Hello everyone, I'm in Alaska with glasses and a microphone, tablet.
When it comes to gangster films, the first thing that comes to mind of many viewers may be the following pictures:
In the dark room, the old godfather was dressed in a dress and wore a blood-red carnation, majestic and solemn;
Or Oguri Shun leads a large group of brothers to walk in the torrential rain;
Or it is the poster of Brother Pheasant and Chen Haonan leading the brothers a bit of a middle two.
Recently, there was such a gangster movie, which subverted many of my previous imaginations about gangsters, especially Japanese gangsters.
The film is divided into three chapters based on the node of time, 1999, 2005 and 2019.
Through different time periods in the past twenty years, the audience is presented with the changes of Japanese gangsters.
In 1999, the protagonist XiaoBai was still a jerk, and his father was a gangster, because he had no money to buy drugs and jumped into the sea to commit suicide, so Xiaobai hated the gangsters and drugs.
Once, Xiao Bai saw that the righteous courage saved the big guy of gang A, and the big guy thanked Xiao Bai for saving his life and personally invited him to join the gang, but he also refused.
When he encountered Gang B selling drugs and committing evil, Xiao Baiqi snatched the other party's drugs and money, and threw the drugs into the sea.
Gang B's men came to the door and beat Up Xiao Bai and his friends, ready to sell their organs.
However, B's boss discovers that Xiao Bai is in contact with Gang A, and the two factions have previously reached a non-aggression agreement, and Xiao Bai has escaped the disaster.
Because of this layer of friendship, Xiao Bai, who is not willing to take the road of the gang, has no choice but to repeat the mistakes of his father.
(The film shows a very solemn induction ceremony)
In fact, compared with other gangs, gang A at least not involved in drugs, when the big boss asked about the purpose of the second boss gang, the second boss replied solemnly, they aspire to become "capitalized people", this plot is really unbearable.
The relatively standardized behavior and single revenue method also bring hidden dangers to their future "sustainable development".
By the second paragraph of the film in 2005, Xiao Bai was already the number one figure in the third generation of the gang.
The impact of changing times on the ecology of gangsters has begun to be seen.
Cities are facing redevelopment, the future economic center of gravity is shifting, and the old pattern of inter-gang land ownership needs to be adjusted urgently.
The two factions of AB had major differences over the issue of turf, which eventually led to a fierce fight between the two factions, while Xiao Bai took the blame for the second boss and was imprisoned.
Fourteen years later, Xiao Bai was finally released from prison, and the film entered the third act.
This year is the first year of Japan's Reiwa, and the traditional gangsters are even more out of place in the context of the new era.
The movie screen also quietly changed from 16:9 to 4:3, as if to show that from Xiao Bai to his gang, like the 4:3 picture, it is a product of the old era.
Society's tolerance for traditional gangs has dropped to an unprecedented freezing point, and the gates of the gang headquarters that were once full of high halls have long been dusted.
Many members have chosen to quit as a result, but the golden basin wash can not be exchanged for social recognition, no bank account, no insurance, and even no fixed residence, which in contemporary society is almost fatal to a person.
For the members who still insist on it, the former sphere of influence has been compressed, new members are no longer joining, the financial crisis is becoming more and more serious, and even the elderly high-level members have no choice but to personally go out to run for their livelihood.
In the film, the way the little white gang chooses is mainly illegal fishing.
In order to raise the cost of medical treatment for the elderly boss, the second boss also violated the oath of Zheng Zheng of that year and secretly bought and sold prohibited drugs.
As opposed to the old order, there is a new generation whose methods of doing things are completely different from those of the past.
Strictly speaking, they are also gangsters, but they are no longer affiliated with traditional gangs with names and surnames, but have opened up a new method of underground association.
In order to let Xiao Bai, who had been in prison for more than ten years, start over, the gang fired him.
Getting rid of the identity of the underworld, Xiao Bai found a hard job, and finally had the opportunity to reunite with his old lover.
But the good times were not long, and the photo of Xiao Bai and his former brother was accidentally exposed, and the underworld resumes of the two were also turned over.
Not only Xiao Bai and his brothers themselves have been condemned by public opinion, but even those around them have been spurned, those who go to work have lost their jobs, and those who go to school have no choice but to transfer to other schools.
Going around, Xiao Bai was left alone, and was finally sent to Huangquan by his desperate brother.
At the end of the film, a stumbling Little White falls into the sea, and with it sinks the gang traditions left over from Japan's Heisei and even showa periods.
After watching this film, I was very emotional, although the film is not very perfect in terms of creative techniques, the script also has many bugs, but through the presentation of these three acts, coupled with handheld lenses, obscure tones and other lens language, the audience can fully receive the sadness of gangster culture towards the end.
In fact, in Japan, the only country in the world that recognizes the legality of gangsters, gangster culture has a long history.
The Meiji Restoration abolished the samurai class, and people who adhered to the samurai spirit came together to form well-organized groups that gradually evolved into gangs in the modern sense.
