Mass Power and Sexual Repression

Stone 2022-04-24 07:01:24

American film noir has long since died out as a genre. "The Gathering at South Station" (hereinafter referred to as "South Station") is not a film noir, it just imitates the latter religiously, and shows the image elements of quite a few other types of films (or art films), just like a long paragraph A slow-paced mix. The piety of the film's form and narrative suggests that it is not a parody (parody), but a pastiche. In this style, as Frederick Jameson put it, the author "uses various dead styles and the artistic language of the past as tools for creating new works". Director Diao Yinan not only tries to awaken and activate a style that has been dormant for many years (as he did in "Fireworks in the Day"), but also intends to convey his understanding of contemporary Chinese society with the interest of images rather than original forms.

The breadth of the director's film interests makes "South Station" so rich that it almost exactly matches Susan Sontag's six main expectations for cinema: "Modern enough, accessible, poetic, Mystery, can arouse people's sexual desire (erotic), there is moral (moral)" ②. Except for the penultimate one.

"South Station" isn't erotic, it's too controlling, certain, and too tight. The lack of image instability and ambiguity makes the emotions and perceptions that should have been inexplicably aroused disappear without a trace. This problem, on the one hand, is caused by the reference and copying in form, and on the other hand, it should be attributed to the characterization - Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) is too determined, while Liu Ai'ai (Gui Lunmei) lacks a little style.

Zhou is an overly determined character. He is not like the typical male protagonist of film noir. He lacks hesitation and curiosity, is not neurotic enough, has a rare sense of outward exploration, and believes in family values. Moral order and unwavering enforcement. He is the "God of War" who punishes rapists (he wears Batistuta's Argentina jersey). Even his escape itself was an accident of last resort, not any momentary shake of morals, emotions, or values. The image of Liu Ai'ai lacks lust. Boyish short hair, conservative outfits, unsexy demeanor and demeanor, and the most frequent pan and medium shots of her on camera. She's so devoid of traditional masculine femininity that one might assume she's a lesbian (and not the kind that would arouse lesbian arousal).

Like the film noir that grew up in the shadow of Hays Code, Southern Station is more inclined to "express sexual intercourse through symbolism and ellipsis". For example, Zhou Zenong’s masturbation behavior is alluded to with photos of airplanes and pistols, or Zhou Liu’s rather unconvincing water sex: it begins with entangled legs and ends with the omission of gargling. The symbolic treatment of sex seems to always emphasize one point: in this film, sex is only a step that must be completed, and the scenes showing it should never be like Zhou Zenong’s noodles scene (repeated close-ups, exaggerated sound effects, vivid and engaging performances) are just as enjoyable, but should be thought-provoking.

However, Falcon of Malta and Double Indemnity are sexy. Not only because of the ambiguity and instability of moral consciousness, but because they themselves are still trying to create attractive gender images (both male and female) and sex scenes in the block (censorship), or to create provocative details with fetishized details eroticism. "South Station" simply abandons that effort, and the sex scenes in the film seem to be a routine, or a relic of formal inertia, following a full-blown film noir narrative. In "South Station," the symbols "pistol," "airplane," and "mouthwash" are used suggestively, but they are neither complemented by meaningful provocative details nor lead to any stable referent.

In the past, the "sex" in Diao Yinan's films was painful, or revelatory, or at least full of meaning. In "South Station", "sex" seems to have become a signifier with nowhere to go. It is sometimes unprovoked violence (the rape at the end of the film), and sometimes it becomes a purely palliative activity (Zhou Liu's water sex), and its existence is not intended to generate or refer to anything—— It's like the common smoking scene in movies, just for relief and relaxation.

Therefore, in that water sex scene, "swimming", "making love" and "smoking" are not subordinate, but juxtaposed. "Swimming" is not preparation, "smoking" is not aftertaste, they are all just temporary relaxation. That's all. From this point of view, Zhou Liu's sex is not triggered by romance, but to relieve common external pressure - they are like two overworked restaurant employees who just want to escape the supervision of the manager and come out together to smoke a cigarette. (A common sense is that it is impossible to enjoy sex when people are tense. Strong sexual desire should be produced in a state of complete relaxation. Any harsh, repressive, tense, and fearful environment will make the desire disappear.)

If the eroticism in classic noir films is nothing but the manifestation of inner violence, then "South Station" does not even have the outer shell of eroticism. It is covered, suppressed, and blocked by another layer of violence, which is completely incapable of expression.

The formal pressure first comes from the surveillance atmosphere built by the depth of field lens and sound effects. If it extends beyond the text, it is not only the inhabitants who suddenly appear in the depths of the alleys in the dark night, but also relies on the context that can be understood by audiences who have a close understanding of a certain historical or social reality. Similar fears can only be found in Cultural Revolution films, such as "Furong Town": villagers suddenly appear in the background, and Qin Shutian and Hu Yuyin are separated by electric shock.

Consider the supermarket scene in Double Indemnity. Although the hero and heroine are worried, the gags of supermarket customers will never cause them substantial panic, but only let the audience take a breath - Americans will never think that any of the people who show up in the supermarket will have Potentially a tool for ethical/legal surveillance. In American noir films, only individual police detectives can create horror and fear (think about the scene where the heroine is hiding behind the door and the detective is in the background), not the masses.

