"Jiang Ziya", "Nezha" and the Chinese School

(Image source: Oriental IC)

Wang Xiaolu/Wen

One

"Jiang Ziya" this animation film was released on October 1, although the reputation is not as high as "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending", but the box office has been more than 1.5 billion, there have been 50 million people rushed to the theater to meet it, the area and level of social dialogue can be described as very deep and wide, its attraction formation mechanism is worth studying.

Not only these two cartoons, but also "White Snake: Origins" and "Return of the Great Sage". These domestic animations with the best box office performance in the past five years are mostly inspired by traditional Chinese myths, and they are regarded by the academic community as the revival and resurgence of the Chinese animation school or national animation, and they have written new chapters for the Chinese animation school.

In recent years, the "Chinese school" has become an eminent scholar in the field of film studies, and this is actually a re-edition of the "nationalization of film" debate in the 1980s. The Chinese school of film industry is from the "Chinese animation school", which has found the courage of theory from here, and also takes the Chinese animation school as an ideal and model.

The Chinese school of animation is a historical existence, a fact, it refers to the 1950s to the late 1980s, the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio produced a group of animation works and creative groups that fit the traditional national style, especially ink animation as an example, but also not limited to ink painting. "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" is not ink, but is based on classical novels, its character modeling, character appearance methods, characteristics of organizational actions, music, are all influenced by the traditional Peking Opera program, and you can think of the concept of "national tradition" at a glance. This batch of works makes good use of traditional Chinese cultural elements, and there should be no doubt about its own school.

But the Chinese school of animation is a huge term, it has a monopoly in time and space, although it refers specifically to the works of the Meiyi Film Studio decades ago, but the use of this name today will create an illusion for communication, it seems to close the future possibilities of Chinese animation. Therefore, in an article, the author called for the Chinese animation school to be renamed the "Shanghai Meiyi Studio Animation School", which is in line with objective facts and opens up unlimited possibilities for the future of Chinese animation. Is the purpose of Chinese animation to focus on highlighting traditional elements? What does it have to do with life in the moment? The early "Chinese animation school" works mostly had traditional themes and animal themes, and there are almost no current themes. Although Mr. Te wei, the main promoter of this school, believes that the national technique can also be used to present the present life, in the end there is still no such work. And if you use the Peking Opera program that identifies the national style of "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" to show the current life, what will it feel like?

We generally believe that this batch of animation originated in a special period in China, and to a certain extent it is the product of the closed environment and planned economy in China. These animations were expensive to produce, but they could be produced at any cost, and they were saddled with the potential task of proving the cultural vitality of the nation-state, so they emerged as precious works of art. In terms of audience acceptance, it goes without saying that under the limited cultural situation, this batch of works has been welcomed. These works and the Chinese animation school have inspired the occurrence of today's "Chinese school", but what is the relationship between today's animation creation and the Chinese animation school?

On October 1, I went to Jinxi, Suzhou, to participate in an animation forum, "The Future of Post-Chinese School Animation". These visits and participation gave me the opportunity to think critically. After returning to Beijing, I watched "Jiang Ziya" in the theater, an animated film that contains various topics that we want to speculate on above.

Two

"Jiang Ziya" is particularly worth discussing, it is still based on traditional mythological themes, based on Xu Zhonglin's novel "Fengshen Yanyi", but its narrative begins at the end of "Fengshen Yanyi" - when Jiang Ziya's Fengshen Platform project is complete, it is the beginning of the film, which makes Jiang Ziya question the Fengshen platform.

Filmmakers know this original very well, and it finds inspiration from the cracks in Xu Zhonglin's narrative presentation. When we read the "Fengshen Yanyi", we will feel that there is a strange point in it: Su Daji is su Hu's daughter, she has been eaten by the thousand-year-old fox demon in Xuanyuan's tomb in Enzhou Yi, and then the Su Daji seen by the imperial court is actually a fox demon formed by tricks, and in the narrative of the novel, the name "Su Daji" is still used when the fox demon appears.

The audience will thus have a feeling of confusion, because on the one hand he will be very sympathetic to Su Daji himself, and on the other hand, he will also know that the new entity under the signifier is a goblin, and when the novel describes how "Su Daji" created the cannon and dissected people's hearts, the reader knows that these bad things were done by the fox demon and not Su Hu's daughter - according to the logic of the story, this is clear, but the use of this name is still confusing. I think this sense of confusion may not be fully conscious in Xu Zhonglin, but the movie "Jiang Ziya" keenly grasps this point and carries out a meaningful transformation, the creators of the film in its setting, let The Master Zun tie the fox demon and Su Daji's yuan god together, when Jiang Ziya went to kill the fox demon, it saw the innocent yuan god from the fox demon, so it could not bear to do it.

