Produced by
| Author of Huxiu Youth Culture Group
| Editor and title picture of Cucumber Soda
| Zhazha County
This article was first published on the Huxiu youth content public account "Nang" (id: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of young people today.
2024 is the year of women’s films.
We applaud because female creators finally get to eat on the table, and not only serve, but also eat with chopsticks.
But no literary and artistic work is absolutely correct and perfect.
It is precisely because we have full expectations for women's works that we will discuss " good stuff " from the perspective of a movie.
Is "Good Stuff" any good? Of course. Exactly how good it is has been mentioned in the headlines of various media too many times.
is so good that it ended all old film forms and has epoch-making revolutionary significance. Director Shao Yihui is praised as a genius of Chinese films to a certain extent.
But if you want to ask what story this movie tells, it is really difficult to summarize because the story is not the narrative focus of this movie.
It is more about "a new lifestyle of a group of people". This lifestyle is beautiful and warm, similar to a matriarchal society. One comment is "as peaceful as returning to the womb".
Single mother Wang Tiemei is a public account editor. She used to be an investigative reporter in the Southern Department. After the demise of the print media, she became our colleague.
Her daughter is Wang Moli, a primary school student in Shanghai who grew up freely in a "non-chicken child environment" and likes writing just like her mother.
The mother and daughter moved to a rented old house in Wutong District, Shanghai's famous "rich and prosperous" district, and met their neighbor Xiaoye, who is the lead singer of a band. Between the three women, a close friendship was formed that spanned the ages, constituting the smallest unit of communism.
In addition to women, there are also men with different tool attributes.
Wang Tiemei’s ex-husband and childcare partner are a weak man, a “Ken” in the Barbie world. After divorcing Wang Tiemei, he indulged in feminist theory and actually worked as a Didi driver. Wang Tiemei's boyfriend, Xiao Ma, is the drummer of the Little Leaf Band. He has an Oedipus complex and is always obsessed with women older than him. Xiaoye has a sex friend, Dr. Hu, who is the most common elite man on Tinder software and refuses to enter into long-term intimate relationships.
The advantages of the movie are straightforwardly put on the table: it is female-oriented.
heroine, woman's life, woman's perspective.
This is one of the few films in the history of film dominated by female characters. There is no greasy looking from head to toe, just equal looks between women.
Just like when Wang Tiemei saw the intern's clothes, she first asked "What are you wearing?" and the next sentence was "Send me the link" that violated expectations. When she saw a girl drinking brown sugar water with dysmenorrhea, she pointed out that she needed to take painkillers to make it effective. Shao Yihui created a dream vacuum zone, refuted all the stigmatization of female friendship, and kicked over the sugar-coated poison that targeted women.
There is proof of female friendliness hidden in the corners and details.
The moving company at the beginning of the movie is called "Kangaroo Mother", and the movers are also women, which subverts ordinary people's impression of physical labor from the very beginning.
Throughout the movie, neither actress wore high heels. They wore comfortable sneakers throughout the movie and often wore big T-shirts. To some extent, they regained the right not to be sexy.
If you still remember the scenes of actor Zhong Chuxi's debut work " Youth ", you will understand the difference between the male gaze and the female gaze. The former is staring at her thighs, while the latter can be aimed at her eyes without makeup. .
There are also various female slogans hidden in the movie, including but not limited to female Justice Ginsburg's merchandise, "i'm a feminist" T-shirts, and "If you see my nipples under my clothes , that’s because I grew them”.
The most powerful sequence in the entire film is a montage of voices and women's invisible housework.
Xiaoye listened to various sounds for Jasmine: a heavy rain was Tiemei frying eggs, a tornado was Tiemei cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, sawing wood was Tiemei squeezing juice, picking vegetables was a panda chewing bamboo, and cooking porridge was lava. surge.
Nature is the world created by your mother for you. It is very beautiful. This is also the golden two minutes of this movie.
The most outstanding comedy scene is the humorous dinner table scene, where the ex-husband and Xiao Ma start a female-centered male competition.
Her ex-husband quoted classics and said, "How many books have you read by Chizuru Ueno?" which amused the audience in first-tier cities.
These issues are all happening on social networks at the moment. Words rush to each other, lines rush to lines. After watching this scene, it feels like I have just escaped from a fierce Weibo quarrel.
Many male actors declined to play the role of her ex-husband as a "feminist performing artist". Chao Youting felt that this role was very similar to "Ken" in " Barbie ", so she happily accepted it. So much so that the line "I'm going to sterilize you" makes him still being criticized by some netizens.
Shao Yihui also admitted in the interview that her ex-husband and Xiao Ma were fictional male characters based on her personal preferences. After all, in real life, even in Beijing and Shanghai, it is difficult to see men who admit the "gender bonus" so frankly .
Compared with the superficiality of these two male characters, Xiaoye’s sex partner Xiaohu is more real. Even the casting is so close that people can’t help but have the uncanny valley effect, as if all Shanghai financial men have concrete face.
Xiao Hu’s name on Tinder is very typical, called richard, and the remark is “not into ltr” (not entering into a long-term intimate relationship). In reality, Xiao Hus will also note that they are "for fun" and "enjoy short-term relationships", and their hobbies are skiing, diving and whiskey. Compared with their ex-husband and Xiao Ma, this "irresponsible man" role is actually found on social software in first-tier cities. The most common, most common, and most inescapable type.
Even when they act out their "love incompetence" and "emotional disorder" in bed, they all follow a set of classic templates of urban fast food relationships between men and women. The sentence "Just love me" made many girls in the audience watch the movie with their moustaches and snicker in embarrassment.
