"Clown" is just an alternative version of "Superhero"

For those who like movies, the recent discussion about the movie"Clown" can be said to be an important cultural event, which hascaused a relatively calm field of public opinion Discussion boom. OnIMDb's website, Joker's score was 8.8, while at douban.com, Joker's score wasas high as 9.1, indicating that thousands of people want to watch it.

At present, The Clown's broad bean rating is 90.14 million people, more than220,000 people want to see.

Although this story took place in the United States in the early 1980s, theclown has the magic to travel through time and space. His encounters andrebellions allowed those who liked the film to find their own shadow init. The clown confronted the mainstream with a mockery. As a result,some critics see it as an "anti-Hollywood" movie. Is itreally? "Clown" is easy to associate with the theme movie"The Parasite" a few days ago. Coincidentally, these two typesof films won first prizes at two important film festivals this year: Parasitewon the affirmation of the Cannes Film Festival, and Clown accidentally won theGolden Lion Award of the Venice Film Festival. If the former can still beunderstood as an author's movie directed by Feng Junhao, then the latter isbasically derived from DC comics.

Therefore, the attentive audience will definitely find that some fundamentalchanges have taken place in the ecology of art films this year. The threemajor film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, and Venice) are generally considered highand low, but both Parasite and Clown are selling well at the box office andhave good Audience base and won unanimous praise on the stage of publicopinion. The recently released domestic film "Youth of You" hasresonated with "Clown" in the distance.

The emergence of these films seems to be a weather vane and has causedcountless discussions. Today, as the boundaries of film art become increasinglyblurred, what it means to be an art film also seems to need to be redefined.

01, "Clown" is still the mainstream movie in Hollywood

We no longer need to prove the value of The Clown. It successfullyrevealed the diseases of the times, and tried its best to accurately reproducethe social structural problems of the United States and the world in anartistic way. Clowns appear not only as movie characters, but also asmetaphors. As Zizek puts it, The Clown can be seen as a despair for orderitself.

However, the era icon "clown" created by this film is not a realliberation, but a more disorderly start. The film raises some questions,but only gives a vague and open ending. The controversy caused by this hascaused a huge tear in public opinion in the real world, which can almost beregarded as a kind of irony. "Clown" is so widely recognizedbecause it created an extremely successful "clown"character. The psychiatric patient named Arthur is an absolute marginalfigure in society. He struggles on the poverty line, takes care ofinsanity mothers, and tries to smile at the world through the work of clownactors. However, his efforts ended with his dignity and dreams constantlydying. The main actor of this film also used the method of breaking childhoodto send actor Joaquin Phoenix to portray Arthur's tragedy and transformationwith unparalleled superb acting , Almost established a classic line ofHollywood performances. The film has done so much effort to shape thecharacter that it resonates and understands better than Parasite. If"Parasite" is remembered as an event, and "Clown" isremembered as a character, this is also the charm of Hollywood movies and themaximum value of stars.

The Joker played by Joaquin Phoenix

No matter how strict the standard is, "Clown" can be said to be awell-produced, rigorous and artistic first-class movie. This servicemethod well restores the character's background and personality, inherits theaesthetic style of the "New Hollywood" generation, and carries outfine-tuning and conversion with contemporary characteristics based on Hollywoodclassic narrative and aesthetic paradigm. We can even say that"Clown" is a superhero movie, he is basically shaped into anotherform of "superhero". The essence of this character's growth pathis still the classic narrative of "counterattack": a little guy isbullied and loses everything until he can't stand it, then starts to create hisown glory. Only this time, the enemy of the hero clown is no longer a badfactor that endangers world peace. He pointed his finger at the"hypocritical" elite. When he spiritually killed his father andin fact killed his mother, he got a transformation and became a trulyindependent personality.

If not for the introduction of extreme violent narratives, the growth of theJoker is logically the same as the Oscar-nominated film "The Birth of aStar" produced by film director Todd Phillips. The latter tells thestory of a country female singer who turned from an ordinary person into a superstar,and the girl's growth was premised on the sacrifice of her husband to someextent (not her subjective will). Both films tell stories based on theachievements of "superstars" at the expense of others, which caneasily become false inspirational stories. However, The Clown has reachedan extreme, and has reached an extreme. This may seem so desperate andrebellious, but in fact it is only a false incitement (yes, I agree with thedefense of many critics at this level, the Joker does not really have more realincitement).