I think this setting is very exciting, but it is too similar to the setting of "Nezha's Demon Child Descending" - heaven and earth gave birth to mixed yuan beads, and Yuan Shi Tianzun divided it into spirit beads and magic pills in the alchemy furnace. Taiyi Zhenren did not operate properly, the magic pill turned into Nezha, and the spirit bead turned into Ao Bing. But at the end of the film, the two join forces to fight against fate. Although the two pieces have different directions, their intentions are quite consistent, and the two have a unique understanding of the division of the spiritual world and the entanglement of the inner world, and consider it important. The duality setting of "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" is mainly the author's re-creation, as mentioned above, "Jiang Ziya" is delicately discovering the cracks in the original work and using them. "Fengshen Yanyi" is a strange book, because the ideas in it reveal unique complexities, and Xu Zhonglin's handling of the fate of the thousand-year-old fox demon actually shows his hesitation in morality, which is another important point where the movie "Jiang Ziya" relies on.

Xu Zhonglin's Shang Yi Wang is actually not a particularly assertive big bad guy, he is just confused by goblins, and this is mainly due to the arrangement of external forces. According to the novel, on the birthday of Nüwa, the minister asked the King of Shang to go to the palace of Nüwa to offer incense, and the King of Shang said, Why should I go. Seeing that the statue of Nuwa was beautiful, but she was also lustful, Nuwa was very angry. Nuwa said, you don't cultivate yourself to govern the world, but also blasphemed me, I think the number of soup has been exhausted. So launch the Three Demons to plague Asaka.

If you look at it from a modern perspective, such a slaughter is not a completely just battle, but the behavior of the king of Qi is instead with the meaning of contempt for authority. When Chaoge fell and the three demons were about to be killed, Xu Zhonglin still gave this fox demon the opportunity to defend himself, and she said to Nuwa, it was you who used the zhao demon banner to recruit us to confuse the king of Chaoge and ruin his world, and now that it is done, you let Jiang Ziya clean us up? Therefore, the setting of the opening of the movie is also based on.

On the Fengshen Stage, the film makes Jiang Ziya realize that killing fox demons is not a natural thing, so he cannot complete the task of Master Zun, so he is punished to Beihai, where he thinks about what he has done all his life. At this time, he met Xiao Jiu, who was actually the Yuan God who escaped from the fox demon, Su Daji. She and Jiang Ziya return to the ancient battlefield of that year, and the film presents the piles of unjust souls under the ancient battlefield, hinting at the cruelty and meaninglessness of the war. At the end of the film, the fox demon said that she was actually a wronged soul, and it was Shi Zun himself who tied her and Su Daji together.

In the original work, the fate of Su Daji and the fox demon is also bound by the authority, and this authority is Nuwa, which shows that the movie "Jiang Ziya" can really get the honor of the best adapted screenplay. It has both follow-up and rewriting, and its internal cultural logic is very clear. In the original work, Jiang Ziya completed the mission of canonization given by the authority and achieved fame himself, while the film gave Jiang Ziya a modern personality, which is a very powerful rewrite. He questioned and reflected, he recognized the totalitarian face of the Master, and finally rebelled against the immortal order formulated by the latter, cut off the ladder to heaven, and completely denied the heavenly court. At that moment, Jiang Ziya's image is parodyed as a savior, and also has the image characteristics of the iron-walled Astro Boy and The Hacker Empire, which is the usual witty style of the new Chinese animation.

The story of Nezha actually comes mainly from the "Fengshen Yanyi". Nezha was born extraordinary, Taiyi Zhenren gave him too many treasures, he went to Donghaikou to take a bath, mixed heaven Aya and Qiankun circle disturbed the Dragon Palace, Nezha killed the Night Fork who came to patrol the sea and the third prince of the Dragon King, and the Dragon King went to the Heavenly Court to file a complaint. Then Taiyi Zhenren said: Nezha accidentally injured the Third Prince, that is the number of days, you Dragon King complained about such a trivial matter, I really don't understand things! - A lot of details of the novel are quoted here, only in this way can we see the author's view of human nature and world view.

The original narrative is clearly run through by the moral logic of the divine world and is non-humanistic, but both films have been transformed by humanism and given considerable modernity: an emphasis on their individual subjectivity, a modern critique of the order of the world. In fact, "The Return of the Great Sage", "White Snake: Origins" and other films have been similarly transformed, and some scholars have written that "White Snake: Origins" is actually anti-traditional culture, which highlights subjectivity and freedom, which is Western values and Western character images.

