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Text|Yushi Liufang
Editor|Yushi Ryufang
«——[·Preface·] ——»
Chinese education films focus on the growth experience of education individuals, pay attention to the joy, warmth and pain in the education process, and present the characteristics of humanistic care and realistic reflection in theme expression and narrative strategy.
From a narrative perspective, Chinese education-themed films have changed from a single perspective to a multiple perspective, going deep into the hearts of the educated to reflect the educational dilemma;
In the narrative structure, dramatic narrative and prose culture narrative are parallel, reflecting on the current situation of education while presenting conflicts;
In the narrative space, Chinese education-themed films play a role in guiding the audience to reflect on the dual role of campus and family for the educated by presenting the educational space.
In general, Chinese education films can reflect the current problems facing Chinese education in terms of narrative, but they still need to update their narrative strategies to resonate with the audience.
"Person" and "point of view" are two of the most flexible and important factors in film narrative. The establishment of personal pronouns is the establishment of the narrative subject, and different personal pronouns determine different narrative angles, narrative horizons and narrative styles.
The narrative perspective is not only manifested as a formal difference in pronouns, but also involves deeper ideological categories such as the value orientation, stance and emotional attitude of the author narrator.
Chinese educational films adopt a variety of narrative pronouns, the narrative style also changes between realism and romanticism, and the narrative stance has also changed from a social perspective to a humanistic perspective, reflecting humanistic care and realistic reflection.
«——[Self-monologue and emotional expression of personal narrative ·] ——»
Personal pronouns is an important narrative element of the film, which refers to the creator's control of the relationship between the narrator, the narrator and the audience in the film.
The identity of the narrator in the film is determined, and the overall narrative angle of the film is also determined, and the different pronouns determine the scope and distance between the narrated subject and the content narrated.
The so-called personal narrative refers to the fact that the film narrator "tells" (presents) the story in the identity and tone of the person "I", "he" or even "you" in a clear grammatical sense.
In Chinese educational films, personal narratives are mainly first-person narratives and third-person narratives.
The first person adopts the perspective of teachers or students, and the personal monologue caused by using this narrative angle has a sense of truth, reflects the current state of education, has appeal, and profoundly affects the audience's aesthetic stance, triggering different psychological effects.
In third-person narrative, the narrator is a relatively objective being, but sometimes there is also the involvement of personal emotions.
Chinese education films use third-person narrative, which can comprehensively present a variety of story styles, many characters and activity spaces, and the personal narrative of Chinese education films mostly adopts first-person, including children, teenagers and teachers.
By analyzing the perspective of the educated and the perspective of the educator, we can distinguish the value orientation, moral judgment and emotional attitude of Chinese education films in terms of narrative stance.
For film narrative, the establishment of different narratorial identities affects the changes of different scopes, different tones and different credibility of storytelling.
In the first-person narrative, the narrative voice is led by the human voice of "I", which can more realistically reflect the protagonist's mental journey and gain the audience's sense of identity through self-narration, such as "Girl's Diary" and "Youth School" that reflect the growth of teenagers.
"Girl's Diary" presents the innocent elementary school time through Ran Dongyang's diary, and the creator observes young male teachers from the perspective of adolescent girls, deals with friendship between girls, and copes with the physiological phenomena of adolescence, and the narrative effect can fit the psychology of girls in the age of beans.
However, because the first-person narrative can only present a limited perspective limited to "me", the story reflected in the film is relatively thin.
"Youth School" shifts its attention to the high school graduating class, telling his rebellious experience during the college entrance examination review from the perspective of a repeat student.
The first-person narration takes the audience back to the college entrance examination, experiencing the process of making a bold confession, confronting the class teacher, and finally deciding to work hard.
Bold and rebellious, but not unruly and disobedient students. In the perspective of Actually . The homeroom teacher, Teacher Sa, is a grumpy and rigid female teacher;
Desks are piled up with review materials, and only after school is a playground for students to release stress; The review process of the college entrance examination is also filled with countless homework and exams, and every time the results are announced, it is like rushing to the execution ground, such a scene restores the life of the college entrance examination in the memory of the post-90s audience.
Chinese education films adopt the first-person perspective of teenagers, from the beginning to show simple and naïve adolescence to the present can face up to the relationship between adolescents and learning life.
Bringing the taboo topic of early love to the screen enriches the multiple manifestations of adolescence on the screen and releases the diverse youth that is restrained.
In addition to the depiction of rebellious youth, first-person narratives are also used in films that reflect the dilemma of education.
"Junior Class" tells the dilemma faced by the elite education represented by the junior class from Wu Wei's perspective. Through Wu Wei's self-statement, the audience automatically brings themselves into Wu Wei's first-person perspective and experiences Wu Wei's humility and insignificance in the junior class as a "last genius".
The first-person narrative can affect the aesthetic psychology of the audience to the greatest extent, and it is precisely through Wu Wei's "normal" perspective in a weak position.
Only then can the audience observe the talented teenagers with different styles in the juvenile class from the perspective of normal people, correctly view the maintenance of elite education by the "crazy and paranoid" teacher Zhou Zhiyong, and rationally think about the value and shortcomings of the juvenile class.
«——[·Spectator Examination and Objective Reflection of Impersonal Narratives.] ——»
The "impersonal narrator" signifies a "zero-degree" personalization, the ability to tell stories one by one presupposes only one activity.
