When all the people around him—the Second Dangjia, the Blind Man, Bai Jingjing, the Spring Thirteenth Lady, the Eight Precepts, the Sand Monk, the Bodhi Ancestor, and so on—are living in the cycle of time, and the Supreme Treasure has become Sun Wukong in an inescapable way, will he become a member of the torrent of time?
The college students who entered in 1996 were the first generation of viewers of "Journey to the West".
Looking back at the "Big Talk Westward Fever" since the late 1990s, this film, which has suffered a cold reception at the social level, has received almost religious madness in the youth community built by VCD, BBS, and university campuses. The inexplicable emotional structure of this generation of young people has found a corresponding form in "Journey to the West". The historical appearance of a generation needs to find its own "story".
In the past, the understanding of "Journey to the West" was often limited to concepts and definitions such as collage, irony, parody, and carnival, and limited to the "postmodern" in the textbook as a noun explanation, which was too ingenious to penetrate the complex and exquisite narrative form of "Journey to the West", and it was difficult to understand the interaction between the text structure of the film and the emotional structure of a new generation. Twenty years have passed, and the tearful spectators have already married and had children, standing at the threshold of the year of confusion. And let us return to "Journey to the West", understand the path of youth of a generation, and understand the historical mystery of this classic.
Let's start with a basic question: How many times has "Journey to the West" told the story of "Journey to the West"?
The first layer of story: the rebellious Sun Wukong
The movie "Journey to the West" opens with the story of "Journey to the West" for the first time, but it is not the Sun Wukong and Tang Monk that we are familiar with: because Sun Wukong could not stand the "nagging" of Tang Monk, he colluded with the Bull Demon King to eat Tang Monk meat. After the matter is revealed, Sun Wukong injures the Purple Xia Fairy and grabs the Moonlight Treasure Box (which can travel through time) to escape Guanyin's responsibility.
Through the subsequent second and third layer stories, it can be added that Sun Wukong rejected the marriage contract with Bai Jingjing (Bai BoneJing) and wanted to marry Xiangxiang, the sister of the Bull Demon King, but at the same time had an affair with the Cow Devil King's wife, Princess Tiefan.
At the end of the first layer of the story, Guanyin wants to kill Sun Wukong, and Tang Monk intercedes on behalf of Him, in exchange for sun Wukong's reincarnation opportunity with his own death. This layer of story appears at the beginning of the film, about four minutes, and constitutes the "wedge" of the whole film.
In this story, Sun Wukong is a rebel who hates the preaching of the Tang monks, as well as the world of gods and the fate of learning the scriptures.
The second layer of the story: the cynical and idle Sun Wukong
This layer of story corresponds to the "Moonlight Treasure Box" in the upper part of "Journey to the West", in the context of time, it takes place in the "five hundred years" of the first layer of the story, Sun Wukong was reincarnated as the Supreme Treasure of the Mountain King, a cynical and idle youth.
After the rout, the Supreme Treasure at this time lived outside of historical time, no longer fighting against fate, but using the "Spiritual Victory Method" to dissolve the predicament. For example, for "cockfighting eyes", supreme treasure comforted himself: "I just focused my attention on a point to change my previous view of things." ”
For young people like Supreme Treasure, the youth of the 1990s will feel very familiar: everyone is a kind of person, after the failure of the rebellion, they have become outsiders who joke about life.
However, history continues, and the path of learning from the scriptures is once again opened. The goblins Chun Thirteen Niang (Spider Essence) and Bai Jingjing (White Bone Essence) come to the cottage of the Supreme Treasure to find a person with three moles on their feet. Chun Thirteen Niang and Bai Jingjing learned from Bodhi Laozu that this person with three moles on his feet was the reincarnation of Sun Wukong, and if he was found, he could find Tang Monk.
The characters of the first layer of the story ("five hundred years ago") gradually come to the second layer of the story: Bai Jingjing once made a marriage contract with Sun Wukong, although Sun Wukong broke the contract, but has always been obsessed with unforgettable; Bai Jingjing and Chun Thirteen Niang are the disciples of Pansi Daxian, and Pansi Daxian is the legal name of Zixia Immortal, and Sun Wukong and Zixia Immortal in the first layer of the story have no love affair, but instead beat zixia fairy into serious injury in order to snatch the moonlight treasure box; the bull demon king did not eat Tang monk meat in the first layer of the story, and the lady also had a private affair with Sun Wukong. For five hundred years, he carried a grudge against Sun Wukong and waited for Tang Monk to appear again.
