The screening of the film "White Deer Plain" and the widespread controversy it caused was undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy cultural events of 2012. The reason why this film, which is neither directed by super-top directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, has been so strong at the box office and not known by word of mouth is undoubtedly related to its prominent origins - it is based on a novel of the same name written 20 years ago and hailed as a "landmark in contemporary Chinese literature". For this reason, the relevant questions mainly revolve around the comparison between the film and the novel, such as "whether the adaptation reflects the essence of the original work", "whether the film editing is too obtrusive", "whether the audiovisual elements are noisy", etc. (1) - the failure of the film seems to further set off the success of the novel. Reed, the first screenwriter of the movie "White Deer Plain", expressed his despair for Chinese films in an interview with a reporter in a bitter tone, "With the current situation of Chinese filmmakers, let's not touch "White Deer Plain"" (2), expressing despair for Chinese films. Obviously, this long-awaited and ill-fated film brings audiences and critics to think on multiple levels: from the abridgement of film to examine the contemporary Chinese film censorship system and trigger a reflection on the literary and artistic system, from the director's artistic concept and ethics to discuss the ideological situation of contemporary Chinese artists and even intellectuals, from the difference between film and fiction to compare text media and video media, to discuss the impact of new media and even mass media on contemporary life... For the work of Chinese intellectual circles to "return to the 1980s" in recent years, the film "White Deer Plain" provides us with a rare opportunity, not only to understand the "failure" of film and the "success" of fiction from a new perspective, but also to compare two different "storytelling eras", and then examine and think about the cultural politics of contemporary China.
In China's "new period literature" after the Cultural Revolution, there are not many works similar to "White Deer Plain" that have been well received and paid attention for nearly 20 years. It has not only won the Mao Dun Literature Award, the highest award for contemporary Chinese novels, but also consistently ranked among the "100 Chinese Literary Books in 100 Years" selected by different institutions. The enduring prestige of a novel is naturally due to its originality in the eyes of critics—"Chen Zhongzhong has climbed to a new commanding height, and he has also greatly surpassed his contemporaries" (3). However, in the author's view, discussing the achievements of "White Deer Plain" from this perspective may ignore the intrinsic connection between this work and the mainstream literature of the 1980s, and thus ignore its condensation and expression of the political unconscious and emotional structure of Chinese intellectual circles in the 1980s.
Readers familiar with contemporary Chinese literature need little hint to see the connection between White Deer Plain and the literature of the 1980s. The basic themes of Chinese literature during this period, such as the "de-revolutionization" narrative of the post-revolutionary era created by "Scars-Reflective Literature", the identification and conversion of traditional culture by "root-seeking literature", the humanization and desire treatment of history by "new historical novels" and "new realistic novels", and the artistic techniques of "magical realist literature", are all presented in the novel "White Deer Plain". Although the novel officially met readers in 1993 (first serialized in "Contemporary" and then published in a single edition by the People's Literature Publishing House), there are good reasons to understand it as a work of the 1980s. Not only because the conception and writing of "White Deer Plain" took place in the 80s (4), but more importantly, because this novel is a concentrated expression of the "de-revolutionization" of the 80s, the "politics of de-politics". In terms of ideas and knowledge, "White Deer Plain" is not innovative, it reorganizes history with the historical view of the 80s, leaving us with a game of tradition and modernity, both new and old Chinese stories, and like a storage box, preserving for us the ideological remains of the 80s that have been ghostified in China today.
One
As the most important ideological legacy of the "post-revolutionary era", "de-revolutionization" is expressed in the novel "White Deer Plain". Bailu Yuan is a "shovel" that you compete with me, and it is also a "mirror" that reflects the details of modern Chinese politics: the hardworking and kind black baby, the first generation of red elements in Bailu Plain, got involved in politics by "wind and snow", and since then, it has been swept away by strong social storms. He constantly changed his identity, but never found his place. After being appointed deputy county magistrate for his great merits in planning uprisings in the Liberation War, Heiwa was secretly framed by county magistrate Bai Xiaowen and brutally suppressed; And Bai Xiaowen, who was mixed into the revolution, half-hearted, cunning and insidious, was like a fish in water and leisurely; The naïve and simple Bai Ling, who betrayed the feudal family for the revolution, was born into death in the White Terror, was transferred to the revolutionary base area because it was difficult to hide in the enemy-occupied area, but was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of being a hidden agent during a purge of the Qing Party in the base area. In prison, she "howled like a she-wolf for three days and three nights", denouncing in front of the instigator of this "introvert" for "mutilating the revolution in the name of high-sounding"; Bai Jiaxuan's brother-in-law, the intellectual Old Master Zhu, still had squires in the Republic of China who supported the compilation of books and opened the library, but after liberation, the books were also burned, and the tomb was smashed... Decades have passed, and the political movements experienced by the original people in the novel all begin in farce and end in farce without exception. Readers can't help but ask: What kind of "liberation" is this?
Such "White Deer Plain" completely rewrites the class antagonism constructed by the "revolutionary historical novels" of the 50s and 70s of the 20th century. For readers familiar with the historical narrative of the 20th-century revolution, the deconstructive significance of the novel White Deer Plain is self-evident. Its objects are a series of revolutionary epic novels such as "The Sun Shines on the Sangan River", "Stormy Rain", "Red Flag Spectrum", "History of Entrepreneurship", "Sunny Day" and so on, and the conflict with "Red Flag Spectrum" is even more short. As a classic work of Chinese literature in the 50s and 70s, "Red Flag Spectrum" published in 1957 shows the growth history of Chinese peasants, describing the life history and revolutionary history of three generations of peasants living in the central Hebei Plain at the same time as "White Deer Plain", and they launched an indomitable struggle against the landlords in different ways. The first generation of peasant Zhu Laogong clashed with the landlord Feng Laolan in order to defend the 48 acres of public land in Suojing Town, and after the defeat, he vomited blood and died, Zhu Laogong's son Zhu Laozhong was forced to leave his hometown, and returned to his hometown a few years later to take revenge, through Jiang Tao, Yun Tao and other generations of Zhu Yan's two generations to get acquainted with the Communist Party, under the party's education, grew up with the next generation of peasants into glorious proletarian fighters and embarked on the battlefield of class struggle. These three generations of peasants represent three different eras: the first generation of peasants represented by Zhu Laogong went into battle shirtless, following the path of the old-style peasants who spontaneously resisted, and therefore were bound to fail; The second generation of peasants represented by Zhu Laozhong is a growing group of peasants, from individual resistance to conscious revolution, from family resistance to class struggle, Chinese peasants have experienced a difficult transformation of modernity; The third generation of Dagui, Ergui, Yuntao, and Jiang Tao were born at the right time, and they were awakened peasants who had grown into the main force of the revolution.
In terms of novel structure, "White Deer Plain" can be regarded as an imitation of "Red Flag Spectrum" (5). The stories of the two novels take place from the late Qing Dynasty to modern times, and the locations are in rural China - "Red Flag Spectrum" takes place in the Central Hebei Plain, "White Deer Plain" is in the Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi, and the main body of the story is also the story of two and three generations - "Red Flag Spectrum" is Zhu Yan's family, "White Deer Plain" is the White Deer family, and more importantly, both novels take the second generation of farmers in two families as the protagonists of the novel, carrying and expressing the writer's view of history - "Red Flag Spectrum" is Zhu Laozhong and "White Deer Plain" It was Bai Jiaxuan... Despite all the similarities, differences in historical views have led to very different fates for the same generation of peasants in different texts. Although the economic status of the villagers in Bailu Village is very different, only the Bailu family owns a large area of land, and most of the others rely on living to make a living, but each destiny and farmers regard it as natural for the landlord to work for the landlord. The landed gentry in the novel not only do not have the cruelty of the exploiters, but are models of morality, they are upright, kind, hardworking, solemn, and uncompromising loyal. The protagonist Bai Jiaxuan treats the "long worker" Lu San like his own "brother". What exists between them is no longer the relationship of exploitation and exploitation, but the family atmosphere and ethical affection full of deep warmth—a daily routine that transcends abstract class narratives. On the other hand, Heiwa's group of revolutionaries have more or less some moral defects: for example, Heiwa broke the waist pole of Bai Jiaxuan, who had funded his own study, and his behavior obviously did not match Renyi; Although Lu Zhaopeng has no feelings with his wife because he is dissatisfied with the arranged marriage, his determination and categorical indifference to the wife who has no fault and serves her family wholeheartedly does not seem to arouse the reader's sympathy and forgiveness.
It can be said that from this point of view, "White Deer Plain" overturned the case for the landlord and gentry class under the standard of moral judgment, and also turned the case on the revolutionary narrative. Unlike the Red Flag Spectrum, which portrays the protagonist Zhu Laozhong as a historical subject who continues to "grow" and eventually finds his place in the "history" that has already unfolded, Bai Jiaxuan in "White Deer Plain", "the last patriarch and the last man of the Chinese family culture that Chen faithfully contributed to China and the world"(6), is a peasant hero who resists "growth", resists progress with historical cycling, and responds to changes with immutability. In Chen Zhongzhong's own words: "The last patriarch (Bai Jiaxuan) in the "White Deer Plain" I want to express, according to the psychological structure and character constructed by the "Township Covenant" that he adheres to, faces challenges from various forces, and Lu Zilin, who has equal economic power but violates the spirit of the "Township Covenant", is a potential opponent; Hei Wa, who is rebellious in nature, and Xiao'e, who is based on the basic requirements of physiological instincts, are absolutely intolerable to Bai Jiaxuan's psychological judgment; Zhaopeng and his daughter Bai Ling, who consciously rebel with new ideas, sigh in vain, this is the strength determined by his psychological structure, and the only opponent who is difficult to present self-confidence; The complete depravity of Bai Xiaowen, who he relied on, completely escaped, hurt him the most, but could not disrupt his psychological order. So much so that Chen Zhong finally concluded: "Bai Jiaxuan is Bailuyuan." ”⑦
The similarities and differences in the structure of the novels and the historical subjectivity of the characters in the two works point to a diametrically opposed concept of history:
At the end of the first volume of "Red Flag Spectrum", it is written that Zhu Laozhong, a second-generation peasant who has completed his growth, risked his death to rescue Zhang Jiaqing, a young professional revolutionary. The novel ends with a strongly symbolic image that often appears in the works of that era:
At this time, Zhu Laozhong bent down and walked up to the mound, turned his back on his hand, and raised his head to look at the air. In the vast sky, a large cloud of thick clouds sprang up, the wind and clouds changed, and he was longing for a great ideal in his heart, and said with a smile: "Heaven! It's like letting the tiger go back to the mountain! ”
This sentence foreshadows: On the Central Hebei Plain, a magnificent storm will be set off!
