Wang Xiaolu Linke/Text
"Spring Festival movies", as a schedule with huge traffic, have always had the nature of a national carnival, which has also stimulated extensive social dialogue and public ideological vitality. Film critic Wang Xiaolu and senior media person Lin Ke hope Through dialogue, their perspectives of concern are presented in order to form an in-depth public thinking effect. With the rise and development of feminist thought in recent years, due to space limitations, this article excerpts and publishes excerpts of the many topics of their conversation about the "female consciousness" of Spring Festival movies.
Han Han’s new film: The disappearance of female characters
Wang: “Spring Festival movies” in 2024 can be measured by many standards, such as box office, female awareness, etc. The box office of this year's Spring Festival stalls is 8 billion yuan, which is considered to be higher than the 7.8 billion yuan in 2021, setting a new box office high. Some people call it "the strongest Spring Festival stall". In fact, due to holiday adjustments, there are two more days this year than in previous years. If strictly considered in the same period, it does not exceed 2021. But even so, the commercial performance has been very good.
Lin: This year, there was not a very high-cost big-budget movie, nor did it break the box office record, unlike last year's "Manjianghong" (4.5 billion yuan) and 2021's "Hello Li Huanying" (54 billion).
King: The Spring Festival has always been a national carnival. We can see from the box office and public opinion field what kind of social dialogue it has stimulated and the extent to which it has stimulated the ideological vitality of the public. Among them, with the trend of feminist thought With the rise and development in recent years, Spring Festival movies are bound to be scrutinized by feminists, so let’s start our conversation on this topic.
Lin: There were 8 films released during the Spring Festival, and 4 of them were withdrawn. This is unprecedented. Including "Mr. Red Carpet", "Let's Shake the Sun Together", etc. Han Han was criticized for the female image issue in "Four Seas" (2022). This time he simply did not set any female characters in " Flying Life 2". Women completely disappeared in his new film, and there are no women even in supporting roles. It can be said that his expression is also a kind of film style, and it is some of his reflections on his previous films. But it can also be thought that what he did was actually a kind of escape - I was afraid that I could not handle the relationship between men and women well in the film, so I simply did not deal with it. In order to avoid some kind of resentment from the female audience, I eliminated all female characters.
Wang: "Flying Life 2" provides a call for fairness in the racing industry. "Article 20" also calls for fairness, but it consciously wraps up this appeal, fearing that it will harm others, which will in turn affect the appreciation of the film's capital, so it puts everything in a safe framework to ensure that it is harmless to humans and animals. look.
" hot and spicy " treats all unfairness as internal problems within the family. Du Leying's conflicts are conflicts with her sister, cousin, boyfriend, best friend, and interpersonal turmoil in a small boxing club. . When it comes to the larger social structure, it is smooth and thornless. This strong safety narrative, excessive safety awareness, and taboos have brought about narrative failures, a certain mediocrity in film art, and the loss of opportunities for profound meaning, and our audiences are also gradually Adapt to such cultural expression and ideological framework. Although we can still occasionally touch some realistic feelings from movies, such as the decadence in "Flying Life 2" and "Hot and Spicy", they seem to have a sense of contemporary substitution, and both movies are about surviving desperate situations. The story may make the audience empathize with it, but I think it is more about the audience using their own Gestalt psychology to watch the film in a brain-filling way.
Jia Ling new film: Inspirational or Muqiang
Lin: For "Hot and Spicy", although Jia Ling hopes to inspire everyone through this movie, the general audience will feel more about the effects of losing weight. The thrill of spectacle. Jia Ling emphasized "win once" in the movie. Her original intention was to inspire the power of life. It was a struggle between the individual and herself, rather than a struggle with others. However, the final presentation was different from this spiritual theme. . Du Leying in the movie truly lives for herself, not to lose weight, but to "win".But how to understand this "win"? What we see in the movie is that most of the tragedies she encounters come from her body shape. At the climax of the movie, during the boxing match, there is a long flashback, which tells how Du Leying was bullied because she was fat and weak, deceived and insulted, and had to compromise with the people who bullied her. She also added that she weakly served as a bridesmaid to the best friend who stole her boyfriend, and transferred her property ownership to her strong sister. The logic of the boxing scene at the end of
seems more like: I stand on the stage, I become very powerful, and prove to the people around me that you are all wrong. The camera also cuts to the expressions of her family and ex-boyfriend, allowing the audience to see their astonishment, thereby creating a sense of counterattack. This is different from self-realization that comes from the heart and does not care about the eyes of others. It is still a kind of success in the sense of success science, and it is still a relatively traditional narrative. Some of my friends were very angry after watching it, and felt that this treatment was a kind of "moqiang". Although I disagreed, I still felt that it was because the film did not express it well, so that people could see such a kind of "moqiang".
