Human considerations in magic realism
Introduction: Mencius advocated the inherent goodness of nature, and Xunzi advocated the inherent evil of nature. In terms of the method of turning human nature to good, Mencius advocated cultivating the germ of goodness through enlightenment; Xunzi advocated transforming the evil of human nature into good through enlightenment.
Since entering the new century, with the return of realist aesthetics, in the context of the increasingly developing multicultural era, more and more domestic films expressing real social themes have been introduced. Realist films to reveal social phenomena, show the inner world of human nature, through simple and simple lens language to create dramatic conflicts, and strive to restore the authenticity of life through appearances, so that the audience can maximize the feeling of reality, this reality can penetrate into the audience's heart, bring people more thinking. "A Vast North" takes women as the first perspective, integrates absurdity and realistic themes, and is a social tragedy cloaked in magic realism, a rural widow Wang Erhao died unexpectedly due to her husband, began to be rejected by her family and the people around her, and was exiled to a situation where there was no place to live. The director boldly uses the story of magical reality to depict a northern countryside full of criticism and reflection, and uses realistic lenses to show the scenes of the daily life of people in the north in front of the audience, the situation of the rural spiritual world shown in addition to the absurdity, and then deeply explores the survival dilemma of rural female groups based on society in the process of modernization and the concern for the real society.
Legend has it that the birth of Eve came from a rib in the male body, so that women are not regarded as an independent individual existence, but they rely on the male body and exist, so that later in the ideological creation of a set of "women should be attached to men" theory, such as "heaven and earth", "male superiority and female inferiority" and other theories are. Simon de Beauvoir believes that men are the subject, is absolute, and women are others, determined by men, she believes that the status of women's others is closely related to her overall situation, stemming from the patriarchal system and patriarchal consciousness, that is, men are at the center of power, women are abandoned in a marginal situation, the film "The North is a Vast Expanse" Wang Erhao did not jump out of the Chinese film to take women as male desires and male subjects, in the film Wang Erhao's three husbands have died one after another and become widows three times. In the end, he can only rely on his husband's deaf brother, which is the absence of male roles under the husband's system. At the beginning of the film, the director explained to the audience that Wang Erhao was a rural widow, which also laid the groundwork for the later portrayal of Wang Erhao as a self-reliant, avant-garde, and open-minded person, who was still optimistic about facing life after experiencing the death of three husbands, which was contrary to the "way of keeping women" in traditional Chinese society, so he was rejected by the people in the village, thinking that her fate was to carve a shadow for Yan Wangye, as long as the people who married him had to die or bring bad obscurity. In the film, the village chief agrees to lend a house to Nihao to live in, but at the cost of possessing Niyoshi's body, the village chief takes Erhao's body as the main body of desire, and then learns that Nihao Kefu will influence his election next year, and the village chief finally refuses to lend a house to Nihao.
The French psychologist Lacan believed that desire is the desire for something known to bring pleasure or satisfaction, and it originates from a lack of feeling about something. Although the husband is not the dominant force in a woman's life, the absence of women in the process of growing up will inevitably cause defects in their lives, Wang Erhao is scolded by the women in the village, everyone wants to bully her, and he is marginalized by the people in the village. In the face of the difficulties of the bald head, the director's presentation makes Dayong "resurrect" and completes the "husband mission" of teaching the bald head, and the bald head begs Erhao to beat his face in order to restore his health, and this alternative treatment of virtual reality makes the majesty of male power not disappear, but strengthened.