The storm of "Red Flag Spectrum" is also sweeping "White Deer Plain". From the "wind and snow" of "all power belongs to the agricultural cooperative", to the dispute between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, to the continuous "rebellion" and "rebellion", and then to the "rebellion" during the "Cultural Revolution", "White Deer Plain" understands it as a historical catastrophe of common anger between people and gods, and the novel uses the mouth of Mr. Zhu, the soul character of "White Deer Plain", to express criticism and curse for this "magnificent storm": "Look how long you toss! ”
The intertextuality of "White Deer Plain" and "Red Flag Spectrum" and their dialogue relationship with revolutionary narratives may be refreshing to today's moviegoers, but they are no strangers to readers of contemporary literature. As the most important category of literature in the 50s and 70s, "revolutionary historical novels" tell the growth story of modern Chinese historical subjects, including peasants and intellectuals, that is, how individual people eventually grow into class fighters through overcoming personal emotions (including family affection, love and hatred, etc.), telling individuals into a huge historical narrative. When the literature of this era developed to the mainstream literature represented by "model plays" in the later period, it had been abstracted to the extreme: all the characters had become symbols that expressed the metaphysical historical essence, such as "Red Lantern", and the family formed by three generations of revolutionary subjects had nothing to do with natural blood relations, but became a representation of abstract class relations - the pinnacle of "revolutionary modernity" was also its end point.
The "return" of literature in the "new era" is marked by the return of human nature, the "individuality" that has been hollowed out by the revolution. Similar to Kitajima's poetry "In the era without heroes, I just want to be a person" and Shu Ting's poetry "human nature" cry "Instead of exhibiting a thousand years on the cliff, it is better to cry on the shoulder of your lover for one night", which became the strong voice of the era in the 80s. From the beginning of "scars-reflective literature" to "new historicism" and "new realistic novel", Chinese literature in the 80s embarked on the road of no return to "humanize" and "desire" history under the tide of "de-revolutionization".
Interestingly, perhaps due to the mass nature of video media, mass media such as film and television are not synchronized with literature in the expression of the ideology of the 80s. Many years later, the literary exploration of the 80s was able to complete its "cross-lingual practice", which became the "main theme" of Chinese film and television and triggered lasting repercussions. For example, the popular revolutionary historical dramas "The Years of Burning Passion", "The Sky of History", "Bright Sword", etc., which were popular in previous years, symptomatically expressed the human nature and desire imagination expressed in the literature of the 80s. These works have completely changed the "tall and complete" image of heroes in the revolutionary narrative of the 50s and 70s, highlighting and expanding the "humanity" of the characters, and allowing the personality to appear as "original", that is, the so-called "writing people as people". Just as "White Deer Plain" tells the "revolutionary" road of Hei Wa, Bai Xiaowen and others, "The Sky of History" tells the "revolutionary history" of the protagonist Liang Daya: the betrothed daughter-in-law would rather hang herself because she does not want to marry him. After escaping the pursuit and killing of the Japanese army, Liang Daya always calculated to go to the Kuomintang army to "mix with the regiment commander and commander", even if he stayed in the guerrilla group in the end, the motive was neither for the anti-Japanese nor for the revolution, but because a young and beautiful female eighth road appeared at the door. ”
Similarly, the popularity of "Bright Sword" is also because it completely subverts the image of the Eighth Route Army in the revolutionary historical narrative: the "Eighth Route Army" here is a group of "bandits" in uniform, the audience cannot see the military style, military discipline, the support of the people, the source of their vitality that cannot die in a hundred battles, all the victories, touches and excitement of this team come from the personal "iron-blooded" spirit of a "soldier" named Li Yunlong. "Bright Sword" no longer digs deep to portray the character characteristics of this character, but tries to exaggerate and amplify his murderous face and "banditry". - How similar this is to "White Deer Plain", Heiwa is a "bandit" for a while, and a "communist army" for a while. This kind of revolutionary historical narrative of "relying on banditry revolution" and "relying on bandit gas to resist Japan" opened by the movie "Red Sorghum" is exactly the only way for "new historical novels" to deconstruct history in Chinese literature in the 80s, and it is the origin of the protagonists of "new historical novels" retreating from "revolutionary heroes" to "reckless heroes" and even "bandit heroes".
Two
The spiritual connection between "White Deer Plain" and the 80s is not only manifested in its "de-revolutionization" value choice, but also in the identification and return to traditional culture. After the "farewell to the revolution", how to rebuild values has become a challenge for Chinese thinking. In the "cultural fever" marked by the "Chinese Culture Academy" and the "Culture and China" series of books that emerged in Chinese thought circles in the mid-80s, literature played an irreplaceable role, and corresponding to literary creation, it was represented by the "root-seeking literature" of the 80s.
The "Renyi White Deer Village" in the novel "White Deer Plain" is the fruit of the process of writers imagining and dressing up traditional culture with literature in the 80s: a "utopia" in troubled times. Of course, there will be contradictions and disputes within Bailu Village, but the culture that supports Bailu Village has invented a set of effective civilization mechanisms, a township rules and people's covenant with etiquette as the core and pillar. The township rules and people's covenant in "White Deer Plain" is the so-called "township covenant", founded by Lü Dalin, a member of the Confucian Guan Middle School school and a scholar of the Song Dynasty, "counting from the Song Dynasty when Lü wrote the "Xiangyu" to the beginning of the 20th century when the Xinhai Revolution occurred, this "Xiangyu" has been recited by the descendants of the original generation for eight or nine hundred years."
Since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has gained its legal status as the spiritual support of China's political and social order. It draws on the nourishment of Taoism and Legalism, establishes a hierarchical order between heaven, earth and people, takes the moral goal of "harmony" and "sameness" as the initiative, takes the ethical practice of "propriety" and "benevolence" as the driving force, and takes education as the basic means, creates a spiritual glue in the huge gap between centralized power and local management, and constructs a continuity and stability based on secular academic and bureaucratic ethics in the game between "country" and "family", so that rural autonomy under centralized power can be realized. Under the "impermanence" of "unity must be divided" maintains the permanence of the ethical order. The "Township Covenant" is a local code that carries the spirit and practical means of this Confucian ideal, and is a popularization of Confucianism, and its content is actually the standard for doing things for people. Because its text is easy to understand, concise and easy to remember, it is widely circulated. Especially in Bailuyuan, the birthplace of Lu Dalin, this "Township Covenant" is even more regarded as the golden rule. More than 80 percent of the original people were illiterate, but they all religiously abided by the text of the Township Covenant and regarded it as the rules of their own people. The sixth chapter of the novel writes that Bai Jiaxuan implements the "Township Covenant" in the Bailu family, and "for a while, the sound of the crop men reading the "Township Covenant" was heard in the ancestral hall every night." Petty theft, gambling, fighting, quarrels and scolding the street are gone, and "the people of Bailu Village have become gentle and polite, and even their voices are soft and meticulous." What an ideal society this is! In the movie "White Deer Plain", there is a few minutes of footage of Bai Jiaxuan teaching the people to recite the "Township Covenant". But with the advent of the revolution, the township covenant also collapsed, Lu Zhaopeng's new education replaced the "township covenant", and at the same time, the educational concept that constituted the spirit of the original people was also subverted.
Chen Zhongzhong's fascination and deification of traditional Confucian culture is mainly reflected in the two characters of Bai Jiaxuan and Mr. Zhu. The number one protagonist of the novel, Bai Jiaxuan, is a representative of the patriarchal family system linked by blood ties in the farming society, he is the patriarch of the Bai family in Bailu Village, and the head of the Bailu family formed by the two surnames Bailu. The characteristic of the spirit of Confucianism is that it maintains a tense relationship between politics and religion, and between the state and the family. As the religious leader of the White Deer Plain, Bai Jiaxuan has always kept a distance from the regime, political groups, and political struggles, reflecting a kind of human nature and moral brilliance. He adhered to the principle of being a man in the traditional Confucian moral code, was diligent and thrifty, strict with himself, did not flatter the superior, did not deceive the inferior, repaid grievances with virtue, and acted with grace and power. The "righteous friendship" with Changgong Lusan fully reflects the Confucian spirit of "affinity, benevolence, and love of things". The novel describes Bai Jiaxuan at the intersection of the family struggle with Lu Zilin and the struggle between various forces in the Bailu Plain: he married a seven-room wife in his life to continue the family incense; Do everything in your power to achieve prosperity for both people and wealth; Run a school, promote benevolence and righteousness, establish a township covenant, and correct the people's style to govern the Bailu family; instigating anti-donation and anti-tax protests to oppose harsh government; self-mutilation and begging for rain to save the people; Vigorously put aside the public opinion, build the tower to town "evil". In that stormy nearly half a century, in the change of banner of coaxing you to sing and I appear, he is the only person in Bailu Village who does not forget righteousness for small profits, is not threatened by the trend, stands firm, and can hold his breath. He always had a small ardent hope: to cure the family business according to the will of self-reliance, and to manage the family affairs according to the method of governing the family, so that the family in the Bailu Plain would be fed and fed, and everyone would be benevolent and righteous, so that his reputation would be immortal.
If Bai Jiaxuan is a representative of practical Confucianism, another main character in the novel, Mr. Zhu, is the ghost of theoretical Confucianism. At the level of practical Confucianism, Chen Zhongzhong cannot avoid the classic dilemma of Confucianism: it is not so much the anti-humanism of "saving heaven and destroying human desire" as it is the fundamental contradiction between Confucian pragmatic principles and moral self-sufficiency. During China's long dynastic era, from the "Cheng Zhu" theory to the Ming Dynasty public security school Sanyuan's "sexual spirit theory", this contradiction was originally only a fine adjustment between tempering desires and suppressing desires, and "desire" was never an internal category of Confucianism. However, the advent of modern times threw this stone at the system of Confucian thought and ethics, making it difficult to practice Confucianism embodied in the White Deer Plain. As many commentators have pointed out, Chen Zhongzhong's attitude towards Bai Jiaxuan is critical—at least expressing doubts or contradictions: on the one hand, it is a warm benevolent and righteous morality, and on the other hand, as a defender of the order of etiquette, Bai Jiaxuan must face human challenges, including desire. This challenge comes both from a heterogeneous and external force like Tian Xiao'e, as well as from Bai Jiaxuan's inner self, such as Bai Jiaxuan's painstaking "land exchange" plot in the early days.
But practicing Confucianism has never been the highest level of Confucianism. Contradictions that cannot be resolved in practical Confucianism seem to be unproblematic in theoretical Confucianism: Chen Zhongzhong's most sincere respect for Confucian culture is achieved through the demigod and half-human figure of Mr. Confucian Zhu, the Guanzhong, of the White Deer Academy. Mr. Zhu is a saint, a wise man, a prophet, and an ideal personality of a traditional knowledge person. He is not only the embodiment of the White Deer Spirit, but also the master of Guanzhong Science, a legendary figure who surrenders without a fight, and a righteous god who solves problems for the villagers and neighbors. During the National Revolution, he retired; In the year of famine, he bowed to distribute "food" to the victims; When the Wokou attacked, he married the eight gentlemen to the pen and became the first in the world; And in the face of the douxing of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, he was heartbroken and beat his chest. His unruly defiance, his loftiness, his perseverance, his patriotism and caring for the people, and his honesty and honesty have become a shining example of Bailuyuan's traditional culture and ideal personality. His words, his personal practice, his living up to expectations, and his lofty prestige have made him a spiritual pillar supporting Bailuyuan. He is Bai Jiaxuan's mentor. Every time Bai Jiaxuan encountered trouble, he would ask Mr. Zhu and wait for Mr. Zhu's guidance. A true worldly master, Mr. Zhu has been living in the White Deer Academy outside Bailu Village, quietly editing the county chronicle in a troubled time, acting as a recorder, observer and critic of history. He is both inside and outside the White Deer Plain, both within and outside history,—— he is the eye of history, the god of history. This true personality god, perhaps lacking human qi and flesh and blood, is more like the "humanization" of the author's cultural ideals, closer to abstract spiritual incarnations. This is a passage from the novel that makes people talk about it:
Mr. Zhu flipped through the county chronicles of previous dynasties, and although there were many differences in various versions of the county chronicles, the evaluation of the villagers of Zishui County was the same eight words: the water is deep and the soil is thick, and the folk customs are simple. Mr. Zhu thought: Can such a conclusion be made in the newly revised county record?