In addition to Xiao Hu, I also remember Wang Moli’s Chinese teacher who only appeared a few times.
Shao Yihui also broke the evil impression about female teachers and gave this young teacher a "new look". When the little boy Zhang Jiaxin performed the routine "I want to sue the teacher," the teacher asked back, "Who taught you how to report?"
In the current environment, this sentence is powerful enough.
Even the usual evil female supporting character is replaced by a little boy here. Shao Yihui once mentioned in an interview that this setting is to eliminate the label of "female jealousy" in the public impression: a boy may be jealous of an outstanding person for no reason.
Highly saturated and high-density lines, almost every sentence touches on gender issues and social hot spots -
I am upright, brave and well-read, what do I have to be pitiful about?
Even though I have broken with the patriarchy, am I still a loser?
Which woman in this world is not more important than a man?
Recalling the past is the beginning of greasy.
The express train stinks, unless it is a female driver.
But why do you have to do a good job? Who is the referee?
It is precisely because we are optimistic and confident enough that we can face tragedy head-on.
's Douban score is 9.1, and the situation is very good. On the other hand, as expected, Hupu has received a lot of bad news.
The most common high-profile comment is that the genders of the lines in "The Good Stuff" are swapped, proving that this movie is "the ultimate man-hate."
What’s interesting is that the reason why these lines that make the tiger-pushing boy break his defense is because the director wants to refute the malice against women that has been condensed for thousands of years at once.
You can think about it calmly: this may be the first time a woman has spoken like this, but it is not the first time a man has spoken like this.
Women have changed from objects to subjects and verbs, while men, who have always stood at the center of the stage, have become prepositions in this female film.
Shao Yihui said many times in interviews that these three male characters do not have their own names.
My ex-husband is called my ex-husband without a last name. Xiao Ma because horses are sexy animals, and Xiao Hu because he talks nonsense.
This is a complete reckoning with the deprivation of women’s names for thousands of years, allowing them to leave the world with the code names of Wang, Li, and Zhang. It is also a one-time refutation of the director’s dissatisfaction with history: use the same method to deprive them of their things. .
Both cats and you want to know what it feels like to lose power.
It is precisely because of expectations that there is a gap.
The agility and naturalness that Shao Yihui presented in " Love Myth " became rigid and net-like in "Good Things", just like a writer who can write a full-length novel suddenly wrote a 100,000+ Popular public account.
The subtlety of "The Myth of Love" lies in the lens language and the ingenious interaction of the characters.
The characters seem to be kneading a piece of dough together, pushing and pulling each other, relaxed, agile and making people smile. The real embarrassment and embarrassment of middle-aged men and women are all the texture of life itself. Shao Yihui uses his careless and idle brushwork It has become a wonderful pen, and when it is about to slip to the edge of artificiality, it can be pulled back with skillful force.
However, the creator’s aura and expression were not left to “Good Things”.
The leisurely dinner table scene in "The Myth of Love" turned into the handful of garlic that the ex-husband crazily stuffed into his mouth in "The Good Thing": too hasty. The humor was there, but the mise-en-scène was poor. They felt uncomfortable eating the meal, and I, as an audience member, felt heartbroken.
's once meticulous life observations have turned into beautiful and exquisite vlog clips in "Good Stuff", a kind of promotion and demonstration of a progressive lifestyle. "The Myth of Love" is truly light, while "The Good Thing" seems more rigid and conservative than its predecessor.
The creator had too much to say, and stuffed it all into his mouth, leaving no room for the audience to breathe. The actors had tried their best to internalize the golden verses into a line, but they still had to rush to finish the line. awkward rhythm.
The whole movie is like a person who has been holding back for too long and has not spoken. It intensively and quickly outputs social hot topics for two hours: menstrual shame, domestic violence, native family, public reporting, gender equality, pastoral female boxing. The momentum is like a rainbow, overwhelming, aiming at the audience's armpits, scratching at high frequency,
, which turns "Good Things" into a collection of Internet jokes. The middle-class and progressive young people in first-tier cities have melted the podcasts they usually listen to, the talk shows they watch, the official accounts they read, and the Weibo they like into a big pot. Characters appeared one after another, and it was a competition to see whose famous quotes could be made into screenshots and liked on Little Red Book.
movies constantly declare that we want to overthrow the patriarchy, we want to take back our subjectivity, and we don’t want to play their games anymore.
But after the slogan was shouted, there was nothing more.
What a movie needs is back-and-forth lines, not hit copywriting.
In an excellent movie, the character does not need to shout to the audience. It is enough to be immersed in his story and have a conversation with other characters in the movie.
was jealous of the topic and made a table of dumplings. The most pity is that Shao Yihui actually has the ability to "shoot" these slogans in the language of the camera instead of letting the characters "speak" them.
Wang Moli wears the skin of a child, but actually lives Shao Yihui in her body. Together with Wang Tiemei and Xiaoye, they form Shao Yihui's multiverse.
seems to be designed to set up a genius girl who "explodes the emperor's new clothes", "has not been disciplined by patriarchy", has keen insights and superb writing skills, but in the end, Wang Moli has to bear too much " "The Preaching Session of Children's Words" allows people to see an untimely sense of adulthood in a child.
During the dinner table scene, Jasmine heard Xiaoye say that her mother disliked her menstruation for soiling the furniture, and asked the man from the perspective of a child:
"Blood is not shit, how can it be dirty?"
"There are so many things in the world. Half of the people bleed, right? "
This kind of treatment can be seen as a child's tone of voice, giving the male power a big fight. It's done well, and you can appreciate the applause. Of course, this can also be seen as a line that comes very abruptly. It is more like the adult author has poured out the point he wants to express, but he is just using the child's mouth as a louder trumpet.