王: In the Japanese version of " Hundred Yuan Love " (2014), the movie also has a similar flashback at that point, but it is shorter and not as intensely rendered as "Hot and Spicy". "Hot Hot" is a legal remake because it purchased the copyright of "One Hundred Dollar Love". The spatial environment and camera scheduling are very similar. Some people think this is a manifestation of the weakening creativity of Chinese films, but today's cultural production Indeed, we have fully entered the era of secondary creation, and works around the world are imitating and appropriating each other. There are still very subtle differences in meaning between "Hot and Spicy" and the original version, which are difficult to spot without careful identification. In the original work, the heroine's weight loss part is not presented so strongly, but "Hot and Spicy" places great emphasis on Du Leying's figure. In fact, before starring in this movie, Jia Ling gained 40 pounds, which also illustrates this point. In the original work, the heroine's motivation for boxing is also more profound, while the motivations and reasons for "Hot and Hot" are more external. Because some elements and directions in the original work have been removed, such as reflection on society, and instead some processes in secular interactions have been exaggerated and emphasized, its flashback passages may have a more secular effect.
Lin: If you think sincerity is a measure of the value of a movie, I think "Hot" may be the most sincere movie in the entire Spring Festival. Because it at least truly mobilizes Jia Ling's life experience.
Wang: I agree with this. Seeing the heroine change from more than 200 pounds to 105 pounds, for a person, this is definitely a major event that will revolutionize both the body and the spirit. Those provocative scenes still moved me deeply. This was Du Leying's success in losing weight, and it was also Jia Ling's success in losing weight. The life inside and outside the film was highly integrated, which determined that this film must have some kind of autobiographical nature. Even if we say that many parts of this film are evasive, roundabout, and more short-term, Du Leying's weight loss of 100 pounds is completely true. It was achieved by Jia Ling through hard work. This is a very powerful event. Of course, this is also Jia Ling's trick, but her sincerity in this part is unquestionable. Even if she uses this even a little self-abuse method to win the audience, this kind of winning is more touching than using other false methods.
Another place that makes me feel sincere is the scene where Du Leying participated in the boxing match. In the last paragraph, when Jia Ling hit the opponent with her left fist, a lot of montage effects were made, but there were very few cuts in the front and middle parts. , mainly using long shots, it was Jia Ling using her own body to fight for real. This made me particularly moved. She used her body and perseverance to truly create the attraction of the film.
The high degree of integration and confusion between the outside and inside of movies is an important feature of film culture in these years.We have all noticed that the Easter eggs in the end credits show Jia Ling's weight loss process and that Jia Ling is learning painting, because when she was filming "Hello, Li Huanying", the storyboards she drew were so clumsy that others were confused. I can’t understand it, but now she is working hard. Although she can’t draw at a professional level in the end, her modeling ability has improved too much. Jia Ling is trying to strengthen the autobiographical characteristics of this film. At the beginning of the film, Du Leying had low self-esteem and her life was very passive. Through hard work, she gained control over her life, became her own master, and gained subjectivity, although this subjectivity was mainly displayed in her body. control, but it is also an important proof of personal mobility. For Jia Ling, her previous "Hello, Li Huanying" became a dark horse at the box office, which is generally considered to be accidental. The success of "Hot and Spicy" this time is an important proof, because it is the director's initiative to fight hard. Obtained results. This movie actually shows the isomorphic relationship between Jia Ling and Du Leying at every turn.
The female perspective of "Hot and Spicy"
Lin: Last year's Spring Festival movie was all made by male directors, and the female characters were relatively pale and weak. It was evaluated as a Spring Festival movie with "no women in the cast". Among them, "Man Jiang Hong" (2023) ) was criticized by feminists because of a rape scene. "Hot" is the only film directed by a female director during the Spring Festival this year. Because of this movie, the female friends around me are looking forward to it. But to be honest, as a Spring Festival movie for the most public, I don’t think “Hot and Spicy” has too many complex or profound feminist stances, and it is still a relatively traditional display of female power.
