Look at the picture and talk, guess where the drift went -
Unexpectedly, these days, I have come to Xining to participate in the 15th First Youth Film Exhibition!
Every day is a fulfilling (saturated) day of watching movies, watching interviews, and writing manuscripts.
Counting, I've watched a dozen films.
This year's First Youth Film Festival, there are many types of films, some telling their own growth, some speaking for small people...
But what resonates most is the special women's unit.
Like the opening "Barbarian Invasion", it is the reflection and experience of female directors finding themselves after becoming a mother.
"A River of Spring Water" is the story of the girl Rong Rong, who works alone in a foot wash shop and raises her brother (actually her son).
It tells the emotional betrayal of women who are deceived and used, and there is no lack of warmth of mutual help between women.
There is time, drift and talk slowly.
What I want to talk about today is triggered by a skirt, a girl's questioning and resistance -
Skirt Scissors Cloth
Director Wu Feng, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, directed and wrote the first film "Bus March" in 2014.
Seven years later, with a more mature work "Skirt Scissors Cloth" to the audience.
At its premiere on July 28th, it won the third place in the audience's honorary vote, and after the film ended, the scene was full of applause.
The story is not complicated.
The protagonist in the movie, Xu Maomao (played by Gao Zhaoqingya), just doesn't want to wear a school uniform and wants to wear a beautiful skirt.
Unexpectedly, it was denigrated and suppressed from all sides.
I believe that most girls who are in adolescence, or have experienced puberty, including Piao, have had similar thoughts:
"The school uniform is too ugly, can I not wear it?"
The fat and loose school uniform covered all the curves of the body, and the whole person looked shorter.
Beauty, no way to talk about.
What's worse is that in school, everyone wears the same, with similar short hair, similar shoes, and even gender, which is blurred, girls and boys, look the same.
The beauty of many ordinary girls is drowned in this uniformity.
Screenshot | "Hello Old Time"
Just want to be a little bit more beautiful, a little different, wrong?
skirt
The story takes place in 2002.
The girl Mao Mao, still in the first year of junior high school, is like most of us, a very ordinary girl in the class.
My father was the workshop director of the flour factory and my mother was a supermarket cashier.
Ordinary-looking, round little fat face, there are still a few pimples hanging.
Her grades are ordinary, and her status in the class is also ordinary, even if someone deliberately bullies her, she does not dare to say a word.
However, she seems to be silent at school and at home.
But he has his own little preference: he likes beautiful skirts.
My favorites to watch are victoria's secret girls on TV and beautiful clothes in magazines.
One day, a movie was played in the factory compound, and I heard that it was "inappropriate for children".
Mao Mao and his good friend sneaked in to see that the woman on the screen was dancing in a slip dress with sequins, feminine and sexy.
In that conservative town, such drama is really rare.
The heroine's flying skirt makes Mao Mao unable to open her eyes.
A friend and discipline committee member in the class said in her ear, "This woman doesn't look like a good thing, her tits are about to be exposed."
Mao Mao's response was: But, how beautiful.
At that time, Mao Mao had vaguely realized that the things that had been restless in her heart and were about to break out of the cocoon-
The first yearning for "beauty".
She began to secretly observe her body, stroking her collarbone, her slowly developing breasts, and her own small belly that could not be reduced.
I even fantasized that I could wear the kind of sequin-glitter dress I had in the movie.
Stand in the center of the stage and shine.
But, budding is just sprouting, it does not dare to grow.
In that environment, beauty is not allowed.
What gave Mao Mao courage was the new transfer students in the school.
During the morning exercises, she appeared in a ponytail and in a homemade school uniform.
Short white sleeves, behind which are self-painted patterns, and a school uniform skirt that is so short that it is only knee-length.
It was particularly eye-catching in a group of girls with short haircuts and fat school uniforms.
Mao Mao watched the girl do what she did not dare to do, and her eyes were full of envy.
What encourages Mao Mao to boldly pursue beauty is this scene.
One day, she followed the girl to the barn.
Find a girl lying in a barn, lazily flipping through the fashion magazine ME.
In the sunlight, the girl's small white vest, the skirt with red plaid on a white background, outlined her white, slender legs.
A girlish, heart-pounding beauty.
This kind of beauty does not need to be covered up, it is so generously revealed.
In fact, Mao Mao is not ignorant of fashion, she even appreciated the charm of "fashion" in advance than any girl in the class.