Jasmine asked Xiaoye: "How should a girl play the drums?"
Xiaoye answered her: "You can beat the girl how you want to."
These witty answers are certainly wonderful, but according to Jasmine's character, she should start playing directly, or even This question will not be asked.
The arrangement of many plots in the film seems to be designed around a "copywriting that must be thrown out", with the purpose of getting the actors to say this line out loud.
So we came to a buffet on women’s issues. There are sexual consent and AV issues here. When having sex, don’t tear off women’s clothes, and don’t imitate AVs that insult women. There is the issue of menstruation. Men still think that menstruation is blue. There are also women here. For independent issues, you don't need to be perfect, just accept yourself, etc.
Once the dialogue logic and the real texture of life are sacrificed, the characters and narrative will give way to slogans. In fact, a good movie does not need every line to be subtle and meaningful.
"Good Things" has a dazzling display of topics, giving it more "communication attributes" from a certain perspective. People see it, people like it, people retweet it. It is certain that
has hit the pain point, but if every highlight episode is just a quote from a character, it would be too tiring, let alone "light".
When "narrative" gives way to "issue", the sense of reality becomes increasingly blurred.
In the interview, Shao Yihui emphasized that what she wanted to shoot was a feminist fairy tale, building a matriarchal utopia, which is the most civilized imagination of human civilization. And this story will only happen in a special experimental city of freedom and progress: Shanghai.
Just like an article pointed out that "Good Things" cannot win the third- and fourth-tier swing states, questions like "How many Chizuru Ueno have you read?" will only appear in a specific stratosphere in Wutong District, Shanghai. . When an issue has a threshold, it also has exclusivity.
In this castle in the air similar to the Barbie Parliament, there is no opposition between women and men. Even men can be cute, vulnerable, and friendly, and they directly admit their gender bonus and original sin without any controversy. .
But why are fairy tales distorted?
Because in real life in non-first-tier cities, there are no such life samples and population samples.
’s ex-husband who shows off her feminism, Xiao Ma who has an Oedipal complex, and Xiao Hu, the resident male guest on hookup apps, these male characters may be found in first-tier cities. However, even if you go back to your hometown in a second-tier city, you will find that such men do not exist.
Most of the men of the same age have given birth to their second child, and they may even use the "avatar for the owner group to cause trouble". Their hobby is to go to the foot bath center with their friends. If you tell them about the gender bonus, not to mention whether they understand it, they will even make you drink three drinks as a penalty.
Some netizens carefully raised practical points of dispute: The rent for this old bungalow in Wutong District is at least 15,000 yuan. Can they really afford it? How should the cost of living be calculated? With the same budget, why not live in the outer ring?
Some Xiaohongshu netizens responded: Because they earn more and can afford to rent. Others seriously analyzed the income structure of Wang Tiemei and Xiaoye, proving that "people are rich."
If you have watched the house-hunting video of @沪平小q, you will know how many people in Shanghai spend 800 yuan to live in a house that is not as good as the stairwell of Harry Potter.The monthly income of many people across the country is less than one-fifth of the monthly rent of Wang Tiemei's old house.
Shao Yihui’s answer is simpler: because Wutong District is beautiful.
She kept emphasizing in the interview that the narrative of suffering has been repeated too much, but in fact, based on China’s population base, it is far from enough.
"For example, those who beat women, do domestic violence, and rape are very old, very backward, and uncivilized. Such people are not worthy of my writing. In modern civilized society, such behavior is inherently wrong and unnecessary. Make another movie to repeat it, but I'm also reflecting on, in fact, reality. There are a lot of similar things happening in life.” (Shao Yihui)
If the so-called new thing is a free, happy and dreamy lifestyle, in fact, this narrative has been repeated in Xiaohongshu short videos. Click to open. You can get a glimpse of it by looking at the vlog videos of Internet celebrities in Wutong District.
Suffering is the background of grassroots life, and people are just trying their best to paint on this background.
Another kind of single mother, another way of life, another kind of "female correct person" can certainly be an inspiration to the audience, but it is not enough to constitute meaningful advice, and even deeper, will it constitute an offense to the weak? : Others don’t live such a free and relaxed life, is it because they don’t work hard enough, or because their destiny is like this.
In such a country where the ordinary class makes up the majority, and in such a country where the patriarchal structure is very polarized, deliberately avoiding narratives of suffering is not just another kind of laziness and arrogance.
Suffering is indeed not beautiful enough, but it does not mean that suffering is not worth writing about.
At present, suffering is still the main contradiction. It is very regrettable that non-first-tier cities have not evolved to a more developed stage.
For a grassroots woman, Wang Tiemei's freedom and lightness may not be as good as Wang Huiling's short video teaching them how to avoid being "single-handed" by their father's family and husband's family.
Although the spiritual exploration of higher civilizations is brilliant, it is difficult to touch the real interests of women at the bottom.
Beneath the soil of Shanghai's free and relaxed atmosphere, there is a lingering capital: relaxation is a luxury that relies on money to maintain.
"Good Things" and the free and easy Wang Tiemei seem to help us confirm a logic. In Shanghai, as long as you have sufficient capital accumulation, you have the ability to live a free, progressive and light life. This highly purified urban landscape only belongs to one group after all. It has nothing to do with gender, only class.
is like the line that everyone applauded to death: "Your express train stinks, unless it is a female driver."