After the clown's "counterattack", the movie made people feelbloodthirsty. He ignored the rules and retaliated in his own way. Hesaid, "I thought I was tragedy, but in fact I was comedy." Manypeople on the Internet agree with this role. Zizek believes that killingthe clown is not about violence itself, but "despair." Thismeans that the social meaning of the clown is greater than the social effect ofthe movie. However, who can deny that the film's ambiguous attitude towardscharacters makes the film meaningless?

In fact, clown violence has no real legitimacy. If his violence againstthe Wall Street elite who insulted him on the subway is still a self-defense,then his violence against his mother and co-workers is a revenge for ventinghis personal anger, but he is against his favorite female neighbor Violence canonly be described as a terrible selfish desire, which makes the calling ofviolence disappear. Indifferent violence is transformed into a film'sfunctional stimulus to the audience, which is actually the usual law ofattraction of Hollywood movies. Excessive violence will cause the clown actionto be ineffective.

"Joker" Arthur and "Wall Street Elite" in the subway.

It is not difficult to find that the clown's expectations of his own destinyhave not broken the rules. He wanted to bring laughter because he neededto be affirmed to be a compelling person in the middle of the stage. Hehates the rich, but not because he is aware of structural injustice, butbecause of his personal resentment against Wayne, the rich inGotham. There was a scene in the movie where the clown mistakenly thoughthe was Wayne's illegitimate son and ran to Wayne's residence to ask for anexplanation. In fact, the clown initially wanted to gain recognition byentering the upper class and becoming the "son" of the rich. Hehad to settle for the second-best result after the request. On the otherhand, he "climbed the dragon" and shot the host on TV, becoming apopular idol. Therefore, from the perspective of narrative logic, theclown's story is a story of self-actualization of the loser. This film is stillessentially a standard Hollywood movie without real rebellion. At the endof the movie, violence can never end. The clown who started performing wasstill intoxicated with himself. In the crowd carnival, he never had aclear idea and purpose. However, he climbed up to the roof and wiped hislips red with blood, enjoying the cheers of the crowd, jumping upagain. He just wanted a wonderful moment. The clown's seeminglygorgeous packaging is actually a hollow and broken heart. This story isdestined to be a black myth in Hollywood, not a complicated reality. Thefilm shows that structural chaos is transformed into struggles between thebottom, but the indiscriminate violent carnival that it brings is certainly nota reasonable way to solve the problem, but an internal friction.

02 "Parasite" "hormonal",

it is a miracle to decompress the audience.

When it comes to Clown, we have to mention Parasite, which has caused heateddiscussions in the past few months. The film's intuitive image eliminatesthe need to "hide" the metaphor of the work. The film uses thewealthy mansions as a metaphor for social structure. The rich enjoy thesun, while the ground floor lives in the basement. In the end, the bottompeople hurt each other, and seeking revenge from the rich would only transferthe owner of the house to another rich family. The background of the storyreflected in Parasite certainly has a profound social background. Accordingto news reports, South Korea's economy continues to decline, unemploymentremains high, and people's livelihood issues are very difficult.

So it's no surprise that Parasite, which reflects the wealth gap, is so popularin Korea. However, is Feng Junhao really a director focusing on socialissues? On the one hand, his works are implanted with these elements; onthe other hand, they transform these realist elements into film symbols, makingthem lose their original practical significance and become tools for genrefilms. I have to say that this shows that Feng Junhao is indeed anexcellent type of film director. He reprocessed reality. In his skills, thetruth is not important, but how to play the pain brought by reality andstimulate the emotions of the audience. Maybe we can understand this way,Parasite is actually a middle-class film, showing the "miracle" ofthe upper and lower classes. In the movie, the rich are extremely simpleand live a luxurious life, and the protagonists at the bottom are smart andcapable, but they cannot change their destiny. The characters inside lackauthenticity, more like models without emotion in a forced socialenvironment. Parasite's presentation of classroom problems is highlyexaggerated (as is the case with The Clown). We can't see the realcharacter of the movie characters, so it's hard to resonate with thecharacters. Empathy seems unnecessary in such a movie. What the filmis about to show is a highly conceptual social model that allows us to unleashour dissatisfaction with the real world when watching spectacles. Stillsfrom "The Parasite".