It is in this sense that the White Deer Academy has become the Noah's Ark of the troubled times that Chen faithfully understands, since the beginning of the 20th century, anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism, anti-ritual religion, and the overthrow of Kongjiadian have become the main tasks of China's new cultural movement, science and democracy have become irreversible trends of the times, while the sound of "man - the beginning, sex - ben - good" reading sound is heard in the school of Bailu Academy... Bailu Academy became a spiritual enclave in China in the 20th century, and all kinds of people in Bailuyuan, such as Lu Zhaopeng, a communist, Lu Zhaohai, a Kuomintang, Bai Xiaowen, a revolutionary woman, and the bandit Heiwa, they were all newly learned and did new things outside, but as soon as they returned to the White Deer Academy and stood at Mr. Zhu's present, they had the feeling of being baptized again. Because they were not only enlightened here, but also the first to be infused with reason and spirituality here, it seems to be the umbilical cord that connects them to the mother of Chinese culture, it is a silent calling and figurative spirit. If this umbilical cord were to be cut artificially, the reality would become absurd.
Mr. Zhu can be seen as the soul of national culture. The shaping of this image not only expresses Chen Zhongzhong's identification with "traditional China", but also expresses Chen Zhongzhong's criticism of "modern China"—not so much criticism, but confusion and incomprehension. Many of these contradictory feelings rely on the mouth of Mr. Zhu, the spokesperson of the "White Deer Spirit". For example, Mr. Zhu called Bailu Yuan "a shovel for flipping cakes", but in fact, each hit 50 big boards. That is to say, he believed that the struggle between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang was nothing more than a struggle for power and profit, not a distinction between right and wrong, not a struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, so he called it "nest bite." Whether it is Mr. Zhu's "sins made in heaven, it is still violable; The moral precept that people do evil and cannot live" or the posthumous maxim of "tossing until when" conveys the writer Chen's faithful view of history. This view of history, in short, is to adhere to the circular theory of "heaven has permanence", so that revolutionary modernism's infinite linear evolutionary view is "self-defeating".
In a sense, the return of Chinese intellectual circles to traditional culture in the 80s is mutually evident from the "de-revolutionization" of ideology. Chen Zhongzhong hopes to use some important values in traditional culture to respond to the disasters of a tumultuous history. In his writing, after the curtain of modernity was lifted, under the control of revolutionary ideology, human nature appeared crazy expansion, poppy, incest, extortion to profit, benevolence and revenge, collusion between officials and bandits, political speculation, personal vendetta bulletin... After the noise of history disrupted the most basic survival order of Bailu Plain, and even subverted people's will to survive, whether it was Hei Wa, Bai Xiaowen or Lu Zhaopeng, Lu Zhaohai and other figures, they finally returned to Bailu Academy and Mr. Zhu's value system. ——Hei Wa finally came back to worship the ancestors in the ancestral hall, and Bai Jiaxuan once commented that no matter how much the baby here tossed, he would finally have to return to this ancestral hall to worship. If Bai Jiaxuan's evaluation is somewhat imposing, the return of Bailu Atomic Brother to Bailu Academy is a return to culture in the true sense ,—— a return to ideal Confucianism. In a sense, it is also a return from the modern "country" to the traditional "home". This is the real thrust of the novel. In this reincarnated narrative structure, the characters, writers, and literature of the 80s have all redeemed themselves. This road of redemption is not Chen Zhongzhong's original creation, it is not only the meaning of the literary tide of the 80s "root-seeking literature", but also the unremitting pursuit of cultural conservatism represented by "neo-Confucianism" throughout the 20th century.
"White Deer Plain" thus writes about the confrontation between "tradition" and "revolution". If Bai Jiaxuan, the No. 1 protagonist in the novel, is a "non-growing" character - his comparison object is Zhu Laozhong in "Red Flag Spectrum", then the No. 2 protagonist in the novel, Hei Wa, is a "reverse growth" character. The prodigal son of Heiwa can really be understood as a glimpse of traditional culture. This is an image that we are very familiar with in revolutionary historical novels, Guo Quanhai, Zhao Yulin, and Liang Shengbao before "growing up". He came from a humble background, preferring to work rather than study when he was young, and was a rebel who was born with a backbone Shirakabara. Persuaded by the communist Lu Zhaopeng and trained by the "Peasant Lecture Institute", the suppressed energy in his nature found a cathartic point, set off a "wind and snow" movement in Bailuyuan, and became the leader of the peasant movement. After the defeat of the revolution, he went up the mountain as a bandit, then went down the mountain as an "official", experienced love and hatred and life tribulations, and at the end of his life, he suddenly woke up and returned to the White Deer Academy, "Hei Wa plopped down on Mr. Zhu's knees, and said sincerely: 'The contemptible Lu Zhaoqian, formerly a bandit, is now the commander of the artillery battalion of the security regiment, and wants to study with Mr. Zhaoqian for his teacher'... 'Zhaoqian has been confused for half of his life, and now he wants to study, seek knowledge, live to understand, and be a good person'. "Jiang Yang thief Heiwa became a humble gentleman overnight, read in the morning and recited at night, studied diligently, and became the best student in Mr. Zhu's life. Chen Zhongzhong thus completely rewrote the tradition of writing revolutionary historical novels, providing another "growth" path for Heiwa, Liang Shengbao.
It's just that the black baby, who has become a "good person", has not been truly redeemed. His final outcome became a mockery of Chen's cultural ideals. Because Hei Wa learned well and was morally honest and upright, but she was framed, calculated, and died tragically, making the most innocent and unjust sacrifice. In this sense, it can be said that the novel "White Deer Plain" is closer to a cultural elegy. The meaning of human redemption and prosperity expressed in the novel is far greater than the significance of "historical reflection" repeatedly discussed by critics, let alone revealing the "true historical essence" outside the revolutionary view of history. Heiwa's tragic story is actually the spiritual dilemma encountered by the "neo-Confucianism" in the post-revolutionary era: the spirit is still there, but there is no material to attach to - the modern revolution has completely destroyed the original social structure, making the Confucian spirit a ghost - a ghost floating without roots in the political and social structure reorganized by global capitalism.
Three
The year the novel "White Deer Plain" was published, West Film Studio bought the filming rights. From Wu Tianming, Chen Kaige to Zhang Yimou, and finally Wang Quanan, the script changed eight times, the shooting and production cycle was as long as three years, and finally it was launched and the screening was postponed due to technical problems, which can be described as a twist and turn, which whetted the audience's appetite. However, since its release in the fall of 2012, the film, which has devoted many artists' efforts, has not received the expected praise. The audience's fiercest criticism of this film is that the film is loosely structured, basically composed of one fragment after another, some "beautiful fragments",—— summarized in one sentence, that is, the movie "White Deer Plain" "has no soul".
There are many reasons for the structural problems of the film, in addition to the well-known film abridgement problems (the film has been edited into at least three versions, namely the 188-minute Berlin Film Festival version, the 175-minute Hong Kong release version and the 154-minute Chinese mainland release version, the mainland release version of the story ends with the scene when the Japanese enemy aircraft drops bombs on Bailuyuan, and the fate of several main characters is not explained), there are also problems with the ability and interest of screenwriters and directors. In addition, there is an important problem, which is the difference between the two eras of storytelling - the era of the novel "White Deer Plain" and the era of the movie "White Deer Plain". This point, perhaps more important and noteworthy than the first two, happens to be overlooked by current audiences and critics.
Comparing the film to the novel, it is easy to see that the film abridges the novel. The biggest abridgement is the deletion of two important characters in the novel, Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu. And these two characters happen to be the souls of the novel "White Deer Plain". They are the most important bearers of the novel's theme – Bai Ling is used to "reflect on the revolution", and Mr. Zhu is used to "return to tradition". In the novel "White Deer Plain", only Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu are the incarnations of the White Deer Spirit. In the novel, the white deer only appears twice, once when Bai Ling is killed, Bai Ling transforms into a white deer to dream of her grandmother and father who love her, and the second time is when Mr. Zhu dies, and Mr. Zhu's wife sees a white deer flying out of the academy and disappearing on the original slope.
In a sense, the film deletes the "soul" of the novel in this way. Who killed the White Deer? The responsibility for this abridgement obviously cannot be borne by the much-maligned censorship of Chinese mainland films - because the characters Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu are completely absent in the uncut 220-minute pilot version, and should not even be borne by the screenwriter and director Wang Quanan - because even in the script of the previous screenwriter Reed, who seems to be much more correct than Wang Quanan, the two characters Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu have been deleted.
In fact, what abridged this story is the cognitive and emotional structure of our time. We can no longer tell today's Chinese story with the knowledge of White Deer Plain,—— the "New Age Consensus" formed in the 1980s and expressed in "White Deer Plain" has long fallen apart. In an age of fragmentation, how can we retell the story of a community? The history of the community has never been an objective record of historical events by historians or an expression of historical truth by writers and artists, but an expression of historians, writers, or directors' ideas about history. This is the meaning of Croce's "all history is contemporary history". In this sense, the novel White Deer Plain has a historical perspective, and at the beginning of the novel, Chen Zhongzhong expresses his ambition to retell Chinese history by quoting the famous quote of the French writer Balzac, "The novel is considered the secret history of a people". - This ambition itself is also a unique intellectual legacy of the 80s. The historical view of the 80s forged the "soul" of the novel "White Deer Plain", leaving readers with an "epic". ——The so-called "epic" is to organize history with a historical view, reflect history with a historical view, make history into "poetry", and make the limited into the infinite. - Our existence is therefore "poetic" only when we associate the fragmented individual through a view of history with an "archetype", a cultural psychological structure, a collective unconscious, a long-standing historical tradition.
In this sense, Chinese intellectuals in the 80s were happy and fulfilled because they had a view of history—no matter how shallow and simple that view of history may seem today. The poetry of the movie "White Deer Plain" - the loss of the view of history - happens to be a symptom of our time.