Of course, I also agree to a certain extent with many people's criticism of Jia Ling, saying that she did not relieve women's body anxiety, but catered to this anxiety. Because before the film was released, Jia Ling did a good job of keeping her image a secret. It was not until the film was released on New Year's Day that the audience discovered that she had become very thin. After that, she gave frequent interviews and appeared in some public occasions. Every time she appeared, she would bring a wave of compliments: Jia Ling is so beautiful now! Jia Ling is so thin now! Including a music video released a few days ago, in which she changed her previous image. She is very feminine, has a good figure, wears a skirt that reflects her graceful figure, and has big waves. As a public figure and an artist, she is free to wear whatever clothes she wants, but because her image is very consistent with what we call the image of beauty in men’s imagination, I think her series of publicity outside the movie has As a selling point, body shape is a bit contrary to the idea she originally wanted to convey.
Although the movie is a movie, the promotion may contain some expressions that are inconsistent with the original work, but for ordinary viewers, it will be confusing. Moreover, there are some shortcomings in the original work, but they are more secretive, and Xuanfa will strengthen this part.
King: Your words remind me of the "big" aesthetic that quietly emerged on the Internet last year. Now girls are getting bigger and bigger as a whole. I know a Douyin master who is 178 cm tall and weighs 180 pounds. She works out every day and says that she It is extremely healthy. This image is very inconsistent with the traditional definition of women in China. They used to have low self-esteem. In recent years, some people have begun to awaken and become very confident. They consciously challenge social stereotypes with their own image. It can be seen that now There are already many subdivisions to the topic of feminism. In the past, Jia Ling was cited as a comrade by them because of her special image, but now Jia Ling's ideas will definitely make them feel frustrated.
In fact, in "Hot and Spicy", Du Leying's obesity seems to be related to her depression of will, and she seems to have a sense of self-destruction. This actually inadvertently links obesity with some kind of mental defect. Moreover, the film's explanation of this part is limited and provides very superficial guidance. On the TV variety show, she said that her kindness was not reciprocated by others, and it seemed that she attributed her depression to interpersonal relationships, which is different from " It's very different in "One Hundred Dollars of Love".In "One Hundred Dollars of Love", the slovenly heroine was actually raped by a colleague. However, this movie does not exaggerate the resentment towards specific people. It seems to point to the Wuwu Zhen and the spirit of the times, pointing to a certain kind of society. The overall spirit, but Jia Ling is more specific, so it is relatively superficial.
There have been more and more movies about female boxing in recent years, including "Keiko, Stare" in Japan in 2022, and in China, director Tang Xiaobai filmed "Punch, Mom" in 2021. There seems to be a relationship between women's boxing and feminism.
Lin: This is also an interesting phenomenon that I want to say, about "feminism" and "female boxing". "Female boxing" is actually a stigma against feminists on the Internet. When some women want to make gender-based remarks, they are seen as "boxing." This is of course a word that I strongly disagree with. But on the other hand, there are indeed a lot of films about female boxers now. Earlier ones such as "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) directed by Eastwood, in which Hilary Swank played a female boxer, Japan has "One Hundred Dollar Love", and the one you mentioned Keiko, gaze". These films about female boxers are actually a response to the core theme of this wave of feminism - "women must have power."
Because female boxing is the most intuitive symbol of female power. Winning or losing on the field actually doesn't matter. This may be the basic narrative style of this type. They all want to reshape their bodies and willpower through sports, trying to show women's inner and outer sense of strength. Look at the girl in "Keiko, Gaze". She keeps practicing, keeps participating in competitions, and keeps hitting. Boxing seems to have become a way of her existence in this world.
"It's always been like this" in Zhang Yimou's films
Lin: The three female images in "Article 20" are all extremely stereotyped. Ma Li is an unreasonable housewife, Zhao Liying plays the image of a female who was sexually assaulted. She was bullied, and the way to be bullied was to be raped. Gao Ye looks like an independent woman who is in line with current values, but she is actually a "manly woman" who doesn't get married for the sake of her career and does things impulsively. In this film, those who have a career do not have a family, and those who have a family do not have a job. It is very stereotyped. But without exception, they must get help from men, support from men and education from men.