Described above, how do we view these four films as being considered to constitute new materials for national animation or the new Chinese school of animation? In recent theatrical animations, the "transformation" of traditional mythology and cinematization is not nationalization, but the full modernization of national things, and modernization is sometimes considered to be Westernization, these two concepts have always been confused, and the May Fourth period once regarded the debate between China and the West as a debate between ancient and modern. So how do we identify the schools of these films? From Jiang Ziya in the original work to recognize and maintain the order, to Jiang Ziya completely rebelled against the order, it is Jiang Ziya, but it is a completely different cultural and ideological tendency, which reflects the transformation of modernity of traditional themes, you can say that this process of modernity is not a process of learning from the West, but the autonomy and spontaneity of China, but this also happens to emphasize the commonality of China and the West rather than the particularity of China.

The commercial success of Jiang Ziya represents a broad resonance that proves the spiritual appeal of this modernity transformation. It is true that the four animations all use traditional resources, and some of the formal appearances are also affected by traditional resources, such as the blank space of "Jiang Ziya" on the composition, the scattered perspective of "The Return of the Great Sage", and the character models of both are inspired by the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and so on. But was the will of the creator inspired by the Chinese school? I think that is more achieved under the principle of business and the idea of film IP, because the transformation of this classic IP is very beneficial to business, which is a cultural asset that has accumulated a long reputation. In addition to borrowing this subject matter and some external forms, it must conform to the current concept of human nature and the inner spiritual mechanism.

So I'm willing to look at them from another perspective. It is very interesting that the Yuan Shi Tianzun in "Fengshen Yanyi" was changed to "Master Zun" in the movie; after Cheng Teng, one of the directors of "Jiang Ziya", became famous, the media reported that he won the Award in the United States, "There is Heaven Outside the Sky", which is a traditional ink animation style film - the aesthetic mood has obviously been applied to "Jiang Ziya", but there is little mention of the animated short film he circulated on the Internet that year, that is, "Red Scarf Man" created by Li Xia and others during his study period with Li Xia, another main creator of "Jiang Ziya".

The protagonist of "The Red Scarf Man" is a bad student who reads comics in class, and he fights with the teacher (Master) in his imagination. And the director of "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" Dumpling once founded the Dumpling Studio, many years ago directed the animated short film "Hit, Hit a Big Watermelon", this film is visually imaginative and interesting, at that time the author was doing an animation magazine, so familiar with these works, these two animations and Song Shang's "Subway Battle Royale" was at that time three widely praised youth animation short films. These works had a dark style that was popular at the time - bad boys, violent aesthetics, sense of play, base plot, this kind of cynicism and social metaphor of violent hormonal catharsis, which is obviously very relevant to the current personal situation. From the perspective of their growth history, we can see the continuity of their works, but also see their constant inner personality, and their industrial animation still runs through the spirit of rebellious authority and universal world values of that year. Although their creations have shifted from the current theme to the distant national mythology, they still reveal the desire and ability of the current dialogue, and the animation of ancient themes has a natural realistic indexing, but it is suitable for borrowing ancient metaphors. So this is a batch of new animations, from form to spiritual thought, which are unprecedented in the history of Chinese animation.

Three

The Jinxi Forum mentioned above, what it sees and thinks, is quite enlightening. Parallel to it, there are also some lectures, one of which is the artist Feng Jiannan of the American Film Studio, who talked about the process of creating "Nine Colored Deer". What the old man said was all historical details, which was very helpful for us to understand the Chinese animation school.

Prepared in June 1980, The Nine-Colored Deer is an allusion to the Dunhuang mural "Deer King Bunsheng", which director Qian Jiajun wanted to bring to the screen in the 1950s and 1960s, but was considered to promote feudal superstition. In the late 1970s, he reapplyed for the subject, which was approved, but asked to avoid promoting feudal ideas such as karma and to use truth, goodness and beauty throughout the narrative. Mr. Feng was assigned the task of making scene drawings for the animation. Because the story takes place in the western region, the art team set off from Shanghai to the west to observe, which took two months, and it took 23 days to copy the murals in Dunhuang alone.

I learned from my exchanges with Mr. Feng that he studied oil painting and had the qualities of Western painting in scene design. Of course, the elements of the film are not all Chinese, there is a scene of a nine-colored deer flying into the air, and Mr. Feng makes the mountain under the picture take on the shape of a Gothic spire to highlight its solemn atmosphere. Of course, these are just some details. The main part, such as this theme, actually comes from India, which is not a chinese story. Dunhuang's paintings themselves are also the product of the combination of China and foreign countries.

