"Les Miserables": the black protest movement in the accelerated era

Amelia 2022-01-15 08:01:09

"Les Miserables": the black protest movement in the accelerated era

Author: Zongcheng

Since the 2008 economic crisis, the world's cinema has ushered in a wave of left-wing film craze. They are concerned with issues such as class, gender, social resource allocation, platform capitalism, and the contradiction of odd jobs, etc., in a general social inequality framework, they focus their lens on the shadowed group image. The representative works of left-wing themes in recent years are Ken Roach's "Sorry, We Missed You", Feng Junhao's "Parasite", Li Cangdong's "Burning" and Huang Xinyao's "Big Buddha Place" and so on. Although the focus of the directors is different, they all chose to abandon the top-down pity that the Wen Tun narrative and the elites are easy to carry, and instead are fierce and decisive, tearing apart the social contradictions. French director Rad Lee’s feature-length debut "Les Miserables" is also in this pedigree. Its powerful and precise narrative is better than the famous "Joker". Although "The Clown" starring Jackie Phoenix exposes the problems of inequality between the rich and the poor and the tearing of classes in neoliberal society, and shows the hypocritical and insensitive anger of the marginalized towards the rich, it is still a concept larger than the content. The clown is also interpreted as a lone wolf populist who is highly symbolic and caters to the taste of the market. The complexity of social contradictions does not unfold in this way, but is reduced to a spectacle of revenge with pleasure and vengeance. From the very beginning, Les Misérables rejected this kind of spectacle display. It opened as a pseudo-documentary. The camera led the audience to the streets. The first part of the painting was a few black teenagers who loved football. They talked about Mbappé, Matuidi, Pogba (these are all French national football players). Black members of the team), support the descendants of immigrants of the French football team, most of whom are African immigrants or descendants of Algeria. Historically, due to the colonial invasion of many African countries by France, French has become the common language in many regions of Africa. The closeness of geography and language has made France the first choice for many former colonial residents in Africa to smuggle or emigrate. How to resettle African immigrants and Muslims has become an important issue in French society. "Les Miserables" takes blacks and Muslims into the painting, focusing the camera on the obscured area of ​​French society, which is a place different from the Palace of Versailles, the Champs Elysées, lacking the bourgeois wave and the literati atmosphere, where drugs are hidden Dealing, fighting with weapons, small vendors, and illegal immigrants, where the police enforce the law violently, and immigrants survive there. What people are thinking about is not politically correct norms, but how to survive in the world. One: The establishment of the subjective narrative of the immigrant community by the camera. Although director Rad Lee knows how to take pictures to please the intellectuals in Paris, Les Misérables does not portray the characters as single The victim symbol, the camera liberated these immigrants from the victim's narrative, replaced by the main narrative, which is based on the display of the immigrant community. Those blacks and Muslims who risked their lives to immigrate from Africa and the Middle East have spontaneously assembled into communities or groups. For example, black children who love football form loose groups, and Muslims of the same religious belief gather in the same neighborhood. Black women formed mutual insurance to fill the ignorance of the French welfare system. These people established an autonomous society outside of order in their lives. They are under external control pressure in the form of police law enforcement. Internally, they have shaped their own community culture based on their own habits and tastes. The atmosphere inside has something in common with the well-known arena and gang culture in China. Here, the loyalty among friends has become an important means of unity between people, which is why after the black child is violently enforced, his companions dare to stand up and help. This reflects the survival wisdom learned by the bottom in a difficult environment, and it is the place where ordinary people shine in their daily lives. It is also the reason why "The Tragic Narrative" truly transcends the victim's narrative and establishes the main narrative. It sees " The art of being resisted by the ruling group". But it is precisely because of this spontaneous order within the community that the French local police try to avoid direct oppressive tactics in the law enforcement process, but instead use the means of fostering agents within the community and cooperating with the gang forces in the community to transfer conflicts. Illegal armed forces in the community also use the awkward position of law enforcement officers in the system to find gaps in their survival and breakthrough. This is where "Les Miserables" does not evade the internal problems of immigrant groups. It did not "bleach" blacks and Muslims in order to deliberately create impressions of the audience. There is no shortage of displays of some oppressed people slashing their swords at the weaker ones. When the camera is aimed at the suburbs of Paris, the audience not only sees cursing drug smugglers, but also sees the conflicts and tears within the immigrant group. Through the disappearance of the lion cub in the suburbs of Paris, the film condenses the contradictions faced by African immigrant