You can actually think a step further behind this sentence. Why do some express trains smell so bad? Could it be because those drivers who are trying to make ends meet sleep in the car and may have to work 12 hours a day, so they have no time to wash their hair, take a shower, or maintain their dignity? How many rings away do they live? Why do they live this way? Downstairs of the house I rented, many Didi drivers parked overnight every day, with everything in their trunks.
A pioneering and free city, it has already divided everyone into different levels.
The free and relaxed progressive lifestyle belongs to new media editors, writers, band drummers, band singers, and ophthalmologists. The places where they talk will only be in old bungalows, Japanese food shops, bars, and Western restaurants; a less progressive life The method belongs to all beneficiaries in non-first-tier cities, including daily workers and drivers.
The focus of the narrative is snatched away, and specific people and stories disappear.
The creator is driven by some huge and lofty "ism" and rushes forward. Every minute is filled with things to express, and then these things are said by the character, and the character becomes a mouthpiece with a unified appearance.
As for the character arcs of the characters themselves, the audience is not interested in the experiences of these people themselves, but is only passionate about the few lines they speak. Men and women quickly pass the baton in a relay race of values.
The right characters will not move people, they will only make people crazy.How do
creators create a vivid woman?
We can see what unbearable desires she has, what unspeakable crux she has, and what complicated dilemmas she has experienced.
But Wang Tiemei is always right, just like she is standing on a scooter driving away wretched men, standing there like a giant, making the audience obsessed.
Her only low point in the film was when she wrote an article and received negative comments from netizens, just like what our colleagues experience most of the time. Her self-loathing and introspection are far less interesting and deep than fleabag in "Fleabag". Vain frustration floats on the water, light and airy.
She has no fragility, no weakness, and no cowardice, so she has become a symbol worshiped by the group.
If there are emotional high-scoring reviews, there will be emotional low-scoring negative reviews.
Some people say that "Good Stuff" is a movie specially provided by Douban Xiaohongshu, a carnival behind closed doors for the stratosphere, feminism with Shanghai characteristics, and a Spring Festival Gala for the petty bourgeoisie community in first-tier cities. Although the film constantly reveals Caroline Criado Pérez's "invisible women" (invisible women), the focus is still on the urban elite and middle class who have long been seen.
In today's public opinion field, once there are voices of doubt about this movie, netizens will accuse it of a stance issue. Dare to say that "Good Things" is not good has become a very test of courage. People want to find out who they are before speaking carefully.
Under almost every quarrel post, you can see the logical deduction "You don't like this movie = you are a man = you misogyny", and the discussion surrounding the content of the film has also become black and white. Gender Guessing Game" gradually slides into another kind of totalitarianism. Treat others with their own medicine, defeat magic with magic.
"Good things are for good people"
"It took me 0.000001s to guess the gender of the blogger, you can try it too"
"It turns out to be a man, that's okay"
"A woman is still like this "Say, reward you for having eight children in the future"
If we blindly reject all voices that raise questions, what is the difference between this and our resistance to patriarchy?
In fact, Wang Tiemei and I are both outsiders living in the first-tier cities of Beijing/Shanghai. We both need to rent an apartment. We even have exactly the same occupation, we are both women who write public accounts.
Of course I admire Wang Tiemei very much. But I can’t really believe that such people and stories really exist in a world where you need to stare at the rent figures and bank balances every month. The director
said that this is a fairy tale for women, but after leaving the theater, fairy tales cannot solve practical problems.
Whether this movie is good or not may not matter whether the audience is in a first-, second-, third- or fourth-tier city. The key is, do you believe this fairy tale?
If you choose not to believe it, you will feel frivolous, vain and ungrounded.
If you choose to believe it, you will feel light and comfortable, like you are back in the womb.
The real world will not change its trajectory because of fairy tales, and "Good Things" only shows a possibility of a parallel world.
is like Xiaohongshu netizens who put women who criticized the movie on trial, but the next post that popped up under the control of the algorithm was still "Is 163cm55kg too fat?" Utopia is beautiful, but we do live in a cruel and ugly reality.
Of course we have to support female directors on the table, of course we have to give them the widest tolerance, of course we have to go against the daddy style of all patriarchal movies, and let more and more female directors take the reins of old men. Grab the microphone and camera.
In the reality that most domestic films have difficulty passing the "Bechdel test", the appearance of "The Good Thing" is extremely precious from a standpoint, making millions of women lament, "So you guys watch movies So cool."
A film can only be called a female narrative if it meets the three conditions of the Bechdel test: condition one, two women must appear in the film; condition two, the two women have a conversation; condition three, they talk about topics other than men.
Of course, nothing can withstand criticism, but we hope that domestic women’s films can be more meaningful, lean down, lower the camera an inch, and take a look at the people outside the Huangpu River.
According to data from "Maoyan", more than 80% of the user profiles who "want to watch this film" are women, especially young women aged 20 to 24. For a movie that has sold nearly 400 million at the box office, no matter how many faults it finds, it must be admitted that she did one thing right - she made the half of the people who bleed every month suppressed thousands In anger, he loudly scolded those toxic men who peed on the street.
Since "The Godfather" is the movie bible for men, "Young and Dangerous" is the textbook movie for men, and "Scent of a Woman" is a must-see for men in their lifetime. Then female creators will definitely be able to create movies with good quotes that belong to women.
But apart from the fun movies, can you still calm down and look at real problems and real dilemmas?
"The Paris Review" asked this question when interviewing Beauvoir in 1956: You have never created a truly independent and free female character who can demonstrate the theme of "The Second Sex" in one way or another. Why?
Beauvoir replied: “In my novels, I write about women as they are in reality—contradictory people, not as they should be.
