At a film exchange event, Jia Zhangke, who has been making movies for decades, was asked by a young female student:
"Why is China always a dilapidated and backward image in your films?
And why do you always win international awards with these biased Chinese images? ”
Jia Zhangke was speechless for a moment, he could hear the gunpowder smell of this question.
Young schoolgirls are questioning: Jia Zhangke's films send blades to foreign media and reinforce the Western stereotype of China's "backwardness and ignorance."
Jia Zhangke himself once said: "I have made more than ten years of movies, more than a dozen films, careful calculation is also very sad, "Mountains and Rivers Of the Past" is my third feature film released in China. ”
The aforementioned films were banned, mostly because of the image of China presented by the film that lagged behind the times.
The hat of public knowledge was buckled on Jia Zhangke's head, and the position judgment also dragged down the pace of his creation, but jia Zhangke, who used Lu Xun as a spiritual totem, was really deliberately pandering to the stereotype of "backward China" constructed by the West?
We have to start with the changes in Chinese film culture.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > 80s films with literature as the cornerstone</h1>
The 1980s was the age of poetry, the era of utopia, and the era of China's voice resounding around the world.
When the red rock of Cui Jian and others poured into the West like a torrent, Chinese films also began to go to sea.
"Yellow Land", "Red Sorghum", "Overlord Farewell", "Alive"... Through the film "Let History Tell the Future", China also launches a sonorous and powerful torture of the human world, and the ups and downs of cultural history and the criticism of social visions are embedded in it.
At that time, Jia Zhangke had not yet set foot in the film world. He prepared for the Literature Department of the Beijing Film Academy in his hometown in Shanxi, and became famous in the Literary Circle of Shanxi with several sharp and profound short stories.
In 1993, he entered the North Film, and 2 years later, he operated the guide tube.
At that time, China was shrouded in a clamor and turmoil, utopian dreams were shattered, capitalism invaded people's spiritual territory, and the flood of commercialization enveloped the film industry, and the fifth generation of directors, including Zhang Yimou, began to obsess over spending huge sums of money to produce well-made but hollow and hypocritical commercial blockbusters.
Film art faces astonishing degradation — thin structure, blunt narrative, and creative stereotyping and kitsch. The great directors have lost the avant-garde nature of their ideas, and they have also lost their vivid experience of life and life.
It was also at this time that Jia Zhangke turned out to be born! With a "Xiao Wu", he presents the loss of a generation of young people in the dream of marketization and commercialization.
The criticality originated from Lu Xun and other pioneers of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, and was injected into the language of images by Jia Zhangke, a literary leader.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > video recorders of vulnerable groups</h1>
"Xiao Wu" won awards at 7 international film festivals, including the 48th Berlin Film Festival, and Jia Zhangke became famous ever since.
From today's point of view, the critical blade of "Xiao Wu" is aimed at the social pain points of the 90s and pierces the sensitive areas of society, and when the mainstream industry compromises to market logic and only pays attention to market share and box office revenue, Jia Zhangke has an impulse to restore the truth and focuses on ordinary Chinese.
There is no dramatic conflict in Jia Zhangke's video narrative, as described by professional researchers at Tsinghua University:
"Jia Zhangke's film documentary style and civilian tendencies have created a simple and natural form and a bland rhythm, and they use the lens language to narrate the ordinary lives of ordinary people, especially people on the fringes of society, which is a restoration of the unique experience of the real state of life - disorder, helplessness and inability to grasp."
Since then, Jia Zhangke has successively filmed films such as "Platform", "Ren Xiaoyao", "Three Gorges Good Man", "Destiny of Heaven" and other films, including Foxconn's Thirteen Consecutive Jumps, Dongguan Yellow Industry and other social hidden diseases, all of which have been exposed to the camera by Jia Zhangke.
In foreign countries, fame has poured in, and at home, bad reviews are everywhere.
The question Jia Zhangke was asked the most was: Why do you only present the dark side of Chinese society, and why do you turn a blind eye to the economic miracle and development results we have achieved?
But Jia Zhangke's fans asked the critics: If Lu Xun lived in a powerful China, would he still criticize?
There are no standard answers to these two questions.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="47" > the "backward perspective" position controversy</h1>
From Jia Zhangke's literary path, we can see that his vigilance and criticism of social issues are not out of the calculation of interests, Rao is now, he is also the poorest among film directors, and his criticism is all out of the creative concept, that is, the humanistic tradition of intellectuals to examine society.
In the industry environment of small fresh meat flooding and entertainment disaster, the essence of commercial blockbusters is spreading the values of money first and entertainment first.
Commercial blockbusters like small times weave a modern, fashionable, and consumer illusion, dragging audiences into it, however, such "works" are full of the vulgar value of money worship, far from ordinary people, despise vulnerable groups, unable to give people real spiritual nourishment, and in another dimension, they are fueling the capitalization of society.
Jia Zhangke chooses to present the profound reality of the vulnerable in society, which is not as good as handsome men and beautiful women, but it is a correction of the imbalance of social values.
However, in the special cultural context of the current confrontation between East and West, Jia Zhangke, who only shoots the dark side and does not shoot the sunny side, has come to the opposite side of the public because of the civilian stance, and he seems to have become a nationalist "traitor"?
But if no one presents the pain of life for the vulnerable, will the vulnerable be even weaker? The reason why capital does not care about the weak is because the weak do not bring appreciation to capital.
We can ask a deep question: is jia zhangke's ass crooked, or is the discourse system of capital control punishing the rebels?