Author: Tao Fuwen
China has a long tradition of respecting teachers and valuing the Tao. The Xunzi Sketch mentions that "the country will prosper, and it will be your master and heavy fu, and if you are a master and a heavy fu, then the fa will exist", placing the respect for the teacher and the tao on the same important position as governing the country and the state. With the rapid development of society and the change of people's ideological concepts, education has penetrated into all areas of life, its status has become more and more important, and the image of teachers has attracted more and more attention. On the occasion of the 36th Teachers' Day, we can take the screen memory as the observation point to discover the unique screen writing and flow of Chinese teachers.
"No One Can Be Less"
Sanctified Statue: The "Engineer of the Human Soul" on the Screen
The image of Chinese teachers is generally shaped on the basis of traditional Confucian cultural thought. Confucianism regards education as the superior, and attaches importance to the purposeful role and moral cultivation of education. "Gentle and fierce, mighty but not fierce, respectful and peaceful." Teachers have also been on the moral high ground, becoming social roles that are respected by others and cannot be desecrated. However, for a period of time, the teacher's screen image appeared flat and single, mostly based on dedication and hard work as a fixed model, and was shaped into a lofty image that combined orthodox moral concepts, self-reliant personality cultivation, profound cultural knowledge, and poor material life.
From the early films "Chaoxia" (1959), "Spring Peach and Plum" (1961), "Gardener's Song" (1974) and other films that emphasize the red candle spirit and selfless dedication of teachers, to "Miao Miao" (1980), "Spring Water Dingdong" (1982), "Smile in the Candlelight" (1991) and other films that praise the character of "gardeners" and spread noble teacher morality, they continue the "bitter love narrative" model of chinese literary and artistic traditions, and the images of teachers in them are mainly positive publicity. Sometimes, even the strange logic of suffering such as "death or disability" and "non-disability is illness" is even attached. This has triggered the audience's questioning of the sanctification of teachers' "body aesthetics", reflecting the public's moral appeal to the teaching profession, that is, teachers should be professional models in the eyes of the audience, only seeking dedication, not return.
This monolithic way of sculpting is more regarded as a medium of publicity and education, ignoring the needs of teachers to seek legitimate interests and personal development. At the same time, the difference in the level of urban and rural economic development has also caused the difference in the image of urban and rural teachers. Rural education resources are scarce, and local teachers have difficulty surviving. In order to help children in impoverished areas receive education without discrimination, they have to dedicate their youth in difficult circumstances. For example, the movie "Phoenix Qin" (1994) tells the touching story of private teachers represented by Principal Yu who insist on teaching under harsh conditions; "No One Can Be Less" (1999) portrays the image of Wei Minzhi, a rural substitute teacher who keeps promises and is stubborn; "Beautiful Bigfoot" (2003) shows Zhang Meili, a private teacher who does her best to get a good education for the children in the village, and so on.
These films mainly reflect the story of the people's teachers passing on their knowledge to remote mountainous areas, and praise their lofty professional ethics and personality qualities. This is the main theme of early education films, and it is also a social reflection on the lack of education, culture and teachers in poor areas.
Image disenchantment: the transition from professionalization to personalization
With the development of society, the image of teachers' screens has begun to be biased towards urbanization, more novel teaching methods and teacher-student relationships have evolved iteratively, and the image of teachers full of personality and "de-sanctification" has begun to appear. The original image of being on top of the world has gradually been broken, and more attention has been paid to equal communication with students, integrating more social reality and personal emotional life. This reflects the change of the entire social environment and national psychology to the image cognition of teachers.
