Is "Auspicious" a successful comedy?

There is no denying this movie. The premise of my discussion is that it is already a good commercial film. These are some regrets based on this. From "Good Luck" to "Keep You Safe", including films directed by Dapeng, I often feel like "I found a good topic, but it was sacrificed by the cunning and smoothness of its audio-visual language, which makes it more wrinkled." "Exploration" feeling. A good movie can withstand criticism. The courage and realistic concern of "Keep You Safe" are not inconsistent with the fact that it is a movie with obvious limitations. The underlying theme of Dapeng's film creation is "funny realism."

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Dapeng's movies always give me a feeling of "funny realism". There is no doubting his courage to reflect reality and his care for the little people, but his movies, from the perspective of topic selection, narrative mode to the direction of avoidance, will mix the sense of sincerity and the reflection of reality with a salty slickness. You say he is insincere and not brave, but he is indeed more focused on current real issues than most of his domestic film colleagues. You say that he is serious enough and in-depth to discuss, but he always avoids the more complicated but worthy of discussion, and avoids the direction that can guide the audience to think deeply. Instead, he uses "happy twist laugh mode", "big boy martial arts" "Movie Psychology" and "Good People Are Rewarded" have a positive ending that is euphemistically called "goodwill in the world", so that the audience does not have to be so heavy-handed. Angle, all these make Dapeng's film courageous and superficial.

For example, in "Keep You Safe", the little character played by Dapeng wants to prove the innocence of a girl out of a sense of justice. The movie has two lines. One was that a scandal was spread about Ms. Han Lu. A person who had never met her slandered her as a stage girl. The rumors got bigger and bigger. Her innocence was still tainted after her death. Some people even wanted to move her out of the cemetery because of this. Peng met her by chance, but he knew about her act of donating money to charity and felt that she was a good person and wanted to seek justice for her. Another line is Dapeng’s daughter. She witnessed another girl slandering her classmates at school. She saw the truth, but the perpetrator threatened her that if she dared to tell the teacher, he would tell her about the large birthmark on her leg.

Both lines are related to "innocence". The core is "I know that a person has been wronged. Do I want to seek justice for him or her?" The attached line echoes the main line, implying "If I stand by and watch today, one day my relatives or people around me will be wronged, how can I believe that someone will come forward?"

So it is a contemporary martial arts story that is touching. In the Chinese version of Little People, Dapeng has also added the roles of a food delivery rider and an online anchor. Dapeng attempts to explore the roles played by rumor makers, rumor spreaders, victims, witnesses, passers-by, and defenders of legal procedures in such incidents. The main plot, in a nutshell, is that the male protagonist seeks innocent justice for the lady and will never give up for the truth and justice he believes in. This narrative idea is correct and straightforward, and it is easy for the audience to fall in love with it. But the more complicated issue was put on hold - what if this person is really a woman sitting on the stage?

If she had a gray career, but she also did good deeds, and she also encountered online violence and more false rumors, then is her justice worth defending?

The movie bypasses this problem in terms of character setting. Because Han Lu is innocent and her profession is also very innocent, the audience can easily be attracted to her and feel that it is natural to seek justice for her.

The movie also tries to make amends through some lines. For example, when Wang Xun’s character tells the protagonist Wei Ping’an that Han Lu is a stage girl, Wei Ping’an says: “Isn’t there a moral flaw in burying us?” There are answers to this question, but unfortunately in the movie it is an issue that is briefly explained and then avoided. It is not presented in depth, and the main line returns to the contemporary "rescuing the dust".

This is not an isolated case in "Keep You Safe". The victim needs to be innocent to be worth saving. Two typical narratives: "prostitute" is "patriotic"; "status" is "fictitious". The one who saves Feng Chen should be a man with a strong sense of justice. He would sacrifice his life for his lover and daughter. This is very family, very martial arts, and a positive contemporary big boy narrative. A conservative kindness.

Just like Yao Qin in "Man Jiang Hong" must be a fierce woman and her virginity has not been compromised, Liu Yifei in "Meng Hua Lu" must also be a good man, and Han Lu in "Keep You Safe" Professional innocence is also required. They can be saved, praised, and asked for justice. The premise is that they are "chaste" and at least correct in terms of "career" and "identity". There is no gray area here. Behind this kind of salvation, is it not the shadow of another concept of chastity, a strict screening of identity (the difference from giving them justice)

However, the reason why justice is fair is because it treats everyone equally. The reason why the truth is the truth and worth pursuing is because it is the truth, and it is a truth that does not change based on the will and identity of the person involved, let alone whether he is chaste or not.

Therefore, the issue that is more worthy of exploration in "Keep You Safe" is the chaste shadow behind the rumors, and how the public can demand truth, justice, and oppose online violence while also joining the ranks of online violence. , while defending moralism, while doing immoral things, but the creator cleverly bypassed it and placed it in a safer and more acceptable range for the public.

