Reporter | Pan Wenjie
Edit the | Yellow Moon
The situation-forced hero (Reluctant Hero) is no stranger to film and television audiences, and the heroine of the recent hit Korean drama "Dark Glory" Wen Dong Eun is an evil woman forced by the situation. In high school, she was tormented by school violence and tried to call the police, but the mastermind's family went up and down, and the police chief signaled that the case was characterized as a small friction between friends; The head teacher not only saw death and could not save it, but also cursed and beat Wen Dongen; She had to drop out of school, and when the mastermind of the murder got married and her children entered elementary school, she began her path of revenge, vowing to take away everything that made the perpetrator happy...
"Dark Honor" poster
Such an evil female character is loved and supported by the audience. Under the entry of the second part of "Dark Glory" that has not yet been broadcast, "Don't engage in whitewashing and harmonious ending!" Kill them! And "Qiao Mei kill me crazy!" Don't give me a harmonious society" has appeared in the comments of Gaozan.
Zhen Huan is also an evil woman forced by the situation. In the TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan", Zhen Huan was still very simple when she first entered the palace, and after experiencing cruel court life, she knew that she had to be worse to defeat her opponent. The process of watching "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is the process of watching the protagonist blacken step by step. In the end, Zhen Huan really framed the empress, and even persecuted the emperor, becoming the final winner of the palace fight.
If the unavoidable "evil woman" can still be justifiably "evil", then think about it, Motoko Haraguchi in "Black Leather Handbook" copied the criminal evidence of big people in a notepad and blackmailed him, which is not so much "forced by the situation" as more like enjoying it. Cersei Lannister in "A Song of Ice and Fire" has maintained her villain identity from appearance to the end, and the audience hates it from the beginning, but her momentum to the end cannot help but be impressive.
So, where is the charm of evil women?
A still from "Black Leather Manual"
Femme fatale with female spy
The 1944 American film Double Indemnity was hailed as a model of film noir, and the title was tentatively titled Incendiary Blonde. One of the reasons the film is known to the world is the image of Femme Fatale. The famous American film critic James Naremore said in the book "Film Noir: History, Criticism and Style" that the emergence of femme fatales is closely related to the progress of society, the development of the women's liberation movement and the reconstruction of women's self-perception. Director Zu Jiyan also pointed out in the article "A Brief Description of the Historical Origin and Development Changes of Femme Fatales" that men were tired of war in World War II, and when they returned home, they were surprised to find that more and more women had established themselves in society and showed their ability to survive. At this time, on the one hand, the men hurriedly drove the women back home, and on the other hand, they projected their fear of independent and authoritative women onto the screen, and the femme fatale image was born. These urban female characters are stylish and enchanting, with a fatal attraction to men. Scholar Li Oufan has also proposed that femme fatales are actually representatives of urban cultural allure.
"Double Indemnity" stills
In the 1987 American film "Fatal Attraction", a married man with a happy family accidentally meets a femme fatale, only to be pestered by her to harass him. Zu Jiyan said that the director's original design ended with a femme fatale killing a man and finally escaping punishment, which was unanimously opposed by the audience during the screening, and the ending of the released version was changed to a man and his wife working together to resist the femme fatale's deadly attack, and in the end, a good woman who was a good wife and mother killed the femme fatale to keep their fortress. Naremore describes the horror of the femme fatale as follows: "Although the femme fatale in film noir is usually punished, she is always a threat to the normal order of things, and in some cases the male protagonist is 'ruined' because she can't resist her charm." ”
The image of femme fatale is not uncommon in domestic film and television dramas. Although the "Seventeen Years" anti-special film is a unique genre in China, it is deeply influenced by foreign detective films and other genre films, and the female spy in it is the unforgettable femme fatale. Writer Gefei once said that he and his friends watched a movie "Heroic Tiger Guts" (1958), and they both liked the female spy in it:
"We secretly liked her in our hearts, and at the same time we felt deeply uneasy that we would like a female Kuomintang agent. Every time we watch this movie, the shame in our hearts brings our spirits to the brink of collapse. Especially in the end, such a wonderful person was shot and killed by our PLA soldiers, which made our hearts ache. ”
A still from "Hero Die Hard"
Why are bad women who smoke, drink, dance, and even belong to the opposing camp so attractive? In the book "Taoism and the World", Liu Dong, deputy dean of the Institute of Chinese Studies at Tsinghua University, explained the mystery: "In that era, is there anyone else who is qualified to dress so out of line and look so sexy?" Do you dare to portray the class sisters around you as so charming? "In this period, only politically absolutely wrong female spies are presented as the most enchanting and sexy stunners. The article "The Production Mechanism of the Mirror Image of Desire in the "Seventeen Years" points out that the female spy who exudes physical charm was a rare image of desire at that time, but "this mirror image is in harmony with the reactionary political identity, and this narrative mode shows the illegality of the political identity of the discourse of desire in the 'seventeen years' period". The greater the temptation of female spies, the stronger the firmness and loyalty of our army to the revolution will be shown. So, the female spy must fail. According to statistics, the "Seventeen Years" anti-special film involves a total of 17 female spies, 16 female spies as one of the main roles, and in the final end, 12 were arrested, 1 turned themselves in, and 2 were killed on the spot.
