Masculinity in "Send Me to the Clouds"

When Sheng Nan, played by Yao Chen, expresses his lust for men twice in the movie, it is not only Si Mao (Li Jiuxiao) and Liu Guangming (Yuan Hong) in the story who are restless, but also the audience in the movie theater. Among them, male audiences may feel uncomfortable and feel stabbed like the male who must face sheng nan's confession in the movie; and for female audiences, this plot may also cause two different reactions, one is empathy, the other is shy and even ashamed... To a large extent, this is also the most surprising and surprising part of teng Congcong's "Send Me to Qingyun", surprised because we seem to have rarely seen women so bluntly express and appeal to their own desires in domestic films, and the surprise is that in a group of current domestic films that seem to have no traditional gender ideology, this film actually exposes the invisible male gender consciousness and angle that exists in the former.

We seem to have rarely heard of a film that is called a film with a strong "masculine consciousness" because it is so common and so old that it is directly treated as a daily and "normal" model that exists within the structure of the film. So it's only when there's a movie like Send Me to The Clouds that we become aware of the gender consciousness in these "genderless" films. In "Send Me to the Clouds", there are two issues related to this that are worth discussing, one is about the repression and obscuration of women's lust in social culture and mainstream ideology; the other is that with the development of current Chinese society, traditional masculinity has also changed. In "Send Me to the Clouds", different male characters actually show a new type of masculinity competition and oppression.

Self-talk: women's desires

In His History of Sexual Experience, Foucault refuted the idea of sexual conservatism in the Victorian period in England. By studying various materials and literature on law, medical science and daily life at that time, he found that there were a large number of new discourses around "sex" at that time, thus constructing a series of new sexual experiences and sexual concepts. Interestingly, however, the expansion of these sexual discourses found by Foucault ultimately produces the intuitive impression that it is sexually conservative rather than sexually liberated or free. This seemingly paradoxical condition has always existed. In the French philosopher Pascal Brucknet's The Paradox of Love, he found that the constant production of discourses about love and sex in modern society brings not passion and romance, but anxiety, insecurity and panic about sex. Bruckné found that the flourishing of sexual discourse led to sexual exhaustion.

But on another level, when we comb through these flourishing sexual discourses and sexual expressions, we find that most of them originate from men, and most of them also express men's sexual concepts, desires and anxieties. Among them, the expression of women's sexual desires is always very limited, and often suppressed and obscured. In fact, this situation is the same in the traditional mainstream patriarchal society of the East and the West, that is, women's sex and desires are always controlled or even erased as a non-existent present.

For traditional China, the main purpose of women's sexuality is to procreate, that is, to give birth to male heirs for the patrilineal family to ensure the continuation of the family. In addition, women's sexuality is constrained and ignored, and many times it is also subject to structural control from patriarchal culture and society. In addition to procreation, feminine sexuality in traditional cultures is also used as a commodity consumed, purchased and plundered by men, so the opposite of the role of "mother" in the ethical order of the family is the prostitute. Unlike the "motherly" sex, the sex of prostitutes has more erotic and commercial overtones, thus placing female sex in the market for trading and circulation.

Whether it is for fertility or consumption, traditional women are controlled by mainstream men for their own sex, so they are also shaped and constructed for it, but even so, it still does not appear in the social public field, but is strictly controlled in a specific space. Male sex, on the other hand, is ubiquitous and permeates everyday life and practice, unconsciously consolidated and reproduced. In traditional films, this is very clear.

Take the classic Hollywood romance films, for example, most of them depict the love chase and interaction between men and women, but one of the typical commonalities is that they mostly write the whole story from the male side. As the famous British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey pointed out in her theory of male gaze in movies, movies are full of male gazes, and it is the mainstream patriarchal ideology that constructs this gaze. The men in the film are always the subjects of the unfolding gaze, while the women who are shrouded by their gaze are still placed in the object position, thus losing the ability to speak and express.

