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Text|Yushi Liufang
Editor|Yushi Ryufang
«——[·Preface·] ——»
The "Female To" youth films "To Our Dying Youth" and "Later Us" also adopt the plot setting of retrospective youth stories dominated by female characters.
Under the nostalgic vision, it richly depicts the group portraits of post-80s youth characters, and creates a distinct image of young women under the interweaving of love and reality.
The creation of dreams in the film highlights the skinny feeling of reality and the plump youth theme of ideals. By comparing multiple texts of the characters, plots and themes of the story elements by quoting the "male" film, the individual experiences of men and women about youth are different.
«——[·Emotional Youth Character Image·] ——»
"Female-oriented" youth films are youth film works shot by female directors with female characters as the main role, with female preferences.
"Women to the Direction" youth film tries to create unique and distinct female characters, and the shaping of female images flashes with a faint feminist brilliance, but then disappears into the torrent of the era of consumerism.
The female characters created in the film strive for more say for women in their posture, while the "gendering" of female creators solidifies the stereotypical image of traditional women.
In early youth love film and television works, women usually appear in a beautiful, gentle, and delicate posture, as if only in the reserved and reserved will attract more people of the opposite sex.
With the continuous emergence of female directors on the screen in recent years, female directors are also trying to create a different image of film and television works on the screen than traditional women.
For example, in the film "Left Ear", the rebellious girl Li Bar, her lines create a clear image of a rebellious girl, "I just like to rob other people's things", "The bad boys in your school all recognize me". She goes in and out of bars, entertainment halls and other places.
These places, which should have traditionally belonged to "women's no-go zones", have become the positions of female directors.
Female directors try to highlight women's individuality, discourse and right to express themselves by breaking the restrictions of such "forbidden areas".
Each director's use of narrative strategies for youth films is more or less based on their own emotional experience and value choices, and in the complex cultural context of the current society, the meaning of these film texts with the temperament of "small literature" and "small era" is dissipated in "entertainment to death?" The era of consumption is reasonable.
Director Liu Ruoying's bold and stubborn narrative technique of "Later Us" can be understood on the surface as a director's willful persistence in telling personal stories.
The narrative focus of young men and women comes from the common personal growth memories of female directors. The spooky of this perspective lies in the spectacle of female body nudity.
In the "Female Direction" youth work, the female director focuses the narrative on women with universal cultural backgrounds in society, and in "To Youth" and "Later Us", the youth background is diluted into an artistic picture.
For example, the image temperament of Zheng Wei after the 80s and Xiaoxiao in the 90s has the universality pointing to a certain era, and the character characteristics carry the intention of the creator to metaphorically express certain characteristics of a specific era.
As the heroines in the film, Zheng Wei and Fang Xiaoxiao are beautiful and cute in appearance, active personality, and full of youthful vitality.
They are not the characters who follow the rules and wait for love to come in the feudal traditional rites, but the persistent girls who would rather exhaust their active pursuit than get the favor of love, but it is such female characters who still cannot escape the fate of being dominated in youth love movies.
In his book "Aspects of the Novel", Foster mentions that there are round characters and flat characters in literary works.
Flat characters are also known as genre characters or comic book characters. A character that is expressed in literary works as pure or with a single character trait.
In youth movies, the setting of female characters is mostly flat characters, such as the simple and lively Zheng Wei in "To Youth", Zhu Xiaobei with strong self-esteem, Ruan Yuan who is gentle and considerate, and Li Weijuan, who worships money pragmatically, and so on.
With the development of the plot of the movie, no matter what they have experienced, the overall personality traits will not change too much.
The advantage of creating a flat character is that the character appears repeatedly with its distinctive character traits, which can be remembered by the audience at a glance and not easily forgotten.
The beautiful and simple style characteristics of youth films require the director not to give them too much thick layers when shaping these young characters, resulting in the characters being too complicated and losing the youthful and relaxed and simple tone.
But a delicate and rich film work, white is indispensable to the collision of round characters and flat characters. In "female" youth films, directors often borrow the impact of "external forces" events to change the character characteristics of characters.
For example, Zheng Wei's growth after being abandoned by Lin Xiaozheng, Fang Xiaoxiao left Lin Jianqing's independent life, and the director unfolded the description of the transformation of a simple girl to a mature woman by arranging plot conflicts, while cleverly transforming a flat character into a round character.
The growth of female characters in "female-to" youth films usually starts from the moment of losing love.
"In the meaning of youth, growth is both a core trait and an eternal proposition", female directors will be disappointed by growing up at a loss.
The contradiction between ideal and reality runs through different forms in youth films, and female choreographers and directors have all chosen the unpredictability of the lost future as the pain of youth growth.
«——[·Youth Group Portrait: Solidified Image·] ——»
Youth is like a movie that has not been rehearsed, so it has a very different ending. In the "Female Direction" youth film "To Youth", in addition to the love between Zheng Wei and Lin Xiaozheng, classmates are used as the main group portraits to design the character environment and the main clue interspersed to form the character map of the work.
"To Youth" has created a number of characters with distinctive character characteristics, such as the cheerful and lively Zheng Wei, the restrained and enterprising Chen Xiaozheng, the gentle and long-term Ruan Guan, the timid and cowardly Zhao Shiyong, as well as Zhu Xiaobei with strong self-esteem and Xu Kaiyang who is a rich son.
