The symptoms of the times of the "avant-garde" text - several adaptations of "Half Fire, Half Seawater"

Wang Xiaolu/Wen

One

When teaching film history in the 1980s, I often mention several adaptations of Wang Shuo's novel "Half Flame, Half Seawater". The novel has been adapted four times. The earliest film version was Pearl River Film Studio Ling Qiwei's "Angels and Devils" (1987); Later, the film of the same name shot by director Xia Gang in 1988; Then came the 2008 film of the same name shot by Liu Fenfen; Another time is the adaptation of German director Peter Zeer, the male lead is played by "The Pianist" star Adrian Brody, this work is not known by many people, it is said that the director read the French version of the original book in 1999, fascinated by the novel, he found Wang Shuo to buy the copyright of the novel, and filmed it in 2001, but the story took place from Beijing to New York.

The author's research on films of the eighties mainly focuses on observing the degree of self-realization of the creators, as well as exploring the ideological and spiritual connotations of society and individuals at that time. To a certain extent, the protagonist of the film must first pass the recognition of the creator in order to obtain a certain angle of recognition from the audience, and the protagonist often places the director's affection and expectations on him, and at the same time, the arrangement of the protagonist's fate also reflects the creator's evaluation of the social environment, as well as the ethical state of the society at that time, including the director himself. Of course, we can also observe more subtle things from it.

In the case of "Half Flame, Half Seawater", whether it is a novel or a movie, we may feel a huge cultural gap when we watch it today. What was thought to be no problem at the time will be considered to be a huge problem today, and we can also see the rise and fall of the ideological level and ethical level of the times. For example, the female figures in many of Wang Shuo's novels look strange today. The girls in his novels all have love brains and strong male tendencies, they are often pure and infatuated, like riffraff young men, and seem to have a soft spot for the so-called "scumbags" of people now. Although the emotional model of girls liking bad men contains some physiological and cultural secrets, the novel's description of this masculine charm is very crude. A girl often easily falls in love with a bad boy and follows him with a dead heart. The male self-confidence embodied in Wang Shuo's novel is very strong, and it is mostly self-confidence for no reason, so it is presented as a certain male narcissism.

In fact, when I read Wang Shuo's novel in the early 1990s, the author already felt this. But the cultural atmosphere and gender consciousness at that time did not seem to make readers strongly question this. I have analyzed this phenomenon in Wang Shuo's text from another angle, and felt that the men in Wang Shuo's novels are not a typical one, and such character portrayals may come from the life experience of the writer's own era. For today's feminists, there must be some kind of offense, but at the time, Wang Shuo's novel was said to be the "most accepted work by readers" of all his novels. Therefore, here, by analyzing this text, we should be able to see the cultural level of that era from a certain angle by discerning the difference between the past and the present viewing experience.

Two

Analyzing this attitude towards women is an important point of view of this article, which can also be used to observe the zeitgeist of the 1980s and the subjectivity of filmmakers. In addition, at a certain level, the narrator (such as the director) and the narrated (the protagonist in the movie) have a certain isomorphism.

The screenwriter of Xia Gang's movie version is actually Wang Shuo himself (he and Ye Daying co-wrote), so the film must be more respectful of the original, and Peter Zell's version is translated Chinese as "Love the Hard Way" (Love the Hard Way), which can also be seen from this naming that he has made great adjustments to the original work.

Xia Gang's version of the movie is a story about the redemption of men. Wang Shuo's novel itself is also a man's confession and confession: Zhang Ming is a idle, unemployed young man whose daily livelihood is to engage in fairy jumping, go to hotel rooms to blackmail clients, and use his female friends as bait. At this time, he met Wu Di, a female college student, who quickly fell in love with the cynical him, but Zhang Ming just played with her, and the disappointed Wu Di became degenerate, she sold her body and committed suicide in insanity, and her suicide had an element of martyrdom. Zhang Ming was later sentenced and released from prison three years later and vacationed in a coastal city in the south. At this time, he met the female college student Hu Yi, and the movie changed Hu Yi to Hu Yu, which also means "also" or "the same", I think both names are suggesting that the fate of this girl and Wu Di is similar. Hu Yu was raped by two young men (who were actually wanted criminals) who pretended to be writers, she gave up on herself, feeling that she was "finished", Zhang Ming persuaded her, sent her out of the place, and went to find two young men to settle the account. Zhang Ming obtained the salvation of his soul by saving Hu Xuan.

The novel was first published in the second issue of Woodpecker magazine in 1986, and after its publication, it caused a huge response in society. Many people heard Wang Shuo's name from this novel. But it's so popular, I've always been a little bit puzzled. But it can amaze a European as well, which is quite surprising, perhaps because of some basic structure of human relationships contained in the text, which makes him feel a certain identity. As far as Chinese is concerned, the novel's first-person narrative featuring a male gangster must have been very brave at the time, and its excitement may be difficult for today's readers to grasp.

