only the medium. As a result, women's identities are completely objectified. They seem to have nothing to do with the plot, lose all ability to act, do not actively cater to men's eyes, and are unable to resist the peeping that makes the audience aware of their immorality.
It is unreasonable that such an extreme female image is natural in the flow of the film's plot, and the film's narration subtly rationalizes the otherness of women. When Grenouille, on the road to Grasse, found a cave with very little smell, he felt so peaceful here that he almost gave up the desire he was looking for. However, when he found that he did not have any smell on him, the narrator immediately and clearly pointed out that "what he feels now is the fear of being forgotten, as if he never existed (12)", and since then he has once again obeyed the call of desire , on the road to evil. This undoubtedly refers to the incompleteness of his ego, and he needs to rely on women as the other to re-affirm his identity as the ego (13). As Beauvoir pointed out, "He can realize himself only through that reality which he is not and which is different from himself (14)." Correspondingly, when he comes to the road close to Grasse Beside, Laura's wonderful smell pointed directly to him the way to enrich his existence.
Generally speaking, what a man seeks in a woman is both as his own kind and as the other of nature (15). But for this film, Grenouille is not looking for an "intermediary between nature, the stranger, and his likeness" (16). What he longed for was their scent, which he could possess forever without any resistance, what he needed was the absolute other. Therefore, for him, only the natural attributes of women, that is, the material side, can help him realize himself. Then we see, "He can only possess it by consuming it, that is, by destroying it (17)." In the film, the woman thus becomes the complete object, the absolute other, calling upon the destruction of the male, In order to realize Grenouille's self and establish male subjectivity.
Therefore, whether it is the threat of castration from the symbolic order or the desire for self-realization caused by the obscure subject, as Grenouille approaches his desire in the narrative, the double anxiety they bring is soothed. .
The Second Coming of the Son of Man: An Orgy of Demeaning Women
All anxiety is soothed when Grenouille finds the fleeing Laura and fulfills her desire. After this, he is arrested by Grasse's soldiers, and the film returns to the original flashback of the plot, as if there is no suspense, the audience thinks that he will be tried and hanged, and his desires will be punished. However, Perfume is not such an ordinary story. Grenouille's execution is undoubtedly the biggest turning point in the film and the true climax of the plot.
In this scene, Grenouille is extremely bright and aloof, and as soon as he raises his hand to send out the scent of perfume, he is called the angel of the extraordinary by the bishop of Grasse. Under Grenouille's magical command, the onlookers were tempted to make love mixed with the scent of thirteen girls. This process was magnified by the upgraded camera, showing their experience at this moment. It is a mixture of divine and human joy. As the film says at the end, what the perfume makes them experience is "pure love inside" (18).
The religious references to this scene can be seen from the people who worshiped and the bishop who couldn't help themselves, from the magic and divinity of Grenouille. This corresponds exactly to the coming of the Son of Man described in the Bible, which says: "They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, full of power and glory" (19), "when the Son of Man is in his glory, When he comes with all the angels, he will sit on the throne of his glory. All nations will be assembled” (20). Clearly, the film has similar elements to the biblical scene, where Grenouille's power and glory are emphasized, and all nations, including his enemies, gather before his throne and bow their heads.
This turning point in the film can be seen as a denial and mockery of Christian civilization and the morality corresponding to its beliefs. The bishop's sermon scene was cross-edited with the scene of Grenouille's synthetic perfume, and the misinformation that the murderer was caught came at this time. From this moment, the film was denying God's omnipotence and omnipotence. In the execution scene, the bishop's kneeling, the naming of the angel, and the sexual enjoyment of his ugly flesh are even more ruthless mockery of his faith.
In the book of Revelation, the second coming of the Son of Man heralds a new heaven and a new earth. Correspondingly, the film overturns the moral principles of Christianity, while also denying the rationalist tradition since the Age of Enlightenment, proposing the possibility of a new world. The film places a character with a special talent who relentlessly pursues his own desires in a more important position than ever before, and affirms his achievements through the indulgence of people. This scene of Dionysian spirit full of emotional indulgence is exactly in line with Nietzsche's theory, expressing the view that "art is the highest mission of life and the original metaphysical activity of life" (21).
But in this new world full of artistic metaphysics, women are still degraded. The process by which Grenouille attains divinity is the process by which women are destroyed as the Other. When he finally got closer to Laura, he took a firm step up the stairs, and this ascent was a metaphor for his authority. In addition, the film does not break the tradition of patriarchal culture and continues to define the female body as lewd and arousing. The fragrance mixed with the body scents of thirteen girls arouses the desires of all, implying the erotic charm of their bodies, and these tragically killed girls in the film are instead constructed as the source of sexual desire.
Such a new world is undoubtedly the same as the feminists' vision of building society on the basis of women's values, promoting women's maternal ethics, emphasizing peace and care, and making society more "productive, peaceful and just" The opposite (22).
Conclusion: Powerless Reflection
In the climactic scene, overlooking the carnival crowd, Grenouille thinks of his first manslaughter of the plum-selling girl. He fantasized about hugging and making love to her tenderly, and thinking of her corpse brought tears to his eyes for the first time. Grenouille seemed to be reflecting, and suddenly seemed to have normal emotions, but his reflection was ultimately powerless.
In this scene, he sees the people making love, and for the first time in his life, he is shown the legal path to which his desires should be directed; something he has neither understood nor longed for. Therefore, in this so-called reflection, what he is reflecting on is not the tragic death of an innocent girl or his own moral flaws, but his own misplaced desires. As he fantasized about their tender embrace and intimacy, she also naturally responded to his desires, accepted his body without resistance, and gladly became his property. This act of reflection is still accomplished through the possession of her body, reflecting male desire. This is not so much a reflection as it is an emphasis on existing gender power structures.
As a result, the gender discourse expressed in the film "Perfume" and the gender power structure reflected in it become easy to understand. The film obtains pleasure through the visual rhetorical strategy of equating smell and vision, otherizes and objectifies women through the active/passive difference between male and female in the narrative, and then further degrades women by constructing new mythological rituals. And the final reflection of the film is so unconscious that it actually further emphasizes the existing patriarchal culture. As part of popular culture, the film is also "absorbed into a global, transhistorical account of patriarchal myths and religions (23)", consciously or unconsciously maintaining existing gender power structures.
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