After giving up the "soul" of "White Deer", the movie "White Deer Plain" can only reverse the main and secondary, and almost inevitably chose the story of Tian Xiao'e, a "rural woman who has lost her footing", as the main line of the film - this choice of the film is actually not much related to the director's "daughter-in-law control", that is, Tian Xiao'e's actor is the wife of director Wang Quan'an. Many critics were angry that "I don't see the white deer, only Xiao'e" in the movie "White Deer Plain", replacing the national history with Tian Xiao'e's personal erotic history, and making such a thick and complex novel into a woman-Tian Xiao'e's "history of sexual liberation", and the "majestic epic" into a "vulgar relationship between men and women", thus condemning Wang Quanan's fun and character. In fact, the story of "White Deer Plain" is not unique. The famous British director Joe Wright's adaptation of the famous book "Anna Karenina", which met the Chinese audience almost at the same time as "White Deer Plains", is a very similar example. For Joe White, filming Tolstoy is actually a very difficult thing, and its difficulties are no less than Wang Quanan's adaptation of "White Deer Plain". - The problem they encountered was almost identical: similar to the novel "White Deer Plain", Tolstoy's story structure was not just a family story, but an epic of Russian society in transition. The novel describes life in Russia in a calm tone, and the drama is not strong. Anna does not appear until nearly a hundred pages into the novel, and she and Volynsky are just a side line in the vast space. Most of the plot of the novel revolves around Levin, Kitty, Stiva and others, especially Levin is the first male protagonist. This tall man with an ordinary appearance, like Nekhlyudov in "Resurrection" and Pierre in "War and Peace", is the embodiment of Tolstoy himself, so Levine in the movie, although he seems to do nothing, is also of great value. It can even be said that "Anna Karenina" is ostensibly about Anna's story, and the real theme is Levin's observations and reflections. Tolstoy uses the words, hearts and experiences of Levine and other characters to express the writer's thoughts on religion, history, society, and the nature of life. Although Joe White is a master of adapting famous books, "Anna Karenina" still represents a huge challenge, and although he recognizes the timeless and profound social significance of the original novel, he still ends up making the novel a family story. As a result, critics accused that, in the words of The Hollywood Reporter, "the film is a child's play, and Joe White turned Tolstoy's epic into a woman's adventure" (8). Clearly, world-class director Joe White made the same choice as Chinese director Wang Quanan.
The more serious problem is not just that the film changes the theme to the relationship between men and women, but that it does not film this "relationship between men and women"—to be precise, it is made into a "vulgar relationship between men and women". In the eyes of many lovers of Tolstoy's novels, the most unacceptable thing about Joe White's "Anna Karenina" is that it tampers with the original story of pursuing free love in the novel, and makes Anna a grudge woman who "has nothing to do with herself". In the movie, Anna and Volensky's love is handled simply and violently, it seems that the two are passion + hunger, and there is no soul collision or heart-to-heart love at all.
The movie "White Deer Plain" reproduces this "failure". The story of Tian Xiao'e in the novel is shown as her sexual adventure with three men, in addition to the love story with Heiwa, her story with Lu Zilin and Bai Xiaowen is somewhat out of helplessness. In the movie, Tian Xiao'e seems to have an indifferent attitude towards sex, which has become frivolous and unruly,—— and the movie can't even tell a love story after losing the spirit of the white deer.
In fact, in the novel "White Deer Plain", Tian Xiao'e is not a character with a clear face. For Chen Zhong, on the one hand, Tian Xiao'e is a demon girl, a traditional "other", on the other hand, Chen Zhong cannot truly abandon the proposition of women's liberation in the new Chinese literary tradition since May Fourth, and he has to sympathize with this character,—— and even at the subconscious level, he is completely unable to resist the erotic temptation brought by this demon girl. This contradiction in the writer's heart makes Tian Xiao'e a character with a strong sense of division. On the one hand, Tian Xiao'e was largely killed by the traditional culture of "cannibalism", and on the other hand, the appreciation and maintenance of benevolent and righteous morality and traditional culture is precisely the basic theme of the novel. Although Tian Xiao'e was also born in a scholarly family, she was more often described as a slut, an adulteress, a demon, and even until she was killed and died tragically in a broken kiln, "Bailu Village did not hear a word that she died pitifully, they all said that she deserved to die." In a sense, this split in values and the author's self-struggle and confusion are precisely the embodiment of the atmosphere of the 80s era. ——When Tian Xiao'e, as the embodiment of desire, was included in the era theme of "de-revolutionization" and "re-traditionalization" in the 80s, her own divisions and paradoxes were hidden and disappeared. Through this character, Chen Zhongzhong continues to express his "new historicist" imagination of "revolution" and "desire". This woman, who is full of vitality with exuberant lust as the core, brings Bailuyuan an unprecedented panic that is far more serious than bandits, warlords, drought and other natural and man-made disasters. With her incredible magical power, this demon girl has conquered several men in the White Deer Plain - Heiwa, Lu Zilin, and Bai Xiaowen, completely destroying the bottom line of Confucian morality and ethics. Even after her death, she still caused a great plague that ran rampant on the plains, taking the lives of countless people, including the woman of Immortal Grass and Lusan, Lu Huiji. Even her ghost brought Lu San, a loyal and benevolent man, into spiritual depression and disaster, destroying his strong will and the backbone of life, and became sluggish and sluggish to death.
The novel "White Deer Plain" expresses the power of desire in such a fierce way, which is actually reproduced in the cliché of the new historical novels of the 80s. The "new historical novel" humanizes history—to be precise, strives to express historical desire as a replacement of revolutionary history with a fragmented history of individual desire. As a need to reverse and reconstruct history, the "new historical novel" goes against the political color in traditional discourse, and turns to the expression of "folk", "everyday", "secular" and even "meanness", and the protagonists of the work begin to become landlords, bourgeoisie, merchants, prostitutes, concubines, gang leaders, bandits and other marginal people who are not "workers, peasants and soldiers", telling about their eating, drinking, Lazar, weddings and funerals, friends turning against each other, mother-daughter enmity, the rise and fall of families, the affinity and resentment of neighbors...
It is in this "new historicism" perspective that "revolution" becomes a manifestation of desire. The first revolution in "White Deer Plain" was based on Hei Wa and others, who were rejected by the clan because of marriage problems, and stirred up a "wind and snow" on the White Deer Plain that "destroyed the foundation of feudal rule" and "all power belongs to the peasant cooperative". They force women to cut their hair and enlarge their feet; smoke-free smoking and smashing pistols; Dao Guan used the temple property to rape the old monk of the temple of the three official temples; smashed to death in the Nanyuan area, the bully Punk Kung who is known for his abuse of women; hammer smashing the "Renyi Bailu Village" stone stele and "township covenant" symbolizing the family patriarchal system; Establishment of grass-roots organizations of agricultural cooperatives in villages and towns; The headquarters of the agricultural cooperative was established on the original basis; Youdou "Rich Dong Evil Gentry" ... Hei Wa led everyone to fight and kill, make a big noise, and make a mess.
Such riots seem more like panic robbery. The peasants involved in the revolution had no minimal political understanding of their actions. Hei Wa led everyone to fight Bai Jiaxuan and smash the ancestral hall, which is by no means an awakening of class consciousness, but more a rebellion against the authority that obstructs her marriage with Xiao'e, and an outbreak under the suppression of lust. As for the old monks who appeared to be punishments for the wicked who were deeply dissented by the people, in fact, this judgment was based on their "fornication" behavior. It is not so much a vent of public anger as a disguised relief from the unrelenting sense of moral guilt brought about by one's own indulgence of lust.
Comparing novels and movies, it is not difficult to find that the problems of Tian Xiao'e's character do not only appear in movies. However, in the novel "White Deer Plain", because of the support of the two themes of "de-revolutionization" and "re-tradition", our feelings about the limitations of this character are not very strong, and even most readers do not regard Tian Xiao'e as the protagonist of the novel. And in the movie "White Deer Plain", because the "White Deer" does not exist, Tian Xiao'e's thinness and hollowness, whose face is ambiguous and has to carry the theme of the whole play, is also obvious to all.
Perhaps this is the symptomatic significance of the movie "White Deer Plain". The "lost soul" of the movie "White Deer Plain" is not only a common feature of the so-called "postmodern" world we live in, but also a manifestation of the particularity of China in the "post-revolutionary" era. The knowledge and ideas of the "new historical novel" of the 80s seem to be complicated, but they have the historical view of "de-revolutionization" and "return to tradition", and in today's China, in an ideological field that lacks basic cultural and political consensus, the movie "White Deer Plain" raises the question of how art is expressed and ideas are possible in a fragmented era.
Today, the ideological limitations of Chinese knowledge in the 80s expressed in the novel White Deer Plain are obvious. Whether it is the Chinese "revolution" that this era is trying to bid farewell to, or the "modernity" of China, or the "tradition" of China, the knowledge and ideas of the 80s are not simple. Fundamentally, when Chen Zhongzhongs constructed the binary opposition between "tradition" and "modernity", they did not understand the intrinsic relationship between these two categories,—— it was not just "modern" that separated "tradition": the Bailuyuan that Bai Jiaxuan adhered to was already a product of modernity, a land of nothing. Because what the Confucian tradition of the past is is beyond the description and restoration of Chen Zhongzhong's pen. As mentioned above, when Chen Zhongzhongs turned "tradition" into a magical realism, Chinese thought lost a way to understand "tradition" within "modernity" and strive to create a creative transformation of tradition. As mentioned above, in the past, the traditional flesh was lodged in the rural clan society, but in the era of Chen Zhongzhong's writing, Neo-Confucianism was separated from the solid earth and could only call the four seas home, with the abrupt "Four Books and Five Classics" and the Chinese Studies Training Class as the foundation of its existence. Any writer can only imagine that "good old days." Although Chen Zhong lacked insight into the ghost of "tradition", the logic of modernity of "tradition", they instinctively realized that tradition could not be restored, so they had to transform "tradition" into a kind of "white deer spirit" in the magical sense in the process of constantly essentializing and symbolizing tradition. The world that was reflected by the "Township Covenant", the Datong world and the Taiping world designed by Chinese scholars according to the patriarchal family system and ideological doctrines, the kind of idyllic poetry of the elder and the young, respectful and orderly, benevolent and filial piety, benevolence and servants, harmony and tranquility, has thus become a magical world.
In any case, however, Chen Zhong also has the ability to converse with imaginary traditions, or more accurately, a kind of "consciousness." The 80s was an era of collecting ideas and finding a way out, an era of reflection and desire to return. The "unconscious" castration of the novel in the film version of "White Deer Plain" reflects the real worries of the moment: we live not only in a "post-revolutionary era", but also in a "post-thinking" era. Revolutionary reflection is impossible, tradition cannot be returned. In the 20 years between the novel and the film, what is really lost is not "literary" and "artistic", but the soul and imagination, and the passion of thought. ——In the era of non-thought, thinking that cannot be done may be the real place of the "white deer spirit" that we need to find.
Exegesis:
(1) Li Lei et al.: "The release of the movie "White Deer Plain" caused controversy from all walks of life", Guangming Daily, September 26, 2012.
(2) Reed: "Don't Touch "White Deer Plain" with the Status Quo of Filmmakers", Life Newspaper, September 20, 2012.
(3) Wang Zhongsheng: "The Search and Construction of the Secret History of the Nation", Novel Review, No. 3, 1993.
(4) According to Chen Zhongzhong's recollection, the concept of this novel was completed in 1987, and the first draft was written from April 1988 to January 1989. The revision began in April 1989 and ended in 1992. See Chen Zhongzhong, "Questions and Answers on "White Deer Plain", Novel Review, No. 3, 1993.
(5) Professor Zhu Shuiyong of Xiamen University has conducted an in-depth comparative analysis of the two works. See Zhu Shuiyong, "The Red Flag Spectrum and the White Deer Plain: Two Historical Narratives of Two Eras," Novel Review, No. 4, 1998.
(6) Li Xing: "Looking Back at the End of the Century," Literature Daily, May 20, 1993.
(7) "Novelist Chen Zhongzhong on the Creation Process of "White Deer Plain", Oriental Morning Post, September 19, 2012.
