Flaunting the pursuit of art and making money, let go of the false halo of an artist

◎ Yoriki

How should we position the group represented by Zhang Yi and Sun Tan in "Galaxy Writers"? According to the statement on the poster of the film - "Migrant workers turn over day", they are "migrant workers". However, there is an obvious sense of mismatch between this promotional slogan and the film's portrayal of the protagonist. Zhang Yi and Sun Tan are not ordinary workers, but "talented screenwriters". They are full of classics in film history, and they cherish all the great directors of literary and artistic films; they think very highly of themselves, believing that their works are extraordinary, but they are just unlucky, and the pearl is covered with dust.

Workers?Artists?

If you look at it from the perspective of Zhang Yi and Sun Tan, "Migrant Workers Turn Over Day" is just a self-deprecation. They probably never feel like they are migrant workers, but are more likely to have always believed that they are artists. Zhang Yi has always taken a posture of resistance to preserve his works in the face of investors' revisions, that is, an attitude similar to "art against capital". When investors suggested that they experience the life of a food delivery boy, they also laughed at them. Sun Tan said: "Do I have to kill someone first when I write a crime film?" Although, after going through a painful script revision process, the film arranges a psychological dialogue between them and the takeaway boy in the form of a "siege", it seems that the two professions have achieved equality in form and meaning in a dream. But in reality, this is just an added joke, and the mechanism of laughter comes precisely from this illusion of equality.

Perhaps in the film, Zhang Yi's girlfriend Zhou Keke is the only sober person and the only worker who truly identifies himself. She is also a veteran movie fan, and she is no less familiar with the classics of film history, and she also believes in Zhang's talent, supports his career, and has endless tolerance for him. When Zhang Yi went to the hospital for mental illness, she finally tactfully and carefully persuaded Zhang to put aside "art", because "the screenwriting fees paid by people are used to revise the draft". However, such consolation was unacceptable in Zhang Yi's opinion. After all, if you regard yourself as an artist, it is natural that art is higher than capital, and the logic of part-time work that collects money and does things must wait for it and abandon it like a piece of paper. Therefore, in the end, Zhang Yi could not meet the demands of the management, and heroically threw himself to the ground in the last tough and majestic argument.

Of course, there is no more in the film about their Seven Seconds, but from their internal discussions with the management, we can get some information about the work: a man with only a seven-second memory and the process of finding himself and recovering his memory with the help of a friend (or dog), which may also involve elements of a delivery boy and a love story. Maybe they really have genius and wonderful design, but this story framework really doesn't make people feel much meaning and value, but more like a big online movie with "seven-second memory" as the selling point. How much art is there to talk about in this kind of film?

攒点子,追名利

What's more, all of their discussions revolve around the plot, and none of them are discussing the meaning and value, connotation and depth of the story. Although they jokingly mock the beat chart for saving the cat in the film, it is this beatboard drawn on the whiteboard when they discuss and revise the story, and all they do is how to fill in the various plots in this table and make the main line of the story form a patchwork of highs and lows. In other words, they don't care much about what kind of story it is, what the meaning of the story is, and they just come up with ideas that can become stories. And when I think of these ideas, I only care about how to tell the story effectively. This is even more evident in the passage of the new script "Crazy Bloodstone" that appears at the end of the film.

"Seven Seconds Man" did not show the true face of Lushan in the end, but "Crazy Bloodstone" roughly outlined the appearance of the story through a dialogue between Zhang Yi and Sun Tan. What makes Zhang Yi excited is nothing more than that this story has the color of a road movie and a gimmick with bloodstone, which can be well constructed (in fact, the storyline they are talking about is also a patchwork of other directors' film works). This kind of story is not completely meaningless (after all, they are attached to Ning Hao's works), but from their discussions, there is no elucidation of the meaning of the story, only excitement about each drama or selling point. They just make up stories between the grids, borrowing or paying homage from film history. Therefore, what they dedicate themselves to is nothing more than a pile of empty illusions constructed by symbols and images, which is far from their self-perception and self-proclaim.

The sense of incongruity in the film comes largely from this, which makes people have an indescribable entanglement after watching the movie:

On the one hand, their creations are not art, and they have no social responsibility, so the labor, overtime, and "dedication" they pursue as a result (living in a snail's home, eating takeout, staying up late, getting sick, being broken up) can hardly arouse sympathy or respect from moviegoers. Their life is a self-choice, but it doesn't feel like a life worth pursuing, in terms of reason, reason, or meaning. So when they say they're leaving Beijing and the industry, it makes the audience feel like it's long overdue — and they stay and stay in it.