In the second layer of the story, in order to save Bai Jingjing, the Supreme Treasure uses the Moonlight Treasure Box, which travels through time and space with the help of the Moonlight Treasure Box.
For Journey to the West, the Moonlight Treasure Box is both an important prop and an important image: the front of the Moonlight Treasure Box is engraved with "Back in Time to the Future", and the side is engraved with "Maha Prajnaparamita". In "Journey to the West", the significance of the Moonlight Treasure Box, first of all, is the narrative function, which supports the plot structure and multi-layered narrative of the film's time travel.
"Journey to the West" can be divided into the following four paragraphs according to the three appearances of the Moonlight Treasure Box, which correspond to the first layer/ second layer / third layer / fourth layer story, respectively; secondly, the meaning points to the fact that the "Journey to the West" in the past twenty years has ignored one point: the Moonlight Treasure Box implies the intertextual relationship with the "Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra", and this constitutes the deep clue of the film, in the third layer of the story, the author will analyze this in detail, which is not repeated here.
With the help of the Moonlight Treasure Box, the Supreme Treasure makes "time flow backwards", arriving before Bai Jingjing commits suicide because he misunderstands his negative heart. However, when Bai Jingjing, Chun Thirteen Niang and the Bull Demon King fought, the Supreme Treasure used the Moonlight Treasure Box again, but instead of "going back in time", it "went back to the future". He travels back five hundred years, the time when the first layer of the story took place.
Why is it not enough that the Moonlight Treasure Box is engraved with the phrase "Back in Time" and also engraved with the obvious paradox of "Back to the Future"? How can the "future" be "back"? This involves understanding the Moonlight Treasure Box and even understanding a key point of "Journey to the West": "Five hundred years ago" and "five hundred years later" cannot be understood in a linear view of time.
The four-layered story of "Journey to the West", "Five Hundred Years Ago/Five Hundred Years Later/Five Hundred Years Ago/Five Hundred Years Later", unified in the will of God, is the four stages of God's will to test Sun Wukong. In the first layer of the story of "Journey to the West", if you start from the perspective of Guanyin, the whole movie can be read as sun wukong's discipline, and the rotation of time is only different stages of trial. Don't forget that God doesn't live in linear time, God is outside of time. Therefore, the "five hundred years ago" of the third layer of the story is the next stage of the second layer of the story "five hundred years later".
The third layer of the story: Love and fate torn apart by Sun Wukong
The third layer of the story corresponds to the second part of "Journey to the West" "The Strange Adventure of Xianlu", which is the essence of the whole film of "Journey to the West". In "Journey to the West", there are actually two clues to discipline rebels: one is Sun Wukong, and the other is Zixia.
The third layer of the story begins with the perspective of the Purple Xia Fairy, who refuses to make a wick in the lamp of the Buddha and escapes to the human world. The movie opens with the Erlang God of the Divine Realm and the Four Heavenly Generals of the South Heavenly Gate hunting down Zixia, and the result ends with Zixia's great victory.
Two traitors' clues crossed in front of the water curtain cave five hundred years ago. At the end of the second layer of the story, the Supreme Treasure travels back to time for the last time, coming to the future five hundred years ago, meeting Zixia who passed by. In this scene, it should be noted that along with the reversal of time, the law of cause and effect attached to time is also collapsing: the Supreme Treasure, with the knowledge of five hundred years later, tells Zixia "Pansi Cave do not break in", which instead inspires Zixia to name the Water Curtain Cave Pansi Cave and claim to be the Pansi Immortal.
This is no longer an inevitable world, but full of contingencies, which man cannot grasp, and a sense of absurdity that makes people feel small begins to spread, and above all these contingencies is the will of God that man cannot touch. Zixia "freely" burned three moles at the soles of supreme treasure's feet, but this accidental move was based on the will of God that Zixia could not perceive; the supreme treasure pulled out Zixia's purple-green sword, and Zixia was surprised to find that he was the lover she was waiting for in the dark, but this marriage was not God's cold arrangement.