groups in France. The police agreed to the circus owner to search for the lost lion. They found the black boy who was suspected, but accidentally injured him during the law enforcement process. This scene was captured by another child's small drone. The situation escalated and the police, anti-police forces, blacks, and Muslims were involved one after another, which eventually turned into a major conflict. In the second half of the story, what the director presents is not compromise, but violence and motives (not just personal anger, but also violence as a struggle strategy and a means of establishing subjective consciousness) after the lack of fairness rules. Whether it’s the police or the gangsters, or the youth in the fringe neighborhoods of Paris In 1991, they did not seem to take the defense of justice as their goal, let alone strictly abide by a set of ethics established by the French elite (the question of "whose morality" can be contemplated here. Is the mainstream ethics in French society the ethics that immigrants should abide by? How do they deal with their own ethics? Are the two ethics opposed to each other? Do immigrants have the ability to avoid moral collapse in their own circumstances). Here justice and fairness have appeared collectively, replaced by violent law enforcement and fascination with personal authority. It is violent for the police to accidentally injure children, and gang intervention is also violent. It is precisely because justice is not coming, the bottom of society can only choose desperate violent resistance. The whole movie is like a metaphor. Fortunately, the director did not design everyone as a symbol for narrative ambition. The setting of the black policeman in the film shows the director's skill. He was once a member of the oppressed, but after becoming a policeman, a law enforcement authorized by the state machinery, he also accepted this systematic law enforcement violence. In the ironic scene in the film, it was the black policeman who accidentally wounded the boy. After the shooting, although he was mixed with surprise, trance, and huge psychological contradictions, he still chose to conceal and destroy the truth when he determined that the boy might be in danger of his life. The director obviously pointed his fierce critical consciousness towards the black policeman who maintained the unfair order, but he still left the scene of the policeman crying to his mother after returning home, so that the audience could see the intense conflict and pain in his heart. This is not a simple moral balance treatment, but a more realistic depiction of African immigrants who have entered the white system. Even if they become an elite class recognized by mainstream society, they still cannot get rid of the troubles caused by their ethnic minority status. In this sense, the director gave a negative answer to the way into the system. Two: The forgotten groups must pass on their own memories. In the movie space of "Les Miserables", the police representing the state organs are responsible for combating gangs and smugglers, but in the actual law enforcement process, those who look like Gangs and smugglers, as well as those who are on the margins of the facial makeup constructed in the aesthetics of the white elite (they are constructed in daily discourse as troublesome people, people who endanger the mainstream nation, people who give birth to unscrupulously, People who lack morality, which arouses the disgust of the mainstream social groups, and then are expelled), have also become the targets of violent law enforcement. What’s ambiguous is that although Africans and Muslims are often condemned in public opinion, their faces are often because of their skin. Sex, habits, religious beliefs and even fertility issues have been criticized, but in these public opinion accusations, two types of issues are often ignored: the first type is the problem of who caused the departure of Africans and Muslims from their homes, and who established in this global governance system The pattern of oppression and the chain of contempt; the second category is the issue of the forgotten contribution of immigrants (not only African Americans, Muslims, but also Chinese and other immigrant groups) to the law. Those dirty jobs that are unacceptable by local residents, and low-income industries in the entire social remote system (discriminated but indispensable), they rely on the labor of immigrants to support them in reality. People who make contributions, in fact, immigrants often have to pay more in order to live in this land with dignity. When the upper-class elites screen the memories of society based on their aesthetics, what the oppressed need to think about is not how to cater to the aesthetics of the elites, but how to preserve their own memories in uniting their neighbors. Whether it is a movie like "Les Miserables" or the painstaking work of the thinker Fanon of the last century, they are essentially the way the oppressed immigrants convey their memories. In reality, the problems reflected in Les Misérables have broken out. On October 27, 2005, in the town of Clichy-sur-Bois in the northern suburbs of Paris, two African-American Muslim teenagers strayed into a substation to avoid being chased by the police. They were electrocuted and killed. The accident caused hundreds of teenagers in the town to take to the streets to protest and clashed with the police, which then led to riots. From the 28th to the 31st, the riots continued to expand. On October 31st, the then Minister of the Interior Sarkozy made a tough speech, which led to the riots further expanding. The riots spread to more than 300 cities and towns in France, dozens of people were injured and more than 9,000 