On the other hand, they disdain to regard themselves as migrant workers, and the film's attitude towards the protagonists is obviously positive, thinking that they are ordinary "dream chasers" in big cities. In fact, what are they pursuing? It's nothing more than fame and fortune, and what they are trying to learn from is the recognition in the film and television industry, the signature of their works, and the "make money" written on the blackboard that they moved? These are just very superficial secular successes.

There is technology, but there is no understanding

The creators of "Galaxy Writer" are insiders in the film and television industry, and the protagonists are based on the two screenwriters of the film, who write their own stories. So whether it's the living environment or the state of work, the film seems very real - but this "realism" only stays on the surface. The huge group of writers at the bottom who support the film and television industry is worth paying attention to. I think if there was a documentary about them, it would be much better than this one.

Because this film cannot grasp the position of this group in general, and therefore cannot deeply judge the meaning of this group's life, nor does it critically reflect on the industry, but only provides two men who chase their dreams along the way, and in the end, the characters do not develop nonsensical stories. Compared with "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop!", "Galaxy Writer" lacks a sociological vision, but adds a kind of false artist aura. Therefore, "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop!" obviously mocks the romantic imagination of "My future is not a dream", while the "Galaxy Writers" still think that there will be a tomorrow that can become famous and gain fame and fortune at their fingertips.

Perhaps, this is a reflection of some of the problems in professional education. Can the college system and professional education cultivate outstanding artistic talents? In this regard, there are discussions in the fields of fine arts, drama, and literature, and the majors involved include painting and calligraphy, dramatic literature, and creative writing. An expert once said that the Department of Drama and Literature is the happiest because the whole department is devoted to training dramatists and creators. This is of course a kind of happiness, but a large number of graduates may also have created a huge group of low-level screenwriters in the film and television industry outlined in the film, creating a large number of but cookie-cutter routine stories, a large number of cheap labor, and a large number of mirage-like living conditions.

One of the directors of this film and one of the protagonists of this film are both graduates of the Performing Arts Major. However, judging from the creative state presented in the film, they only have the directing and screenwriting techniques that control the rhythm, and do not inject a deep understanding of society and life into the work, so that even if they write about their own industry, they are unable or unwilling to form a reflective understanding. The screenwriting technique is supposed to be auxiliary, and it is supposed to be a reprocessing of a meaningful story, but if there is only mastery of the technique, only preconceived technical training, at most you can only look at social life and the world through the filter of technical rationality formed by the technique, and code and classify the lively life and reality according to the existing rules, it is difficult to touch the social reality personally.

Female resources, male gaze

The gender logic of this film is a direct example of this. To exaggerate, all the female images in the film are negative: Xiaorui cheated on Da Liu and abandoned her ex-boyfriend who was not good-looking, which attracted everyone's disdain; As for the opinions raised by these two women, the film of course adopts a negative expression: Zhang Yi blocks the two of them throughout the whole process, and after each meeting, Sun Tan and Zhang Yi will denounce the two for not understanding art at all. In the end, the two sides had a big argument and broke up unhappily - the two women terminated their contracts, asked Zhang and Sun out of the company, and asked someone else to revise their script, but only to indicate the source of the story.

Zhou Keke is the female character with the strongest pen in the whole film. Her screen name is a masculine one. With this name, as well as Zhang Yi's confidence in his own level of problem, he took it for granted that the one who came to watch the movie with him was a "brother". In Zhang Yi's life, Zhou Keke did not contribute anything to his script, but persuaded him to be realistic at the end, give up part of his art, and complete the project first. Of course, this is difficult for Zhang Yiyi to accept.

When the two experienced all kinds of changes, especially after experiencing Xiaorui's derailment, they once hugged each other and said firmly that even if there are too many divisions and integrations in this city, they will be husband and wife for life. But in the end, Zhou Keke still left Zhang Yi, and packed up all his belongings without telling him and hired a moving company. If Zhang Yi hadn't gone home so early, what was presented in the film would be that Zhou Keke would say goodbye - the reason why she wanted to separate was just a simple sentence: the pursuit is different, and she can't go on.