To put it bluntly, The Parasite is not a reflection or critique of classissues. It just caters to the middle class's imagination of social structure,or it is only the works of middle class elites using "sexualobsession". The logic of this movie seems to be that the middle classis always in the safest position. Because this group has neither theability to buy a mansion with a hidden basement, nor to "degenerate"to the point where they live in the basement.

Parasite seems to be a wake-up call, reminding the middle class to maintainproper respect for social reality when social conflicts are greatlystimulated. The final violence in the film is between the bottom and the bottom,and the bottom resists the upper classes. Feng Junhao obviously didn'twant to scare the audience. After a small warning, The Parasite gave theaudience a proper placebo.

If you compare them carefully, the themes of the two films, The Parasite and TheClown, are also consistent, focusing on the solidification of social classes,revealing a kind of structural violence. These stories are somewhat out ofthe real world. Therefore, they are not so much realist works as fables.

We can even think of a new type of film-the "hormonal" film beinginvented. Parasite is indeed a consumer movie with great viewingpleasure. The film always mobilizes various factors to attract theattention of the audience. At the right tempo, it guides the audience intothe movie one by one. When the final fatal blow occurred, the audience'snervous nerves were relaxed and anger was swept away.

03 "Youth for You"

successfully integrated various types of films.

At this point in writing, we may wish to take a look at the recently populardomestic film "Youth for You", which has also been shortlisted forthe next-generation Berlin Film Festival. As the film tells the same storyof two children at the bottom fighting in their own way against the violenceimposed on them, it seems to echo the Clown. There are many overlaps inthe stories of "Youth of You" and "The Clown", all of whichare rebellious stories of insulted and injured people. However, forvarious reasons, the former did not place too much emphasis on killing in thefilm, but instead used an accident as an "excuse"method. However, the latter was released more, vividly showing theelements of violence. However, in different social backgrounds, audienceshave different emotions towards movie characters. If we say that Chen Nianand Xiao Bei are more sympathetic, we will feel that they have been replaced byclowns, perhaps because the roles of clowns are more complicated and morerepresentative. But perhaps more because of his success in the final"counterattack", he can satisfy the audience's wishes. Stillsfrom "You, the Boy".

The heroines in the movie, Chen Nian and Xiao Bei, accidentally formed a smallgroup with their trauma. They want to support each other and get rid ofthe cripple through mainstream means such as the college entranceexamination. Unexpectedly, old age suffered campus violence, but wasinjured but was unable to obtain justice through proper means. He laterkilled his classmate who bullied him. To protect her, Xiaobei chose tobury her body and found her guilty. As a result, the fate of these twopeople has to face a crueler future and legal punishment.

The success of the film is that it does not stop telling the story of a younggirl being bullied, but rather tries to bring the person's experience into awider society. Therefore, after the movie was released, the discussion wasalmost endless. From the danger of campus violence to the era of whethercriminal responsibility should be redefined, from sophisticated audiovisuallanguage to criticism of social reality, different audiences interpretdifferent meanings due to different life experiences. Some practicalmeanings are actually new meanings that the movie text itself does not have,and the audience spontaneously derives them. "Youth of You"consciously or unconsciously carries out intertextual discourse with socialreality, making the meaning of the film more complete, which has nothing to dowith the film itself. Stills from "You, the Boy".

Chen Nian and Xiao Bei are rare movie characters in the current moviemechanism. Little people do not rely on external forces, but in the formof community organizations, use their own abilities to resist externalharm. The film succeeded in getting rid of the camouflage of sadness andnarcissism, turning the character's tragedy into thinking about the structureof society. Therefore, it has a mode and care that are not found inordinary home movies. Movies everywhere exaggerate the harm thatstructural power relations do to people: teachers to students, mothers tochildren, rich to poor ... the tragic ending of the movie has a strongconjuring effect, inspiring the audience to think and act.