introduction
The movie "Hunting" has been really popular in the United States on the other side of the ocean for a while.
It tells that several American social elites kidnapped a group of ordinary people from the bottom to a "hunting ground", gave them guns and ammunition, and hunted them with various weapons.
The film's main creative lineup is quite strong, director Craig Zobel (Craig Zobel) participated in directing "Westworld", "American Gods", "Overwatch" and other classic American dramas.
The film was originally scheduled to be released in North America on September 27, 2019, but on August 10, Trump scolded: "Liberal Hollywood is racist at the highest level, full of anger and hatred! They like to call They are 'elite' themselves, but they are not. In fact, it is often the people they strongly oppose who are the elite. This upcoming film is meant to incite and cause chaos. They create their own violence and then try to dump them. Blame others. They are true racists and very harmful to our country!"
There are also multiple channels of media, and they are also full of firepower to scold.
Film outlet Indiewire said it was "dangerous";
Deadline said it was "a disturbance to our country"
Time said it was "not appropriate";
The Wall Street Journal said it was "designed to stoke division in the country";
The Daily Mail said it had "exploitative rather than opinionated";
Fox News went even further, saying it "shows Hollywood for what it really is demented and evil".
It can be said that these comments have turned from "discussing matters" to "punishing hearts". Especially Fox News, as always, scolded the style and scolded the level.
In terms of political leanings, Indiewire and Hollywood News Front are leftists, Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal are centrists, Daily Mail is center-right, and Fox News is far-right—you can offend them all , is also a strange thing.
Later, the film was announced to be withdrawn, but it was not scolded away. The analysis said that it should be related to two large-scale shootings in the United States at that time.
On March 13 this year, the film was finally released, and it even changed to a new poster, printing all the fancy insults on the new poster. I have to say that this wave of momentum is really not something that money can buy.
On the left is the poster originally scheduled to be released on September 27, which is relatively normal; on the right is the newly scheduled poster on March 13, which is abusive.
But you should be able to guess the ending. The United States suffered a major outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic within a week of its release, and the theaters were closed. The film had to move to streaming media as soon as it earned $6.5 million at the global box office.
Such an ill-fated film is full of American magical realism both inside and outside the scene. What did it say, and why was it scolded?
Let's start from the beginning.
1. What does it say: when "white left" meets "red neck"
At the beginning of the movie, the audience only presented a confrontation between "hunter" and "prey" without giving too much background explanation. This brings a touch of suspense in addition to the blood: how did the "hunter" and the "prey" come from, and why are they tit for tat?
The movie doesn't give the audience time to think more, because the prey is the prey. A character who appears to be the heroine appears - as it happens, she is played by Emma Roberts (Emma Roberts), and her aunt is the famous "big mouth beauty" Julia Roberts (Julia Roberts).
Unexpectedly, she just had a little electricity with a guy who seemed to be the male protagonist, and was shot in the head and quit the game. The non-mainstream temperament of the film is revealed here.
The rest of the prey also behaved stupidly until the real heroine, Crystal, showed up.
By the way, she is played by the late bloomer Betty Gilpin. The goddess is a typical temperament white beauty looks like Uma Thurman, Jessica Chastain, Rebecca Ferguson, Jodie Comer) and so on.
As the adventures of the sharp-eyed and agile heroine, known as "Snowball" by the hunters, deepens, the story behind the hunter and the prey gradually emerges in front of the audience.
It turned out that the "hunters" were a group of pretentious social elites. Once in a private social group, they joked that they wanted to torture and kill "deplorables", but they were stabbed by hackers, triggering the most aggressive among the inferiors. The siege of a gang of people - keyboard warriors. The keyboard warriors have weaved a set of conspiracy theories that the elites tortured and killed the poor. Under the pressure of political correctness, the companies where these troubled elites work have fired them from their respective positions. As a result, they were disgraced and angered at these inferior people who believed in anything and everything, and chose the most prominent group of keyboard warriors as "prey" to carry out torture.
Say we kill people? It will complete you!
However, these elites are pampered on weekdays, and their hands-on ability is really not good. When they arrested people, they made a mistake and brought our heroine Christie in by mistake. She is an Afghan war veteran and the only one in this film who is beneficial to society. people. This is also doomed to the demise of the elite.
In this way, the identities of "hunter" and "prey" are very clear, and the reason for the opposition is also very clear: class contradiction.
But this contradiction is no longer the naked labor-capital contradiction of the past. It has become more secretive, more modern, and even more civilized.
The political orientation represented by the elite hunters is the so-called "white left" popular on the Chinese Internet. Of course, this is not a good name. If it was more politically correct, they should be called "regressive left". They pursue equality politically, but think they are superior to others; culturally, they insist on pluralism, but they hate the culture that insists on unity. The double standards, the decency and the standing, are what they are talking about.
The prey keyboard warriors are all portrayed according to the "red neck", their political inclinations are all outright extreme right (so they are also called "white right"), politically adhere to extreme nationalism; culturally adhere to a single Christian Faith, so it's especially anti-keith and anti-intellectual.
The former thinks the latter is stupid, the latter thinks that the former is bad, and if you don't talk for a while, it's better to have the spare time to type and spray people than to fight to the death with real knives and real guns.
Therefore, this bloody hunting ground is essentially the current public opinion field in the United States. And the movie also used the perspective of Christie, a bystander, to come off the court with great interest as the referee: you said he was stupid, he said you were bad, and now I declare - you are right.
You elites who are full of benevolence, righteousness and morality are a bunch of hypocrites; you guys who have never studied are a bunch of idiots. All die.
This film fires at all forces mercilessly, and it is naturally not tolerated by all forces.