These women are all beautiful. Without overly quoting Laura Mulvey's theories, we can also see that men on and off screen consume these women's sexual resources. The pictorial clip of the beat table in which the murder and suspense take place in the woman's bedroom, and the fragment of Rui's infidelity becomes a fact through the inferences and conjectures of others—in that clip, both on and off the screen are fantasizing about the sexual acts that could occur or could occur in another space, and the conjecture turns out to be true. The innocent Zhou Ke saw that on the first day of Zhang Yi, he ate a bucket of popcorn while watching a movie, and the two had a relationship that night and contributed the first nude scene in the film. That shot is from above, with Zhou Keke, with his bare shoulders and neck, lying flat and looking directly at the viewer outside the camera, with a strong suggestion (not to mention the obvious passivity of the woman in the low position). In the subsequent dialogue between Zhou Keke and Zhang Yi, Zhou Keke talked about the movie, and Zhang Yi took the audience to reminisce about the bed just now:

Zhou Keke: If you can watch "Interstellar" again on the big screen, it will definitely be super cool.

Zhang Yiyi: Then you just now?

In the passage of Zhang Yi's KTV party with a few friends, when Boss Cai held the bonus card that won the award on behalf of the script to share with everyone, Boss Cai became the brightest star of the night. At this time, the film arranges a shot of Zhou Keke looking up at Boss Cai, as well as a shot of Zhang Yi who is cramped and restless. Isn't this a hint that men who have a successful career will take away all their resources, or that men at the bottom of their careers are panicking that they are about to lose their sexual resources.

The third woman is Ma Shanshan, a literary consultant at the investor. The opinions she put forward were contemptuous and contemptuous for Zhang and Sun. But Sun Tan is still willing to hold a script meeting because he is willing to meet Ma Shanshan, who is quite beautiful. In the end, when Zhang Yi and Sun Tan quarreled with the two women in the management, they learned that Ma Shanshan's defense of them and the recognition of their talents behind their backs could be regarded as a success; on the other hand, in this quarrel, Ma Shanshan was relatively speechless, shed a thousand tears, and was always in the position of the underdog, that is, the weak. The male protagonists find satisfaction in both aspects.

Women who are life partners, either because of carnal desires or material things, have left these men who think they are pursuing a spiritual life, and the women they meet in their careers are putting forward all kinds of layman's opinions that they see as hindering art, and putting obstacles to their careers - all these women are consumed as sexual resources by men on and off the screen. If we know that one of the three main creators of this film is a woman, then the "male gaze" of this film is so typical, it is even more incredible.

Too stereotypical, unreal

The two directors of this film, Li Kuo and Shan Dandan, are a husband and wife. In a post-screening creative exchange session, an audience member asked, since this movie has a strong autobiographical color, why not use the setting of the male and female protagonists, but the setting of two male protagonists? Li Kuo replied that the prototype of this movie is actually him and Gao Qun, another screenwriter of this movie, and the two of them have worked together for a long time. And if you use the character setting of the hero and heroine, you will fall into a love line, and it will be difficult to express the state of your career and industry. It seems that the female director also agrees with this.

I think, as mentioned above, that the screenwriters are not writing about the lively social reality, but through a series of screenwriting techniques, as well as the filters of film history classics and successful works of the same generation, to create the internal reality of the film, and then come to the conclusion that the setting of the male and female protagonists will definitely turn the film into a romance film, and cannot tell the state of the industry, and men must be idealistic and talented, women must be materialistic and will choose other branches, they will appreciate the talent of men, but they do not understand real art.

In terms of character creation and the construction of gender identity, "Galaxy Writer" has a similar bias. This makes it a story that makes sense, but it's also an extremely stereotypical story, too far from reality.

At the end of the film, Zhang Yi and Sun Tan buried their "Seven Seconds Man" script with their own hands. A century later, the script was rediscovered and an art gallery was built on the site, and a robot-like staff member told visitors that it was the earliest human-created script we had ever unearthed. Why is it obvious that this is created by a human and not an AI?" because it is imperfect. ”

What is the real meaning of human writing compared to AI writing? Is human writing valuable because it is "imperfect"? Is human writing necessarily "imperfect"? The answer must not be as simple as the film says, and it is by no means something that can be laughed off. On the contrary, if we are left with only the beat table, the means of storytelling, and lose the search for meaning and the sense of reality, then it is not inconceivable that human writing will be completely replaced by AI. Let's hope we don't cut ourselves off.