◎ Chen Jianxin
"If this is hell and I'm in it, I must be a demon too."
Too many Chinese-language audiences entered "1883" from Douyin, and they did not expect to be "taken down" as soon as they entered it - the beginning was extremely hot: the girl with the arrow in the abdomen used an infinite continuous revolver to shake the strongmen around, slaughtering the enemy at the same time, she even had the heart to spit out golden sentences.
Bison, prairie, snakes, smallpox, brawls, horses, gunfights... The episode is not over, five or six bandits have been killed, killing several people with a single shot is a routine operation, the average level of the actors is superior to the level of martial arts, and they can face the battle while remaining expressionless, as if they are accumulating strength for the facial distortion when they collapse.
There is no doubt that "1883" is a "Western". But the "west" in the play is just a collection of stereotypes. No one seems to be asking: Is this really the case in the West?
Because the answer is dead.
From the day there was a "Western", these stereotypes were copied in batches and became "eight strands". Without this, the audience does not recognize it as a "Western." What is admirable is that after so many years of repetition and thousands of works, "Westerns" are still so attractive - after "1883" was launched, it achieved a high score of 9.4 on Douban, a rating of 9.1 on IMDb, and a praise rate of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, which can be called "phenomenon-level".
Old themes, old stories, old dresses, old scenes, old bridges... What did "1883" rely on to win? In a word: the power of ideology. "1883" sends anesthesia to the hearts of the audience, and old things can be revitalized.
It's not content with just telling a good story
The plot of "1883" is uncomplicated: the Dutton family follows a group of German immigrants, trekking west from a small town in Texas to the Montana wilderness in search of a "promised land", which is the epitome of the "westward expansion movement" in the United States for a century - along the way, they are attacked by hunger, poisonous snakes, wolves, bandits, natives, etc., and their members are constantly decreasing, and there are new graves along the way. But in order to escape whipping, taxation, poverty, and true freedom, they had to go on their way.
"1883" unfolds along three lines:
One is James Dutton, the head of the Dutton family. As a captain in the Confederate Army, he was captured in the Civil War and spent 3 years in prison. He is strong on the outside, with the arrogance, silence, disobedience, and strange thoughts of American Southerners, but on the inside he is fragile and wants to break free from his memory. Although he was on the same road as the immigration group, he did not consider himself a member of it, he only cared about the safety of his family and did not obey the captain's arrangement.
One is Captain Brennan. After his granddaughter died of smallpox, he burned down his old home and prepared to commit suicide, only to return to his old business because he wanted to go to "that place" and take another look—to transport a group of immigrants to Montana for a fee. With few manpower, high risks, and the fact that the immigrants did not listen to the command, Brennan had to adopt a high-handed policy, and his indifference, brutality, and meanness made the contradictions between him and the immigration group, and even between him and the accompanying James Dutton, increasingly acute.
One is Elsa Dutton, as the daughter of James Dutton, she was trained by her father to be a "female man", under the impulse of adolescence, she wanted to get rid of the "civilized life" that was bound a lot, and the "westward journey" became her "mature journey".
The tension of the three lines is reflected in the fact that James Dutton traveled west to survive, Brennan went west to seek death, and Elsa Dutton traveled west for excitement. The three people have different values and behaviors, coupled with various accidents that continue to appear on the way, it seems that it is not difficult to achieve suspense and tense plots.
However, "1883" is not a weak drama such as "Knife Line in the Snow" after all, thinking that it is enough to shoot good shots, arrange suspense, and tell a good story. Beyond the skin, "1883" has a deeper excavation. The skill presented in the excavation is precisely the most lacking in the current domestic film and television dramas.
Demons are naturally meant to highlight the "I"
What really makes 1883 amazing is that it constructs a whole new world, primitive, wild, rugged, and dangerous, reflecting the creators' different understandings of the natural world.
Chinese tend to "the unity of nature and man" and will actively integrate into the natural order, while Westerners tend to "overcome nature", in "1883", the grass and woods crowded with pictures are not magnificent, but terrifying.
The atmosphere of terror is laid out by a series of "tricks": when sleeping, use ropes to guard against snakes; do not drink water from streams at will; pay attention to the marks on the grass, the stalker may be preparing to attack; the chariot wheel will sink on the grass, push with brute force, may die; cross a very shallow river, more difficult than passing the ghost gate...
Through these techniques, man's relationship with nature becomes an antagonistic one—either triumphing over nature or being overcome by nature. The subtext of this narrative is: there is no eternity, only means. The so-called hero is a person who has mastered more skills ( especially the art of killing).