There is a classic line in this movie: "Is this the way it has always been?" I also want to ask Director Zhang Yimou, the image of women in your movies has always been this way over the years, have you never thought of changing it? In particular, there is a section in the film where bullies oppress women. In fact, I think there are many similar things in Chinese social news. Women are oppressed in many ways, and not all of them involve sacrificing sexual rights. It's not that her husband was insulted by his wife, so he finally entered a desperate situation. In "Article 20", I feel that the thing that really put them into desperation had already happened, that is, their daughter was sick. They wanted to take their daughter for treatment but had no money, so they had to borrow loan sharks.
王: The image of the female prosecutor played by Gao Ye is also very strange. I think the setting of this character is substandard. Her sense of justice in the movie is overwhelming. When she completely negates the judgment of others and searches for the justice in her own heart - that is, when she passionately searches for the knife that Wang Yongqiang said about her, what is her reason? Why is it so different? What is her logic and source of motivation? Although she did find the knife in the end, the knife was set up by the film's creators, and the previous logical problems were not resolved. The whole thing feels like the character is neurotic and irrational. Many characters in " Article 20 " are like NPCs (non-player characters) in the game. They are just a small program without their own thoughts and vitality. They are just functional characters to ensure the continuation of the story.I want to continue talking about the character Hao Xiuping. When I saw Hao Xiuping jumping off the building, I was angry. Zhang Yimou has always liked to create heroic women. You can think back to his creations in recent years, which are full of heroic women. Hao Xiuping's family borrowed a loan shark, but they were raped by the loan shark. They were also forced to sign the divorce papers by the bad guy. The other party obviously wanted to "possess" her and use her as a sexual resource. The family of the loan shark kidnapped Hao Xiuping's child in order to force her to sign a declaration of voluntary sexual relations. At this time, the movie made Hao Xiuping fall into deep self-blame. She felt that everything was caused by her! How should we deal with this plot? We may discover Hao Xiuping's kindness and repression as a grassroots woman through her behavior, but in fact, Hao Xiuping thinks of herself as the cause of trouble (reminding me of "Beauty is a disaster"). This is obviously the creator of the film who asked her to Think so! Whatever she thinks is the creator's setting. A modern disabled woman had no money to treat her disabled daughter and borrowed a loan shark. When she was thinking about her own tragedy, she actually reflected that her body made the gangster lustful. This is not a modern movie, but an ancient Chinese local drama. Although Gao Ye made an impassioned speech later, saying that Hao Xiuping jumped from the building because of his disappointment in the rule of law, why didn't Hao Xiuping express this disappointment directly? Why do the disappointments of grassroots society have to be relayed through another person? The scene where the director asked Hao Xiuping to jump off the building was particularly hard for me to accept. I felt it was a way to stimulate the audience. Including the rape scene, the people who were raped were all pretty, the movie camera showed and exaggerated the criminal actions, Hao Xiuping, played by Zhao Liying, covered her exposed body to accuse the loan shark, the audience's emotions were also deliberately manipulated here for catharsis and guidance.
Lin: Zhang Yimou especially likes to shoot scenes related to rape, including last year's " as solid as a rock ". In the 2023 Spring Festival release of "Man Jiang Hong", the prostitute Yao Qin was blackmailed, and her lover said "You can kill her, but don't ruin her!", which was interpreted by netizens as "a man values a woman's chastity more than hers" "Life is still important", I think this reflects the inner psychological structure of director Zhang Yimou. Including the scene in "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" where a group of sex workers die on behalf of female students, Zhang Yimou subconsciously believes that the value of women depends on their chastity. This has also been analyzed and criticized a lot. In addition, in "Article 20", people, including the audience and the characters in the story, are immersed in the appearance of being guided by the director, but do not seem to be aware of the structural problems of Hao Xiuping's tragedy. The character played by Lei Jiayin did nothing from the beginning to the end, he was just correcting a mistake, but in the end he was made into a hero by the movie.
King: A female friend often told me that Zhang Yimou uses movies to torture people. He likes to show torture vividly to torture people's hearts and cultivate the audience's psychological structure of sadism and masochism. Indeed, his films must find a way to embody cruelty and eroticism. We look at Zhao Liying's scene in "Article 20" from the surface. It presents the underlying narrative and female accusations, but in fact, there is a deep psychological mechanism underneath. His films will definitely not let go of the sexual value of female actors. Even if it is a sexual assault scene, he will emphasize the sexy side of women in that scene. This film receives top box office figures every day. I believe the reason is For one, this ancient traffic cipher still works today.