Today, when I think back to my perception at that time, I believe that my incomprehension came from the greasy feeling revealed in the male first-person narrative - although this novel was later included in the "Wang Shuo Anthology: Pure Love Volume". We don't know how the French version was translated, but it probably still gives the novel a unique appeal. A certain old-fashioned emotional structure that women are not bad and men do not love may be projected by young people's new love experiences, and the redemption of young men often contains an atmosphere of adolescent hormonal bursts and dark guilt. In short, this is a novel suitable for adaptation into a movie.

In my research on urban cinema in the 80s, the author found that there is a sequence of movie characters who are the bad boys who existed in some movies in the early eighties, and by the late eighties, they are more mature and conscious bad men in the film. If examined from the psychology of film creation and the relationship between time, these people are actually a group of people: most of them were born in the 60s of the last century, but in the 80s, they are still struggling to complete the construction of their personal subjectivity that has been infinitely delayed. It can be said that these successive characters are actually portraits of a generation of young people, and each specific person is a special aspect of a group. This is an important background for this article.

After "Half Flame, Half Seawater", Wang Shuo's novella "The Obstinate Lord" published in 1987 also had the image of this group of young men, but it had changed profoundly at that time. The novel was also adapted into a film of the same name in 1988. Wang Shuo's novels and the films adapted from his novels, in the mid-to-late 1980s, provided some new cinematic portraits whose protagonists were no longer able to fit within the story framework and cinematic space of the early eighties, and his films showed the meaninglessness of man.

The evil behavior of the protagonist in "Half Flame, Half Seawater" actually comes from the weightlessness of life, and his cynicism for the heroine also comes from this. In Huang Jianxin's "Reincarnation" (1988), the director amplifies the discovery of meaninglessness in Wang Shuo's original novel "Surfacing "Surface", which makes Shi Bi finally jump off the building and commit suicide, which is unprecedented in the history of Chinese cinema in its spiritual sense. The characters in "The Obstinate Lord" embody the complete betrayal of old values and the astonishing destructiveness of past ideologies.

In the past, we criticized Wang Shuo's works, thinking that they were just breaking the old structure and breaking the past culture, but there was no effort in construction. In today's broader vision of cultural criticism, asking creators to construct is actually an excessive requirement, but the subtle psychological structure of creators can be analyzed. These heroes, although very new, in the contrast, we still find their problems.

Three

In the discussion of this article, I often equate Wang Shuo and Xia Gang because of the strong consistency between the two texts in some aspects. Compared with "Love Too Hard" filmed in New York, Xia Gang's version is indeed the most respectful of the original, and it also reflects the narrative structure presented in the novel more strictly. The film is divided into two paragraphs, and both Wu Di and Hu Yi's passages are filmed. But the New York version of the movie does not have Hu Yi's paragraph, only Wu Di, and Wu Di's name is Claire, and Zhang Ming's name is Jack.

After Claire is abandoned, she begins to indulge herself and is deliberately caught by Jack. This plot is the same as Xia Gang's version. Jack is deeply tortured by Claire, which has this plot in both Wang Shuo's original book and Xia Gang's version, but the New York version greatly strengthens this plot. The biggest difference is that Wu Di committed suicide successfully, and when she died, "the tears in her eyes had not yet dried", while Claire's suicide was unsuccessful, she survived, and successfully got her degree. Jack expresses his heart in writing inside the prison. After he got out of prison, he contacted Claire and had this conversation: "I never blamed you, never. You know that stepping into the dark side of the moon is not the worst thing. "So what's the worst?" "Walking alone."

Claire expressed that she never condemned the other party. At this point, we can see that her non-accusation shows a kind of self-commitment. Going to the dark side of the moon is a life experience that needs to be borne by oneself, so there is no condemnation, and that dark experience becomes an important element of individual growth.

Both Xia Gang's version and Wang Shuo's novel version end with the death of the girl, and the girl's death brought Zhang Ming long-term condemnation, so in the Xia Gang version of the movie, we can see Zhang Ming, who burned incense on the island, expressing his inner instability. And at the end of the film, we hear the children's chorus "Looking for a friend" - "Seek, seek, find a friend, find a good friend." ”

This kind of children's chorus was repeated in urban films of the late 1980s, especially in the difficult and depressing moments in the main corner, when the song would suddenly sound. In the narrative of that year, this has a deep meaning. He seems to be presenting a huge spiritual gap, as if childhood dreams are shattered, and the falseness of everything that has been taught in the past is exposed, so this song actually contains a relatively strong criticism. Reinforcing this gap is obviously an evaluation of the outside world, but it also provides an explanation for the protagonist's spiritual growth.

