One
On September 16, 1949, on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Xinhua News Agency published an editorial written by Chairman Mao Zedong entitled "The Bankruptcy of the Idealistic View of History: Six Commentaries on the White Paper".
In this commanding commentary, Chairman Mao wrote in poetic language:
"Of all the things in the world, man is the first and most precious. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, as long as there are people, any miracle on earth can be created. We believe that revolution can change everything, and that a new China with a large population, abundant products, a prosperous life, and a prosperous culture will not be long before it comes, and all pessimistic arguments are completely groundless. ”
Chairman Mao's judgment that "man is the first and precious" set the tone for New China in dealing with the issue of "man". Throughout his life, Chairman Mao devoted himself to the complete emancipation of people and to arousing people's subjectivity, and no matter what difficulties he encountered, Chairman Mao believed that he could find answers from the people, and they could be solved along the path of relying on the masses, mobilizing the masses, and believing in the masses.
Of course, people are divided into classes, and Chairman Mao did not ignore this, and he paid special attention to the role of the working class.
On June 30, 1949, to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Chairman Mao published "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship", which pointed out categorically:
"The people's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. Because only the working class is the most far-sighted, selfless and full of revolutionary thoroughness. ”
Although during the same period, there was also a debate within the party, that is, whether the restoration of the national economy should mainly depend on the working class or the bourgeoisie? Some people even put forward the idea of "exploiting meritorious service," after Chairman Mao expressed his attitude, the argument quickly had an answer: We must rely on the working class wholeheartedly!
In the first 30 years of the People's Republic of China, the position of "relying on the working class" was implemented throughout, and it was also vividly expressed in many film works.
In the first feature film "Bridge" in New China, the liberated working class, in order to restore production, rush to repair bridges, support the front line, compete for advice, take the initiative to work overtime, showing the sense of responsibility and creativity of the master, in the same period of a series of films "Infinite Potential", "Radiant", "Towards New China", etc., all show such themes.
The industrial-themed films "Boiling Mountains", "The Age of Fire" and "Entrepreneurship", which were filmed and released during the Wen G period, vividly demonstrated how amazing creativity the working class armed with Mao Zedong Thought can burst out!
During this period, it was unthinkable to treat workers as a burden and a burden and abandon them by laying them off.
But the development of history is tortuous.
After the 80s, with the widespread implementation of the contract system and the factory director responsibility system, the status of "people" has also undergone subtle changes.
When the theme of the times changed from "workers are the masters of the factory" to "efficiency first, taking into account fairness", the public opinion of "feeding lazy people in a big pot" was also created and became popular.
The films and literary works of this period have timely responses to such changes, such as "The Appointment of Director Qiao" and "Blood is Always Hot".
The change of things was gradually realized in the rhythm of boiling frogs in warm water without being noticed -- at first, it was only "floating salary" and "bonuses" to stimulate the "lazy people" to be diligent, but in the 90s, they directly began to "reduce staff to increase efficiency" and "lay off workers and restructure".
Interestingly, although the "laid-off" has formed an irreconcilable paradox with "the workers are the masters of the factory", the literary and artistic works of those years still tried their best to incorporate the "laid-off" into the traditional revolutionary narrative, making it look like a revolutionary action full of self-sacrificing spirit.
For example, in the TV series "Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee" at the end of the 90s, the best party member model workers took the initiative to ask for layoffs, claiming that this was to save the enterprise, which is tantamount to asking workers to take the initiative to admit that they are a burden and a burden to the factory, and admit that they are no longer the owners of the factory, but only one of the "factors of production" alongside machines and factories.
The late famous writer Cao Zhenglu criticized the absurdity of this set of rhetoric in his novel "There" (formerly known as "Internachon "There"). In "There", the factory collapsed because someone deliberately wanted to embezzle state-owned assets, and the workers were the best.
Here, the reason why I want to sort out the changes in the status of "workers" in reality and "discourse" in 1949 without avoiding redundancy is that only by understanding this change can we truly understand and understand "The Annual Meeting Can't Be Stopped".
Two
"The Annual Meeting Can't Stop", the reputation is very good, and the box office is also unbeatable in the New Year films, not without reason.
The choreographer and director chose the genre film mode of "misplaced comedy", which laid the foundation for this film to make the audience "laugh and break the defense".
What is Misplaced Comedy?
To put it simply, he is a small person, because of some kind of mistake, he was suddenly placed in a position that does not belong to him at all, however, his words and deeds in ignorance and ignorance were automatically interpreted by the people around him with an exaggerated interpretation, so that he was regarded as an important VIP figure, and there seemed to be some kind of mysterious aura on his head, which produced a series of jokes and strong ironic effects.
In the history of literature, the most famous "misplaced comedy" is Gogol's "The Minister".
A gentleman from the capital, St. Petersburg, Khlesdakov, lost all his bets and was trapped in a hotel in a small city. Coincidentally, rumors are circulating in the city's upper class that the "Minister of the Imperial Mission" is coming to conduct a private interview with Weifu. Khlesdakov's accent and the "Petersburg style" exuded by his dress made him immediately regarded by the mayor as a "minister", so the local bureaucrats and businessmen rushed to bribe him, and the mayor even wanted to marry his daughter to him.