Self-talk is an important means of constructing self-awareness and subjectivity, but "speaking" is actually universally controlled and suppressed for women in traditional culture and society. And in this limited voice, because of the existence of sexual taboos, it is impossible for them to confide in their sexual desires. Therefore, in the liberation of women in modern China, sexual liberation has always been an important category. In Ding Ling's famous "Diary of Lady Sha Fei", what caused controversy and discussion was that Sha Fei as a woman first expressed her sexual desires, and it was in this self-talk and disclosure that she changed from an object stared at and disciplined by men to a master of the self. (As a supplementary comparison is Yu Dafu's series of novels about sexual distress, repression, and perversion, although the protagonist is male, he is still able to self-awaken and empower because of his own sexual desire problems.) ）

In "Send Me to the Clouds", Sheng Nan's attention to her own sexual desire comes from the fact that she learned that she had ovarian cancer and that she might lose the ability to obtain sexual pleasure after seeing the operation on the Internet, so she wanted to experience sexual pleasure again before the operation. In the movie, Sheng Nan has been single for a long time and has no sex life, which seems to belong to the group of young people who have gradually "sexless life" that are often discussed in the domestic media in recent years. As Brückner found, in the modern consumer society and the Internet, sex is everywhere, a variety of film and television book resources and all kinds of dating software have made people more aware of sex and accessible, but the status quo is that many young people gradually lost their sex life, causing this situation In addition to some young people losing interest in it, another more important reason is that with the development of modern capitalist business society, as well as the deepening of urbanization, the list situation between people has become more and more serious. Eventually, traditional ethical relationships are gradually replaced by addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in the logic of market and capital, resulting in a lack of intimacy, which makes it difficult to establish intimate relationships.

Sheng Nan, who lives in the modern metropolis, may also face this situation, and if he had not learned that he had ovarian cancer, this situation may still continue. In addition to learning that she was ill, Sheng Nan's reawakened sense of self-libido was also related to the various embarrassments, humiliations, offenses and blows from mainstream male society that she suffered in the process of writing an autobiography to Her father, Li Zong, whom she had always despised, because she needed to earn the cost of surgery. In the movie, Sheng Nan is surrounded by men except his mother, and these men can be subdivided according to age and class, such as Simao, Liu Guangming and Sheng Nan, who are about the same age and education, while Li Zong and his father are different from Sheng Nan in terms of social class and age. Therefore, when these elements enter the gender structure, we find that the net woven from it firmly envelops Sheng Nan in it.

Among them, Li Zong is the most typical person, in the scene of the hot spring room in the movie, four or five men with big belly and naked upper body laugh in the hot spring, talk about business and investment, etc., while Sheng Nan stands outside the door, waiting for Li Zong to come out and sign the contract. (Here, men's presentation of their bodies does not feel anything wrong with the presence of a man standing outside, and they may not be aware of the inconvenience that their physical-sexual display may cause to others.) And if we align the male and female characters in this scene, we may immediately realize the problem: the male presentation of the body and sex is completely routine and normalized. And when Mr. Li gave a lecture to Sheng Nan, we found that the above elements—age, class, and male identity—were integrated and began to discipline and suppress Sheng Nan. This model has been timeless and constitutes the most central means of mainstream patriarchal ideology.

The film also compares the activity of Sheng Nan's friend Simao in sexual life and his relish and showing off about it, further showing the limitation and control of women's sexual expression. In daily life, we always hear men talk about their sexual ability and sexual performance in various occasions, and jokes and words about sex are everywhere. In contrast, women are more conservative about it, and the fundamental reason is that they are forbidden to talk about it, especially when it comes to their own sexual desires. When Sheng Nan tells Simao about his sexual desires, Si Mao rejects her as a friend; and when Sheng Nan expresses this wish to Li Guangming, who has a good feeling, the latter is frightened and runs away.

In "The Mad Woman in the Attic" by S.M Gilbert and Susan Guba, the author analyzes the works of Western 19th-century women writers and finds that in the female world of female writers, there is always a "crazy woman" who blatantly ignores women's morality, is full of flowers, ambitions, and evil deeds, and is eventually destroyed for this purpose. This seemingly crazy role is actually created by the mainstream patriarchal society when it controls and suppresses women, and male ideology also uses this to discipline those women who are out of line, thus creating a "good woman-crazy woman" binary image, in order to achieve the stability of the rule. In "Send Me to the Clouds", the male who confesses his sexual desire is likely to be regarded as a "crazy woman". And the mental illness that appears at the beginning and end of the movie eventually forms a certain understanding and resonance with Sheng Nan, so he will say "I love you". In a world made up of men such as Simao, Liu Guangming, and Li Zong, Sheng Nan is like an outlier among women, only because she expresses her own sexuality and sexual desires.

In the film, in contrast to Sheng Nan, who begins to express his sexual desires bluntly, is her mother. Sheng Nan's mother married Sheng Nan's father at the age of 19, and eventually quit her job to become a housewife, but with her husband cheating on Sheng Nan's female classmates, and being cold to her, she began to become a "useless person" and a non-existent person. In order to regain her attention and happiness, her mother began to dress herself more carefully, and eventually developed a feeling of pity for Li Zong's father.