Produced by
| Author of Huxiu Youth Culture Group
| Editor and title picture of Cucumber Soda
| Zhazha County
This article was first published on the Huxiu youth content public account "Nang" (id: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of young people today.
2024 is the year of women’s films.
We applaud because female creators finally get to eat on the table, and not only serve, but also eat with chopsticks.
But no literary and artistic work is absolutely correct and perfect.
It is precisely because we have full expectations for women's works that we will discuss " good stuff " from the perspective of a movie.
Is "Good Stuff" any good? Of course. Exactly how good it is has been mentioned in the headlines of various media too many times.
is so good that it ended all old film forms and has epoch-making revolutionary significance. Director Shao Yihui is praised as a genius of Chinese films to a certain extent.
But if you want to ask what story this movie tells, it is really difficult to summarize because the story is not the narrative focus of this movie.
It is more about "a new lifestyle of a group of people". This lifestyle is beautiful and warm, similar to a matriarchal society. One comment is "as peaceful as returning to the womb".
Single mother Wang Tiemei is a public account editor. She used to be an investigative reporter in the Southern Department. After the demise of the print media, she became our colleague.
Her daughter is Wang Moli, a primary school student in Shanghai who grew up freely in a "non-chicken child environment" and likes writing just like her mother.
The mother and daughter moved to a rented old house in Wutong District, Shanghai's famous "rich and prosperous" district, and met their neighbor Xiaoye, who is the lead singer of a band. Between the three women, a close friendship was formed that spanned the ages, constituting the smallest unit of communism.
In addition to women, there are also men with different tool attributes.
Wang Tiemei’s ex-husband and childcare partner are a weak man, a “Ken” in the Barbie world. After divorcing Wang Tiemei, he indulged in feminist theory and actually worked as a Didi driver. Wang Tiemei's boyfriend, Xiao Ma, is the drummer of the Little Leaf Band. He has an Oedipus complex and is always obsessed with women older than him. Xiaoye has a sex friend, Dr. Hu, who is the most common elite man on Tinder software and refuses to enter into long-term intimate relationships.
The advantages of the movie are straightforwardly put on the table: it is female-oriented.
heroine, woman's life, woman's perspective.
This is one of the few films in the history of film dominated by female characters. There is no greasy looking from head to toe, just equal looks between women.
Just like when Wang Tiemei saw the intern's clothes, she first asked "What are you wearing?" and the next sentence was "Send me the link" that violated expectations. When she saw a girl drinking brown sugar water with dysmenorrhea, she pointed out that she needed to take painkillers to make it effective. Shao Yihui created a dream vacuum zone, refuted all the stigmatization of female friendship, and kicked over the sugar-coated poison that targeted women.
There is proof of female friendliness hidden in the corners and details.
The moving company at the beginning of the movie is called "Kangaroo Mother", and the movers are also women, which subverts ordinary people's impression of physical labor from the very beginning.
Throughout the movie, neither actress wore high heels. They wore comfortable sneakers throughout the movie and often wore big T-shirts. To some extent, they regained the right not to be sexy.
If you still remember the scenes of actor Zhong Chuxi's debut work " Youth ", you will understand the difference between the male gaze and the female gaze. The former is staring at her thighs, while the latter can be aimed at her eyes without makeup. .
There are also various female slogans hidden in the movie, including but not limited to female Justice Ginsburg's merchandise, "i'm a feminist" T-shirts, and "If you see my nipples under my clothes , that’s because I grew them”.
The most powerful sequence in the entire film is a montage of voices and women's invisible housework.
Xiaoye listened to various sounds for Jasmine: a heavy rain was Tiemei frying eggs, a tornado was Tiemei cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, sawing wood was Tiemei squeezing juice, picking vegetables was a panda chewing bamboo, and cooking porridge was lava. surge.
Nature is the world created by your mother for you. It is very beautiful. This is also the golden two minutes of this movie.
The most outstanding comedy scene is the humorous dinner table scene, where the ex-husband and Xiao Ma start a female-centered male competition.
Her ex-husband quoted classics and said, "How many books have you read by Chizuru Ueno?" which amused the audience in first-tier cities.
These issues are all happening on social networks at the moment. Words rush to each other, lines rush to lines. After watching this scene, it feels like I have just escaped from a fierce Weibo quarrel.
Many male actors declined to play the role of her ex-husband as a "feminist performing artist". Chao Youting felt that this role was very similar to "Ken" in " Barbie ", so she happily accepted it. So much so that the line "I'm going to sterilize you" makes him still being criticized by some netizens.
Shao Yihui also admitted in the interview that her ex-husband and Xiao Ma were fictional male characters based on her personal preferences. After all, in real life, even in Beijing and Shanghai, it is difficult to see men who admit the "gender bonus" so frankly .
Compared with the superficiality of these two male characters, Xiaoye’s sex partner Xiaohu is more real. Even the casting is so close that people can’t help but have the uncanny valley effect, as if all Shanghai financial men have concrete face.
Xiao Hu’s name on Tinder is very typical, called richard, and the remark is “not into ltr” (not entering into a long-term intimate relationship). In reality, Xiao Hus will also note that they are "for fun" and "enjoy short-term relationships", and their hobbies are skiing, diving and whiskey. Compared with their ex-husband and Xiao Ma, this "irresponsible man" role is actually found on social software in first-tier cities. The most common, most common, and most inescapable type.
Even when they act out their "love incompetence" and "emotional disorder" in bed, they all follow a set of classic templates of urban fast food relationships between men and women. The sentence "Just love me" made many girls in the audience watch the movie with their moustaches and snicker in embarrassment.