The copy of "ME" that the transfer student opened, Mao Mao had already read, was her good friend, the tailor's son Chen Dali (Dou Xinhao), and showed it to her.
She just didn't dare.
But the provocative behavior of the transfer school gave her courage.
In order to make her notice herself, Mao Mao prepared to make a special dress herself and carry out her first rebellion.
On the school uniform skirt, she deliberately pieced together a love heart out of rags, and added lace to the inner lining of the skirt to make the skirt larger.
Early in the morning, he changed into the short sleeves that the school stipulated that he could only wear on June 1, and rolled up the sides of the school uniform, vaguely revealing his waist.
On this day, Mao Mao also became the most eye-catching girl in the school like a transfer student.
But when she looked for the figure of the ponytail with her eyes.
Only to find that the girl's ponytail had been cut off, and the cute skirt was missing, replaced by a wide school uniform like theirs.
The beautiful disappeared, followed by the failure of Mao Mao's first fashion revolution -
He was called by the teacher to come to the parents and trained fiercely in front of his face.
"Students have to look like students, so inconsistent like anything."
In the movie, the skirt does not just refer to the school uniform skirt that Mao Mao has modified by itself.
It also means, maverick.
It means, a repressed pursuit of beauty.
At this point, I can also understand, Mao Mao, why don't you dare?
Because only like others, is it safe.
And the pursuit of what is repressed comes at a price.
scissors
Scissors, in a way, are a metaphor for "correction."
In the movie, beauty and self are forbidden and need to be corrected.
A girl, as long as she begins to focus on dressing, teachers or parents, the first reaction is, "You fell in love early" and "you learned badly."
Women who wear beautiful skirts are also stigmatized and considered immodest.
This is the price that Xu Maomao must face in the pursuit of beauty.
Xu Maomao's mother, who also loved beauty at that time, wanted to become a model.
But in a conservative, derogatory aesthetic environment, how outrageous it is to be a model.
Not a good girl's hat, say buckle it.
So she gave up her resistance and became a supermarket cashier with a tight collar and only gray overalls every day.
In the family, she is also a voiceless mother.
Because her husband, Xu Maomao's father, was a pair of scissors in that environment.
In the film, he disciplines his daughter directly and rudely in an almost intrusive way.
There was no knock on the door, so he broke into the room and shouted that Mao Mao, who was changing clothes, should hurry out for breakfast.
Xu Maomao was forced to run for class president, although she did not have the slightest desire to become an official.
After learning that Mao Mao was wearing "strange clothes" at school, on the way home, he saw his daughter being sneered at by her classmates.
The father, who had lost face, was completely enraged.
When he arrived home, Mao Mao, who was sitting on the ground, was slapped by his father.
Finally, the father took the scissors and cut the skirt in half.
He only hopes that his daughter will have a job and give him face.
What if I don't obey?
beat.
This way of education was described by Xu Maomao's father as: wheat does not shell off its shell and cannot become flour.
In "Dog Thirteen", there is also such a plot -
The daughter insisted on finding her dog named Einstein, so she ran away from home, and after the grandfather broke his leg, the grandmother lost it at night in order to find the granddaughter.
Because of this, the father was furious and dragged his daughter with a beating.
Although both fathers showed guilt and regret after the violence.
However, this kind of rough education is like a pair of scissors.
Trim the branches that the child grows in the eyes of the parents and does not "obey".
Does it work? effective.
However, it could not stop the possibility of this branch emerging again.
They don't understand their daughter's thoughts, much less why they behave in such a "rebellious" way.
The aphasia under family communication can only be corrected in a simple and rude way using "scissors".
But does "scissors" represent only homeschooling?
At school, after the pony-tailed girl had her long hair cut off, Mao Plucked Up the Courage to Ask Her How She Had Come To Be Like This.
The girl said, "I'm too lazy to get angry with them." ”
It may seem like an understatement, but it is more like a helpless compromise.
In "Looks Beautiful", the square gun is chased by the kindergarten director behind the ass and cuts a small braid, and the big cold scissors become the protagonist of the picture.
The little man's square gun ran crying under the scissors.
In the general environment of discipline and unification, no matter where it is, there will always be an iron scissors that rings.
It cuts out all thoughts related to "personality" and "self" at all times.
Let these girls who are scared by the "scissors" remind themselves that they should not grow something different from others.
However, "Skirt Scissors Cloth" not only makes scissors a means of discipline.
It also gives "scissors" another meaning -
Break through the shackles.
There is a shot of Mao Mao holding scissors and cutting open a black cloth.