The tragedy of the male mother is also largely due to the control and obscuration of women's self and sexual expression by mainstream sexual and gender ideologies. People seem to have forgotten all the sexual desires of Sheng Male's mother as a woman, and began to de-sexualize/separate her early, which led to her becoming a "sexless" woman in traditional imperial society, such as "dead ash of the wood" when describing the young widow Li Feng in "Dream of the Red Chamber".

When the film shows the sexuality and sexual desires of middle-aged women such as Sheng Male's mother, we find that the suppression of her comes not only from the traditional sexual/other structure, but also from Sheng Nan as a daughter. One of the important conflicts between her and her mother is that she has also subconsciously forgotten her mother's sexual rights as a woman. This ideology has a long history and has been deeply rooted in traditional China, that is, to restrain parents through adult children, especially on sexual issues, it seems that once parents enter middle age, they have no "sex", desire and the right to enjoy sex. Therefore, when facing the mother, Sheng Nan is actually a helper and re-producer of the patriarchal gender ideology that traditionally suppresses her sexual desire.

Thus, as Bourdieu points out, the dominant ideology acts not only on the power holders who occupy a dominant position in the field, but also on the marginalized oppressed, making them instruments for their own consolidation and reproduction. When Sheng Nan faced her own sexual desires, she encountered the suppression of mainstream sexual ideology and thus became a rebel; but when she faced her mother's sexual desires, she unconsciously became a screw in the mainstream ideology. In this big net, in addition to women like Sheng Nan and his mother being disciplined and suppressed, some non-mainstream men also face the situation of being insulted and hurt.

Second, "rich": new style of masculinity

In australian scholar R.W. Cornell's classic book "Masculinity", she pointed out that the essential masculinity that is traditionally believed to be essential masculinity will actually be constructed with the changes in the history and culture of different societies, and that "masculinity" itself is a existence that is very closely related to many other historical categories, such as economy, gender, race and sexual orientation. Cornell pointed out that there are also hierarchies and divisions within the field of masculinity, which leads to the oppression of femininity relative to the outside, and the internal oppression of men who do not conform to mainstream masculinity. In several male characters who appear in "Send Me to the Clouds", we see that men under the action of different elements eventually have a distinct hierarchical differentiation, and different masculinities are constructed and become tools to bind, humiliate and even oppress these men.

As pointed out above, in "Send Me to Qingyun", Simao and Liu Guangming are in similar positions in terms of age, education and social class/status, while they are contrasted by middle-aged businessmen represented by Li Zong. In the movie, Simao bows to Li Zong, hoping to get his promotion and help to learn or find opportunities to make money; and Liu Guangming, as Li Zong's son-in-law, is even more promised, bearing the sneers and humiliations from his father-in-law. Through these plots and stories, the film shows a very typical hierarchical division within the male group and the resulting oppression and harm, and an important reason why a middle-aged successful male businessman like Li Zong can occupy the mainstream position in this internal field comes from his "wealth".

Mainstream masculinity in modern and contemporary China is not static. Professor Dai Jinhua pointed out in his book "Invisible Writing" that the dominant position in the male field of modern China was gradually castrated after the founding of New China due to the impact of endless political movements, and finally completely lost the mainstream masculinity privilege that had been obtained by knowledge. But with China's entry into reform and opening up in the 1980s and 1990s, the male intellectual elite, which had been suppressed for decades, once again regained the suppressed masculinity with the knowledge and discourse power they had mastered. However, this result does not seem to last long, that is, with the development of the market economy, many intellectuals began to "go to the sea" to become businessmen and earn the first pot of gold, thus opening the tide of modern Chinese consumerism. The success of Mr. Li in "Send Me to Qingyun" is bound to be very directly related to the reform and opening up at the end of the last century and the development of the market economy.

It is with the strong entry of capital, masculinity also changes under its influence, one of the most typical features is the disintegration of the sanctity of knowledge, and "rich" businessmen have constructed a strong right to speak and choose on its basis, thus beginning to become an important template for mainstream masculinity. In "Send Me to Qingyun", those young people with high academic qualifications encounter sneers from Li Zong, who are not highly educated, and others, especially the mockery of his son-in-law Liu Guangming. In the movie, in order to entertain his guests, Mr. Li asked his son-in-law Liu Guangming to perform a recitation of pi for everyone. Behind this comical scene is actually a reflection of the current situation of contemporary Chinese society, that is, under the shroud of capital and consumer markets, knowledge has dropped its price and become a toy for people's entertainment. Liu Guangming, who represents knowledge, under the siege of class, capital and mainstream masculinity, can only stand in front of the mirror and recite pi.

