some people say that Haneke’s violence from top to bottom is full of gentleness, but like a cold dagger that pierces everyone’s heart. In fact, his coldness is based on a glimpse of the malpractices of modern society. He creates A kind of helplessness that is alienated from the social order, and a kind of helplessness that is born of violence and desire. "White Ribbon" inherits the consistent "open" ending of Haneke's movies, and also inherits Haneke's consistent gloomy inner quality. It shows the audience the group pressure and abnormality hidden under the social structure, and has the effect of shaking modern society. The courage and perseverance of the foundation of the power structure.
A
"White Ribbon," the story takes place in a German town before the war. It tells the jealousy, resentment, and revenge hidden in a peaceful town, with the doctor’s falling horse, the accidental death of the farmer’s wife, the flogging of the baron’s son, and the malicious burning of the barn. It seems that a long-planned conspiracy is unfolding. . In fact, even at the end of the film, we have no way of knowing who the mastermind of the conspiracy was. The silence of the village chief’s daughter towards the crowd and the threats of the pastor’s doubts about the teacher made the assumptions and conjectures in the audience’s mind impossible to verify.
The film is presented entirely in black and white images, abandoning the rendering of colors and the intrusion of warm colors. Black sets the tone of the film solemn and gloomy. As a serious film discussing social issues, such treatment is indispensable. Hanek said that using this special narrative method to create a distant effect, "distance" itself brews a kind of distance and a sense of barrenness, so that the audience can be more aware of where they are and get closer. The core of the film. There is no soundtrack in the film, which completely strips off the music's traction and interference with the narrative. The audience can only hear footsteps, door closings, and dialogue between characters, etc. The silent sound world presents a strong sense of depression. . The long shot in the corridor of the priest’s house in the film is unforgettable: In a small space, the child lowered his head from one room to another room, and took the whip and gave it to his father. All we observed were the dull lights and soles of the feet. The creak pressing against the wooden floor, closing the door, whiplash and reserved moan came from the silence. I can't describe where the tremendous pressure in my heart comes from at this time, is it a cramped space, a boring voice, or a combination of both? I only know that my heart is surging in the silence, but I can't stop the stiffness and cooling of the limbs. The splicing of long shots and empty shots allowed this suffering to continue, and the shackles on the body became heavier.
The alias of "White Ribbon" is called "White Audiotape". On the one hand, it echoes the famous "White Ribbon" movement (an anti-patriarchal violence movement). It is similar to "Hidden Camera", the alias of "Hidden". In fact, this setting has two deep meanings. First of all, the tapes in "Audiotape" and "Hidden" are anonymous, and the recorder is unknown. In other words, all crimes are exposed anonymously and cannot be publicly signed. It shows that some evils themselves are formed endogenously in society. Exposing that evils will also shake the foundation of the social structure. This is also a dilemma in the development of civilization, which is the so-called derivatives and attachments of civilization. Secondly, both audio tapes and video tapes are tools to record the real society, with objective and rational characteristics. Through them, the audience feels a kind of secret reality and a kind of rational existence. However, the camera in "Hidden" is operated by humans. It intercepts certain nodes in the time stream and is itself selective. The "audiotape" in this film is a character's self-report, which is a subjective presentation of reality. More or less with human subjective prejudice. Although both films abstract the narrator's position, emotional attitude and value orientation, "Hidden" abstracts as a hidden photographer identity, and "White Ribbon" abstracts as a rural teacher with the purest inner emotions in the film. However, the one-sided and single perspective cannot be avoided. It warns the audience that any one-way logic and thinking are undesirable, and the possibility of interpretation exists only in a more diversified historical context.
Taking this in depth, we find that the audio tape or video tape also contains Haneke's exploration of film narrative methods. Sartre said that everything in the novel is a manifestation of the author's manipulation. The same is true in the movie, but the manipulator is more concealed. For a long time, inpersonal narration is a unique mode of movies, and audiences tend to ignore the existence of this almighty narrator. When we are immersed in the calm and objective lens narration, Haneke uses a videotape ("Hidden") or an audiotape ("White Ribbon") to remind the audience that there is a narrator here. The narrator in "White Ribbon" is sometimes a concrete individual, a rural teacher, and sometimes a hidden observer (camera). The interactive appearance of the two not only maintains a moral, intellectual, emotional, temporal, and physical distance, but also produces the film's polysemous structure and ironic complex narrative effects. It allows the audience to skip the single ethical and moral evaluation of the characters, and go straight to a concern for the existence of life. It is even these characters that cause ambiguity in moral evaluation, which more vividly touched the true existence of the barrier of retiring vulgarity.
2.