The youth of each character in the film is intertwined around love and friendship, and together they build the youth map of the post-80s world in the film.
In the film "Later Us", in addition to Lin Jianqing and Fang Xiaoxiao, the two young experiencers, the group portrait design of environmental characters is intertwined with the main clue.
In one shot in the film, Fang Xiaoxiao and Lin Jianqing are squeezed into a narrow alley share house of only a few square meters, and the camera moves upward, and the audience sees the life of the Beidrifters wrapped in small rooms in the entire alley from the perspective of God.
The fates of different characters reflect each other under this lens, expressing the complexity and permeability of the times and life.
Combining the above two films, we can see that the description of group portraits in "female-to" youth movies is tragic.
By shaping a life with flaws and incompleteness, the director seems to convey to the audience that youth is destined to be flustered and lacking.
Schopenhauer believed that man exists as an independent living individual, and that the root of all his desires is the production of a need for a substance that sustains his vital signs.
In essence, man is nothing more than a mass full of desires and needs, condensed by various needs.
In this life, he is increasingly in the midst of desires and needs, and he is worried and troubled all day long, sincerely fearing for his own survival.
Zhu Xiaobei in the film "To Youth" was mistaken by the supermarket lady for throwing something, so he smashed the supermarket under impulse and was expelled from school;
The school flower Ruan Guan can't extricate herself from unsuitable love, and finally buried her life on the road to the youth agreement; There is also Lin Jing, who is entangled by his depressed girlfriend, and Lin Xiaozheng, who cannot get love.
The director has created a number of characters with different styles, and at the same time, expresses the embarrassment and survival dilemma faced by young people as individuals under the domination of desire in youth.
As a subculture, youth culture is entrenched on the fringes of mainstream culture, but at the same time, it is also a cultural form that enriches the current cultural connotation.
Youth movies are precisely in this way to interpret youth culture, interpret this group, and the confusion and circumstances that the group faces in the current stage of social and life development.
Because everyone has experienced youth, his scope of application is wide. Children look forward to youth, teenagers feel youth, and adults reminisce about youth.
Youth, a special symbolic symbol, it flows in everyone's blood, and those crazy, difficult, grievances and misunderstandings that were once not accepted by the world will be vividly rendered and splurged in youth movies.
If reality is compared to a cage of "discipline", then youth movies are colorful butterflies incarnated as wings, stumbling in various power nets, trying to break through the cage and break out of the cocoon with their own strength.
«——[·Epilogue.]——»
Outside the youth group, there is also an indispensable "other", that is, the right holder. He can be a teacher, parent, administrator, or an adult in society with certain rights.
Young people are often constrained by schools and parents, and in To Youth, Later Us, and Charlotte's Troubles, the "other" as parents is often absent. When some of the "other" power retires, the child leaves the parent's comfort zone or discipline.
Without the existence of the "other" of "patriarchy", the youth group seems to be free, but it is also the key to being lost.
In the film "To Youth", the young generation has a variety of group portrait expressions, while the older generation of fathers are all blurred faces, or as necessary makers of plot conflicts.
For example, Chen Xiaozheng's selfishness may be attributed to the imperfect family growth environment and the excessively strict and even strange behavior of his mother, as a son, he can only obey his mother's instructions but do not resist.
Zheng Wei and Lin Jing's love that day broke in the bean contempt, although they took the initiative to flee after gaining insight into the unspeakable hidden relationship between their fathers.
But it does not show too much of the sharp conflict between the two generations in the plot, but only to ridicule in his own emotional predicament and look forward to regaining the bravery about love.
In addition, in the social space outside the family, the school, as an organizational representative, appears in the film from time to time, such as the dormitory manager who is a strong and introverted housekeeper, the old professor who "prefers women to boys" in the classroom roll call link, and the cadres on duty in the security department, etc., the film tries to weaken the institutional identity characteristics of the characters through the shaping of their personalized behavior.
Then dissolve the possible institutional power of this theme, weaken the contradiction and turn to the simple love narrative and the details of the life of youth to refer to the intergenerational conflict that was originally contradictory.
The heroines in "Female-to-" youth movies are almost all father-deficient, and due to the lack of protection in the process of growing up, they are always in painful or failed life situations.
Although the symbol of the father is dissolved and avoided in youth films, it exists in another form.
The appearance of the role of boyfriend often has the meaning of "patriarchy", which symbolizes the embodiment of "father" and gives adolescent women father-like power.
Women's desire for men is manifested in dependence on love and obedience to the guidance of their will.
Like an unsupported child struggling to find his spiritual "father," like a naked baby seeking a warm and strong embrace. Although the role of the father is hidden in the "Female To" youth film, society serves as a symbol of patriarchy.
«——[References] ——»
1. Robert McKee. Story: Material, Structure, Style and Principles of Screen Play[M Beijing:China Film Press,2001.
2. Abrams. Concise Dictionary of Foreign Literature[M].Changsha:Hunan People's Publishing House,1987.
3. [US] Claire Marks. Family House, A Mirror of Self IM. Xu Shisi Translation.Taipei: Teacher Zhang Cultural Business Co., Ltd., 2000.