Subsequently, supreme treasure and Sun Wukong encounter, which is the only juxtaposition in the whole film, supreme treasure as a bystander, witnessing the first layer of the story. This four-minute story appears in the movie for the second time. However, this "replay" has changed: Guanyin also can't stand Tang Monk's nagging, and Sun Wukong and Sun Wukong simultaneously choked Tang Monk's neck.
The appearance of the Supreme Treasure in the first layer of the story also ended this layer of story, and the nine-ring tin staff of the Tang monk fell from the air, no longer the perfect Tang Monk in the first layer of the story, but smashed on the head of the Supreme Treasure. The Supreme Treasure fainted to the ground, and the Moonlight Treasure Box in his hand opened, drawing Tang Monk into the depths of time and space. Taking this plot as a cutting line, the "five hundred years ago" after that is completely different from the "five hundred years ago" in the first layer of the story, and the history is changed by the Supreme Treasure.
Supreme Treasure and Zixia meet in the residence of the Bull Devil King, who rescues Zixia, who was seriously injured by Sun Wukong in the desert, loves Zixia's beauty and wants to marry her; at the same time, he urges Supreme Treasure to marry his sister Xiangxiang as soon as possible. At such a moment, the Supreme Treasure is still thinking about the Moonlight Treasure Box. In this layer of the story, the Moonlight Treasure Box has successively undergone the transmission of the Supreme Treasure - Zixia - Sun Wukong - Supreme Treasure - Tang Monk, and fell into the hands of the Bull Demon King.
The reason why the Moonlight Treasure Box is important to the Supreme Treasure is that it allows him to return to five hundred years later to save his lover Bai Jingjing. Therefore, when the long-loved Zixia drew her sword and angrily pointed at the Supreme Treasure, the classic monologue of the Supreme Treasure sounded for the first time, but it was only to deceive Zixia:
If Heaven could give me a chance to do it again, I would say three words to the girl: I love you! If I had to add a deadline to this love, I would like to be... Ten thousand years!
However, when this monologue sounds for the second time, supreme treasure has truly fallen in love with Zixia, and realizes that as the bearer of Sun Wukong's fate, his love is impossible, and he must make a decision between fate and love.
Prior to this, all the efforts of supreme treasure had failed, and he joined forces with Zixia to steal the moonlight treasure box, but Zixia was stabbed by the jealous incense, and supreme treasure himself was abducted by the eight precepts and sand monks to see Tang monks in prison. The Supreme Treasure and his party escaped with the injured Zixia, the Bull Demon King appeared and captured Zixia, Tang Monk, the Eight Precepts, etc., and the Supreme Treasure himself fell off a cliff and was saved by the reincarnation of bodhi ancestor "Bandit Big Brother" five hundred years ago. In a trance, the Supreme Treasure returned to the Water Curtain Cave/Pansi Cave with the bandit brother and met the white crystal crystal of five hundred years ago.
Supreme Treasure was caught up in the choice of love, and he did not know whether he loved Bai Jingjing more or Zixia more. For the Supreme Treasure, for Bai Jingjing and Zixia, they must cross the hue and know their "heart". When the Supreme Treasure first met Bai Jingjing, he did not understand this truth, and was obsessed with various dresses to attract Bai Jingjing. And Zixia and Bai Jingjing in this layer of the story have cast spells into the heart of the Supreme Treasure, Zixia faced the "heart" of the Supreme Treasure, found that the Supreme Treasure loved bai Jingjing, she left a tear; Bai Jingjing faced the "heart" of the Supreme Treasure, and found that the Supreme Treasure's favorite at this time was already Zixia, she found Zixia's tears, and chose to leave quietly. The supreme treasure in the confusion decided to ask the spring thirteenth lady five hundred years ago to dig out his heart with a sword, and he wanted to confirm his love.