In addition to Xiao Hu, I also remember Wang Moli’s Chinese teacher who only appeared a few times.
Shao Yihui also broke the evil impression about female teachers and gave this young teacher a "new look". When the little boy Zhang Jiaxin performed the routine "I want to sue the teacher," the teacher asked back, "Who taught you how to report?"
In the current environment, this sentence is powerful enough.
Even the usual evil female supporting character is replaced by a little boy here. Shao Yihui once mentioned in an interview that this setting is to eliminate the label of "female jealousy" in the public impression: a boy may be jealous of an outstanding person for no reason.
Highly saturated and high-density lines, almost every sentence touches on gender issues and social hot spots -
I am upright, brave and well-read, what do I have to be pitiful about?
Even though I have broken with the patriarchy, am I still a loser?
Which woman in this world is not more important than a man?
Recalling the past is the beginning of greasy.
The express train stinks, unless it is a female driver.
But why do you have to do a good job? Who is the referee?
It is precisely because we are optimistic and confident enough that we can face tragedy head-on.
's Douban score is 9.1, and the situation is very good. On the other hand, as expected, Hupu has received a lot of bad news.
The most common high-profile comment is that the genders of the lines in "The Good Stuff" are swapped, proving that this movie is "the ultimate man-hate."
What’s interesting is that the reason why these lines that make the tiger-pushing boy break his defense is because the director wants to refute the malice against women that has been condensed for thousands of years at once.
You can think about it calmly: this may be the first time a woman has spoken like this, but it is not the first time a man has spoken like this.
Women have changed from objects to subjects and verbs, while men, who have always stood at the center of the stage, have become prepositions in this female film.
Shao Yihui said many times in interviews that these three male characters do not have their own names.
My ex-husband is called my ex-husband without a last name. Xiao Ma because horses are sexy animals, and Xiao Hu because he talks nonsense.
This is a complete reckoning with the deprivation of women’s names for thousands of years, allowing them to leave the world with the code names of Wang, Li, and Zhang. It is also a one-time refutation of the director’s dissatisfaction with history: use the same method to deprive them of their things. .
Both cats and you want to know what it feels like to lose power.
It is precisely because of expectations that there is a gap.
The agility and naturalness that Shao Yihui presented in " Love Myth " became rigid and net-like in "Good Things", just like a writer who can write a full-length novel suddenly wrote a 100,000+ Popular public account.
The subtlety of "The Myth of Love" lies in the lens language and the ingenious interaction of the characters.
The characters seem to be kneading a piece of dough together, pushing and pulling each other, relaxed, agile and making people smile. The real embarrassment and embarrassment of middle-aged men and women are all the texture of life itself. Shao Yihui uses his careless and idle brushwork It has become a wonderful pen, and when it is about to slip to the edge of artificiality, it can be pulled back with skillful force.
However, the creator’s aura and expression were not left to “Good Things”.
The leisurely dinner table scene in "The Myth of Love" turned into the handful of garlic that the ex-husband crazily stuffed into his mouth in "The Good Thing": too hasty. The humor was there, but the mise-en-scène was poor. They felt uncomfortable eating the meal, and I, as an audience member, felt heartbroken.
's once meticulous life observations have turned into beautiful and exquisite vlog clips in "Good Stuff", a kind of promotion and demonstration of a progressive lifestyle. "The Myth of Love" is truly light, while "The Good Thing" seems more rigid and conservative than its predecessor.
The creator had too much to say, and stuffed it all into his mouth, leaving no room for the audience to breathe. The actors had tried their best to internalize the golden verses into a line, but they still had to rush to finish the line. awkward rhythm.
The whole movie is like a person who has been holding back for too long and has not spoken. It intensively and quickly outputs social hot topics for two hours: menstrual shame, domestic violence, native family, public reporting, gender equality, pastoral female boxing. The momentum is like a rainbow, overwhelming, aiming at the audience's armpits, scratching at high frequency,
, which turns "Good Things" into a collection of Internet jokes. The middle-class and progressive young people in first-tier cities have melted the podcasts they usually listen to, the talk shows they watch, the official accounts they read, and the Weibo they like into a big pot. Characters appeared one after another, and it was a competition to see whose famous quotes could be made into screenshots and liked on Little Red Book.
movies constantly declare that we want to overthrow the patriarchy, we want to take back our subjectivity, and we don’t want to play their games anymore.
But after the slogan was shouted, there was nothing more.
What a movie needs is back-and-forth lines, not hit copywriting.
In an excellent movie, the character does not need to shout to the audience. It is enough to be immersed in his story and have a conversation with other characters in the movie.
was jealous of the topic and made a table of dumplings. The most pity is that Shao Yihui actually has the ability to "shoot" these slogans in the language of the camera instead of letting the characters "speak" them.
Wang Moli wears the skin of a child, but actually lives Shao Yihui in her body. Together with Wang Tiemei and Xiaoye, they form Shao Yihui's multiverse.
seems to be designed to set up a genius girl who "explodes the emperor's new clothes", "has not been disciplined by patriarchy", has keen insights and superb writing skills, but in the end, Wang Moli has to bear too much " "The Preaching Session of Children's Words" allows people to see an untimely sense of adulthood in a child.
During the dinner table scene, Jasmine heard Xiaoye say that her mother disliked her menstruation for soiling the furniture, and asked the man from the perspective of a child:
"Blood is not shit, how can it be dirty?"
"There are so many things in the world. Half of the people bleed, right? "
This kind of treatment can be seen as a child's tone of voice, giving the male power a big fight. It's done well, and you can appreciate the applause. Of course, this can also be seen as a line that comes very abruptly. It is more like the adult author has poured out the point he wants to express, but he is just using the child's mouth as a louder trumpet.