⑧http://www.wed114.cn/jiehun/jiapianyouyue/2012092574079.html。 Related criticisms can be found in: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/anna-karenina/review/368580. The screening of the film "White Deer Plain" and the widespread controversy it caused is undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy cultural events of 2012. The reason why this film, which is neither directed by super-top directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, has been so strong at the box office and not known by word of mouth is undoubtedly related to its prominent birth - it is based on a novel of the same name written 20 years ago and hailed as a "landmark in contemporary Chinese literature". For this reason, the relevant questions mainly revolve around the comparison between the film and the novel, such as "whether the adaptation reflects the essence of the original work", "whether the film editing is too obtrusive", "whether the audiovisual elements are noisy", etc. (1) - the failure of the film seems to further set off the success of the novel. Reed, the first screenwriter of the movie "White Deer Plain", expressed his despair for Chinese films in an interview with a reporter in a bitter tone, "With the current situation of Chinese filmmakers, let's not touch "White Deer Plain"" (2), expressing despair for Chinese films. Obviously, this long-awaited and ill-fated film brings audiences and critics to think on multiple levels: from the abridgement of film to examine the contemporary Chinese film censorship system and trigger a reflection on the literary and artistic system, from the director's artistic concept and ethics to discuss the ideological situation of contemporary Chinese artists and even intellectuals, from the difference between film and fiction to compare text media and video media, to discuss the impact of new media and even mass media on contemporary life... For the work of Chinese intellectual circles to "return to the 1980s" in recent years, the film "White Deer Plain" provides us with a rare opportunity, not only to understand the "failure" of film and the "success" of fiction from a new perspective, but also to compare two different "storytelling eras", and then examine and think about the cultural politics of contemporary China.
In China's "new period literature" after the Cultural Revolution, there are not many works similar to "White Deer Plain" that have been well received and paid attention for nearly 20 years. It has not only won the Mao Dun Literature Award, the highest award for contemporary Chinese novels, but also consistently ranked among the "100 Chinese Literary Books in 100 Years" selected by different institutions. The enduring prestige of a novel is naturally due to its originality in the eyes of critics—"Chen Zhongzhong has climbed to a new commanding height, and he has also greatly surpassed his contemporaries" (3). However, in the author's view, discussing the achievements of "White Deer Plain" from this perspective may ignore the intrinsic connection between this work and the mainstream literature of the 1980s, and thus ignore its condensation and expression of the political unconscious and emotional structure of Chinese intellectual circles in the 1980s.
Readers familiar with contemporary Chinese literature need little hint to see the connection between White Deer Plain and the literature of the 1980s. The basic themes of Chinese literature during this period, such as the "de-revolutionization" narrative of the post-revolutionary era created by "Scars-Reflective Literature", the identification and conversion of traditional culture by "root-seeking literature", the humanization and desire treatment of history by "new historical novels" and "new realistic novels", and the artistic techniques of "magical realist literature", are all presented in the novel "White Deer Plain". Although the novel officially met readers in 1993 (first serialized in "Contemporary" and then published in a single edition by the People's Literature Publishing House), there are good reasons to understand it as a work of the 1980s. Not only because the conception and writing of "White Deer Plain" took place in the 80s (4), but more importantly, because this novel is a concentrated expression of the "de-revolutionization" of the 80s, the "politics of de-politics". In terms of ideas and knowledge, "White Deer Plain" is not innovative, it reorganizes history with the historical view of the 80s, leaving us with a game of tradition and modernity, both new and old Chinese stories, and like a storage box, preserving for us the ideological remains of the 80s that have been ghostified in China today.
One
As the most important ideological legacy of the "post-revolutionary era", "de-revolutionization" is expressed in the novel "White Deer Plain". Bailu Yuan is a "shovel" that you compete with me, and it is also a "mirror" that reflects the details of modern Chinese politics: the hardworking and kind black baby, the first generation of red elements in Bailu Plain, got involved in politics by "wind and snow", and since then, it has been swept away by strong social storms. He constantly changed his identity, but never found his place. After being appointed deputy county magistrate for his great merits in planning uprisings in the Liberation War, Heiwa was secretly framed by county magistrate Bai Xiaowen and brutally suppressed; And Bai Xiaowen, who was mixed into the revolution, half-hearted, cunning and insidious, was like a fish in water and leisurely; The naïve and simple Bai Ling, who betrayed the feudal family for the revolution, was born into death in the White Terror, was transferred to the revolutionary base area because it was difficult to hide in the enemy-occupied area, but was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of being a hidden agent during a purge of the Qing Party in the base area. In prison, she "howled like a she-wolf for three days and three nights", denouncing in front of the instigator of this "introvert" for "mutilating the revolution in the name of high-sounding"; Bai Jiaxuan's brother-in-law, the intellectual Old Master Zhu, still had squires in the Republic of China who supported the compilation of books and opened the library, but after liberation, the books were also burned, and the tomb was smashed... Decades have passed, and the political movements experienced by the original people in the novel all begin in farce and end in farce without exception. Readers can't help but ask: What kind of "liberation" is this?
Such "White Deer Plain" completely rewrites the class antagonism constructed by the "revolutionary historical novels" of the 50s and 70s of the 20th century. For readers familiar with the historical narrative of the 20th-century revolution, the deconstructive significance of the novel White Deer Plain is self-evident. Its objects are a series of revolutionary epic novels such as "The Sun Shines on the Sangan River", "Stormy Rain", "Red Flag Spectrum", "History of Entrepreneurship", "Sunny Day" and so on, and the conflict with "Red Flag Spectrum" is even more short. As a classic work of Chinese literature in the 50s and 70s, "Red Flag Spectrum" published in 1957 shows the growth history of Chinese peasants, describing the life history and revolutionary history of three generations of peasants living in the central Hebei Plain at the same time as "White Deer Plain", and they launched an indomitable struggle against the landlords in different ways. The first generation of peasant Zhu Laogong clashed with the landlord Feng Laolan in order to defend the 48 acres of public land in Suojing Town, and after the defeat, he vomited blood and died, Zhu Laogong's son Zhu Laozhong was forced to leave his hometown, and returned to his hometown a few years later to take revenge, through Jiang Tao, Yun Tao and other generations of Zhu Yan's two generations to get acquainted with the Communist Party, under the party's education, grew up with the next generation of peasants into glorious proletarian fighters and embarked on the battlefield of class struggle. These three generations of peasants represent three different eras: the first generation of peasants represented by Zhu Laogong went into battle shirtless, following the path of the old-style peasants who spontaneously resisted, and therefore were bound to fail; The second generation of peasants represented by Zhu Laozhong is a growing group of peasants, from individual resistance to conscious revolution, from family resistance to class struggle, Chinese peasants have experienced a difficult transformation of modernity; The third generation of Dagui, Ergui, Yuntao, and Jiang Tao were born at the right time, and they were awakened peasants who had grown into the main force of the revolution.
In terms of novel structure, "White Deer Plain" can be regarded as an imitation of "Red Flag Spectrum" (5). The stories of the two novels take place from the late Qing Dynasty to modern times, and the locations are in rural China - "Red Flag Spectrum" takes place in the Central Hebei Plain, "White Deer Plain" is in the Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi, and the main body of the story is also the story of two and three generations - "Red Flag Spectrum" is Zhu Yan's family, "White Deer Plain" is the White Deer family, and more importantly, both novels take the second generation of farmers in two families as the protagonists of the novel, carrying and expressing the writer's view of history - "Red Flag Spectrum" is Zhu Laozhong and "White Deer Plain" It was Bai Jiaxuan... Despite all the similarities, differences in historical views have led to very different fates for the same generation of peasants in different texts. Although the economic status of the villagers in Bailu Village is very different, only the Bailu family owns a large area of land, and most of the others rely on living to make a living, but each destiny and farmers regard it as natural for the landlord to work for the landlord. The landed gentry in the novel not only do not have the cruelty of the exploiters, but are models of morality, they are upright, kind, hardworking, solemn, and uncompromising loyal. The protagonist Bai Jiaxuan treats the "long worker" Lu San like his own "brother". What exists between them is no longer the relationship of exploitation and exploitation, but the family atmosphere and ethical affection full of deep warmth—a daily routine that transcends abstract class narratives. On the other hand, Heiwa's group of revolutionaries have more or less some moral defects: for example, Heiwa broke the waist pole of Bai Jiaxuan, who had funded his own study, and his behavior obviously did not match Renyi; Although Lu Zhaopeng has no feelings with his wife because he is dissatisfied with the arranged marriage, his determination and categorical indifference to the wife who has no fault and serves her family wholeheartedly does not seem to arouse the reader's sympathy and forgiveness.
It can be said that from this point of view, "White Deer Plain" overturned the case for the landlord and gentry class under the standard of moral judgment, and also turned the case on the revolutionary narrative. Unlike the Red Flag Spectrum, which portrays the protagonist Zhu Laozhong as a historical subject who continues to "grow" and eventually finds his place in the "history" that has already unfolded, Bai Jiaxuan in "White Deer Plain", "the last patriarch and the last man of the Chinese family culture that Chen faithfully contributed to China and the world"(6), is a peasant hero who resists "growth", resists progress with historical cycling, and responds to changes with immutability. In Chen Zhongzhong's own words: "The last patriarch (Bai Jiaxuan) in the "White Deer Plain" I want to express, according to the psychological structure and character constructed by the "Township Covenant" that he adheres to, faces challenges from various forces, and Lu Zilin, who has equal economic power but violates the spirit of the "Township Covenant", is a potential opponent; Hei Wa, who is rebellious in nature, and Xiao'e, who is based on the basic requirements of physiological instincts, are absolutely intolerable to Bai Jiaxuan's psychological judgment; Zhaopeng and his daughter Bai Ling, who consciously rebel with new ideas, sigh in vain, this is the strength determined by his psychological structure, and the only opponent who is difficult to present self-confidence; The complete depravity of Bai Xiaowen, who he relied on, completely escaped, hurt him the most, but could not disrupt his psychological order. So much so that Chen Zhong finally concluded: "Bai Jiaxuan is Bailuyuan." ”⑦
The similarities and differences in the structure of the novels and the historical subjectivity of the characters in the two works point to a diametrically opposed concept of history:
At the end of the first volume of "Red Flag Spectrum", it is written that Zhu Laozhong, a second-generation peasant who has completed his growth, risked his death to rescue Zhang Jiaqing, a young professional revolutionary. The novel ends with a strongly symbolic image that often appears in the works of that era:
At this time, Zhu Laozhong bent down and walked up to the mound, turned his back on his hand, and raised his head to look at the air. In the vast sky, a large cloud of thick clouds sprang up, the wind and clouds changed, and he was longing for a great ideal in his heart, and said with a smile: "Heaven! It's like letting the tiger go back to the mountain! ”
This sentence foreshadows: On the Central Hebei Plain, a magnificent storm will be set off!
