For a Hollywood spy action film with a female as the absolute protagonist like "City of Extreme Cold", people must be able to realize before watching the movie that most of the movie-watching pleasure of the whole movie will come from watching Charlize. How Theron played all kinds of male characters in the palm of his hand and beat them all over the place - but even so, it still doesn't seem to me to be able to make "Arctic City" " as a feminist Hollywood film - on the contrary, it fully reflects the process of how men use language to bring this female image into their own control. . At the same time, we can also find out how mainstream films shape female myths and at the same time use a "movie lie" to dissolve this female image - so much so that such female myths can be seen when people walk out of the cinema. At that moment, it will disappear forever, and it will not stay in the consciousness level for a single minute.
The first thing to be clear is that, unlike other Hollywood-style commercials with women as protagonists, the camera lens as a symbol of the male gaze in "Arctic City" is well hidden on Charlize Theron. And this kind of concealment is the basis for the above-mentioned realization of "men use language to eliminate women's screen image". For example, in the first scene of Charlize Theron, the film first shows the solid muscle line of her back (the physical strength is highlighted), and then the burning of Theron and the dead man Intimate photos of the agent (we can find this emotional ruthlessness is highlighted by a sense of spiritual strength later in the film), and in subsequent interrogation episodes, Theron has a Both are dominant and in control (which is reinforced by Theron's white shirt and central composition), and we can now fully believe that the narrative advancement of this film is firmly in the hands of the protagonist Theron. ——At this time, Theron no longer exists as the object of male desire, but a mysterious object, that is, the existence of male fear-but it is difficult to realize Theron’s objectification only from the opening paragraphs of the film, Because at this time the male gaze is still hidden and not fully revealed.
A further concealment of this male gaze is in the mise-en-scene of the action scenes. The director of this film, David Leitch, is a very outstanding and unique action film director in Hollywood in recent years, and he has a very strong personal style in the design of action scenes. In action scenes, he uses a lot of long-shot splicing instead of the mainstream short-shot quick-cut mode in Hollywood - the effect of this is that the "insensitivity" of the actors when making fighting actions is strengthened, and the fighting process is intensified. The sense of rhythm is more obvious, and the sense of power of the character's punching has been enhanced relative to the quick cut (traditional Hollywood quick cut is only to ensure the continuity and smoothness of the action scenes), and the fighting scenes have become rougher And very aggressive and violent. The most impressive thing in "City of Extreme Cold" is the pseudo-long-shot action scene that lasted more than 7 minutes in the corridor. This lens treatment makes Theron's action scenes look more brutal and violent than previous Hollywood action scenes, showing the audience the kind of pure force and power that only occurs in male action movies. Head-to-head confrontation, the kind of physical flexibility and fighting skills as the mainstream fighting style of women in action films is placed in a secondary position here, and at the same time, Theron's dress is also tightly wrapped throughout the film. The combination of coats and boots - "Arctic City" completely eliminates the erotic meaning of women to men in the action and styling design of the action scenes. Theron seems to have completely become a screen image that is not stared at by men, even in the At the climax of the violent episode, the impact of the visual spectacle on the audience even makes her gender seem irrelevant.
But as mentioned above, this so-called erasure of gender attributes is just hiding the point of view of the male gaze, and this hidden exposure is reflected in another aspect of the text of "City of Extreme Cold" among the types. You must know that it is undoubtedly a success as an action film, "Cold City", but as a spy film, it is a failure enough. The rhythm of the literary drama in "The City of Extreme Cold" is slow and slow, and the information output inside the camera is high-density but very chaotic regardless of priority and secondary, but the promotion of the plot relies heavily on these literary and drama plots that are too short in length and too dense in information. ——But it was in the narrative advancement of these bad literary dramas that men appeared as the main body: in the short literary drama, the pressure of multi-party political wrestling came to the protagonist Theron, and Theron was constantly required to Choose your own position among these forces. In the later viewings, the film will reveal to us that Theron himself has an extremely firm position from beginning to end, and this position is also one of these forces. Long's control over the interior of the interrogation room does not come from himself, but from a certain character in the interrogation room (that is, a symbol of a certain force), so his identity fluctuates throughout the film, and his psychological state is elusive All of Theron's actions actually originated from a speaker with supreme power. The three-dimensionality and richness of his characters were destroyed at the last moment of revealing the secret, and they became an instrumental sounder.
And when we look back at the beginning of the film at this time, we will find that the predicament of the protagonist in the whole film may not exist. As the GDR under the background of the Cold War, what is shown in the film is more of the so-called "night desire": rock music, new wave and whisky - the cold and desolate sense of chilling during the Cold War has been replaced by the street subculture of capitalism Completely cover up, the entire narrative space has been implying the proposition that "the Western camp will usher in victory". In addition, Theron as a spy is always in the behavior mode of accepting orders and acting (although in the first half of the "accepting orders" part is confused by multiple forces, you don't know Theron's execution Which order is it, but she is really just executing the order), in this case, you will faintly feel that there is a pair of invisible hands behind the film controlling the real direction of the story, and the hands of these hands The masters are the men hidden in the film authority.
Throughout the film, the men of power don't seem to be very involved in the story, but every word they say to Theron has a huge impact on the direction of the film's plot (the literary content described above). ), and the film’s tendentious depiction of narrative space makes Theron more like a marionette performing corresponding instructions on a set up stage. Men have become the real dominant force in the film's narrative, and they don't even bother to exert material power in the story, but tell the story as God, and control the entire story with a linguistic and regular spiritual power. The image space directly elevates their status to a dimension beyond the reach of the characters in another film. All the previous hiding of the male gaze was just to hide this higher-dimensional gaze.
In this case, it is not difficult to explain why Theron can break the shackles of gender in the action scenes and "do whatever you want" (the details of the story are not important for men, they already control what is more important, that is, the right to tell) ; and in Theron's gay sex scene, where the camera's point of view is so erotic, moving over the thighs, breasts, lips of the two women; or the sacrifice of Theron's gays that follows throughout the story. Theron's revenge success all of a sudden became insignificant.
Among the action movie genres, "City of Extreme Cold" has perfectly created a powerful female myth. Women can easily knock down strong men to the ground. They exist as men's "fear". In the spy movie genre, women are firmly controlled by men as powerful men, and they are also stared at by men with eroticism (desire) at will. If you take out a single passage, you can say it is a manifestation of female power, but from the perspective of structuralism, the entire film is the result of male language discipline. At the same time, what is even more interesting is that the concept of female objectification as the object of male "fear" and male "desire" and the separation of the two images of "day" and "night" in the film all come from androcentrism. Psychoanalysis—that is to say, Theron's mythological image itself was born out of a patriarchal center—she was born out of service to men from the very beginning.
"Arctic City" can be used as a sample of Hollywood's compromise under the feminist trend of thought, but it still, like other films, has gone on a path that runs counter to feminist theoretical practice. We still need more female-led film production and distribution, not only to grasp the narrative space but also to grasp a higher dimension - just as Dai Jinhua said: what we need is another world of perspective and dimension, and Not a tedious variation of being typed over and over again.
View more about Atomic Blonde reviews