Jasmine asked Xiaoye: "How should a girl play the drums?"
Xiaoye answered her: "You can beat the girl how you want to."
These witty answers are certainly wonderful, but according to Jasmine's character, she should start playing directly, or even This question will not be asked.
The arrangement of many plots in the film seems to be designed around a "copywriting that must be thrown out", with the purpose of getting the actors to say this line out loud.
So we came to a buffet on women’s issues. There are sexual consent and AV issues here. When having sex, don’t tear off women’s clothes, and don’t imitate AVs that insult women. There is the issue of menstruation. Men still think that menstruation is blue. There are also women here. For independent issues, you don't need to be perfect, just accept yourself, etc.
Once the dialogue logic and the real texture of life are sacrificed, the characters and narrative will give way to slogans. In fact, a good movie does not need every line to be subtle and meaningful.
"Good Things" has a dazzling display of topics, giving it more "communication attributes" from a certain perspective. People see it, people like it, people retweet it. It is certain that
has hit the pain point, but if every highlight episode is just a quote from a character, it would be too tiring, let alone "light".
When "narrative" gives way to "issue", the sense of reality becomes increasingly blurred.
In the interview, Shao Yihui emphasized that what she wanted to shoot was a feminist fairy tale, building a matriarchal utopia, which is the most civilized imagination of human civilization. And this story will only happen in a special experimental city of freedom and progress: Shanghai.
Just like an article pointed out that "Good Things" cannot win the third- and fourth-tier swing states, questions like "How many Chizuru Ueno have you read?" will only appear in a specific stratosphere in Wutong District, Shanghai. . When an issue has a threshold, it also has exclusivity.
In this castle in the air similar to the Barbie Parliament, there is no opposition between women and men. Even men can be cute, vulnerable, and friendly, and they directly admit their gender bonus and original sin without any controversy. .
But why are fairy tales distorted?
Because in real life in non-first-tier cities, there are no such life samples and population samples.
’s ex-husband who shows off her feminism, Xiao Ma who has an Oedipal complex, and Xiao Hu, the resident male guest on hookup apps, these male characters may be found in first-tier cities. However, even if you go back to your hometown in a second-tier city, you will find that such men do not exist.
Most of the men of the same age have given birth to their second child, and they may even use the "avatar for the owner group to cause trouble". Their hobby is to go to the foot bath center with their friends. If you tell them about the gender bonus, not to mention whether they understand it, they will even make you drink three drinks as a penalty.
Some netizens carefully raised practical points of dispute: The rent for this old bungalow in Wutong District is at least 15,000 yuan. Can they really afford it? How should the cost of living be calculated? With the same budget, why not live in the outer ring?
Some Xiaohongshu netizens responded: Because they earn more and can afford to rent. Others seriously analyzed the income structure of Wang Tiemei and Xiaoye, proving that "people are rich."
If you have watched the house-hunting video of @沪平小q, you will know how many people in Shanghai spend 800 yuan to live in a house that is not as good as the stairwell of Harry Potter.The monthly income of many people across the country is less than one-fifth of the monthly rent of Wang Tiemei's old house.
Shao Yihui’s answer is simpler: because Wutong District is beautiful.
She kept emphasizing in the interview that the narrative of suffering has been repeated too much, but in fact, based on China’s population base, it is far from enough.
"For example, those who beat women, do domestic violence, and rape are very old, very backward, and uncivilized. Such people are not worthy of my writing. In modern civilized society, such behavior is inherently wrong and unnecessary. Make another movie to repeat it, but I'm also reflecting on, in fact, reality. There are a lot of similar things happening in life.” (Shao Yihui)
If the so-called new thing is a free, happy and dreamy lifestyle, in fact, this narrative has been repeated in Xiaohongshu short videos. Click to open. You can get a glimpse of it by looking at the vlog videos of Internet celebrities in Wutong District.
Suffering is the background of grassroots life, and people are just trying their best to paint on this background.
Another kind of single mother, another way of life, another kind of "female correct person" can certainly be an inspiration to the audience, but it is not enough to constitute meaningful advice, and even deeper, will it constitute an offense to the weak? : Others don’t live such a free and relaxed life, is it because they don’t work hard enough, or because their destiny is like this.
In such a country where the ordinary class makes up the majority, and in such a country where the patriarchal structure is very polarized, deliberately avoiding narratives of suffering is not just another kind of laziness and arrogance.
Suffering is indeed not beautiful enough, but it does not mean that suffering is not worth writing about.
At present, suffering is still the main contradiction. It is very regrettable that non-first-tier cities have not evolved to a more developed stage.
For a grassroots woman, Wang Tiemei's freedom and lightness may not be as good as Wang Huiling's short video teaching them how to avoid being "single-handed" by their father's family and husband's family.
Although the spiritual exploration of higher civilizations is brilliant, it is difficult to touch the real interests of women at the bottom.
Beneath the soil of Shanghai's free and relaxed atmosphere, there is a lingering capital: relaxation is a luxury that relies on money to maintain.
"Good Things" and the free and easy Wang Tiemei seem to help us confirm a logic. In Shanghai, as long as you have sufficient capital accumulation, you have the ability to live a free, progressive and light life. This highly purified urban landscape only belongs to one group after all. It has nothing to do with gender, only class.
is like the line that everyone applauded to death: "Your express train stinks, unless it is a female driver."