To borrow a quote from Game of Thrones, Littlefinger – chaos is the ladder of ascension.
Japanese gangsters made the leap forward in the chaotic Japanese society after World War II.
After the war, Japan had no armed forces, and the gang group took on the task of protecting the local people and ushered in the opportunity to legitimize themselves.
Of course, the earliest gangsters had various violent crimes, pornography, gambling and drug acts, but in order to adapt to the background of legalization, the gangs also cancelled some illegal business.
(During the Great East Japan Earthquake, the first people to rush to the rescue were local gang members.)
Despite this, Japanese society is becoming less and less tolerant of gangsters.
Of course, there are certain gray areas in between.
In the movie, the development of gang B in the later stage is actually far better than that of gang A, the main reason is that B has taken the police force, and in the face of increasingly strict laws against gangsters, the police have given B very strong protection.
(In reality, The Yamaguchi Group, Japan's most powerful group, the political and business circles, and the financial group that specializes in laundering money for itself)
Like "The Sopranos and the Family", Xiao Bai's gang has a more obvious Showa temperament.
The Showa era, the era of the reign of Emperor Hirohito of Japan, dates from 1926 to 1989.
At the initiation ceremony, Xiao Bai called the boss "Righteous Father", which is very much in line with the rules of the showa era gangsters.
They often do not have the main purpose of economic expansion as their main purpose, stick to a certain place, and have a very strict ethnic structure.
Under increasingly strict laws and government supervision, the business of ordinary gangsters is becoming more and more difficult to do.
In the movie, Xiao Bai's predecessors live by illegal fishing, which is actually not a fabrication.
Gang members who are increasingly struggling to make ends meet sell memes on social media, sell peripherals, and even some sell milk tea.
There are also members of the Yamaguchi group who illegally fish and then sell it in their own house, and finally because the business is too good to be reported by their peers, which is found by the police, and the supplier is from the Yamaguchi group.
Business is difficult to do, the future is difficult, newcomers are reluctant to join the association, and aging has become the most headache for Japanese gangsters.
Just as shown in the Spring Festival film "Detective Chinatown 3", Qin Feng TangRen rushed into a bathhouse where gangsters gathered and found that it was full of tattooed uncles.
In real life, the gray-haired gangster grandfathers personally organize Halloween candy distribution in order to recruit new people.
In the face of gang fire, the uncle who is nearly seventy years old still has to pick up the guy's affairs and go to the street.
Therefore, Japanese gangsters are often ridiculed as "nursing homes" now.
But as the police in the film say, it is not the police and the law that eliminate the gangsters, the times have changed, and the whole society no longer accepts the gangsters.
It is not difficult to see the hint from the summary of the male characteristics of several eras in Japan in recent years.
During the Showa period, a generation that experienced the harsh war and the rise of Japan after the war was called the "Showa Boys";
At the end of the last century, after the Japanese economic bubble, the generation that witnessed the vacuous capital market was called "Heisei Waste Wood";
To this day, the generation ruled by the "house" and "cute" culture has even evolved into a "Reiwa fat house".
(A growing number of young Japanese are being labeled "herbivorous," a new term that has sparked research around the world on the roles of traditional men after the war.)
Fat house and gangster, these two words together feel particularly contrasting, completely incompatible.
On the surface, these titles are a satire on the lack of masculinity in contemporary Japan, but behind it is actually social changes that shape the character of each generation.
The American scholar R. Taggart Murphy, in his book Japan and its Historical Shackles, argues that there are similar phenomena around the world.
In the United States, for example, this phenomenon is known as the "end of masculinity."
After World War II, the emerging economic system gave birth to new industries and social structures, and the status of women in society was greatly improved.
The qualities of emotional intelligence and empathy represented by women are also increasingly favored by society.
The era of "speaking with fists" is gone, people's sense of subjectivity has been greatly improved, and concepts such as "dedication" and "sacrifice" no longer appear frequently in people's daily lives.
On the one hand, "perseverance" and "strength" are no longer important criteria for evaluating men.
Modern life, on the other hand, has catalyzed a growing number of homesteaders (including Ben Alaska).
The decline of traditional gangsters has become almost inevitable.
Just like the chimneys that appear frequently in the film, as time progresses, the higher the level of social industrialization, the more the number of chimneys increases.
Machines replace manpower and push the times forward, and XiaoBai and his gang, who cling to the old rules, will one day be eliminated.
So will there still be gangs in society, the answer is yes, but they no longer exist in the traditional way we used to know.
And the little whites are like the tears of the times, dripping into the sea and dissipating beyond the threshold of a new era.
Well, today is almost here to talk about, before the film also explained the "Blood Gangster", "Underworld" and other gangster-themed film and television dramas, in fact, there are many excellent works on this subject.
Friends who are interested in this kind of subject matter have a lot of praise, and we can go back and talk about other films.
You can also comment on the real name recommendation of the area, you like the gangster movie, if the voice is high, you may be arranged one day!
We'll see you next time.
Bye bye bye.
The picture in this article comes from the network
Edit: Aso