The first is that the external image of teachers has gradually bid farewell to stereotyping, and a number of sketches of teachers with fashionable appearances, uninhibited personalities, and diversified and complex images have emerged. Gu Yuetao, an avant-garde and show-loving class teacher in "Eighteen-Year-Old Sky" (2002), a primary school physical education teacher who deliberately loses weight to adapt to students' aesthetic tendencies in "Flower Eye" (2002), Maori, an "alternative" music teacher in "Eight Lessons" (2005), a stern homeroom teacher who walks in the cold and bright wind in "Youth Pie" (2013), Miao Wanqiu, who looks funny and "fights wits" with students in "Teacher • Good" (2019), etc., these are chic in their shapes. The alternative and novel character design makes the teacher's external image walk down the altar, becoming more charming, humorous and funny, and more close to real life. This is undoubtedly an effective attempt and breakthrough for the transformation and reconstruction of teachers' roles.
"Teacher • Good"
The second is the inner implication level, the stereotypical image of the teacher on the screen, from obedience psychology to personalized psychology. The image of the "spicy + funny" teacher began to be shaped, and the "personality teacher" gradually appeared on the screen. The TV series "Eighteen-Year-Old Sky" imitates the popular anime of Japanese manga artist Hiroshi Fujisawa, and the male protagonist has a flamboyant personality, youth and sunshine, and uses a unique method to interpret quality education to the fullest. He is a great friend and confidant of students, and a new type of explorer and creator who masters self-education and is good at cooperation with the concept of scientific education, rather than a strict teacher or a simple teacher. Thus, it breaks the "hegemonic screen phenomenon" of gentleness and thickness on the screen and pays attention to the solidification mode of teacher morality, and also caters to the audience's reverse psychological release of the solidification of the teacher's image, and realizes the aesthetic expectation of seeking novelty and seeking difference.
Diverse Personalities: New trends in the development of teachers' images on the screen
In recent years, the screen writing of the teacher's image has gradually penetrated into the shaping of the teacher's heart on the basis of personalized creation in terms of modeling design and character relationships. In the movie "Pulling Flowers in the Summer" (2013), Ma Changli, a recent graduate, resigned from a rural middle school and fell into confusion, not knowing how his ideals should be realized. Until he met the student Zhou Xiangyang, this disabled teenager let Ma Changli find his fighting spirit again. In the three months that accompanied Zhou Xiangyang to the college entrance examination, the two people grew up together and chased their dreams.
The image of teachers such as Ma Changli has successfully escaped the on-screen creative thinking barriers of teachers' blind dedication to students and education, and teachers are constantly growing and improving themselves while educating students. From the portrayal of the lofty image and moral character of teachers in early films to the gradual personalization of modern teachers' screen image styles, related artistic creations no longer blindly pursue endless sacrifice and dedication, but pay more attention to personal values and appeals. These teachers have become ordinary people who are more recognized by the public, and they have also become more realistic artistic images.
In addition, with the strong support of the state for volunteer education projects, high-quality educational resources have gradually tilted to the Midwest, and volunteer film has become a sub-genre film that records this history and records the beautiful story of human nature. "My Teaching Career" (2007), "The Other Side of the Sky" (2007), "Volunteer" (2008), etc., continue to enrich the screen image of teachers. In the past, the image of the teacher on the screen often replaced reality with an ideal, ignoring the personality of the teacher, making the teacher an "ideal symbol" without any material factors, unconditional payment, and otherworldliness. This image "reality" of the accumulation of symbols constitutes the moral shackles of the teacher's professional image.
To change this situation, it is necessary to reposition the status of teachers, so that the image construction of teachers' images will move from typical to personalized, character portrayal will move from singleness to pluralism, and the meaning will move from single and clear surface to complex and rich profundity, giving teachers the image of teachers a softer and lighter cultivation soil. At the same time, avoid the "eyeball economy" era to meet commercial needs, and use low-level fun, kitsch and sensational means to degrade the image of teachers. In this way, we can help the image of teachers to walk down from the altar and guide public opinion to eliminate prejudice. At the same time, it is appropriate to introduce the production and genre model of commercial films, explore a more vivid and full, three-dimensional and vivid image of teachers, and open up a more diversified vision for the public's cognition of teachers.
(The author is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Journalism of Fudan University and an associate researcher at the School of Literature of Jiangsu Second Normal University)