Whether it is a femme fatale or a female spy, it is a female body that is stared at by men. In Freud's vision, women symbolize the scarcity of phallus and the threat of castration, so the femme fatale evokes castration anxiety while bringing pleasure. Hollywood movies often calm male audiences by gazing at women while punishing or saving them. Mary Ann Doane, a professor of film and media at the University of California, Berkeley, notes in Femmes Fatales that because "femme fatales are positioned as evil and often punished or killed, her text eliminates a desperate reaffirmation of control by the threatened male subject," so "she is not a feminist subject, but a symptom of male fear of feminism." ”
In "Mad Woman in the Attic", American feminist theorists Gilbert and Guba talk about the two kinds of women under male power - angels and monsters: angels are the embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty, and monsters are seductive and dangerous, making people love and hate. Obviously, the contrast between the good wife and the femme fatale, the contrast between the revolutionary sister and the female spy, are all variations of angels and witches. But the problem is that any expression is not completely controlled by its producer, gaining its own life in the spread, and femme fatales can also be appropriated by women, because recapturing the cultural products created by men is exactly the survival strategy that women learn. Femme fatales offer women the opportunity to express and show, as Naremore puts it, as they embody a threat to the "normal order." The question is, is "normal order" really normal?
Double standards of desire and general loss of morality
If you want to list the evil women of our time, who is the first thing that comes to your mind? Shi Shunxiang, a literary researcher from Taiwan, nominated Bridget Jones in "BJ's Single Diary" at the beginning of his book "Evil Women's Power". Bridget Jones is at best cute and funny, why is she regarded as a wicked woman? It turns out that the author believes that good women in the past were to attach themselves to and please men, and to give unreservedly in intimate relationships; And the "evil woman" is narcissistic and full of various desires, generously exuding female lust - in this sense, Bridget Jones is an evil woman. She dares to have her own desires! Gu Yun, the author of the article "On the Innovation of the Image of "Evil Women" in Japanese Film and Television Dramas", combined with the relevant research results of the Japan Evil Women Research Institute, pointed out that "evil women" in a broad sense refer to attractive and thoughtful women who know how to use their strengths to satisfy their desires and achieve goals that are difficult for ordinary people to achieve.
Liu Xiaolei, author of "Drunken Lights Looking at the Red Chamber", sees that if you stay away from "narcissism, sex and aggression", you may lack vitality and vitality, and become dull. "Why do we think narcissism is bad? Sex is a flood beast? The attack power is terrible? It's because our culture doesn't accept, doesn't recognize. In her opinion, Pan Jinlian's pursuit of sex in "Jin Ping Mei" and Wang Xifeng's greed for power and money in "Dream of Red Mansions" are too strong, and it is "their desire, anger and plagiarized vitality" that make them special.