2. Why was it scolded: took off the emperor's new clothes
"The Hunt" tells the political truth that cannot be said in the United States, like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes" loudly claiming that the emperor is naked. I don't want to be ashamed of America?
So Trump fired first. After all, his voters are hunted like pigs in the movie, and they are stupid like pigs. Is it tolerable or unbearable? Other left and right media also took their seats, angrily defending their last dignity. Even those outside the scope of the film's attack felt the film "incited division."
It's just that, perhaps, those divisions were already there before they were "incited". In addition to showing the divisions between the two groups in the general political sense, the film also shows their divisions on a range of American-specific political topics: gun control, global warming, political correctness (including but not limited to immigration, sexual orientation) , abortion), etc. Some critics say that these are generalities and not deep enough. But in fact, this film just uses these topics as a sarcastic joke, and does not intend to delve into it. For example, one of the elites must correct his peers not to say "black people" but to say "African Americans", which shows his obsession with political correctness.
From the point of view of this film, these rambunctious discussions are minutiae; if it is discussed one by one, as some reviews say, it will be scrapped. So what is "ben"? In the second part of the movie, through the mouth of the bystander Christie, a new version of the "tortoise and the hare race" is told: the tortoise and the hare race, the hare is arrogant, the tortoise insists, and finally the tortoise wins the hare - in the evening, the hare carries the sledgehammer and kills the tortoise's family. Killed it all.
Because the rabbit always wins.
This is what divides America: the rabbit always wins. Other problems are derived from this. For example, the immigration issue: Elite companies need cheap labor, and of course they don’t care how many immigrants come into the country. They naturally welcome cheap immigrants with a “diversified” attitude; Relief, of course, must hold high the banner of racism.
So this "immigration problem" boils down to the fact that the elites are always the elites, the inferiors are always the inferiors, and the elites always get more than the inferiors.
This is the so-called "rabbit always wins".
At this point, "Hunting" has become a typical work of "fixed body questioning", which is openly questioning the superiority of the American system and losing confidence in the system.
3. Where is the road
The movie has already raised the question, so is there no way out?
From a personal point of view, yes. After all, at the end of the movie, the heroine Christie killed all the elites, and the keyboard warriors also died, so she became a new elite.
But the main premise is that these elites are stupid enough: they caught the wrong person, which is the first mistake; there is a more subtle mistake: remember when they called Christie "Snowball"? Later in the film, Christie asks their eldest daughter, "Why call me Snowball?"
The eldest woman said triumphantly, "This is a pig from George Orwell's Animal Farm."
Christie corrected: "But Snowball is an idealist, hated by other pigs, and rumored by other pigs. (From your point of view) You should be Snowball."
The female boss was dumbfounded and asked, "Do you also read Animal Farm?"
That's the biggest mistake the elites make: they don't know about the other classes, and even less about themselves. They smugly and smugly handed over the legitimacy of the regime (aka "Snowball"), which heralded their demise.
On the personal side, first of all, you have to be as smart and brave as Christie, preferably a war veteran; secondly, you have to be as good at taking chances as Christy and seize the opponent's mistakes; lastly, you have to be like Christy, the protagonist .
But what about from an institutional point of view? It's hard to say. At the end of the film, those who were supposed to serve the elite are again diligently saddling Christy. Christie enjoyed their service, but also shared the elite's leftover goodies (like caviar) with them.
So is this a change? Well... at least a start.
4. When non-mainstream entertainment meets non-mainstream politics
Finally, let's talk about a trend that "The Hunt" represents: the combination of non-mainstream entertainment and non-mainstream politics.
"Hunting" belongs to the "Battle Royale" theme. Movies with similar themes include Japan's "Battle Royale", the teenage romantic revolution series "The Hunger Games", the American TV series "Kill Without Amnesty", and the Nth Time of "Harry Potter" The self-destructive transformation work "Holding a Gun at the Waist", as well as the "Human Erasure Project", which can continue to produce sequels and even become a universe no matter how scolded it is.
The core of this type of subject matter is blood and violence, and the fundamental purpose is to make the audience happy. This is actually very non-mainstream and a little off the table. And it also poses a challenge to the plot design, because logically modern people don't want to kill people casually.
So these films, without exception, are more or less political, sometimes with some non-mainstream political setting, in order to create a story environment that makes such a killing possible.
In this way, non-mainstream entertainment, which originally relied on bloody blood, was accidentally and inevitably combined with non-mainstream politics. This combination is very common in Battle Royale stories. This has an additional advantage in this film: since hunters and prey are not good things, it is difficult for you to empathize with them, so there is no psychological burden to enjoy killing.
Of course, mainstream American entertainment movies will not touch these political views. Offending everyone is not good for business.
Although the political views of mainstream American entertainment films are not so non-mainstream, it is undeniable that they have also been politicized rapidly over the years. Just look at the Oscars: 12 Years a Slave in 2014, Moonlight in 2017, The Shape of Water in 2018, Green Book in 2019, Parasite in 2020. To name a few more examples: horror films "Get Out", "Us", "The Invisible Man"; mystery films "Knives Out", etc. All of these films mentioned above discuss or insinuate political topics such as race, class, sexual orientation, feminism, etc.
It can only be said that this is a cultural reflection of the deepening rift within the United States; and "The Hunt" is only one of the most intense critics.
Epilogue
Did 'The Hunt' Incite Divide America? To paraphrase a repeated line from the movie: "Maybe, maybe not."
Perhaps its words were indeed intense, even somewhat offensive.
Perhaps it was withdrawn for the first time due to the shooting case, and the second time it was taken offline due to the new crown pneumonia epidemic, all of which proved in the dark that this is an "out of place" movie - or does this constitute a kind of irony in itself?
Perhaps, all these issues should be hidden under the banner of political correctness and never be brought up.
After all, my own national conditions in the United States are here.
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