At the Jinxi Forum, everyone mentioned the most proud "Big Trouble Heavenly Palace" and "Nezha Mind" of the Chinese animation school. "Nezha Noisy Sea" was produced in 1979 shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, in which Nezha is very similar to the "Red Soldier", which is the relationship between this work and the times, but its rebellious image in "Fengshen Yanyi" has been quite surprising, especially the relationship between Nezha and his parents, although they later reconciled, but it was forced by external majesty, you still feel that this family relationship is completely inconsistent with confucian purposes, so you can judge that Nezha is a heterogeneous factor of Chinese culture. Therefore, some people later investigated that Nezha actually came from India and went back to Egypt.

The image of Sun Wukong has also been pointed out to its Indian origin, first with Hu Shi, then chen Yinke and Ji Xianlin, all agreeing that Sun Wukong is related to the macaque Hanuman in South Asian mythology. Chen Yinke said: "There are also stories of apes in China, but in the past social psychology of our country, the realm of kings and subjects, and the realm of divine beasts, the distinction is extremely strict, if there is no dependence, I am afraid that I may not be able to relate to it." ”

Although these foreign mythological figures have been transformed and reshaped by the Middle-earth literati and established a closer relationship with the cultural life of the Chinese, the story is still a reminder of the impossible of closing oneself and the absolute division between east and west, globalization began in the Neolithic Age, world civilization is mixed, and Toynbee's claim in his famous "Historical Research" that the division of several civilizations that have not been touched at all has been proved wrong by the new archaeological process. The division of nationalities is similar. Many things that are considered unique to themselves may be examined carefully and found that this is not the case.

What is a nation? The constructivist view of nationality holds that nations are not natural. British scholar Benedict Anderson calls it an "imaginary community" . In fact, in the famous speech of the French thinker Ernest Renen, in his famous speech in 1882, his conception of nationality was constructivist. He opposed defining nations by blood race, geography, common interests, language, religion, and so on. He believed that the nation was a type of moral consciousness that was shaped by a common political will. But I think that the nation is not all constructed, it also has a native component. There is still a real content in the national tradition, it is in the area where the border is relatively stable, there may be a group of people who are related by blood, because they have lived together for a long time, they have formed common experiences, common interests, and have common languages, customs, memories and cultural allusions... Of course, I still tend to think that the so-called unique national culture and aesthetics were formed in the past relatively closed areas and relatively long periods of time, and it formed a strong sense of consciousness and group cohesion in a specific period- especially when the international situation deteriorated, and the earliest proposal for the nationalization of literature and art was in 1939, and that was the era when a country suffered a crisis.

But after this era has passed, if you want to re-seek experience from it, you must see its closedness. This is the case with the Chinese school of animation that emerged in the 1950s, and its emergence is actually full of a certain passivity. Since "there is no intervention of commodity principles, and there is no refinement of contemporary media means (television and fully industrialized theaters), it has not acquired a new form after full communication with the current audience." "It is very difficult to reproduce it in the present, it must be transformed. Chinese animation must establish a flesh-and-blood relationship with the current life, rather than emphasizing the establishment of a relationship with the national tradition, because the national tradition runs through contemporary life, if the national tradition in contemporary life is relatively thin, then the same must be true in the field of literature and art.

The relationship between animation and current life does not need to be called, and without intervention, creation is a process that occurs naturally. "Red Scarf Man" and "Subway Battle Royale" are both vivid expressions of reality by the current youth. The future of Chinese animation urgently needs to be more contemporary and more realistic, like Liu Jian such a realist animator will naturally increase, that may form a new school of animation, when many creators form their own characteristics, may be able to summarize a school afterwards, but this mainly uses the inductive method in philosophy, and can not create a principle to forcibly promote, become an interventionist thing, and as to whether it really formed a school with stable connotations, it is really encounterable and cannot be forced.

Of course, even as a form of constructivism, the actions of the Chinese school are clearly not empty, but are mainly a political act under specific motives. The question is what materials the constructivists use to construct, and where is it going to lead this cultural politics? If it is to compete in the international film market - after Hollywood entered the Chinese market after 1993, scholars called it "wolf coming", and debating Chinese film art in the national unit was once the habitual thinking of scholars, but in the international film market and evaluation system, we see more film subjects based on individual creative teams and individual authors. So where is constructivism going here? This is actually the doubt of many people.