"A Vast North" has a strong realist color, the director focuses on the female image in the contemporary countryside, and truthfully presents the survival dilemma of rural women to the audience, causing the audience to have a strong emotional resonance. At the beginning of the film, Lao Tofu's insult to Wang Erhao reflects the problem of sexual assault in the countryside; the fourth master of Long is paralyzed in bed, with no children and no daughters to take care of, reflecting the problem of left-behind elderly people in the countryside; Wang Erhao's distant relatives have always wanted a son, reflecting the problem of preferring sons to daughters in the countryside; distant relatives later sold their four daughters only to feed a boy, reflecting the problem of buying and selling children in the countryside; the village chief snatched the mine from Xu Wei and blew up the mountains to dig up gold, reflecting the problem of rural ecological destruction. So all this reflects the desolate and withered status quo in the north, reflecting the deep-rooted selfishness, indifference and greed in human nature. In "The North is a Vast Expanse", the director portrayed Wang Erhao, a rural widow who was marginal in her family, although she was self-reliant, brave and kind to pursue her own life, but she was also rejected by the backward villagers, surviving in a distorted society of human nature, the only consolation to the soul was her husband's deaf brother, her husband's brother died unexpectedly when he finally blew up the mountain, completely shattering the last line of defense in Wang Erhao's heart, and the whole world completely collapsed. Wang Erhao's misfortune, from a large level, is actually the misfortune of this society, people are frantically pursuing interests to satisfy their own desires, and then ignoring the so-called moral ethics, Wang Erhao did his best to help the people around him, but did not realize that people are just using her, she is just a victim of this society.
The term "magic realism" was first coined by the German literary critic Franzi-Rohe. In 1925, in order to study German and European late expressionist painting, Franz-Royce published the book "Magic Realism - Late Expressionism - Some Problems of Current European Painting", which for the first time proposed the concept of "magic realism", which is more popularly said to change reality into fantasy without losing its truth. The film "A VastNess in the North" is a rural theme film with magic and reality intertwined, using magical content to express real life, mixing the black humor of the northeast countryside, telling the rural widow in an absurd form, a yin and yang mistake, the people in the village think that she is a god who can see a doctor to drive away evil. Erhao spied on the lives of these people from the perspective of the gods, trying to lead them to the right path, but he could not cure the physical disease, but he could not cure the greed and selfishness of human nature. Some people think that there is a fundamental opposition between magic and reality, that magic is an art divorced from reality, lacking the reality it should be, in fact, in this film, we are more likely to see the reality hidden under the magic art, see the inferiority of human nature is difficult to change, see the fusion of reality and magic, and also the coexistence of illusion and truth. Wang Erhao became immortal before the more realistic, homeless, with the van as a house, sleeping in the wilderness, no one can lend a helping hand to help them, and even everywhere want to possess the two good bodies; after becoming a fairy, can talk to the ghosts and gods, cure the disease and save people, and can be a sister-in-law to give birth to a son, the people in the village called the two good gods, and competed with each other to invite the two good to live in their own homes, the two contrasted, nakedly exposing the "nature of human nature", XunZi believes: "Human nature is evil, and its nature is false."
Christian Mytz believes that the film is not a mirror of reality but a conscious symbolic construction carried out by the creator, he uses the concept of semiotics to incorporate the film into a complete system of symbolic ideography and construct the film in a multi-faceted way in the form of symbols, and the symbolic element has become a specific metaphorical element in the film to explore its unspoken meaning. In the film, the "mirror" as a specific symbolic element, in Zhao Liang's critical documentary "Sorrowful Demon Beast", the director uses a poetic long lens to record a person carrying a mirror walking in the empty city lined with high-rise buildings, the people and plants in the mirror suddenly disappear at a certain moment, leaving only the reflection of the empty city in the mirror, narrating "We are the magic beast, the minions of the magic beast", using the mirror to reflect the world, alluding to the problems and contradictions in the process of economic and social development and change and the absurdity of human nature. Between the real and the unreal, it indicts the inferiority of human beings. In "A Vast North", Nihao walks on the road in the field with a mirror on his back, and is framed by the women in the village, and Erhao carries a broken mirror to find his classmates, but is smashed to pieces by the debt collector. Outside the broken mirror is the well-dressed human world; inside the mirror is a broken, distorted, cold-blooded world; the world transforms between magic and reality, presenting the darker side of more realistic human nature in an indifferent way for us to think about.
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Public account team: Drama and Film Studies, Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology
Final South Film Talk Film Group