In this comedy, published almost 200 years ago, Gogol portrays a series of despicable and despicable bureaucratic images, which truly and typically reflect the essential characteristics of the Russian bureaucracy that are corrupt, flattering, and despicable and vulgar, and expose all the ugliness of the bureaucracy in Tsarist Russia.
The drama "Nian" also adopts a similar technique to "The Minister of the Imperial Mission".
A fitter Hu Jianlin (played by Dapeng) was transferred to the headquarters by mistake when the group laid off employees, because no one could explain his incredible promotion, so he was regarded as a mysterious person with a special relationship with the chairman, and was even rumored to be the illegitimate son of the chairman......
The drama "Nian" first debunks a myth that mainstream economists have created and maintained for years: private ownership is more efficient.
In the film, Zhonghe Group is a large private enterprise, but the group is full of corruption, superficiality, mutual bargaining and extravagance, and the group has to lay off employees on a large scale when it encounters a crisis, but it also costs 60 million yuan to hold an annual meeting, which makes Hu Jianlin from the grassroots stunned.
All of these problems, which seem to be exclusive to state-owned enterprises in mainstream economists' narratives about economic reform, are ultimately attributed to "unclear property rights", and the conclusion is that only property rights reform can fundamentally solve the problem.
However, the drama "Nian" shows us that as long as the enterprise is large to a certain extent, whether it is a state-owned enterprise or a private enterprise, these problems may occur, so this is not a property rights issue, but a management and cultural issue.
In the words of screenwriter and director Dong Runnian, "In fact, no matter what kind of enterprise or what kind of system, everyone in it has the same purpose, they all want to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, want their own better status and future, want financial gains, and don't want to take the blame, and hope that the responsibility will not fall on their heads if something happens." ”
What Dong Runnian said is also right and wrong. Excellent public-owned enterprises can compress these problems to a minimum by establishing a culture of "serving the public wholeheartedly" and "loving the factory as home." However, because private enterprises cannot solve the inherent contradiction of "the enterprise is the boss's, and the salary and body are their own", no matter how they engage in team building, they can only do this.
Three
The central plot of the drama "Nian" is a large-scale layoff, a plan that has a satirical code name "Layoffs (Wealth) Guangjin".
In the drama "Nian", the "Guangjin Plan" is shown as a disaster and even a crime.
The layoffs were disguised in the name of "optimization" and carried out secretly, but the gossip had already spread within the group, so everyone was in danger, fearing that they would become "friction under the gears of the times".
At this point, the story already has the flavor of reflection on the late nearly 40 years, although this reflection is a kind of time and space dislocation and tortuously refracted, but it also once again activates people's thinking about the history of "smashing three irons with three irons" in the era of state-owned enterprise restructuring.
Under the conditions of a market economy, layoffs are the inevitable result of the logic of "big fish eat small fish, and small fish eat shrimp" in competition, and it is a regular and regular phenomenon.
According to Marx's view in Capital, competition leads to an increase in the organic composition of capital, that is, in order to defeat competitors, the proportion of capital spent on equipment and technology will be higher and higher, and the proportion of capital spent on wage labor will be lower and lower, resulting in a large surplus of people.
The "Guangjin Plan" went smoothly until the entire Zhonghe Machinery Factory and its 300 employees began to be laid off.
In the drama "Nian", the biggest villain is President Xu Yunfeng (played by Li Naiwen), who appears as a conspirator and deliberately wants to bring down Chairman Hu (played by Ouyang Fenqiang).
But strictly speaking, Mr. Xu is the representative of the "advanced productive forces" favored by the market, he is rational, calm, hard-hearted, and forward-looking. Only he realized that there was no need for the group to retain its own machinery factory, and only by laying off this factory and its 300 employees and transforming into an Internet company could there be a way to survive.
Unfortunately, although Mr. Xu's thinking is correct, because Chairman Hu (played by Ouyang Fenqiang) started from the director of the machinery factory and has been trying to protect the machinery factory, he took a stupid approach, that is, by mixing defective products into the bolts produced by the machinery factory, to create a reason for removal. This conspiracy was exposed by Hu Jianlin, who also had a deep affection for the machinery factory, at the annual meeting, and Mr. Xu and the people involved in the conspiracy were imprisoned, and the machinery factory was saved, and everything was happy.
Undoubtedly, this is a "bright tail", but it goes against the logic of the market and reality. Because the chairman's violation of the law of market competition will inevitably lead to the bankruptcy of Zhonghe Group.
However, if such a "bright tail" is not added, the logic of "market competition will inevitably lead to layoffs" will be very skinny, and the comedy will not become a comedy, and the choreographer will not be able to end it.
Four
I named a work like "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop", which I named "New Left Cinema".