I'm not sure if this is a problem with the creator or censorship, but the creator's previous "Auspicious Ruyi" had a similar problem. There is nothing wrong with making a pseudo-documentary and deconstructing emotions, but what is ambiguous is that when the creator shows the behavior of the family members off-camera and dismantles a Chinese-style heavy and touching story, does the creator dare to show his own hypocrisy, speculation, and What about complexity and internal divisions? This kind of courage is unequal, and so is the price. So the paradox of this kind of mockumentary is that it looks like you're real, but you can never be a fair, equal amount of real. As long as there's someone behind the camera, someone deciding how to edit, it's a drama directed by some will.

What makes Dapeng successful is this kind of "artificial realism", and what hinders him, at least so far, is also "artificial realism".

The core problem of "Keep You Safe" is precisely that it is afraid of causing "discomfort" to the audience. It needs to maintain Han Lu's innocence in terms of character design, and let Wei Ping'an do everything possible to prove this innocence, because this is a narrative that will not cause "discomfort", it is quite correct, bright, and has the main theme, and will not impact the true feelings of the audience. Gray area. But if you want to delve into the issue of "rumors", a creator needs to face the discomfort of mainstream audiences. It relates to several questions:

1. Are "scamming rumors" and "rumors" the same? Why do the perpetrators of online violence like to create pornographic rumors against women? A common way we ruin a woman on the Internet is to slander her private life. Men who have an open private life will not face too many criticisms, but if a woman is labeled as "promiscuous" or "slutty", she will encounter endless online violence. Even those who humiliate her shed tears while watching the movie. People who feel that "spreading rumors" is wrong. What is exposed behind this is the concept of "chastity" that has lasted for thousands of years at the cultural and conceptual levels. It is the higher moral requirement that society places on women than on men.

"Keep You Safe" sets Han Lu up as a person with a clean career and lifestyle. To uphold justice for such a person will not arouse the slightest concern among mainstream audiences (including those who have participated in online violence) Discomfort. But a more common situation in life is that when a person does not fully meet mainstream expectations and her style of doing things does not fit within the mainstream aesthetics, she will encounter online violence and rumors. This kind of "not meeting mainstream expectations" does not mean that it is "wrong". She may just have a more open concept of sex, or she may not be in a profession that is considered "normal" by the mainstream, such as "civil servant, teacher, programmer", etc. When a person is defined as "abnormal," she is actually more likely to encounter violence and humiliation. However, "Keep You Safe" bypasses this issue in terms of character setting, because Han Lu is a "normal person", and her career and life style are considered "normal" by the mainstream, so Wei Ping'an It is seeking justice for a "normal person", a person who the mainstream believes does not have any flaws.

And this is the pity of the movie. Because it gives up exploring, when a person who is not "normal" and does not meet "mainstream expectations" faces online violence, both he and those who defend him will face more complex situations. If the movie dares to be made, then even the audience's reaction will be part of the movie, a part that can sting the audience and trigger in-depth discussion of the issue.

"The Distance Between Us and Evil" and "Corridor of Justice" have discussed this issue, and even the recently released, commercial-oriented "Vicious Lawyer" has also discussed it. So I don’t think it’s possible to avoid all issues by saying, “You can pass the trial by asking for tricks.” What's more, even if the purpose of defining creators is to "pass censorship," the audience who proposed this discourse also realized that defending people who are not "mainstream", such as defending someone with a gray area, will not easily pass censorship. of. So what are the people who make the screens afraid of, and what are the audiences afraid of? Didn’t you agree to seriously reflect on online violence? Why don't we dare to show the type of people who are more common and more complex in cyber violence? And this is indeed not just the regret of the producer itself, but also the platform and social concepts. It is a long road.

2. This is also something that this movie about "rumors" cannot explore in depth (I don't think it's a problem with the movie in this regard, but because social concepts and platform standards prevent the issue from being discussed. question), that is - are rumors really harmful? Who defines rumors? If a person delivers a piece of news out of integrity, but it is later determined to be a rumor, how do we deal with this situation?

This question is by no means nit-picky. Because this is a field where self-media is common and hot topics only take a few hours to ferment, we are in it.

For example, when a hot event comes out, there are clear victims and perpetrators, and a binary opposition narrative. At this time, the audience forwards it out of a sense of justice, but later it turns out that the truth is not the case. The audience who enthusiastically forwarded it criticized them for creating and spreading rumors. ? But what if something goes unnoticed without attracting public attention at the first time, and the potential victims do not get justice and the perpetrators go unpunished? At this time, can you really say from the commanding heights of reason that everyone should stop being so excited and stop spreading rumors?

This absolutely rational narrative seems correct, but it ignores the fact that people in the midst of a matter cannot be "omniscient and omnipotent" from fermentation, being seen, causing public discussion, relevant departments to intervene, and fact-checking. ”, the pursuit of the truth is often accompanied by many trials and errors. But if people are not allowed to try and make mistakes from the beginning, and there is a risk that "this news may not be true, but spreading it may save someone," the matter will not spread, and the oppressed will still be silenced.

So, this is the more subtle area of ??the "rumor" issue - who should define rumors, decide which rumors are harmful, and which rumors are inevitable in the spread of public information. It's even possible to imagine this narrative - what if one person seeks justice for another, only to have him create rumors instead? Will your sympathy for him diminish at this time? But if he doesn't do this, he can't achieve the just goal in his heart? This is a discussion about purposive justice and procedural justice.