This is undoubtedly one of the joint points of "Journey to the West", after being killed by Chun Thirteen Niang, the Supreme Treasure suddenly had an epiphany. Before choosing to wear a tight hoop spell to become Sun Wukong, he had a conversation with Guanyin:
Supreme Treasure: Master Guanyin, I began to understand what you said, before I looked at things, I saw things with the naked eye, but at the moment I died, I began to see the world with my eyes. Everything can really be seen as clearly as ever. It turned out that the girl had left a tear in my heart, and I could feel how sad she was at that time.
Guanyin: Do you no longer linger on earthly affairs?
Supreme Treasure: It doesn't matter, there is no sorrow in life, and there is no pain in death.
Perusing this dialogue, the Supreme Treasure breaks the "color" because of "death", abandons the skin bag, and enters the world of "heart". He probably remembered the spell of the Moonlight Treasure Box: Prajnaparamita. "Prajna" means wisdom, and "Paramita" means "to the other shore."
To some extent, the Moonlight Treasure Box is actually empty (the Moonlight Treasure Box as an object is a beginningless and endless reincarnation, the Moonlight Treasure Box obtained by the Supreme Treasure from Zixia five hundred years ago was brought to Zixia by himself five hundred years later), the so-called time travel, the so-called "five hundred years ago /five hundred years later" Distinction, is just a variety of hues, confusing the original heart. Only when the Supreme Treasure realizes "emptiness" can it truly become "Sun Wukong", see that the five aggregates are empty, and overcome all suffering.
Similar to Journey to the West, Journey to the West also uses the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra as a subtext. However, "Journey to the West" focuses on cleaning up the cultivation of the "heart ape", Sun Wukong is more "long-winded" than the Tang monks in many cases, reminding the Tang monks not to forget the "Heart Sutra"; "Journey to the West" is more empty, life and death, gods and demons, past and present lives, looking at it with the heart, the heart is not hindered.
What is the difference between being void and becoming or not becoming Sun Wukong? However, for the "emptiness" after the epiphany, neither the Supreme Treasure nor the Guanyin consciously wants to inject meaning. Supreme Baoqi lived and died, and looked at the world with "heart eyes", but the first thing he saw was still the tears left by Zixia in her heart.
From "color" to "receiving", experience Zixia's sadness. The mystery of the emptiness of the five aggregates of the Heart Sutra, the so-called color (appearance), acceptance (feeling of appearance), thinking (concept or imagination), action (subconscious memory), consciousness (grasping the consciousness of color, feeling, thinking, and acting itself), and the supreme treasure /Sun Wukong who is about to wear a tight mantra can all be discovered? Therefore, Guanyin interrupted the words of the Supreme Treasure when he was "a tear", reminding him to stop nostalgic for the world. In this passage, the film cuts into the dialogue between the Supreme Treasure and the dead "Robber Big Brother", in order to elicit a summary of Guanyin's theme of thought: "taking the scriptures" is to dissolve the hatred in the world.
Back to the above, it was at such a moment that the Supreme Treasure chose to become Sun Wukong, and once again read out that classic monologue to bid farewell to the world. Supreme Treasure and Zixia, as two traitors to the world of God, once fantasized about the love of separation from history, and the meaning of life was implemented in the individual's occasional whisper.
However, no matter what, the Supreme Treasure cannot escape the capture of fate, he can only be Sun Wukong, and his freedom can only be freedom within the golden hoop. The Supreme Treasure enters "emptiness" from "color", but this "emptiness" does not refer to the silence of life, but to the nothingness of life. He turned the lies of the past into unfulfilled vows, and used the infinite time of "ten thousand years" to fight against "five hundred years ago/five hundred years later", against the continuous smearing of God's will on personal existence, which was a tragic failure of individualism, and Sun Wukong, who bore the fate, was more awe-inspiring than the rebellious Sun Wukong. It is indeed no accident that this passage has become a classic passage of the whole film.
After the Supreme Treasure became Sun Wukong, that is, after the so-called enlightenment, what was born was not a hero of the drama, but a nihilistic ironer. "Taking the Scriptures" is an empty signifier, and the chatter of the Tang monks is actually nonsense. The meaning of the sutras is also suspicious, although the gods and Buddhas have cultivated the "right path", but Guanyin still can't restrain the anger in his heart, and the Erlang god and so on are even more lustful.