The storm of "Red Flag Spectrum" is also sweeping "White Deer Plain". From the "wind and snow" of "all power belongs to the agricultural cooperative", to the dispute between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, to the continuous "rebellion" and "rebellion", and then to the "rebellion" during the "Cultural Revolution", "White Deer Plain" understands it as a historical catastrophe of common anger between people and gods, and the novel uses the mouth of Mr. Zhu, the soul character of "White Deer Plain", to express criticism and curse for this "magnificent storm": "Look how long you toss! ”
The intertextuality of "White Deer Plain" and "Red Flag Spectrum" and their dialogue relationship with revolutionary narratives may be refreshing to today's moviegoers, but they are no strangers to readers of contemporary literature. As the most important category of literature in the 50s and 70s, "revolutionary historical novels" tell the growth story of modern Chinese historical subjects, including peasants and intellectuals, that is, how individual people eventually grow into class fighters through overcoming personal emotions (including family affection, love and hatred, etc.), telling individuals into a huge historical narrative. When the literature of this era developed to the mainstream literature represented by "model plays" in the later period, it had been abstracted to the extreme: all the characters had become symbols that expressed the metaphysical historical essence, such as "Red Lantern", and the family formed by three generations of revolutionary subjects had nothing to do with natural blood relations, but became a representation of abstract class relations - the pinnacle of "revolutionary modernity" was also its end point.
The "return" of literature in the "new era" is marked by the return of human nature, the "individuality" that has been hollowed out by the revolution. Similar to Kitajima's poetry "In the era without heroes, I just want to be a person" and Shu Ting's poetry "human nature" cry "Instead of exhibiting a thousand years on the cliff, it is better to cry on the shoulder of your lover for one night", which became the strong voice of the era in the 80s. From the beginning of "scars-reflective literature" to "new historicism" and "new realistic novel", Chinese literature in the 80s embarked on the road of no return to "humanize" and "desire" history under the tide of "de-revolutionization".
Interestingly, perhaps due to the mass nature of video media, mass media such as film and television are not synchronized with literature in the expression of the ideology of the 80s. Many years later, the literary exploration of the 80s was able to complete its "cross-lingual practice", which became the "main theme" of Chinese film and television and triggered lasting repercussions. For example, the popular revolutionary historical dramas "The Years of Burning Passion", "The Sky of History", "Bright Sword", etc., which were popular in previous years, symptomatically expressed the human nature and desire imagination expressed in the literature of the 80s. These works have completely changed the "tall and complete" image of heroes in the revolutionary narrative of the 50s and 70s, highlighting and expanding the "humanity" of the characters, and allowing the personality to appear as "original", that is, the so-called "writing people as people". Just as "White Deer Plain" tells the "revolutionary" road of Hei Wa, Bai Xiaowen and others, "The Sky of History" tells the "revolutionary history" of the protagonist Liang Daya: the betrothed daughter-in-law would rather hang herself because she does not want to marry him. After escaping the pursuit and killing of the Japanese army, Liang Daya always calculated to go to the Kuomintang army to "mix with the regiment commander and commander", even if he stayed in the guerrilla group in the end, the motive was neither for the anti-Japanese nor for the revolution, but because a young and beautiful female eighth road appeared at the door. ”
Similarly, the popularity of "Bright Sword" is also because it completely subverts the image of the Eighth Route Army in the revolutionary historical narrative: the "Eighth Route Army" here is a group of "bandits" in uniform, the audience cannot see the military style, military discipline, the support of the people, the source of their vitality that cannot die in a hundred battles, all the victories, touches and excitement of this team come from the personal "iron-blooded" spirit of a "soldier" named Li Yunlong. "Bright Sword" no longer digs deep to portray the character characteristics of this character, but tries to exaggerate and amplify his murderous face and "banditry". - How similar this is to "White Deer Plain", Heiwa is a "bandit" for a while, and a "communist army" for a while. This kind of revolutionary historical narrative of "relying on banditry revolution" and "relying on bandit gas to resist Japan" opened by the movie "Red Sorghum" is exactly the only way for "new historical novels" to deconstruct history in Chinese literature in the 80s, and it is the origin of the protagonists of "new historical novels" retreating from "revolutionary heroes" to "reckless heroes" and even "bandit heroes".
Two
The spiritual connection between "White Deer Plain" and the 80s is not only manifested in its "de-revolutionization" value choice, but also in the identification and return to traditional culture. After the "farewell to the revolution", how to rebuild values has become a challenge for Chinese thinking. In the "cultural fever" marked by the "Chinese Culture Academy" and the "Culture and China" series of books that emerged in Chinese thought circles in the mid-80s, literature played an irreplaceable role, and corresponding to literary creation, it was represented by the "root-seeking literature" of the 80s.
The "Renyi White Deer Village" in the novel "White Deer Plain" is the fruit of the process of writers imagining and dressing up traditional culture with literature in the 80s: a "utopia" in troubled times. Of course, there will be contradictions and disputes within Bailu Village, but the culture that supports Bailu Village has invented a set of effective civilization mechanisms, a township rules and people's covenant with etiquette as the core and pillar. The township rules and people's covenant in "White Deer Plain" is the so-called "township covenant", founded by Lü Dalin, a member of the Confucian Guan Middle School school and a scholar of the Song Dynasty, "counting from the Song Dynasty when Lü wrote the "Xiangyu" to the beginning of the 20th century when the Xinhai Revolution occurred, this "Xiangyu" has been recited by the descendants of the original generation for eight or nine hundred years."
Since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has gained its legal status as the spiritual support of China's political and social order. It draws on the nourishment of Taoism and Legalism, establishes a hierarchical order between heaven, earth and people, takes the moral goal of "harmony" and "sameness" as the initiative, takes the ethical practice of "propriety" and "benevolence" as the driving force, and takes education as the basic means, creates a spiritual glue in the huge gap between centralized power and local management, and constructs a continuity and stability based on secular academic and bureaucratic ethics in the game between "country" and "family", so that rural autonomy under centralized power can be realized. Under the "impermanence" of "unity must be divided" maintains the permanence of the ethical order. The "Township Covenant" is a local code that carries the spirit and practical means of this Confucian ideal, and is a popularization of Confucianism, and its content is actually the standard for doing things for people. Because its text is easy to understand, concise and easy to remember, it is widely circulated. Especially in Bailuyuan, the birthplace of Lu Dalin, this "Township Covenant" is even more regarded as the golden rule. More than 80 percent of the original people were illiterate, but they all religiously abided by the text of the Township Covenant and regarded it as the rules of their own people. The sixth chapter of the novel writes that Bai Jiaxuan implements the "Township Covenant" in the Bailu family, and "for a while, the sound of the crop men reading the "Township Covenant" was heard in the ancestral hall every night." Petty theft, gambling, fighting, quarrels and scolding the street are gone, and "the people of Bailu Village have become gentle and polite, and even their voices are soft and meticulous." What an ideal society this is! In the movie "White Deer Plain", there is a few minutes of footage of Bai Jiaxuan teaching the people to recite the "Township Covenant". But with the advent of the revolution, the township covenant also collapsed, Lu Zhaopeng's new education replaced the "township covenant", and at the same time, the educational concept that constituted the spirit of the original people was also subverted.
Chen Zhongzhong's fascination and deification of traditional Confucian culture is mainly reflected in the two characters of Bai Jiaxuan and Mr. Zhu. The number one protagonist of the novel, Bai Jiaxuan, is a representative of the patriarchal family system linked by blood ties in the farming society, he is the patriarch of the Bai family in Bailu Village, and the head of the Bailu family formed by the two surnames Bailu. The characteristic of the spirit of Confucianism is that it maintains a tense relationship between politics and religion, and between the state and the family. As the religious leader of the White Deer Plain, Bai Jiaxuan has always kept a distance from the regime, political groups, and political struggles, reflecting a kind of human nature and moral brilliance. He adhered to the principle of being a man in the traditional Confucian moral code, was diligent and thrifty, strict with himself, did not flatter the superior, did not deceive the inferior, repaid grievances with virtue, and acted with grace and power. The "righteous friendship" with Changgong Lusan fully reflects the Confucian spirit of "affinity, benevolence, and love of things". The novel describes Bai Jiaxuan at the intersection of the family struggle with Lu Zilin and the struggle between various forces in the Bailu Plain: he married a seven-room wife in his life to continue the family incense; Do everything in your power to achieve prosperity for both people and wealth; Run a school, promote benevolence and righteousness, establish a township covenant, and correct the people's style to govern the Bailu family; instigating anti-donation and anti-tax protests to oppose harsh government; self-mutilation and begging for rain to save the people; Vigorously put aside the public opinion, build the tower to town "evil". In that stormy nearly half a century, in the change of banner of coaxing you to sing and I appear, he is the only person in Bailu Village who does not forget righteousness for small profits, is not threatened by the trend, stands firm, and can hold his breath. He always had a small ardent hope: to cure the family business according to the will of self-reliance, and to manage the family affairs according to the method of governing the family, so that the family in the Bailu Plain would be fed and fed, and everyone would be benevolent and righteous, so that his reputation would be immortal.
If Bai Jiaxuan is a representative of practical Confucianism, another main character in the novel, Mr. Zhu, is the ghost of theoretical Confucianism. At the level of practical Confucianism, Chen Zhongzhong cannot avoid the classic dilemma of Confucianism: it is not so much the anti-humanism of "saving heaven and destroying human desire" as it is the fundamental contradiction between Confucian pragmatic principles and moral self-sufficiency. During China's long dynastic era, from the "Cheng Zhu" theory to the Ming Dynasty public security school Sanyuan's "sexual spirit theory", this contradiction was originally only a fine adjustment between tempering desires and suppressing desires, and "desire" was never an internal category of Confucianism. However, the advent of modern times threw this stone at the system of Confucian thought and ethics, making it difficult to practice Confucianism embodied in the White Deer Plain. As many commentators have pointed out, Chen Zhongzhong's attitude towards Bai Jiaxuan is critical—at least expressing doubts or contradictions: on the one hand, it is a warm benevolent and righteous morality, and on the other hand, as a defender of the order of etiquette, Bai Jiaxuan must face human challenges, including desire. This challenge comes both from a heterogeneous and external force like Tian Xiao'e, as well as from Bai Jiaxuan's inner self, such as Bai Jiaxuan's painstaking "land exchange" plot in the early days.
But practicing Confucianism has never been the highest level of Confucianism. Contradictions that cannot be resolved in practical Confucianism seem to be unproblematic in theoretical Confucianism: Chen Zhongzhong's most sincere respect for Confucian culture is achieved through the demigod and half-human figure of Mr. Confucian Zhu, the Guanzhong, of the White Deer Academy. Mr. Zhu is a saint, a wise man, a prophet, and an ideal personality of a traditional knowledge person. He is not only the embodiment of the White Deer Spirit, but also the master of Guanzhong Science, a legendary figure who surrenders without a fight, and a righteous god who solves problems for the villagers and neighbors. During the National Revolution, he retired; In the year of famine, he bowed to distribute "food" to the victims; When the Wokou attacked, he married the eight gentlemen to the pen and became the first in the world; And in the face of the douxing of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, he was heartbroken and beat his chest. His unruly defiance, his loftiness, his perseverance, his patriotism and caring for the people, and his honesty and honesty have become a shining example of Bailuyuan's traditional culture and ideal personality. His words, his personal practice, his living up to expectations, and his lofty prestige have made him a spiritual pillar supporting Bailuyuan. He is Bai Jiaxuan's mentor. Every time Bai Jiaxuan encountered trouble, he would ask Mr. Zhu and wait for Mr. Zhu's guidance. A true worldly master, Mr. Zhu has been living in the White Deer Academy outside Bailu Village, quietly editing the county chronicle in a troubled time, acting as a recorder, observer and critic of history. He is both inside and outside the White Deer Plain, both within and outside history,—— he is the eye of history, the god of history. This true personality god, perhaps lacking human qi and flesh and blood, is more like the "humanization" of the author's cultural ideals, closer to abstract spiritual incarnations. This is a passage from the novel that makes people talk about it:
Mr. Zhu flipped through the county chronicles of previous dynasties, and although there were many differences in various versions of the county chronicles, the evaluation of the villagers of Zishui County was the same eight words: the water is deep and the soil is thick, and the folk customs are simple. Mr. Zhu thought: Can such a conclusion be made in the newly revised county record?