On the other hand, the surveillance atmosphere is also related to some peculiar Chinese urban spaces: the tube towers lacking privacy, the camera-intensive train stations, and the ubiquitous dilapidated small hotels. These landscapes lag behind the times to a certain extent, but still have an undeniable authenticity. When filming some indoor scenes, directors always use the back scene (the person behind the window glass) to create depth of field. The private apartment in "Double Indemnity" cannot exist in the world of "Southern Station". From this perspective, "Furong Town"'s imagination of the passion between the hero and heroine is a bit too warm.

However, the surveillance system also has layers, and at the bottom are women. What Diao Yinan said, "women form alliances and leave men in the dark night"4 is not only a thematic interpretation, but also a formal description. In "South Station", Liu Ai'ai often appears in the foreground, while in the background or in the shadows, there is always a man watching her closely. At the beginning it was her boss Hua Hua (Qi Dao), then Zhou Zenong and Brother Yan (Huang Jue), and at the end, Team Liu (Liao Fan). Although the men themselves are the objects of surveillance (criminals/gangsters/rioters), they still tightly control the women around them.

As mentioned earlier, Liu Ai'ai has latent lesbian tendencies (as suggested by Liu Ai's close relationship with Yang Shujun (Wan Qian)). But it's hard to tell whether they are born lesbians, or if they are forced to feign homosexuality to avoid aggression because they are forced into nowhere by the omnipresent surveillance, censorship, suspicion, and omnipresent male gaze. By the wild goose lake, Liu Aai’s dress, as a symbol, also faintly responded to this violence: short hair, white wide-brimmed hat, and elegant dress. This image is not from any Western film, but from Yu (Zhang Yu), the heroine of Yang Yanjin's "Small Street" (1981).

In "Small Street", the heroine Yu (Zhang Yu) has her hair cut by the Red Guards, and she is ashamed of going to the street ever since. On the one hand, at that time, the short hair was a symbol of sinners; on the other hand, her inherent sense of shame came from a simple logic - without long hair, you are not a woman. This greatly affected Yu's gender identity: she tied one end of the long cloth to the table leg and pulled it tight, and turned the other end along her chest to flatten her breasts tightly (the action design is very similar to the way Zhou Zenong wrapped the bandage in "South Station"). similar) disguised as a male. In the interaction with the male protagonist Xia (Guo Kaimin), she also suppressed her sexuality, fearing that Xia would find out that she was a woman. In the terrifying and strange social atmosphere, even after entering the intimate two-person world, she could not get rid of fear and shame.

In another scene, Yu, who was forced to go out in order to treat her mother's illness (at this time, she was dressed like Liu Ai'ai by the lake) was discovered and interrogated by the crowd. Her hat was snatched by the Red Guards and flew into the men's room. This is a huge symbolic gender shaming. What's even scarier is that in the movie, she lives in a fear of humiliation that is more terrifying than being humiliated all the time.

At the end of "Southern Station", Liu Ai'ai was caught by a strange man and questioned whether she was a "swimming girl". Her horrified, bewildered, manipulative look (and the moral panic behind it) is identical to Yu in "Small Street." She was then raped in the street by the man, and the horror and pain of the scene was another proof of the director's refusal to express sexual pleasure. The South African writer JM Coetzee (Disgrace, 2001) once wrote that "the rape of a lesbian is worse than the rape of a virgin". If Liu Ai'ai is really understood as a lesbian, then the rape and humiliation of men is not only violence against their bodies and sexual desires, but also violence against their deeply ingrained sexual orientation.

This violence is also reflected in the escape scene near the wonton shop. The men were fighting, but the women had no choice but to flee in terror. But where to flee? Even in the last scene of the film, the two women who "formed an alliance" walked forward hand in hand with a little sense of security, but they still could not avoid the police's peeping.

The common "stalking" in Diao Yinan's previous works is completely different from the "surveillance" in this film. The former is often ambiguous, unknown, sexy, and surging outward, leading to a certain private desire; while the latter is mechanical, collapses inward, systematic, instrumental behavior, leading to Some kind of community appeal - in "South Station," the police always act collectively.

At this point, private emotions and desires no longer exist, only the ubiquitous fear remains.

By creating subtle differences between visual motifs, the director completes a transition from private to public expression. In this film, Diao Yinan seems to be closer to the fifth-generation director, impatiently pointing from the form to the reflection on society and history (Chen Kaige's "The Yellow Earth", Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern"), not like him Like his peers (sixth-generation directors), he first appeals to the complexity of the individual. In any case, it is precisely because it is rooted in the Chinese film tradition and social context that "Southern Station" has been able to obtain valuable social criticism outside of its complex form, which is also the difference between it and "The Last Night on Earth".

①Frederick Jameson, Historicism in The Shining, see Visible Signatures, Nanjing University Press, 2012, p. 113.

② Susan Sontag, The Decay of Cinema, the New York Times, Feb 25 1996.

③ James Naremore, "Film Noir: History, Criticism and Style", Guangxi Normal University Press, 2009, 105 pages.

④ "Diao Yinan said "Southern Station": Women form alliances and leave men in the dark night," Southern Weekend WeChat public account, 2019-12-25.

View more about The Wild Goose Lake reviews