With a crisp "bang", the cloth was cut cleanly and crisply.
This "breaking" also opened the knot in her heart.
Unlike many traumatic youth films, the scissors in Skirt Scissors Cloth represent "correction".
However, it also depends on who holds it in his hand.
When it is held in the hands of fathers, it is discipline and repression.
But when it was put into the hands of the Xu Maomao, it became a weapon to break prejudices and correct old bad habits.
Only by daring to pick up the scissors in your hand can you truly "find yourself".
cloth
A soft, moldable, but also full of tough cloth.
Here, cloth is the material used to make skirts.
However, it is also the embodiment of the self, a colorful, full of possible "courage".
It is a kind of creative bud that is far from homework and books, or an imagination of the future that is not marginal and imaginative, or even a "rebellion" that we once dared to run counter to the requirements of parents and schools.
It may not be so pretty, like a clumsy rag puzzle on the skirt of The Hairy Hair.
However, it is a rare reflection and awakening.
Wearing its hairy hair, it seems to be asking the world out loud —
What the hell is wrong with wearing a nice dress.
In the movie, cloth also represents another voice: no.
Cloth is a tool that Xu Maomao wants to make a difference.
It was also a "no" she shouted to all prejudices and denials.
In rebelling against his father's forcing him to run for class cadre.
Mao Mao tried it, and she trembled and said the first sound in her life, "No."
But he was soon stunned by his father.
Learning to say no doesn't mean rebellion;
Hope is different, nor is it depraved.
In the eyes of teachers, classmates, and parents, wearing a skirt is not obedient, and it should be denied.
To this end, Mao Mao wrote a line of words in grievance -
I want to wear what I like
I'm not a bad boy
No, it's not.
There is such a detail in the movie "Carnival".
After Xiaowen was told by her mother about the rape, she returned home from the police station, and her mother pulled open her closet and pulled out her flower skirt.
I'll make you wear some more inconsequential clothes
Beautiful, personal, like the brightly colored ladybug that appears at the beginning of the film.
Mao Mao said that the English name of the ladybug is called "lady bug".
In her understanding, emphasizing femininity and the pursuit of beauty is a mistake that needs to be corrected.
But who is the wrong person—
But there's nothing wrong with a bird wanting to fly
The wrong guy with the shotgun was the one who took the shotgun
Although, now more girls, perhaps more fortunate than Mao Mao, do not need to be suppressed in the pursuit of beauty and personality.
However, the sound of what a girl should become is still everywhere.
Standards are changing, and the negation of self and personality has never stopped.
It's just that people of different eras are carrying different shotguns.
Even when they grow up, girls are still subtly influenced by these ideas and disciplines.
They become anxious about their bodies.
I am also often worried about how to show a little bit of feminine beauty under the premise of ensuring my own safety.
Dress boldly, be bold, and be sexy, and it may become an excuse for some violations after the crime, those "sluts humiliation" that show beauty and guilt, both overt and covert.
Where does this inexplicable anxiety come from?
Maybe we all have a girl named Mao Mao hidden in our hearts, crying and writing on the paper:
I want to wear what I like, what's wrong.
What this film wants to explore, express, is not complicated.
The pursuit of beauty, the search for self, should be a beautiful thing, but it is often considered ugly and vulgar.
Women who grow up under this kind of discipline and repression, from the beginning of youth ignorance, have been sown with the seeds of unconfidence and anxiety.
They have long been accustomed to hiding themselves, not to do things that are different, not to become the first birds, and to exhaust themselves in the good old days.
Why are so many girls not confident? And there are so many "Puxin men"?
Think of the flower skirts that were once ridiculed, think of the long hair that was forced to be cut, think of your own body, how you are no longer under your control.
It's not just a "what do I want to wear" issue.
It is a question of "how can I be unfettered and become the person I want to be?"
At the end of the film, Mao Mao, regardless of the situation, regains the flower skirt that his father cut and wears it after running away from home.
She passed a "road of equality".
What is true equality?
When you put on a skirt, when you look in the mirror, when you put on lipstick, when you put on a pair of high heels.
Perhaps this is the first step towards equality.
And the next step is when you don't want to wear a skirt, don't want to dress up, don't want to wear lipstick, don't want to wear a pair of high heels.
Yes, don't be defined by people, label you.
There is no need to leave, there is no need to rebel alone.
There is no need to pay a heavy price for this.
Perhaps it is called freedom and equality.
Freedom, in the final analysis, is the right to choose.