It is in this sense that the White Deer Academy has become the Noah's Ark of the troubled times that Chen faithfully understands, since the beginning of the 20th century, anti-imperialism, anti-feudalism, anti-ritual religion, and the overthrow of Kongjiadian have become the main tasks of China's new cultural movement, science and democracy have become irreversible trends of the times, while the sound of "man - the beginning, sex - ben - good" reading sound is heard in the school of Bailu Academy... Bailu Academy became a spiritual enclave in China in the 20th century, and all kinds of people in Bailuyuan, such as Lu Zhaopeng, a communist, Lu Zhaohai, a Kuomintang, Bai Xiaowen, a revolutionary woman, and the bandit Heiwa, they were all newly learned and did new things outside, but as soon as they returned to the White Deer Academy and stood at Mr. Zhu's present, they had the feeling of being baptized again. Because they were not only enlightened here, but also the first to be infused with reason and spirituality here, it seems to be the umbilical cord that connects them to the mother of Chinese culture, it is a silent calling and figurative spirit. If this umbilical cord were to be cut artificially, the reality would become absurd.
Mr. Zhu can be seen as the soul of national culture. The shaping of this image not only expresses Chen Zhongzhong's identification with "traditional China", but also expresses Chen Zhongzhong's criticism of "modern China"—not so much criticism, but confusion and incomprehension. Many of these contradictory feelings rely on the mouth of Mr. Zhu, the spokesperson of the "White Deer Spirit". For example, Mr. Zhu called Bailu Yuan "a shovel for flipping cakes", but in fact, each hit 50 big boards. That is to say, he believed that the struggle between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang was nothing more than a struggle for power and profit, not a distinction between right and wrong, not a struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, so he called it "nest bite." Whether it is Mr. Zhu's "sins made in heaven, it is still violable; The moral precept that people do evil and cannot live" or the posthumous maxim of "tossing until when" conveys the writer Chen's faithful view of history. This view of history, in short, is to adhere to the circular theory of "heaven has permanence", so that revolutionary modernism's infinite linear evolutionary view is "self-defeating".
In a sense, the return of Chinese intellectual circles to traditional culture in the 80s is mutually evident from the "de-revolutionization" of ideology. Chen Zhongzhong hopes to use some important values in traditional culture to respond to the disasters of a tumultuous history. In his writing, after the curtain of modernity was lifted, under the control of revolutionary ideology, human nature appeared crazy expansion, poppy, incest, extortion to profit, benevolence and revenge, collusion between officials and bandits, political speculation, personal vendetta bulletin... After the noise of history disrupted the most basic survival order of Bailu Plain, and even subverted people's will to survive, whether it was Hei Wa, Bai Xiaowen or Lu Zhaopeng, Lu Zhaohai and other figures, they finally returned to Bailu Academy and Mr. Zhu's value system. ——Hei Wa finally came back to worship the ancestors in the ancestral hall, and Bai Jiaxuan once commented that no matter how much the baby here tossed, he would finally have to return to this ancestral hall to worship. If Bai Jiaxuan's evaluation is somewhat imposing, the return of Bailu Atomic Brother to Bailu Academy is a return to culture in the true sense ,—— a return to ideal Confucianism. In a sense, it is also a return from the modern "country" to the traditional "home". This is the real thrust of the novel. In this reincarnated narrative structure, the characters, writers, and literature of the 80s have all redeemed themselves. This road of redemption is not Chen Zhongzhong's original creation, it is not only the meaning of the literary tide of the 80s "root-seeking literature", but also the unremitting pursuit of cultural conservatism represented by "neo-Confucianism" throughout the 20th century.
"White Deer Plain" thus writes about the confrontation between "tradition" and "revolution". If Bai Jiaxuan, the No. 1 protagonist in the novel, is a "non-growing" character - his comparison object is Zhu Laozhong in "Red Flag Spectrum", then the No. 2 protagonist in the novel, Hei Wa, is a "reverse growth" character. The prodigal son of Heiwa can really be understood as a glimpse of traditional culture. This is an image that we are very familiar with in revolutionary historical novels, Guo Quanhai, Zhao Yulin, and Liang Shengbao before "growing up". He came from a humble background, preferring to work rather than study when he was young, and was a rebel who was born with a backbone Shirakabara. Persuaded by the communist Lu Zhaopeng and trained by the "Peasant Lecture Institute", the suppressed energy in his nature found a cathartic point, set off a "wind and snow" movement in Bailuyuan, and became the leader of the peasant movement. After the defeat of the revolution, he went up the mountain as a bandit, then went down the mountain as an "official", experienced love and hatred and life tribulations, and at the end of his life, he suddenly woke up and returned to the White Deer Academy, "Hei Wa plopped down on Mr. Zhu's knees, and said sincerely: 'The contemptible Lu Zhaoqian, formerly a bandit, is now the commander of the artillery battalion of the security regiment, and wants to study with Mr. Zhaoqian for his teacher'... 'Zhaoqian has been confused for half of his life, and now he wants to study, seek knowledge, live to understand, and be a good person'. "Jiang Yang thief Heiwa became a humble gentleman overnight, read in the morning and recited at night, studied diligently, and became the best student in Mr. Zhu's life. Chen Zhongzhong thus completely rewrote the tradition of writing revolutionary historical novels, providing another "growth" path for Heiwa, Liang Shengbao.
It's just that the black baby, who has become a "good person", has not been truly redeemed. His final outcome became a mockery of Chen's cultural ideals. Because Hei Wa learned well and was morally honest and upright, but she was framed, calculated, and died tragically, making the most innocent and unjust sacrifice. In this sense, it can be said that the novel "White Deer Plain" is closer to a cultural elegy. The meaning of human redemption and prosperity expressed in the novel is far greater than the significance of "historical reflection" repeatedly discussed by critics, let alone revealing the "true historical essence" outside the revolutionary view of history. Heiwa's tragic story is actually the spiritual dilemma encountered by the "neo-Confucianism" in the post-revolutionary era: the spirit is still there, but there is no material to attach to - the modern revolution has completely destroyed the original social structure, making the Confucian spirit a ghost - a ghost floating without roots in the political and social structure reorganized by global capitalism.
Three
The year the novel "White Deer Plain" was published, West Film Studio bought the filming rights. From Wu Tianming, Chen Kaige to Zhang Yimou, and finally Wang Quanan, the script changed eight times, the shooting and production cycle was as long as three years, and finally it was launched and the screening was postponed due to technical problems, which can be described as a twist and turn, which whetted the audience's appetite. However, since its release in the fall of 2012, the film, which has devoted many artists' efforts, has not received the expected praise. The audience's fiercest criticism of this film is that the film is loosely structured, basically composed of one fragment after another, some "beautiful fragments",—— summarized in one sentence, that is, the movie "White Deer Plain" "has no soul".
There are many reasons for the structural problems of the film, in addition to the well-known film abridgement problems (the film has been edited into at least three versions, namely the 188-minute Berlin Film Festival version, the 175-minute Hong Kong release version and the 154-minute Chinese mainland release version, the mainland release version of the story ends with the scene when the Japanese enemy aircraft drops bombs on Bailuyuan, and the fate of several main characters is not explained), there are also problems with the ability and interest of screenwriters and directors. In addition, there is an important problem, which is the difference between the two eras of storytelling - the era of the novel "White Deer Plain" and the era of the movie "White Deer Plain". This point, perhaps more important and noteworthy than the first two, happens to be overlooked by current audiences and critics.
Comparing the film to the novel, it is easy to see that the film abridges the novel. The biggest abridgement is the deletion of two important characters in the novel, Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu. And these two characters happen to be the souls of the novel "White Deer Plain". They are the most important bearers of the novel's theme – Bai Ling is used to "reflect on the revolution", and Mr. Zhu is used to "return to tradition". In the novel "White Deer Plain", only Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu are the incarnations of the White Deer Spirit. In the novel, the white deer only appears twice, once when Bai Ling is killed, Bai Ling transforms into a white deer to dream of her grandmother and father who love her, and the second time is when Mr. Zhu dies, and Mr. Zhu's wife sees a white deer flying out of the academy and disappearing on the original slope.
In a sense, the film deletes the "soul" of the novel in this way. Who killed the White Deer? The responsibility for this abridgement obviously cannot be borne by the much-maligned censorship of Chinese mainland films - because the characters Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu are completely absent in the uncut 220-minute pilot version, and should not even be borne by the screenwriter and director Wang Quanan - because even in the script of the previous screenwriter Reed, who seems to be much more correct than Wang Quanan, the two characters Bai Ling and Mr. Zhu have been deleted.
In fact, what abridged this story is the cognitive and emotional structure of our time. We can no longer tell today's Chinese story with the knowledge of White Deer Plain,—— the "New Age Consensus" formed in the 1980s and expressed in "White Deer Plain" has long fallen apart. In an age of fragmentation, how can we retell the story of a community? The history of the community has never been an objective record of historical events by historians or an expression of historical truth by writers and artists, but an expression of historians, writers, or directors' ideas about history. This is the meaning of Croce's "all history is contemporary history". In this sense, the novel White Deer Plain has a historical perspective, and at the beginning of the novel, Chen Zhongzhong expresses his ambition to retell Chinese history by quoting the famous quote of the French writer Balzac, "The novel is considered the secret history of a people". - This ambition itself is also a unique intellectual legacy of the 80s. The historical view of the 80s forged the "soul" of the novel "White Deer Plain", leaving readers with an "epic". ——The so-called "epic" is to organize history with a historical view, reflect history with a historical view, make history into "poetry", and make the limited into the infinite. - Our existence is therefore "poetic" only when we associate the fragmented individual through a view of history with an "archetype", a cultural psychological structure, a collective unconscious, a long-standing historical tradition.
In this sense, Chinese intellectuals in the 80s were happy and fulfilled because they had a view of history—no matter how shallow and simple that view of history may seem today. The poetry of the movie "White Deer Plain" - the loss of the view of history - happens to be a symptom of our time.