Apparently, James Dutton, Brennan, and Elsa Dutton are all internally designated heroes. The first two kill people like hemp, and the screenwriter's main job is to give them moral reasons; the latter is slightly troublesome and needs to design a process of self-breakthrough to show that growth is the improvement of killing skills.
Why design such a terrible nature? Implicit in this is the cognitive way of Enlightenment philosophy: the search for the self by denying the other.
Enlightenment philosophy advocates science, and the premise of science is doubt, and true knowledge is obtained through the continuous elimination of doubts. The premise of science is objectification, and only by figuring out "who is the object" can the research be carried out - when I study my hand, the hand has nothing to do with me, it has become the object of study, and only by fully separating my relationship with the hand can I correctly understand the hand. For researchers, knowledge is objective and there is no need to waste feelings about it.
Along this line of thought, nature, which has made human beings marvel, praise, worship, and cherish, has become the object of use and conquest. Although it nurtures us, it also limits and threatens us, it allows human beings to survive and it also allows human beings to die. So, when Elsa Dutton is "immature", "1883" also has some scenes of grassland sunsets, rivers flowing, riding horses to drive bison, and as her boyfriend is killed by bandits, nature naturally becomes vicious and becomes a "demon" to adapt to the existence.
After the "unity of heaven and man" was broken, the "I" was highlighted, and thus gained the right to control the fate.
Bury it deep enough
The narrative of "overcoming nature" in 1883 is actually a rewrite of the Odyssey in order to hijack the right to interpret history. Therefore, the "Westward Movement" has become a great epic, showing the immortal spirit of human indomitability and pursuit of tomorrow, and as the pedestal of the American Dream, it inspires Americans to continue to move forward.
However, what about the indigenous people who lost their homeland due to the "Westward Expansion Movement"? How to calculate the resulting plague and death? What is the count of the genocide that continues in between? But the beauty of "overcoming nature" is that it can describe massacres as transporting civilization and seizure as indoctrination.
So Elsa Dutton's inner voice kept popping up in a voiceover way, trivial enough and chicken soup. For example, if you can cope with your own life, that is called independence, not freedom. Freedom loops in 1883. If there is freedom as an excuse, the death of Aunt Elsa Dutton is justified, and the tragedies of the immigration group are reasonable, and they all become the price of freedom.
Thus, "1883" opens up the distinction between it and contemporary people: every awakening of the individual comes from the pain of the surroundings, and only by realizing that "I am different from you" can "I" be born. On the way to the pursuit of "me", it is destined to encounter jealousy, hostility, misunderstanding, etc., red dust is like a sea, everyone is doomed to be scarred, and James Dutton, Brennan, Elsa Dutton and other tough guys are the best placebo.
It is true that "1883" never shouts "Damn those who are different from me", "I am a natural boss", "rob you for your own good", etc., but these are implicit in the principles of narrative - as long as you enter the narrative, you must accept them, which is the highest state of anesthesia: the master plays the rules, the mediocre hands play the plot, and the bad hands play the settings.
"1883" is even like this, it also reflects on the "westward movement", but its basic way of thinking, such as "advanced can swallow backwardness", "I am civilization, you are barbaric", "spread civilization is naturally correct", etc. sneak into the audience's mind, then, its purpose has been achieved - of course, in the way of box office success.
Only by demonizing the nature of the west can the "westward movement" be sung and wept, and the colonizers become heroes. No matter how "Westerns" have been, at the root, generations of "Westerns" have adopted the same narrative method, and "a lie repeated a thousand times has become the truth", which seems to have the artistic appeal of the intestines.
Film and television is a popular art, which needs to "tell stories", but it cannot "tell stories for the sake of telling stories", and how to tell your own story well, "1883" does have a lot to learn from. For example, the story has to relate to the contemporary. Modern life is not perfect, in the process of pluralism, it is inevitable that new problems such as self-loss, bitterness, anxiety, and loss of meaning will inevitably appear, which are often not presented in the form of fierce conflicts of reality, and can only be soothed by standing at a philosophical height. The cowboys in "1883" are far from modern society, but they can grow themselves and pursue meaning, which are still enlightening today.
The three-line narrative in "1883" represents three kinds of life, and many modern people have similar mental processes at different stages, in other words, the three protagonists are part of the audience's self. In "1883", the story is expected, but it is the suspense that different "I" fell into the trap and how to break free. And no matter how complex the plot is, it cannot be compared with the audience's "self-substitution".