cars were burned. On November 8th that year, the French President declared a state of emergency throughout the country and imposed curfews in many places. The Paris riots in 2005 spurred director Radley, after which he decided to make a film showing the tearing apart of French society. Since 2005, related incidents in France have continued. For example, in 2017, Theo, a 22-year-old black man, was interrogated in the street by four police officers in Enais-sur-Bois, a northern suburb of Paris. Operation. In recent years, the opposition between the people of Paris and the police has intensified, especially the black and Muslim groups, and the relationship with the police has become increasingly tense. Therefore, the French will have a sense of substitution when watching "Les Miserables". The strokes in the film are not whitewashed or distorted. It is the real life of Paris’ neighborhoods. It is a Paris that has faded away from the world’s famous attractions. The capitalist metropolis where riots occur every day. When people set their sights on Pakistan When the magnificence of Lebanon and London, the social chaos in many African countries, the image of smugglers are imagined and portrayed as ugly, low-quality and undermining European cultural traditions, we should ask more-what causes such differences? What caused the refugees from the Third World to leave their homes and come to Europe? The neoliberal world order grabbed raw materials, labor, and eliminated low-end production capacity from the Third World. The European bourgeoisie relied on colonial plunder and technological revolution to create their glory, but it also left the colonized countries still unable to resolve it. Scars. Therefore, the immigration problem in European countries represented by France is, on the surface, a problem of immigration quality and violent law enforcement. The root cause is the problem of the global expansion of the capitalist order. One of the origins of the chaos in the Middle East today is the "Sykes-Picket Agreement" signed by Britain and France a hundred years ago. This agreement divides the Arab region into two parts: "One part goes to the Arabs in Mecca; Syria; It was divided into France, and the British occupied Iraq, Mesopotamia, Basra, and Baghdad. However, there was a problem in the division, that is, Palestine. The two sides failed to reach an agreement with Palestine, so they took Palestine Assigned to a third party.” ("The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire: The First World War in the Middle East, 1914-1920") After the millennium, France's participation in NATO's military operations in the Middle East aggravated the disasters in the Arab world and even in North Africa. In 2012, a photo of a "3-year-old boy on the beach in Turkey" once made the world silent. The Arab world was devastated, and Europe on the opposite side of the Mediterranean became a "paradise" in the eyes of many people. As a result, the number of people fleeing from smugglers increased sharply, and the region around the Mediterranean was facing a serious refugee crisis. When the colonists of the suzerainty made huge profits through plundering, and now they have obtained a large amount of cheap young labor from the immigrant group, they cannot enjoy the benefits while unilaterally accusing the immigration of all kinds of problems. Three: A third world ghost "Les Miserables" depicts the French ethnic group torn apart, which can not only remind people of international films such as "Parasite" and "Joker", but also evoke people's memories of French left-wing films. "Les Miserables" is not like the hypocritical narrative strategy of the old Hollywood man, which portrays marginal people as kind and innocent, and they are exploited by the upper class. Through the occupation and distortion of left-wing film production, many of today’s politically correct films have actually dismantled the dangerous elements that may be implied. In the common typological processing of Hollywood films, “left-wing” films have been disguised as packs of talcum powder. Yes, hey, it's over. It will not have any effect on the change of social stereotypes, and more Such as consumerism's plundering of left-wing issues and "alternative speech." The hypocritical narrative strategy avoids the more complicated issues behind the oppressed and oppressed narrative. Perhaps we should return to the question of the thinker Fanon in "All the Suffering People on the Earth"-Where does the oppression come from? How is the face of the oppressed? France is a country with a strong atmosphere of left-wing intellectuals. Since the French Revolution, left-wing intellectuals have made their voices heard through books, newspapers, and movies. During the New Wave Movement, French left-wing film reached a climax. Filmmakers not only regarded art as an exploration of skills, but also paid more attention to film as a carrier of social criticism. In an interview about the movie "Chinese Girl" (1967), Godard said: "Art is not a reflection of reality, but a process of'reflecting' this reality." French left-wing films in the 1960s (which actually include Films made by directors from French-speaking Africa) include a branch line that reflects the production of films that reflect the ethnic groups of immigrants in France. This includes not only works that show the fall of French colonial hegemony and the reshaping of values ​​in the entire society, but also the creation of subjective narratives with immigrants as the main character. Influenced by the atmosphere of the times, the latter movie mainly shows immigrants. The oppression and resistance of people (such as black African Americans) in the suzerain state. In 1969, there was a movie "Black Girl" in Senegal. The