There are also some similar films, such as "Piano of Steel", "Blizzard is Coming", "The Detonator", "The Sewing Machine Band", "Let the Bullets Fly" and last year's "In the Octagon Cage" and so on.
On the opposite side of these films is the huge, boisterous sequence of right-wing films.
Compared with the traditional left-wing films of the thirties and forties of the twentieth century, such as "The Peach and Plum Robbery" and "The Lights of Ten Thousand Homes" (which also showed the layoffs of the company), the biggest feature of the new left-wing films is that they have lost the ability to look into the future and the courage to make a thorough accusation of the dark reality.
With a netizen's point-to-point comment, it is "the process is very exciting, and the ending is very empty".
Where is the new in the New Left Cinema?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's reform and opening up, and after the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the victory of the West, the left-wing narrative, because it lost the support of overarching theory, can no longer imagine another world.
Since the other world is impossible, then living with reality is the only option.
In a nutshell, because Nala had already foreseen the outcome of the exodus, she hesitated the moment she stepped out of the threshold, and she was about to stumble, and finally did not step out of the door - this is the dilemma of New Left Cinema, and it is also the real dilemma of all migrant workers!
At the end of the play "Year", Hu Jianlin, Jack Ma, and Penny sang a rap on the stage of the annual meeting-
"Are you like me who is worried about layoffs, guarding your post and working overtime.
Are you like me, even if you take the blame every day, you can't let go of the shackles of five insurances and one housing fund.
Are you like my overall fantasy to be able to live without having to look at the face of your boss.
Are you like me who will only be cowardly and retreat, and you should break your silence in the face of injustice. ”
"I'm Jack, not Magic, I've been in K8 for a few years without any money and no dignity.
Fall a headache and insomnia, the body is not as good as a year,
I work hard, and my boss is Yingying Yanyan. ”
"I'm outsourced Penny Pan, and I do all the dirty work,
The merit book has nothing to do with me, and I never go around in circles when I speak,
I'm not idealistic, I just want to be worthy of myself,
油腻的酒局get off me，掌权黑手can't beat off me。 ”
"I am HR Manager Zhuang Nihu, standard parts factory fitter Master Hu,
Transferred and promoted, no one cares, I don't know how to pretend to understand, I don't have a score in my heart,
What is granularity, I'm in a trance,
But it doesn't matter, as long as you stand on the right team and pat yourself on the back, you can keep your future. ”
"The harmony of the people is the unity of the world, the world and the people,
In fact, it's just the stars holding the moon, singing and harmonizing.
The people at the grassroots level are panicking, and the middle level is forming a party.
The black words are very good, and the scenery on the surface is all an illusion. ”
"The president fart, the director turned into a sentence, and the manager received an order not to decrypt it,
I just want to escape, throw it to the grassroots, tonight OT, you make a PPT. ”
"If you are not satisfied, expel him, and everything will be fine.
Spend all day and wine, and call the whole brother and brother,
financial crisis, non-stop corruption,
Self-proclaimed flat, hierarchical like a jungle. ”
"High-rise buildings rise from the ground, how many ants are buried,
I'm an employee, not a slave, and I want to be myself.
What's the point of being so sad and depressed,
A company is a machine with no humanity but only destination. ”
……
After listening to this rap, many migrant workers felt happy and tugged at their heartstrings. But what if you don't want to live like this?
That is, according to the situational theory given in the film, this unbearable workplace life appeared under the rule of Chairman Hu, and after a turmoil, Chairman Hu was not only not overthrown, but his position became more stable.
As I said a few years ago when I commented on "The Sewing Machine Band", the petty bourgeoisie is dissatisfied with the crushing of big capital, but it does not dare to break through the logic of capital, so it can only hope for the mercy of big capital.
Penny chose to resign, but what could she do? At the end of the film, Penny participates in the pop singer's audition, but this is more of an escape than a way out.
Five
In the play "Year", after the workers of Zhonghe Machinery Factory learned that the factory would be laid off and that they would be laid off, they were immediately angry.
In a trance, this does not seem to be a small private factory, but a state-owned enterprise in the trend of restructuring.
In fact, this is also a kind of space-time dislocation.
When Hu Jianlin was determined to fight against Mr. Xu, he flashed back to the late 90s, when the machinery factory was in trouble, and Chairman Hu, who was the director of the factory at the time, encouraged everyone not to give up and insist on holding the annual meeting.
I suddenly realized that Chairman Hu had made the first pot of gold through the "restructuring" of the machinery factory.
The workers of the machine factories seemed to have completely forgotten this "pre-history" of socialism, and they no longer fought to regain their own means of production, but were angry, anxious, and even wept to keep their exploited position.
This is in response to what Jiang Wen said in "Beijingers in New York": "How good it is for someone to exploit you, your heart is so down-to-earth!"
This is the most powerful satire in the satirical comedy "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop".
(The author is a senior researcher at the Kunlun Ce Research Institute; source: Kunlun Ce Network [author's authorization], reproduced from the WeChat public account of "Independent Commentator Guo Songmin", revised and released; the picture comes from the Internet, invaded and deleted)