The true existence described in "White Ribbon" involves a problem that "hatred" and evil come from, a problem that has always existed in human society but cannot be solved, that is, the problem of the power distribution structure of the family/society. The film will be directed at the patriarchal/patriarchal social power structure, using the various characters in German towns and their relationships to show the roots of violence hidden in the family and society, and even the terrorism in today’s society. The source is also wrapped in the confrontation of the social power structure, which is the purpose of "White Ribbon" and the previous work "Hidden".
From "The Seventh Continent" to "Hidden", Hanek's interpretation of violence often focuses on the family. The self-mutilation of family members in Australia in "Seventh Continent", the parents in "Benny’s Videotape" failed to effectively channel their children’s violent emotions, the mother’s repression of power in "Piano Teacher" led to the distortion of female psychology, and "Hidden" The alienated relationship between husband and wife in "is made tense and complicated by the intervention of video tapes. While "White Ribbon" focuses on the small towns in Germany, the focus is extended from the family to the social level. We not only see the contradictions within each family, but also the confrontation between each family due to different social identities and status. mood. And this emotion is not simply one-to-one, but multi-line interlaced and intertwined.
As the supreme symbol of power in the town, the baron has the power to control the property of the town, and his attitude often determines the survival of a family. The farmer's son pushed the fault to the baron because of his mother's death. He destroys the vegetable garden and burns the granary in an attempt to use violence to bring justice, and is a resistance to the core position of the baron's social power. At the same time, within the Baron’s family, the wife provoked her husband’s authority with infidelity, and her appeal to personal emotions is undoubtedly a resistance to the cold and indifferent relationship between husband and wife. It should be said that the confrontational elements in the Baron’s family and social relations are a condensate of the various types of confrontation in the film, and the more anonymous violence can be said to be personal/class dissatisfaction with the patriarchal/male power structure. Revolt.
The children and women in the film are in the position of a disadvantaged group, which is different from the limited tension in the family relationship of the baron (it can be compared to the middle-class family conflicts in "Hidden", which is limited and hard to cause violence), the priest's family It is an overly strong family structure of father/husband. In the film, the priest’s toughness with the children with white ribbons, the harshness of whipping his son Martin, and the intimidation of rural teachers are all manifestations of the priest’s abuse of self-authority; and the farmer’s family It is a family structure with a weak father. Although the farmer himself has the authority of the father over the family members, he never dares to challenge the status of the baron. He is a weak force in social relations but dominates in family relations, so It was the son who had long been suppressed by the patriarchy that provoked the banner of family resistance. We carefully consider the chain of relationships and find that the strength and weakness of social relationships are often based on a dependency relationship. The stronger a person's survival depends on others, the more he is in a position of dominance in the power relationship. The priest has the least reliance on the baron in the power center of the town, so he shows more of a kind of toughness and arbitrariness, while the peasant has to rely on the baron’s grace due to economic pressure, which is more of a kind of weakness. A compromise.
Following this line of thought, we compare the family relationship between the Baron and the doctor, and we will be pleasantly surprised to discover an amazing secret. Although the baron's wife had a private meeting with other men in Italy, she eventually returned to the baron, even though the baron asked her if she had slept with that man, she paused for a moment and said no (apparently). Here, the baron’s wife is on the more dependent side in the relationship between the husband and wife. His financial dependence on her husband is too strong, which makes her afraid and unwilling to break with her husband; while the daughter of the doctor’s family (not the doctor’s biological) is There is a fundamental difference. A daughter can live independently by inheriting the property of her mother’s ex-husband. She is not completely dependent on her father financially, so she should be the easiest to resist in the family relationship (analogous to the son of a farmer’s family). It is unbelievable that she begs for completeness after being harassed by the doctor several times. Looking at the incident of the doctor falling from the horse with this kind of doubt, we can find a secret clue that the string was the act of her daughter, and her father-killing behavior was a resistance to the father’s incest. In the film, the doctor fell. The whole process of the horse was presented through a reverse shot of her daughter standing at the window, which also confirmed my guess. As for the children in the village mentioned by the teacher in the conversation with the pastor who participated in this incident, I think it is not difficult to explain that the daughter instructed her friends to participate in this "conspiracy", and they tacitly understood after the incident. "Meeting" conveyed this signal. In fact, most of the subsequent anonymous events in the film can use this idea to determine who the "murderer" is, and the logic is clear. In general, Cary went to unmask the farmer’s wife and the doctor rescued the village chief’s child to have a fever. The two scenes are to solve the doubt. I won’t repeat them here for the two key clues.