protagonist was a girl who migrated from Africa to France and worked as a nanny for a middle-class French family. She went to a more affluent society, but the mobile feast did not belong to her. She left her hometown and suffered discrimination. The difference in skin color and social status made her feel like a lower class person, suffering from cold eyes and exploitation in a foreign land. This black girl was a symbol of French immigrants of African descent at the time. She lived at the bottom of the society and served as a low-cost labor force in France. She was doing trivial housework day and night like a slave labor. Finally, after her self-esteem was hurt by the mistress, she chose to cut her off. Suicide by wrist. After the Second World War, former colonial countries such as Kenya and Algeria sought independence from the suzerain country, France. Left-wing filmmakers also created a series of films reflecting social contradictions based on this theme. For example, "The Battle of Algeria" (1966) filmed by Gilo Pentekovo in Italy praised the struggle and sacrifice of the Algerian people from the perspective of the oppressed striving for independence. Godard's "Little Soldier" (1963) also reflects the battle of Algeria, but it uses an individualized narrative to present the experience of the deserter Bruno Forrest in the war. At that time, the Algerian War was a sensitive topic in the French intellectual circles, and many famous intellectuals such as Sartre and Camus were involved. Godalmu Seeing the tearing of the intellectual world caused by the Algerian War and the irreversible weakening of French colonial hegemony, I chose an anarchist perspective. After the millennium, there are also many movies reflecting the problem of French immigration. For example, the comedy "Father-in-law and Mother-in-Law Really Difficult to Become" talks about four daughters in a middle-class Catholic family who were married to Arabs, Jews, Chinese and African-Americans, which caused cultural conflicts and identity issues. In 2009, director Jacques Odia’s "Fabler" designed the plot of an Arab being sent to a French prison. In these films, we will see that the immigration issue is commercialized and categorized. On the one hand, it has become a politically correct expression. On the other hand, it has also dispelled the pain of immigration issues in the superficial reconciliation or symbolic description. The meaning of "Les Miserables". Many years ago, in the novel "Les Miserables" by the writer Hugo, there was a passage: "'We only need to work a little bit, and the nettle becomes a useful thing. If we leave it alone, it becomes a useful thing. So we get rid of it. How many people in the world are just like nettles." He was silent for a while, then went on and said: "My friends, keep this in mind, there is no bad grass in the world. There are no bad people, only bad farmers.'" Hugo wrote these words through the metaphor of nettles, the protagonist of the novel, Jean Valjean. As a poor worker with a peasant background, he was born at the bottom and his character was simple, but the injustice and oppression of the social structure changed his actions little by little. After seeing his sister’s children crying from hunger, he couldn’t help stealing bread for the children. Unfortunately, he was caught and sentenced to 5 years in prison. After several escapes, he was caught and sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison. As a result, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a piece of bread. After coming out of prison, Jean Valjean was blinded everywhere, with no job, no food to eat. When he was suppressed to the darkest part of society, he swore that he would take revenge against this society. And today, when a movie of the same name called "Les Miserables" is released, what it hopes is not only to let the audience see what happened to the immigrants, but also to return to Hugo's command: "My friends, remember Staying true to this point, there is no bad grass or bad people in the world, only bad farmers." Cultural conflicts and identity issues. In 2009, director Jacques Odia’s "Fabler" designed the plot of an Arab being sent to a French prison. In these films, we will see that the immigration issue is commercialized and categorized. On the one hand, it has become a politically correct expression. On the other hand, it has also dispelled the pain of immigration issues in the superficial reconciliation or symbolic description. The meaning of "Les Miserables". Many years ago, in the novel "Les Miserables" by the writer Hugo, there was a passage: "'We only need to work a little bit, and the nettle becomes a useful thing. If we leave it alone, it becomes a useful thing. So we get rid of it. How many people in the world are just like nettles." He was silent for a while, then went on and said: "My friends, keep this in mind, there is no bad grass in the world. There are no bad people, only bad farmers.'" Hugo wrote these words through the metaphor of nettles, the protagonist of the novel, Jean Valjean. As a poor worker with a peasant background, he was born at the bottom and his character was simple, but the injustice and oppression of the social structure changed his actions little by little. After seeing his sister’s children crying from hunger, he couldn’t help stealing bread for the children. Unfortunately, he was caught and sentenced to 5 years in prison. After several escapes, he was caught and sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison. As a result, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a piece of bread. After coming out of prison, Jean Valjean was blinded everywhere, with no job, no food to eat. When he was suppressed to the darkest part