The great thing about "Star Trek" is that it opens a story mode based on space themes. There are countless imitators of all kinds of science fiction movies filmed later. In terms of artistry alone, "Breaking the Milky Way" is not excellent among similar themes, and it is not well-known.
This is a low-cost sci-fi comedy aimed at parodying the "Star Trek" series, but compared with those that are humorous and easy to mess up the story, the success of "Breaking the Galaxy" lies in the The story is told relatively solidly.
The most surprising thing is that the whole film's narrative framework actually embodies the key issues in postmodern theory, which can be regarded as a postmodern fable.
The actor and the role are stupidly indistinguishable
The sci-fi TV series "Galactic Visitor" was once all the rage. Although it has been suspended for 18 years, the main actors of the series still gather together to participate in various fan meetings. Here, the title of "Galactic Visitor" and the movie itself are exactly the same, both are called "Galaxy Quest". As we will see, this arrangement is not just for the pursuit of comedy effects, but rather profound.
At an event, several fans with grotesque behavior found Jason, the captain in the play. They claimed to be Semiians from the Karatu Nebula. They said that their planet was being invaded by foreign enemies and hoped that Jason could help. .
The key setting here is: When the Semians saw "Galactic Visitor", they didn't know that it was a fictional TV series, thinking it was a historical documentary from the earth. As a result, the crew became heroes in the hearts of the Semian people, and their deeds were widely celebrated. When they faced the invasion of foreign enemies, they expected Jason to help them through the crisis.
The Semians even created the Protector spacecraft piloted by the crew in accordance with the plot setting in the play, turning this originally fictional thing into a real spaceship. All the details of the spacecraft, including the internal structure, power plant, etc., are in line with the plot description of the spacecraft in "Galactic Visitor".
Later, the story naturally became that Jason led the crew to do a fake show to help the Semians defeat foreign enemies and successfully return to Earth.
The most valuable part of the whole story is that it subtly displays the famous simulacrum theory of French postmodern philosopher Baudrillard and its core concepts: hyperrealism and "implosion".
More real than real
Jean Baudrillard is often referred to as the "postmodern high priest", and his thoughts have had a significant impact on the world today, especially the humanities and social sciences. The theory of simulacra explains some basic characteristics of today's society, and reflects keen thinking about the living conditions of human beings.
"The simulacra is no longer a simulation of a certain field, a certain referent or a certain entity. It does not require the original object or entity, but uses a model to produce reality, a kind of hyper-realism." Baudrillard believes that simulacra The image creates extremely real virtual objects and virtual scenes that do not exist in the objective world.
For the Semians, the world in "Galactic Visitor" undoubtedly assumes the function of simulacra and has super-real characteristics.
The so-called hyper-realism is more realistic than reality, more beautiful than beauty, and more realistic simulation than reality. And these simulated things have become people's criteria for judging the truth itself. With the advent of hyperrealism, simulacra begins to construct reality itself.
Disneyland is a typical hyper-real case. It is cleaner than the streets outside and friendlier than people in the real world. It condenses American ideals and values and presents them in the most perfect form. It looks like a fairy tale world, but it is actually more real and trustworthy than the real American society.
As Baudrillard said: "This is no longer a problem of reproducing the falsehood of reality, but a problem of covering up that reality is no longer true and thus saving the principle of reality."
The characters and plots in "Visitor of the Galaxy", as well as the Spaceship Protector they piloted, are like the Disneyland in the eyes of the Semiians, becoming a kind of "miraculous (self) similarity" in Baudrillard’s Reality that has been carefully crafted.
The heroic deeds of the crew are more perfect than the reality of the Semians, and more worthy of emulation. Simulating "Galactic Visitor" became a way to save their reality principles, and they worked hard to make their world more and more like the plot in the play.
Prototype, disappearing in imitation
Hyper-reality also means that the boundary between simulacra and reality has "implode". This concept was borrowed by Baudrillard from the communication scientist McLuhan, but it completely subverted its original connotation.
In the book "Postmodern Theory", American scholars Douglas Kellner and Steven Best gave a more accurate summary of "implosion": "In the postmodern world, image or simulacrum and reality The boundary between them has imploded, and with this, people's previous experience of'reality' and the foundation of reality have also disappeared."
For example, audiences often treat doctors in TV dramas as real doctors. An actor who plays a villain may be cast aside by passers-by in real life. The fictional history in TV dramas will be taken seriously by die-hard movie fans as real history.
Not only that, but the social relations between people are completely mediated by images, thus forming what Baudrillard’s teacher and French thinker I. Debord said is the spectacle society.
What the Semian people experience is undoubtedly the most thorough and 100% "implosion", so they regard real-life actors as real crew members. The imitation of the Protector spacecraft perfectly embodies the super-reality of the simulacrum. In Baudrillard’s famous "three stages of simulacrum", it happens to be at the second level, which is the mode of industrial production.
In the basic setting of the film, the Semians are considered to have a high degree of technological civilization. This fictitious spacecraft by humans has become a prototype for imitation by the Semians. They used high technology that the earth does not have to produce a real spacecraft as it is.
As Baudrillard wrote in "Symbolic Exchange and Death": "This is precisely labor, it is precisely the machine, it is the entire industrial production system that is fundamentally opposed to the principle of theatrical illusion." As long as the Semians are willing, they Countless such spacecraft can be produced, and by then, the prototype spacecraft in "Galactic Visitor" will no longer be important.
The scholar Yan Chijun pointed out when evaluating this process: "The original is excluded from the system, and what is produced is some undifferentiated copy. Moreover, once the original enters the production system, it will be immediately rejected. Copy it."
"Implification" is everywhere
Like the experience of the Semians, the actors of "Galactic Visitor" finally experienced the "implosion" between the simulacrum and the reality. In Baudrillard’s conceptual system, the types and scope of "implosion" are very wide, and what the characters in the play experience is, as Kellner and Best put it, "the difference between the sign-making technique of the media and the reality itself." Implosion in time".
When they returned to Earth in a spacecraft, they entered the fan commemorative event by accident, and the moment they walked out of the cabin door, they were suddenly cheered by fans. At this moment, they were in a trance, and they could not distinguish between reality and imagination. The boundary between true and false no longer exists, and "implosion" occurs.
Movie fans treat them as actors, but they really become crew members. But on the stage, they seem to have once again returned to the roles in the play, and the real feat they just completed has once again become the super real in the simulacrum.
The senior movie fans and technical nerds who provided important help to Jason in the film also experienced "implosion." The "Galactic Visitor" in their minds can be described in the words of sociologist George Ritzer: "The distinction between genuine and fake is becoming more and more difficult. Every contemporary event is a mixture of reality and imagination. ."
"Visitor of the Galaxy" and "Blast the Galaxy" share the same name, which shows that the creators intend to extend this "implosion". All the characters in the film are spinning around in the simulacrum world, and their encounters are conveyed to the real audience, which is us, through the screen.
In the highly developed media environment, we who are in the spectacle society, just like the fans in the film, are also experiencing ubiquitous "implosion".
References for this article:
[French] Jean Baudrillard: "Symbolic Exchange and Death", translated by Che Jinshan, Yilin Publishing House, 2012 edition
[America] Douglas Kellner, Steven Best: "Postmodern Theory", translated by Zhang Zhibin, Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2015 edition
[America] George Ritzer: "Postmodern Social Theory", translated by Xie Lizhong, China Publishing House, 2003 edition
Yan Chijun, Han Dan, Liu Zhao: "Keywords for Postmodern Theorists", Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2011 edition
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