After giving up the "soul" of "White Deer", the movie "White Deer Plain" can only reverse the main and secondary, and almost inevitably chose the story of Tian Xiao'e, a "rural woman who has lost her footing", as the main line of the film - this choice of the film is actually not much related to the director's "daughter-in-law control", that is, Tian Xiao'e's actor is the wife of director Wang Quan'an. Many critics were angry that "I don't see the white deer, only Xiao'e" in the movie "White Deer Plain", replacing the national history with Tian Xiao'e's personal erotic history, and making such a thick and complex novel into a woman-Tian Xiao'e's "history of sexual liberation", and the "majestic epic" into a "vulgar relationship between men and women", thus condemning Wang Quanan's fun and character. In fact, the story of "White Deer Plain" is not unique. The famous British director Joe Wright's adaptation of the famous book "Anna Karenina", which met the Chinese audience almost at the same time as "White Deer Plains", is a very similar example. For Joe White, filming Tolstoy is actually a very difficult thing, and its difficulties are no less than Wang Quanan's adaptation of "White Deer Plain". - The problem they encountered was almost identical: similar to the novel "White Deer Plain", Tolstoy's story structure was not just a family story, but an epic of Russian society in transition. The novel describes life in Russia in a calm tone, and the drama is not strong. Anna does not appear until nearly a hundred pages into the novel, and she and Volynsky are just a side line in the vast space. Most of the plot of the novel revolves around Levin, Kitty, Stiva and others, especially Levin is the first male protagonist. This tall man with an ordinary appearance, like Nekhlyudov in "Resurrection" and Pierre in "War and Peace", is the embodiment of Tolstoy himself, so Levine in the movie, although he seems to do nothing, is also of great value. It can even be said that "Anna Karenina" is ostensibly about Anna's story, and the real theme is Levin's observations and reflections. Tolstoy uses the words, hearts and experiences of Levine and other characters to express the writer's thoughts on religion, history, society, and the nature of life. Although Joe White is a master of adapting famous books, "Anna Karenina" still represents a huge challenge, and although he recognizes the timeless and profound social significance of the original novel, he still ends up making the novel a family story. As a result, critics accused that, in the words of The Hollywood Reporter, "the film is a child's play, and Joe White turned Tolstoy's epic into a woman's adventure" (8). Clearly, world-class director Joe White made the same choice as Chinese director Wang Quanan.
The more serious problem is not just that the film changes the theme to the relationship between men and women, but that it does not film this "relationship between men and women"—to be precise, it is made into a "vulgar relationship between men and women". In the eyes of many lovers of Tolstoy's novels, the most unacceptable thing about Joe White's "Anna Karenina" is that it tampers with the original story of pursuing free love in the novel, and makes Anna a grudge woman who "has nothing to do with herself". In the movie, Anna and Volensky's love is handled simply and violently, it seems that the two are passion + hunger, and there is no soul collision or heart-to-heart love at all.
The movie "White Deer Plain" reproduces this "failure". The story of Tian Xiao'e in the novel is shown as her sexual adventure with three men, in addition to the love story with Heiwa, her story with Lu Zilin and Bai Xiaowen is somewhat out of helplessness. In the movie, Tian Xiao'e seems to have an indifferent attitude towards sex, which has become frivolous and unruly,—— and the movie can't even tell a love story after losing the spirit of the white deer.
In fact, in the novel "White Deer Plain", Tian Xiao'e is not a character with a clear face. For Chen Zhong, on the one hand, Tian Xiao'e is a demon girl, a traditional "other", on the other hand, Chen Zhong cannot truly abandon the proposition of women's liberation in the new Chinese literary tradition since May Fourth, and he has to sympathize with this character,—— and even at the subconscious level, he is completely unable to resist the erotic temptation brought by this demon girl. This contradiction in the writer's heart makes Tian Xiao'e a character with a strong sense of division. On the one hand, Tian Xiao'e was largely killed by the traditional culture of "cannibalism", and on the other hand, the appreciation and maintenance of benevolent and righteous morality and traditional culture is precisely the basic theme of the novel. Although Tian Xiao'e was also born in a scholarly family, she was more often described as a slut, an adulteress, a demon, and even until she was killed and died tragically in a broken kiln, "Bailu Village did not hear a word that she died pitifully, they all said that she deserved to die." In a sense, this split in values and the author's self-struggle and confusion are precisely the embodiment of the atmosphere of the 80s era. ——When Tian Xiao'e, as the embodiment of desire, was included in the era theme of "de-revolutionization" and "re-traditionalization" in the 80s, her own divisions and paradoxes were hidden and disappeared. Through this character, Chen Zhongzhong continues to express his "new historicist" imagination of "revolution" and "desire". This woman, who is full of vitality with exuberant lust as the core, brings Bailuyuan an unprecedented panic that is far more serious than bandits, warlords, drought and other natural and man-made disasters. With her incredible magical power, this demon girl has conquered several men in the White Deer Plain - Heiwa, Lu Zilin, and Bai Xiaowen, completely destroying the bottom line of Confucian morality and ethics. Even after her death, she still caused a great plague that ran rampant on the plains, taking the lives of countless people, including the woman of Immortal Grass and Lusan, Lu Huiji. Even her ghost brought Lu San, a loyal and benevolent man, into spiritual depression and disaster, destroying his strong will and the backbone of life, and became sluggish and sluggish to death.
The novel "White Deer Plain" expresses the power of desire in such a fierce way, which is actually reproduced in the cliché of the new historical novels of the 80s. The "new historical novel" humanizes history—to be precise, strives to express historical desire as a replacement of revolutionary history with a fragmented history of individual desire. As a need to reverse and reconstruct history, the "new historical novel" goes against the political color in traditional discourse, and turns to the expression of "folk", "everyday", "secular" and even "meanness", and the protagonists of the work begin to become landlords, bourgeoisie, merchants, prostitutes, concubines, gang leaders, bandits and other marginal people who are not "workers, peasants and soldiers", telling about their eating, drinking, Lazar, weddings and funerals, friends turning against each other, mother-daughter enmity, the rise and fall of families, the affinity and resentment of neighbors...
It is in this "new historicism" perspective that "revolution" becomes a manifestation of desire. The first revolution in "White Deer Plain" was based on Hei Wa and others, who were rejected by the clan because of marriage problems, and stirred up a "wind and snow" on the White Deer Plain that "destroyed the foundation of feudal rule" and "all power belongs to the peasant cooperative". They force women to cut their hair and enlarge their feet; smoke-free smoking and smashing pistols; Dao Guan used the temple property to rape the old monk of the temple of the three official temples; smashed to death in the Nanyuan area, the bully Punk Kung who is known for his abuse of women; hammer smashing the "Renyi Bailu Village" stone stele and "township covenant" symbolizing the family patriarchal system; Establishment of grass-roots organizations of agricultural cooperatives in villages and towns; The headquarters of the agricultural cooperative was established on the original basis; Youdou "Rich Dong Evil Gentry" ... Hei Wa led everyone to fight and kill, make a big noise, and make a mess.
Such riots seem more like panic robbery. The peasants involved in the revolution had no minimal political understanding of their actions. Hei Wa led everyone to fight Bai Jiaxuan and smash the ancestral hall, which is by no means an awakening of class consciousness, but more a rebellion against the authority that obstructs her marriage with Xiao'e, and an outbreak under the suppression of lust. As for the old monks who appeared to be punishments for the wicked who were deeply dissented by the people, in fact, this judgment was based on their "fornication" behavior. It is not so much a vent of public anger as a disguised relief from the unrelenting sense of moral guilt brought about by one's own indulgence of lust.
Comparing novels and movies, it is not difficult to find that the problems of Tian Xiao'e's character do not only appear in movies. However, in the novel "White Deer Plain", because of the support of the two themes of "de-revolutionization" and "re-tradition", our feelings about the limitations of this character are not very strong, and even most readers do not regard Tian Xiao'e as the protagonist of the novel. And in the movie "White Deer Plain", because the "White Deer" does not exist, Tian Xiao'e's thinness and hollowness, whose face is ambiguous and has to carry the theme of the whole play, is also obvious to all.
Perhaps this is the symptomatic significance of the movie "White Deer Plain". The "lost soul" of the movie "White Deer Plain" is not only a common feature of the so-called "postmodern" world we live in, but also a manifestation of the particularity of China in the "post-revolutionary" era. The knowledge and ideas of the "new historical novel" of the 80s seem to be complicated, but they have the historical view of "de-revolutionization" and "return to tradition", and in today's China, in an ideological field that lacks basic cultural and political consensus, the movie "White Deer Plain" raises the question of how art is expressed and ideas are possible in a fragmented era.
Today, the ideological limitations of Chinese knowledge in the 80s expressed in the novel White Deer Plain are obvious. Whether it is the Chinese "revolution" that this era is trying to bid farewell to, or the "modernity" of China, or the "tradition" of China, the knowledge and ideas of the 80s are not simple. Fundamentally, when Chen Zhongzhongs constructed the binary opposition between "tradition" and "modernity", they did not understand the intrinsic relationship between these two categories,—— it was not just "modern" that separated "tradition": the Bailuyuan that Bai Jiaxuan adhered to was already a product of modernity, a land of nothing. Because what the Confucian tradition of the past is is beyond the description and restoration of Chen Zhongzhong's pen. As mentioned above, when Chen Zhongzhongs turned "tradition" into a magical realism, Chinese thought lost a way to understand "tradition" within "modernity" and strive to create a creative transformation of tradition. As mentioned above, in the past, the traditional flesh was lodged in the rural clan society, but in the era of Chen Zhongzhong's writing, Neo-Confucianism was separated from the solid earth and could only call the four seas home, with the abrupt "Four Books and Five Classics" and the Chinese Studies Training Class as the foundation of its existence. Any writer can only imagine that "good old days." Although Chen Zhong lacked insight into the ghost of "tradition", the logic of modernity of "tradition", they instinctively realized that tradition could not be restored, so they had to transform "tradition" into a kind of "white deer spirit" in the magical sense in the process of constantly essentializing and symbolizing tradition. The world that was reflected by the "Township Covenant", the Datong world and the Taiping world designed by Chinese scholars according to the patriarchal family system and ideological doctrines, the kind of idyllic poetry of the elder and the young, respectful and orderly, benevolent and filial piety, benevolence and servants, harmony and tranquility, has thus become a magical world.
In any case, however, Chen Zhong also has the ability to converse with imaginary traditions, or more accurately, a kind of "consciousness." The 80s was an era of collecting ideas and finding a way out, an era of reflection and desire to return. The "unconscious" castration of the novel in the film version of "White Deer Plain" reflects the real worries of the moment: we live not only in a "post-revolutionary era", but also in a "post-thinking" era. Revolutionary reflection is impossible, tradition cannot be returned. In the 20 years between the novel and the film, what is really lost is not "literary" and "artistic", but the soul and imagination, and the passion of thought. ——In the era of non-thought, thinking that cannot be done may be the real place of the "white deer spirit" that we need to find.
Exegesis:
(1) Li Lei et al.: "The release of the movie "White Deer Plain" caused controversy from all walks of life", Guangming Daily, September 26, 2012.
(2) Reed: "Don't Touch "White Deer Plain" with the Status Quo of Filmmakers", Life Newspaper, September 20, 2012.
(3) Wang Zhongsheng: "The Search and Construction of the Secret History of the Nation", Novel Review, No. 3, 1993.
(4) According to Chen Zhongzhong's recollection, the concept of this novel was completed in 1987, and the first draft was written from April 1988 to January 1989. The revision began in April 1989 and ended in 1992. See Chen Zhongzhong, "Questions and Answers on "White Deer Plain", Novel Review, No. 3, 1993.
(5) Professor Zhu Shuiyong of Xiamen University has conducted an in-depth comparative analysis of the two works. See Zhu Shuiyong, "The Red Flag Spectrum and the White Deer Plain: Two Historical Narratives of Two Eras," Novel Review, No. 4, 1998.
(6) Li Xing: "Looking Back at the End of the Century," Literature Daily, May 20, 1993.
(7) "Novelist Chen Zhongzhong on the Creation Process of "White Deer Plain", Oriental Morning Post, September 19, 2012.
⑧http://www.wed114.cn/jiehun/jiapianyouyue/2012092574079.html。 A related criticism can be found at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/anna-karenina/review/368580.