Sun Wukong realizes the emptiness of the world, and cannot but live to bear the heavy responsibility of the void, and can only do infinite games with the void, which is the core of irony. Transforming into Sun Wukong, the Supreme Treasure appeared as an ironer at the Bull Devil King's wedding ceremony, jokingly but painfully: "I repeat, my name is called... Qi Tianda... saint. "Then with a loud fart crash to fly the little demon, snatch the bull demon king's fork to roast chicken wings, all ironic logic is running."
Shelving the burden of meaning in an ironic way is the aesthetic and life proposition of the Chinese individual in the 1990s; at the same time, the irony of "Journey to the West" is different from no attachment, but with idealism within the scope of individualism, through time, death, and fate of attachment to "love". No matter how Much Sun Wukong teased and how he kept pushing away Zixia's love, he still loved Zixia. The secret of this individual life was completely revealed when Zixia died for Sun Wukong, and she was also punished by the cold and ruthless punishment of the tight hoop curse.
In our fixed destiny, love is desperate and futile, and Sun Wukong can tear the Bull Demon King to vent, but he cannot tear the fate apart, but is torn apart by fate. Zixia died, and Qingxia, who had been fighting with Zixia in the depths of her soul, chose to return to the Buddha as the wick; the Supreme Treasure died, and Sun Wukong, like Sun Wukong should do, destroyed the Bull Demon King under the gaze of the gods and saved Tang Monk. Fate calmly drowned everything, drowned the seeds of rebellion, and drowned out any desire.
The fourth layer of the story: took on the absurd Sun Wukong
From this we come to the fourth layer of the story, which I think is the most remarkable ending in the history of cinema.
Sun Wukong opens the Moonlight Treasure Box and once again returns to five hundred years later, waking up in the Water Curtain Cave/Pansi Cave. Except for him, everyone has been erased from the relevant memories, and the Eight Precepts indicate that there was a big wind and sand last night, and Goku took his master and apprentice to hide here. Tang Monk also stopped nagging, but spared words like gold. It is not that the Tang monks have changed, and the Eight Precepts say that "the master has always spoken simply and clearly", but that Sun Wukong has changed, and the nagging that was once unbearable has become unimportant. At the same time, we must also note that nagging is not transformed into the great righteousness of the economy, as an intermediary in the world of the meaning of the gods and Buddhas, the Tang monks no longer nag, there is no language, and everything returns to the void.
As the invisible clue of the movie, when Sun Wukong walks out of the cave, whether it is the water curtain cave in the true state or the coiled silk cave in the emotional entanglement, it is quietly erased, and the name in this layer of the story is Bodhi Cave, "Bodhi" means great enlightenment. The enlightened person of the void walks out of the Bodhi Cave and is confronted by the everyday world. Sun Wukong first met the reincarnated Bodhi Ancestor/Bandit Brother, and at this moment his identity is the tour guide who leads the tour to visit the ruins of the Journey to the West.
If this reincarnation is also based on fate (because in the third layer of the story, the robber brother and the supreme treasure agreed to return him three swords in the next life), but also rely on the cause and effect of the shaky reincarnation, then the reincarnation of the second boss and the blind brothers that Sun Wukong subsequently met, the reincarnation of Bai Jingjing and Chun Thirteen Niang, is full of absurdity.
After the new five hundred years, the second boss is no longer a bandit, but a first-class person, a python robe and jade belt, and a brocade return to his hometown. Bai Jingjing and Chun Thirteen Niang, in this layer of the story, become the big and small lady of the Yuan, as tofu Xi Shi, waiting for the title of the husband Junjin List. This scene is undoubtedly the ultimate imagination of daily life, marking the highest state of happiness, but in the eyes of the void Sun Wukong, this scene is full of absurdity. Xinke Zhuangyuan lamented in a opera style that "hard women grind tofu", while in slang, "grinding tofu" alludes to lesbianism.