In Wang Shuo's novels, many expressions are more direct. After all this, the hero's spirit does grow, he first educates a few young people who play with girls, sends them to the police station, and then ends with the novel: "I took the boat and train all the way home. Through the vast land. I saw the idyllic scenery of rice fields, fish ponds, canals, and villages and towns covered by pink walls; saw one noisy, crowded, smoke-billowing industrial city after another; See the famous mountains that roll and wind, the magnificent rivers that wind for thousands of kilometers; I saw thousands of cheerful girls everywhere. ”

There is regret for girls, sighs and pity for the general fate of girls. Everything in the past, including women's experiences of being killed, became fertilizer and nutrients for male growth. But throughout the film and the whole text, the girl's subjective consciousness has not been expressed at all. In the movie, before the girl leaves the island, she is in an irrational state of being comforted and persuaded by men. And the lyricism at the end of the novel is also very strange, as if everything in the past has made the male protagonist obtain some kind of metaphysical philosophy, and the thousands of cheerful girls who can be met everywhere have become some kind of unified existence, they need to be cared for, and their fate needs to be maintained through the male conscience and awakening.

In Chinese films at that time, sometimes the stronger the resentment of the female protagonist, the weaker the subjectivity, not that women cannot develop emotions of criticism and accusations to the outside world, but that she must also have self-choice and self-responsibility. She (Hu Yi) can express her disappointment in the world, but she should take up her part and grow into a self-responsible subject.

In Wang Shuo's novels and Xia Gang's version of the movie, this part does not exist. Thus, at the textual level, the girl becomes a destroyed and saved object, who has not taken control of her own destiny, has not rationally opposed the male-dominated situation, but is a completely dominated being.

In the film story that takes place in New York, Claire's own life experience develops into materials and nutrients for self-growth, showing a noble humanistic spirit of self-commitment, and also showing the dignity of women. Claire is not just an object of male pity, she is actively developing her own destiny and taking the initiative to tell her life story. The charm that exudes at the end of the film is that Claire is a "higher" being than Jack, and we will be illuminated by her light. In a way, Peter Zell's film embodies the cultural spirit that is closer to the values and standards of today's Chinese, and therefore much higher than the 1988 Chinese adaptation.

Four

From this comparison, you can actually see the character of the protagonist in the film, and see the spiritual tendency and depth of thought of the creator. Although the characters in Wang Shuo's novels and film adaptations played a revolutionary and liberating role in Chinese culture in the 80s, there is still a special need to evolve in some details of thinking and on some major cultural issues. On the surface, they defended women, and they discovered the fact that women are consumed, and their fragile fate, which may make the works seem feminist, but today they are non-feminist. This is the gap between the times, and we can see the difference between gender consciousness in the eighties and today. In any case, today's gender consciousness is actually going to a deeper place, more aware of the fate of women, and knows how to construct and solve the problem of inequality.

The above is an absolute contrast, if from a relative perspective, we must also see the background of the times behind this level of thought, and see the specific historical process of the evolution of the protagonist of the movie. In fact, Wang Shuo's novels and Xia Gang's movies, Zhang Ming, as the perpetrator, is also a victim to a certain extent. Obviously, Wang Shuo, the original creator of the text, never gave up and completely denied this character. However, this 80s text does not provide more historical explanations for Zhang Ming's spiritual outlook, and we may also seek a kind of "intertextuality" from the social texts of the time.

The characters in Wang Shuo's novels are more like existential characters, as protagonists, as criminals or morally corrupt people, their language occasionally leaks emotional and spiritual origins, such as from their ridicule of various political slogans of the time, which can probably show the long-standing source of their mental condition. The nursery rhyme "Looking for Friends" that often ripples in the film also provides a hint by chance, this song is a children's song widely circulated in China in the sixties and seventies of the last century, and its simple, bright tune and lyrics may bring not only nostalgia for the era of innocence and repentance for today's sins, it may have a deeper meaning.

In the context of the eighties, everything was quite mixed, such as open-mindedness and serious restrictions on youth, almost simultaneously. The unique protagonist image in Wang Shuo's works, the so-called riffraff image, most of them have no formal work, often self-employed or unemployed vagrants, at that time, this kind of individual who is separated from the existence of the collective unit, its character itself is suspicious, so the male protagonist in Wang Shuo's text often has a consciousness of "I am a bad person". But in the later "Obstinate Lord", this self-perception of "I am a bad person" has a reversal, or the self-perception of "I am a bad person", never from the heart, even in "Half is Flame, Half is Seawater", the hero often shows a strong sense of morality in other aspects while committing crimes, and their blackmail targets are also prostitutes, that is, some men who seek illegal sexual satisfaction. Therefore, the moral face of these urban youth is very ambiguous, and their attitude towards women is more complicated.

And all this is in the zeitgeist of the 1980s, but also in a long political historical process. We can see the difference in cultural standards from the Chinese and foreign adaptations of "Half Fire, Half Seawater", and see that the avant-garde texts of the 80s still have so much to reflect, and at the same time, we will also identify ourselves yesterday: as men, we used to evaluate women with such an attitude, and took them for granted for a long time, which is enough to stimulate our examination of our selves today.