This humiliating show was finally interrupted by Sheng Nan, who could not watch it. Because Sheng Nan himself was also born with a high degree and attached great importance to his own knowledge, he could empathize with the humiliation that Liu Guangming encountered; on the other hand, Liu Guangming, as a man, was suppressed and castrated within the male group, and eventually became a clown, which is also familiar to Sheng Nan. Thus, as Cornell points out, the oppressiveness of the hegemonic masculinity that dominates masculinity acts not only on the degraded femininity, but also on other men who do not conform to this mainstream masculinity. And once ostracized and stigmatized from within the male community, the plight of these men may be even more difficult, because they always have the identity of "male". So in the movie, Liu Guangming chose to commit suicide.

As many articles have pointed out, people today— especially young men— no longer worship the philosophers, novelists, or poets that young people once followed, or the philosophers, novelists, or poets who were once followed by young people. Dean, Malone. Brando was the star of the times, and most of them became successful businessmen. This is probably the inevitable situation in market logic and society, that is, money becomes the standard by which everything is measured, and masculinity is also closely linked to it. In "Send Me to the Clouds", Simao is thinking about how to make money and how to succeed. There are recurring discussions about money in the film, about its connection to life and life. One of the typical ideas reveals an attitude of "money omnipotence", which is completely captured by the logic of capital in modern society.

Take Simao, for example, he was once a rather vengeful journalist, but he was eventually fired from the company for offending the powerful, and perhaps it was precisely because of this incident that he began to believe that only "having money" could get rid of the humiliation and unfreedom he suffered as a low-level person in life and society, so he began to pursue how to become rich. What is reflected behind this turn is actually related to the re-emergence of the gap between rich and poor in Chinese society in the 1980s and 1990s.

When Liu Guangming confronted Sheng Nan, he boasted about his full knowledge, as if he hoped to get some kind of comfort from Sheng Nan. What is curious is that although he has a full belly, he still fails to see or rebel against people's flattery and belief in the omnipotence of money under the logic of capital, but instead participates in it and endures humiliation. It is here, through Liu Guangming, that the director once again shows sheng nan's stubbornness and courage. And interestingly, when he learned that Sheng Nan was a doctor, Liu Guangming was also quite surprised. And Sheng Nan also seems to be deliberately "lowering" his academic qualifications, so as not to have to face many stigmas and satires of highly educated women in society.

In the gender structure, even Liu Guangming, who has been hurt by mainstream masculinity, still has more gender rights than Sheng Nan, who is a woman, so he will turn to her and talk to her endlessly. Maybe it's because he xu Shengnan is a confidant, or maybe it's just to find an opportunity to show off his knowledge. For whether in the face of his wife or his father-in-law, his knowledge becomes something for ridicule and amusement, measured and shrouded entirely by money, just like his masculinity.

III. Conclusion

In "Send Me to the Clouds", the director deliberately breaks down and uncovers various myths and lies in traditional male society, of which women's words and manifestations of self-lust are the most typical. After Si Mao and Sheng Nan have a relationship, one of the details is the satire of the traditional male concept of sex, that is, Sheng Nan finally obtained an orgasm on his own, not Si Mao. Men are very sensitive to this, precisely because in the traditional sexual discourse, men are always described as the active or subject in sexual behavior, and women can only be used as objects of bearing, so even in such sexual discourse writing, it is often based on men as the center of sexual description, and completely ignore women's experience and pleasure in it.

In the Western feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, many women's mutual aid groups appeared, and one of the main purposes was to encourage women to speak about their bodies, experiences, sexual experiences and pleasures, so that women gradually realized and regained their own subjectivity. It is precisely for this reason that we have seen discussions about women's sexuality and experiences in many Western films, such as the classic American drama "Sex and the City", which revolves around the lives and sex of four different female friends, showing an important aspect of modern women's lives.

In Lei Jinqing's monograph "Male Characteristics", he uses "Wen" and "Wu" to summarize the masculinity of traditional China, but with the complex social conditions of modern China, masculinity has also changed. In "Send Me to Qingyun", only Li Zong, a rich and successful businessman, can become a power person in the masculine field, not only suppressing women, but also restricting men like Simao and Liu Guangming. In the film, the director seems to want to solve this problem in some metaphysical way, but in the end the processing is limited, because it shows a chess game that the chess pieces can't control.

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