Here, Journey to the West deconstructs the logic of daily life in the post-revolutionary era, the inability of everyday life to completely anesthetize the losers of rebellion, and the nothingness after the great defeat. In the continuous emptying and restarting of samsara, everything is both full of uncertainty that cannot be grasped, and it is also moving towards the end point prescribed by the gods and Buddhas. All the people around the Supreme Treasure/Sun Wukong — the Second Lord, the Blind Man, the White Crystal, the Thirteenth Lady of Spring, the Eight Precepts, the Sand Monk, the Bodhi Ancestor, and so on — are living in the cycle of time, and the Supreme Treasure has become Sun Wukong in an inescapable way, will he become a member of the torrent of time?
A very important difference is that Sun Wukong retains the memory of the Supreme Treasure, which is the key to "Journey to the West" through the void, realizing "emptiness", but "emptiness" is not "nothing". On the border between the everyday world and the Journey of the Western Heavens, at the moment of leaving the city, Sun Wukong encounters the reincarnation of the Supreme Treasure and the Purple Xia Fairy: the proud samurai on the city wall, and the lover who is obsessed with him. Sun Wukong burrowed into the body of the reincarnated Supreme Treasure and kissed the reincarnated Zixia, both helping the samurai to reconcile with his lover and completing the impossible love: Sun Wukong, who was already wearing a golden hoop, kissed Zixia. The samurai and his lover in the everyday world cannot understand and cannot detect Sun Wukong, and in the ridicule of "he is like a dog", Sun Wukong walks out of the daily world, with a tenacious memory, and goes to the desert of the real world.
At the end of Journey to the West, the first is the triumph of heaven: the world of God erases all rebellion (Zixia dies, Qingxia converts; Supreme Treasure dies, Sun Wukong takes refuge), and the "sutra learning" continues, albeit meaninglessly. But in the joyful celebration of the world of gods, Sun Wukong embarked on the journey with a tenacious subjective will, resisting forgetting, resisting the anesthesia of daily life, and inscribing the memory of love. Sun Wukong, who bears the absurd fate, has a noble dignity under the appearance of ridicule, he is Sisyphus wearing a tight curse, and he is the tragic hero of our comedic era.
"Journey to the West" seems to empty history, but it is a truly historical work belonging to our time. Under the appearance of absurdity, "Journey to the West" is faithful to its own time, and to accurately convey our times, it depends on the reinvention of narrative techniques.
In terms of formal intensity, "Journey to the West" condenses the spiritual journey of the youth of the 1990s in three hours with a complex four-layer structure, constructing a highly rich allegorical structure. Behind the four layers of the story is the will of the eternal God and the eternal absurdity. However, the individual is by no means inactive, and with occasional love, man confronts the divine will and identifies his existence in the flood of time. Ultimately, in the hollowing out of time, the individual withdraws historical significance from the will of God to himself, and Journey to the West is both a story of the individual having to submit in the greater history and, above all, a mythical story of the birth of the individual. The Supreme Treasure becomes Sun Wukong who resists Sun Wukong, the embodiment of the unyielding free will in the shackles of God.
Why did "Journey to the West" impress a generation? In the 1990s, it was the combination of supreme treasure and Sun Wukong, stumbling from rebellion to cynicism, from cynicism to nothingness, bearing the tearing of love and fate, and bearing the absurdity of the world. At the same time, a generation is by no means a drifter, and in the depths of memories that cannot be forgotten, there is a tenacious persistence; under the mask of irony, "nothing" can give birth to "being", "virtual" but not "empty". The emergence of "Journey to the West" formalizes the emotional structure of a generation, which is a work that is bound to appear at the moment of a generation's historical appearance.
For example, the theme song of "Journey to the West" is "Love of a Lifetime", "In the world, it is difficult to escape fate", does the Supreme Treasure always have to become Sun Wukong? In 2000, a few years after the release of "Journey to the West", a young man with the pen name He Zai wrote "The Biography of Wukong" under his enlightenment, announcing the birth of truly quality Chinese online literature, "I want this day, I can no longer cover my eyes; I want this land, I can no longer bury my heart; I want all sentient beings to understand my intentions; I want all the Buddhas to disappear!" "A new generation of newcomers who have grown up in the cradle of iron is destined to trek a long journey, once again visiting distant gods.