"Drunken to Pick the Light to See the Red Mansion"
By Liu Xiaolei
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Triple Bookstore 2019
This is a double standard of desire. If it is a man who is narcissistic, generous in lust and greed for power and money, then he is just a normal man; When it is a woman who shows desire, she may be called an "evil woman." Zhen Huan became an evil woman because she dared to rebel against her husband's power and monarchy for her personal affection, destroying the "normal order" of the feudal dynasty; Wen Dongen became an evil woman because she disrupted the "normal order" of the chaebol society, where the law of the jungle and government and business protect each other. But those societies may not be normal in the first place.
In recent years, many images of "evil women" have emerged in various countries, which are partly related to the advancement of women's status. The article "A Brief Analysis of the Structure and Development and Change of the Image of Bad Women in Modern Korean Dramas" sees that with the improvement of Korean women's level of education, participation in politics and politics, and employment, women's social status has been improved, and from the 70s of the last century to the present, the image of bad women has changed from a bad mother-in-law who only knows how to make it difficult for her daughter-in-law to a proud and complacent rich lady, or a poor woman who climbs up at any cost and desperately in order to change her life.
Not only can the supporting characters be bad people, but the protagonists can also become bad women who "unfold their personalities without hesitation, are entangled in various desires, and constantly pursue ideals". Jin Tao, author of "A Study of the Image of Evil Women in the Literary Works of Keigo Higashino," sees that many evil women in Japan—especially Keigo Higashino's women—"live in an era of gradual rise of women in a patriarchal society." In their quest for development, these women are full of contradictions between reality and ideals, and they inevitably use some extraordinary means in dealing with these contradictions."
"Harem Zhen Huan" stills
Putting aside the analysis from a gender perspective, the evil woman narrative also reveals a certain "worse than bad" atmosphere. Tao Dongfeng, a professor at the School of Humanities of Guangzhou University, pointed out in his article "Comparing Bad Psychology Corrupts Social Morality" that the social atmosphere of cynicism and opportunism has been projected into many literary and artistic creations, and he used "The Legend of Zhen Huan" as an example to believe that this TV series promotes the value of "worse than bad" to the public. Tao Dongfeng said that the fundamental problem behind this is that "there is a soil that encourages bad learning or an environment that encourages evil in real society." Zhou Zhiqiang, a professor at Nankai University's College of Arts, also noticed the resentment and desire that permeated it when analyzing officialdom novels. He took the online novel "The Peak of Power" as an example to point out that in the face of corrupt elements, the way the protagonist takes is to use stronger violence to fight the violence of the underworld and evil, and use more arrogant methods to fight the arrogance of the underworld forces; People only want to use the same dirty tricks to win, and even the desire to imagine justice and fairness has disappeared.
Jung Jae-hyung, a professor of film at Dongguk University in South Korea, once said that serious crimes and corruption cases in South Korea are endless, but investigations and punishments are not fully enforced, so the public has begun to imagine personal revenge, and movies and TV dramas reflect this mentality. From this point of view, works such as "Dark Glory" tell us that more people believe that they can only win in the cold logic of selfishness and struggle than the ideal of justice. In such a moral atmosphere, the evil woman has often become a kind of spiritual sustenance for ordinary people, she represents the vulnerable group who fight against privilege, and will stop at nothing to achieve fairness and justice in her mind.
Resources:
Jin Tao, "A Study on the Image of Evil Women in the Literary Works of Keigo Higashino"
Li Ting's "Brief Analysis of the Image Construction and Development of Bad Women in Modern Korean Dramas"
Han Min, "The Production Mechanism of the Mirror Image of Desire in Seventeen Years"
Gu Yun "On the Innovation of the Image of "Evil Women" in Japanese Film and Television Dramas"
Tao Dongfeng "Worse psychology corrupts social morality"
Allegory Criticism: An Outline of Contemporary Chinese Literature and Cultural Studies, Zhou Zhiqiang, Peking University Press, 2020-1
Film Noir: History, Criticism and Style, by James Naremore, translated by Xu Zhanxiong, China Academy of Art Press, 2020-8
"Drunken Lights Look at the Red Chamber" Liu Xiaolei Life, Reading, New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore 2019-6
Femmes Fatales, Mary Ann Doane, Routledge, 1991-8-22
(Unless noted, the pictures in this article are all from Douban)