Although the narrative of the film can not set up a clearly identifiable "narrator" and his "voice", the operation of the lens "language" itself has already indicated and embodied the strategy and intention of the narrative.
Behind those narrative texts that seem to be events "telling themselves", there is still a "narrator" as a narrative source who plays the role of organizing, guiding, suggesting, and driving the narrative process.
It can be seen that film creators hide their positions and subjective emotions in the narrative of the film, and analyze the film with inhuman narrative, that is, analyze the creative intention implied by the film and explore the value orientation behind it.
There is no clear narrator in "Dog Thirteen", although the film opens with the confession of Li Play, it does not completely stand in the position of Li Play to narrate, and the director hides behind the narrative to express his aesthetic attitude and value orientation.
The characters in "Dog Thirteen" can be divided into the following three categories: one is a rebellious teenager with a crack in the original family represented by Li Play, the other is an absolute supporter of traditional Chinese patriarchy represented by Li Play's father and stepmother, and the third is a semi-social teenager represented by his cousin Li Tang who submits to traditional patriarchy and the adult world.
By narrating the process of Li Play and Einstein's dependence on each other, the film allows the audience to understand Li Play's incomplete native family and arouses the audience's compassion.
After Li Play suffered a fall and injury to his grandfather due to the dog loss incident, the camera chose to stand on Li Play's side, and expressed the helplessness and despair of adolescent girls in the process of being domesticated by recording Li Play being scolded by his father and crying in the bathroom.
And then Li Play's father let her sit on his lap and tell Li Play her apologies like a child, and after the objective and calm shot, the audience can have a variety of interpretations.
The first is his father's true remorse and good intentions, and the other is that his father's seemingly gentle apology cannot soothe Li Play's broken heart.
At the end of the film, Li Play and her father celebrated her winning the first place in the physics competition in the car, and Li Play asked about the love process between her father and mother, and her father couldn't help but cry.
At this time, the authority of the father in the camera is completely absent, and the crying man also arouses the audience's empathy. Under such a lens, the audience can feel the bitterness of men suffering under the strong pressure of society, and can also feel the deep affection between father and daughter. The uncertainty of the identity of the narrative character most importantly means the uncertainty of the value judgment criteria of the narrative character.
In the hidden narrative angle, the director did not choose to show the violent growth of adolescence from the subjective perspective of Li Play, nor did he choose to explain his father from the perspective of an adult.
Instead, it adopts a sideline perspective to observe the mode of getting along between the two, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation of the film.
«——[·Epilogue.]——»
The impersonal narrative examines and reflects on the phenomenon of education from an objective perspective, which allows the audience to observe and view the current situation of education more calmly.
However, considering that the film is not random and accidental when choosing the narrator or focusing on the characters, the film creator will have his own ideological and ethical tendencies, and he can manipulate the narrative attitude and narrative position of the film from behind.
Accordingly, when we analyze a film, we should examine whether the educational problems exposed in the film are close to reality and whether the film's care for the growth of teenagers is appropriate.
In early educational films, the image of children who were treated as adults lost their naïve nature.
For example, "Flowers of the Motherland" adultizes the solidarity between primary school students, making the children in the film become the promoters of collectivist ideas.
Lu Xun once said: "In the past, Europeans' misunderstanding of children was to think that adults were prepared, and the misunderstanding of Chinese was that they thought that they were shrinking adults."
Until this year, after the research of many scholars, I know that children's world is completely different from adults, and if they do not understand it first, they will hinder the development of children. Therefore, all facilities should be child-oriented. ”
Adults will always use their "childhood imagination" to set the current children's movie audience, which obviously causes mismatching.
To get rid of the "egocentrism" of the creator In rural education films, the lens's observation depth of the rural teaching environment is limited, and the lack of objective perspectives at different levels is easy to cause the defect of insufficient portrayal of the real educational space environment in rural areas.
In "No One Less", the narrator represented by the creator dominates the narrative of the film, while the reaction of real material reality is hidden, and the seemingly documentary narrative is drowned in the director's ethical tendency.
Under such a narrative method, Wei Minzhi taught for fifty yuan at the beginning, and was later prosecuted under the rescue of the city, the audience could not develop a psychological identification with Wei Minzhi, and the difficult survival situation of rural children was diluted in TV interviews, and the final peace of the film also dissolved the creator's underlying concern and civilian consciousness.
By observing the impersonal narrative in the film, it is not difficult to find that the leading role of the creator behind the inpersonal narrative, the confirmation of subjectivity and the mentality and temperament of the creator control the formal arrangement of the film, it is worth noting that some narrative subjects always consciously infuse their own ethical consciousness in the narrative.
Educational films take the focus on education as the foothold, reflect the problems existing in education, and pay attention to the growth of educational individuals.
Therefore, the behavior and psychology in the narrative should be in line with the authenticity of the individual education, only in this way can the current situation of education be objectively reflected and trigger realistic reflection from all walks of life.
«——[References] ——»
1. Hu Zhongping: Modern Education, Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2011.
2. Wei Xianchao, Hu Wei, Qiu Kunshu, Xu Jun, Essay on the Principles of Education, Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2013
3. Wu Maoguo; From Narrative to Ethics: Theory and Practice of Narrative Ethics, Beijing: Xinhua Publishing House, 2013.