In a patriarchal society, the imbalance of power distribution often affects people's judgments of good and evil. The various incidents of destruction and abuse in the film are immoral and even evil when placed in a normal public opinion evaluation system. However, in a "small group" composed of disadvantaged groups, collective deviant behaviors are not easily detected by the entire group (even if some people are detected, they will be punished anonymously), which is a manifestation of collective unconsciousness. The root cause of this evil is that the hatred and hostility of the individuals among the members has nowhere to vent, and the individual's weak position in the power chain cannot be changed. Individual hatred then becomes a collective hatred. Individual violence is realized through an anonymous form of collective violence, which means that hatred and resentment are abstracted by collective members, rather than specific to an individual member. Therefore, this kind of abstract resentment can easily be distorted, or used by some people in the group who have the right to speak, resulting in a series of unimaginable violent incidents. This may be one of the root causes of violence and terrorism.
The three
films repeatedly tried to channel the occurrence of resentment, hatred, and violence through the influence of God/religion, but things were counterproductive. The pious hymn at the end sounded a deep irony of religion. Violence was not eliminated in the hymn, on the contrary, Large-scale social conflicts and group violence (wars) are intensifying. The embarrassing position of religion, ethics and morality in the social structure is gradually becoming prominent. Religious, ethical and moral constraints based on "good" and "evil" are invalidated in the social evaluation system Now, the social power structure based on patriarchy/male power fails in the power distribution system.
From a historical point of view, the production of life itself has formed primitive relationships such as spouses and parent-child relationships in a broad sense, and gradually derives into family ethical relationships in a broad sense. At the same time that the family is formed, along with the establishment of labor forms and property relations, the initial power structure at the family level is formed. The patriarchal/husband power structure is the initial family power structure derived from this in human society. As the family became the starting point of social connections, the division of labor led to an increase in the interdependence of social relations. Because of the influence of the husband’s family structure, a male-centered social power structure emerged (based on the power of male talent and property). Distribution structure). The power structure from the individual to the family requires the establishment of a family contract relationship based on ethics, and the power structure from the family to the society requires the establishment of a social contract relationship based on morality. Both ethics and morality are religious and social The basic principle of order. However, when we focus on the social division of labor itself, we find that the division of labor is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it creates a sense of cohesion between people (Durkheim). On the other hand, it makes people highly abstract and assumes responsibility. The risk of being distorted (Feuerbach). The sense of cohesion makes the group consensus and then transforms it into a code of action (morality), but the abstraction of the individual makes the moral itself face the embarrassment of being abstracted when encountering the individual, that is to say, at the same time as the morality is produced, the distorted morality is also produced at the same time. In fact, individuals in different groups have different codes of conduct and ethics, which are all endogenous to the social order itself. In the film, the unimaginable violence is to abandon the existence of morality. The tension from the family has spawned more intense social tension. The behavior of "small groups" has become more and more presumptuous under a kind of ethical guidelines. Whenever they gather after the incident, the eyes always give me a gloomy feeling, and there is a kind of prestige in full view.
From another perspective, morality is a derivative of society. It is often seen as a sublation of a purely causal sequence through a certain purpose. It is the transcendence of reflection consciousness over the impulse of the current people. It contains one thing. This collective subconscious suppresses the individual's self-consciousness. According to Taoism, it means "doing what the heart desires but not overstepping the rules", "doing what the heart desires" means that there is an individual motivation system (self), while "not overstepping the rules" means a collective evaluation system (self-discipline). The restrictive effect of the former on the former is obvious. It embodies the suppression of self by self-discipline, which has a Freudian meaning. However, when society undergoes sudden changes due to economic, cultural, and other ideologies, self-discipline may be missing or distorted. The ruler that flogged self-desire disappears or is damaged, and we will unconsciously look for other “rules” or Acknowledge the distorted "rule ruler".
From these two perspectives, it is very convincing to look at the birth of violence and a kind of terrorism in the film, and even the outbreak of World War I and World War II. In the postmodern context, the distorted "morality" is no longer suppressed by morality, and a demand for the reorganization of social power structure is ready to emerge. Violence and terrorism can reconstruct the social order in the form of collective anonymity. At the same time, the group consciousness of self-discipline is missing or distorted, causing the "out of control" of the individual motivation system and looking for new or distorted self-discipline. Self-discipline can easily be borrowed to achieve the purpose of inciting individual behavior. In connection with the age when these children grew up in the film, twenty years later is the period when they entered the stage of history, the extremely distorted family/social environment in which they were children, and their lack of or distorted sense of self-discipline, After being easily instigated and manipulated by Hitler twenty years later, the original ethical, moral and social order has since collapsed, and a new order from the inside to the outside is quietly resurrecting.
Originally published in "Li Zhi"
10/01/05 4:25
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