You can actually think a step further behind this sentence. Why do some express trains smell so bad? Could it be because those drivers who are trying to make ends meet sleep in the car and may have to work 12 hours a day, so they have no time to wash their hair, take a shower, or maintain their dignity? How many rings away do they live? Why do they live this way? Downstairs of the house I rented, many Didi drivers parked overnight every day, with everything in their trunks.
A pioneering and free city, it has already divided everyone into different levels.
The free and relaxed progressive lifestyle belongs to new media editors, writers, band drummers, band singers, and ophthalmologists. The places where they talk will only be in old bungalows, Japanese food shops, bars, and Western restaurants; a less progressive life The method belongs to all beneficiaries in non-first-tier cities, including daily workers and drivers.
The focus of the narrative is snatched away, and specific people and stories disappear.
The creator is driven by some huge and lofty "ism" and rushes forward. Every minute is filled with things to express, and then these things are said by the character, and the character becomes a mouthpiece with a unified appearance.
As for the character arcs of the characters themselves, the audience is not interested in the experiences of these people themselves, but is only passionate about the few lines they speak. Men and women quickly pass the baton in a relay race of values.
The right characters will not move people, they will only make people crazy.How do
creators create a vivid woman?
We can see what unbearable desires she has, what unspeakable crux she has, and what complicated dilemmas she has experienced.
But Wang Tiemei is always right, just like she is standing on a scooter driving away wretched men, standing there like a giant, making the audience obsessed.
Her only low point in the film was when she wrote an article and received negative comments from netizens, just like what our colleagues experience most of the time. Her self-loathing and introspection are far less interesting and deep than fleabag in "Fleabag". Vain frustration floats on the water, light and airy.
She has no fragility, no weakness, and no cowardice, so she has become a symbol worshiped by the group.
If there are emotional high-scoring reviews, there will be emotional low-scoring negative reviews.
Some people say that "Good Stuff" is a movie specially provided by Douban Xiaohongshu, a carnival behind closed doors for the stratosphere, feminism with Shanghai characteristics, and a Spring Festival Gala for the petty bourgeoisie community in first-tier cities. Although the film constantly reveals Caroline Criado Pérez's "invisible women" (invisible women), the focus is still on the urban elite and middle class who have long been seen.
In today's public opinion field, once there are voices of doubt about this movie, netizens will accuse it of a stance issue. Dare to say that "Good Things" is not good has become a very test of courage. People want to find out who they are before speaking carefully.
Under almost every quarrel post, you can see the logical deduction "You don't like this movie = you are a man = you misogyny", and the discussion surrounding the content of the film has also become black and white. Gender Guessing Game" gradually slides into another kind of totalitarianism. Treat others with their own medicine, defeat magic with magic.
"Good things are for good people"
"It took me 0.000001s to guess the gender of the blogger, you can try it too"
"It turns out to be a man, that's okay"
"A woman is still like this "Say, reward you for having eight children in the future"
If we blindly reject all voices that raise questions, what is the difference between this and our resistance to patriarchy?
In fact, Wang Tiemei and I are both outsiders living in the first-tier cities of Beijing/Shanghai. We both need to rent an apartment. We even have exactly the same occupation, we are both women who write public accounts.
Of course I admire Wang Tiemei very much. But I can’t really believe that such people and stories really exist in a world where you need to stare at the rent figures and bank balances every month. The director
said that this is a fairy tale for women, but after leaving the theater, fairy tales cannot solve practical problems.
Whether this movie is good or not may not matter whether the audience is in a first-, second-, third- or fourth-tier city. The key is, do you believe this fairy tale?
If you choose not to believe it, you will feel frivolous, vain and ungrounded.
If you choose to believe it, you will feel light and comfortable, like you are back in the womb.
The real world will not change its trajectory because of fairy tales, and "Good Things" only shows a possibility of a parallel world.
is like Xiaohongshu netizens who put women who criticized the movie on trial, but the next post that popped up under the control of the algorithm was still "Is 163cm55kg too fat?" Utopia is beautiful, but we do live in a cruel and ugly reality.
Of course we have to support female directors on the table, of course we have to give them the widest tolerance, of course we have to go against the daddy style of all patriarchal movies, and let more and more female directors take the reins of old men. Grab the microphone and camera.
In the reality that most domestic films have difficulty passing the "Bechdel test", the appearance of "The Good Thing" is extremely precious from a standpoint, making millions of women lament, "So you guys watch movies So cool."
A film can only be called a female narrative if it meets the three conditions of the Bechdel test: condition one, two women must appear in the film; condition two, the two women have a conversation; condition three, they talk about topics other than men.
Of course, nothing can withstand criticism, but we hope that domestic women’s films can be more meaningful, lean down, lower the camera an inch, and take a look at the people outside the Huangpu River.
According to data from "Maoyan", more than 80% of the user profiles who "want to watch this film" are women, especially young women aged 20 to 24. For a movie that has sold nearly 400 million at the box office, no matter how many faults it finds, it must be admitted that she did one thing right - she made the half of the people who bleed every month suppressed thousands In anger, he loudly scolded those toxic men who peed on the street.
Since "The Godfather" is the movie bible for men, "Young and Dangerous" is the textbook movie for men, and "Scent of a Woman" is a must-see for men in their lifetime. Then female creators will definitely be able to create movies with good quotes that belong to women.
But apart from the fun movies, can you still calm down and look at real problems and real dilemmas?
"The Paris Review" asked this question when interviewing Beauvoir in 1956: You have never created a truly independent and free female character who can demonstrate the theme of "The Second Sex" in one way or another. Why?
Beauvoir replied: “In my novels, I write about women as they are in reality—contradictory people, not as they should be.”
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