Yao Yao: The left and right factions in the United States are dueling at the Oscars

Yao Yao

The Korean movie "Parasite" swept four Oscar awards and became a hot topic of discussion among Chinese staying at home. There are two kinds of public opinion that are very popular, one is that Korean movies are very powerful, and the other is that the American Oscars are very open. There is some truth to both kinds of praise, but if it stops there, or even uses Chinese films as a reference and "mourns them", it ignores the "political correctness" of the Oscars, and does not help to truly enhance the soft power of Chinese films.

First, Hollywood has always been the cultural stronghold of the Democratic Party, and the Oscars are the political vane of liberals. The more extraordinary the time comes, the more the Oscars will rely on their aspirations with a fearful leap forward. This year's Oscars awarded four awards to a South Korean film, and even a very rare one of the "Best Picture" and "Best International Film" at the same time, at a time when populism is on the rise, it is better to say that hollywood elites are eager to hedge Trump's nativism with a clear globalism.

Cinema is not only a cultural phenomenon, but also has its political and economic basis. The West Coast of the United States, where Hollywood is located, is home to a gathering of liberal upstarts such as Apple, Google, and Facebook, so trump has jokingly called the "Left Coast" (a pun on the political leaning towards the Democratic Party). On cultural issues, the "Left Coast" does show a certain progressiveness. However, behind cultural pluralism, there are hidden political and economic drivers that support transnational capital flows; Behind Trump's populism represents a local industrial consortium eager to reinvigorate American industry. Local consortia require capital to return to the United States for investment, while multinational consortia want capital to flow to the world to increase in value, which constitutes a deep contradiction behind Trump's struggle with the "left coast" concept.

Second, in the decade after the financial crisis, in the face of increasingly fermenting social dilemmas, Trump chose to use populist anti-elite discourse to induce and mobilize angry voters, while Hollywood showed an ambiguous evasive posture because of its tying with the interests of transnational capital and the establishment elite. If you dare not touch the real contradiction, you can only soothe people's hearts with virtual heroes in the alternate world such as "Captain America". The 2018 Oscars hit an all-time low rating, and Trump immediately tweeted ridicule: "There are no big names in Hollywood." Now it's just me who's the big coffee. ”

This year's Oscars could have been an inflection point. In the past year, Hollywood has produced a number of excellent works that touch the contradictions of reality. So, where did the laurel "Parasite" win? It should be admitted that the film portrays the social phenomenon of the division between the rich and the poor in South Korea, but it ambiguously avoids the root causes behind the social contradictions. The rich people in the film are all stupid and polite white sweets who are easy to deceive and polite, and the creators are obviously not willing to criticize the rich, nor are they willing to blame the poor, let alone touch even a little bit of the deep cause of the class gap. The Oscars seem to remind American filmmakers to stay warm, because criticizing the poor will go against their constantly flaunted values, and criticizing the rich will expose their deeply disguised interests.

Confucius said: "The virtuous speak, and the benevolent are courageous." "It is difficult for a person to become a benevolent person without the courage to transform the world, and the will of a film without a voice for the times must also be difficult to capture people's hearts." Seeing the ideological struggle behind the Oscars and the deep american society will help us better understand ourselves, distinguish between good and evil, and strive to make more wonderful and profound film works, so as to realize the philosophical ideals of the Huairou people with soft power. (The writer is Director of the National Soft Power Research Center of the China Foreign Affairs University)

Editor-in-charge: Yang Yang

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