of society, he swore that he would take revenge against this society. And today, when a movie of the same name called "Les Miserables" is released, what it hopes is not only to let the audience see what happened to the immigrants, but also to return to Hugo's command: "My friends, remember Staying true to this point, there is no bad grass or bad people in the world, only bad farmers." Cultural conflicts and identity issues. In 2009, director Jacques Odia’s "Fabler" designed the plot of an Arab being sent to a French prison. In these films, we will see that the immigration issue is commercialized and categorized. On the one hand, it has become a politically correct expression. On the other hand, it has also dispelled the pain of immigration issues in the superficial reconciliation or symbolic description. The meaning of "Les Miserables". Many years ago, in the novel "Les Miserables" by the writer Hugo, there was a passage: "'We only need to work a little bit, and the nettle becomes a useful thing. If we leave it alone, it becomes a useful thing. So we get rid of it. How many people in the world are just like nettles." He was silent for a while, then went on and said: "My friends, keep this in mind, there is no bad grass in the world. There are no bad people, only bad farmers.'" Hugo wrote these words through the metaphor of nettles, the protagonist of the novel, Jean Valjean. As a poor worker with a peasant background, he was born at the bottom and his character was simple, but the injustice and oppression of the social structure changed his actions little by little. After seeing his sister’s children crying from hunger, he couldn’t help stealing bread for the children. Unfortunately, he was caught and sentenced to 5 years in prison. After several escapes, he was caught and sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison. As a result, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a piece of bread. After coming out of prison, Jean Valjean was blinded everywhere, with no job, no food to eat. When he was suppressed to the darkest part of society, he swore that he would take revenge against this society. And today, when a movie of the same name called "Les Miserables" is released, what it hopes is not only to let the audience see what happened to the immigrants, but also to return to Hugo's command: "My friends, remember Staying true to this point, there is no bad grass or bad people in the world, only bad farmers." There is no bad grass, no bad people, only bad crop people. '" Hugo wrote these words through the metaphor of nettles, the protagonist of the novel Jean Valjean. As a poor worker born as a peasant, he was born at the bottom, his character is simple, but the social structure is a bit unfair and oppressive. Change his behavior. As he saw his sister’s children crying from hunger, he couldn’t help stealing bread for the children, so unfortunately he was caught and sentenced to 5 years in prison. He escaped several times and was arrested and added. Sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a piece of bread. After coming out of prison, Jean Valjean was blinded everywhere, with no job, no food to eat. When he was suppressed to the darkest part of society, he swears I must avenge this society. Today, when a movie of the same name called "Les Miserables" is released, what it hopes is not only to let the audience see what happened to the immigrants, but also to return to Hugo's instruction : "My friends, keep this in mind. There is no bad grass or bad people in the world, only bad farmers. " There is no bad grass, no bad people, only bad crop people. Hugo wrote this through the metaphor of nettles, the protagonist of the novel Jean Valjean. As a poor worker born as a peasant, he was born at the bottom, his character is simple, but the social structure is a bit unfair and oppressive. Change his behavior. As he saw his sister’s children crying from hunger, he couldn’t help stealing bread for the children, so unfortunately he was caught and sentenced to 5 years in prison. He escaped several times and was arrested and added. Sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for a piece of bread. After coming out of prison, Jean Valjean was blinded everywhere, with no job, no food to eat. When he was suppressed to the darkest part of society, he swears I must take revenge on this society. And today, when a movie of the same name called "Les Miserables" is released, what it hopes is not only to let the audience see what happened to the immigrants, but also to return to Hugo's sentence : "My friends, keep this in mind. There is no bad grass or bad people in the world, only bad farmers. "

View more about Les Misérables reviews

Extended Reading
  • Andres 2022-03-27 09:01:15

    The black immigrant director has natural sympathy for the little black boy in the film who stole things everywhere and then gathered to attack the police

  • Kristian 2022-03-28 09:01:08

    "The lion prays to God every morning to let the merciful escape his claws." The game between the state apparatus and African immigrants is the collision of two civilizations. It is the police and children who are bleeding at the forefront, but the whole society is injured. The film's perspective follows the newly transferred police officers into the African-American community, examining the multi-faceted struggles in the past two days, and does not make an easy judgment of good and evil. In the end, the triangular confrontation in the corridor left the choice to the audience.

Les Misérables quotes

  • Chris: You just arrived and you're lecturing us? We're the only ones respected.

    Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz, dit Pento: Respect? People around here just fear you.