Chapter 93 give you a clown hat

When I visited the temple fair for the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake, I saw many stalls selling clown hats. They were made of glitter paper and had colorful tassels on the top and bottom; , or the top is like an octopus tentacles, or it is like the horns of ungulates.Pointed top hats have existed in China for a long time, not to mention that they have existed in ancient times. Lu Xun's Tiaowuchang (he not only described it in words but also drew it himself) is an example.The clown hat inlaid with colored wool seems to have come from the West, and it often appears in Western classical paintings, dramas, and movies and TV shows that represent their classical life.

Clown hats sold well at temple fairs.I have seen with my own eyes all kinds of scenes of buying and wearing hats: some can't wait to put on their own heads before paying; Since then, I have been wandering like that to the end, walking on the street wearing it after the temple fair, and even wearing it on the subway... I observed carefully, and the people who enthusiastically bought and wore clown hats were almost all young people. People of my age may have special memories of clown hats, that is, during the Cultural Revolution, especially when the Red Guards smashed the "four olds" and set off a wave of "red terror" that fought against "ghosts and snakes". All "a small group" (in fact, often a large group, full of tables) who are caught out to criticize will be put on a high hat to criticize and parade in the streets.In the beginning, they were mostly made of paper, which was relatively rough, and later developed into refined, welded steel, and some had razor blades with sharp edges on both sides of the brim of the hat. The tall hat not only vilified the person being criticized into a "heap of shit" , also has the function of the instrument of torture.In those years, what I was most afraid of was being caught out and put on a clown hat.I remember that in the midsummer of that year, an elderly teacher was scolded, and a Western-style clown hat made of wooden sticks and handkerchiefs was put on his head. The "little general" who criticized him was really good Use foreign things to serve China", but the distorted and painful face under the clown hat has been firmly stuck to my heart for many years and cannot be faded.

After the reform and opening up, I had the opportunity to see the film "8 1/2" shot by the Italian film director Fellini. The protagonist's nightmare scene is also put on a pointed hat and shown to the public at the place of the religious trial.What makes me curious is that the pointed hat is not the shape of a European court jester, but is similar to the jumping impermanence hat described by Lu Xun. , the kind of high hat buckled on Hu Hansan's head.Is it because Fellini is good at "using the Chinese for the foreign", or is it because the victors of China and the West have the same fashion when dealing with "other races"?I look forward to relevant scholars and experts coming out to solve the mystery.

Now the merchants who manufacture and sell clown hats at temple fairs, of course they will not force anyone to wear that clown hat, they will work hard to sell it, and the rhetoric of the sales promotion is based on making voluntary consumers feel that wearing that hat is a fun thing.Needless to say, young people and children who bought clown hats and wore clown hats at temple fairs must have done it voluntarily, and they must have found it interesting. It is an external symbol of their inner happiness. The same clown hat, under certain circumstances, when others force you to wear it by force, is humiliation, disaster, and even makes you miserable.In other situations, when you choose to wear it voluntarily, it is humorous, interesting, and even makes you feel happy.

A veteran of the Cultural Revolution once confided to me in private that when those "three highs" were put on a high hat and criticized, he really felt a sense of joy in his heart. The psychological reaction translated into words is: "You still Can you be proud?" Here I want to explain to young people today that the "three names" in the "Cultural Revolution" refer to "celebrities, famous experts, and famous professors in the literary and art circles", and the "three highs" refer to their enjoyment. "high level, high salary, high treatment".In fact, the "three highs" of the "three" characters at that time were very limited, and their salaries, housing, manuscript fees, and performance subsidies reached a level that was less than a few times lower than that of the ordinary person who confided his heart to me. , how can there be the social status of the current stars, such "international standards" income enjoyment; but even if the gap is not so huge, the psychological stasis caused by the feeling of inequality can still be achieved under the influence of external forces. The degree of resentment can be estimated based on this. Now some ordinary people whose social status and economic benefits are far away from the stars, the dark side of their human nature surges with the hope that the stars will stumble and suffer bad luck. If there is a chance for the psychological undercurrent to erupt, what kind of situation will be unbearable for the stars.

The vicious impact on the "three high and three high" figures during the "Cultural Revolution" should of course be denied, because it cannot really solve the problem.Moreover, using violent means to force others to wear a high hat and trample on their personality, no matter in the name of "revolution" or something more sacred, is a barbaric uncivilized behavior and a stain in the development of human history. In the future, our social development must avoid it. This kind of thing happens again.But having said that, just because we have entered the market economy and become a commodity society, and the law allows some people to get rich first, those who gain both fame and fortune feel that the fame and wealth they have gained are so sacred that they cannot be questioned, ridiculed, and changed. the point.Today's celebrities must know that although the times are different and the law has improved, the human nature you face is still a constant existence.Social stability requires legal guarantees on the one hand, and "ventilating holes" on the other.Some ordinary people who have not yet become stars or have no hope of becoming stars make fun of stars who have gained fame and fortune, and even prepare some tall clown hats to crown them "absent", which is a kind of "venting hole" and plays a role in the psychology of "not feeling angry" function to compensate.

Not long ago, a website rated some stars in the entertainment industry as the "Top Ten Ugly Stars". In fact, those netizens who voted online were nothing more than expressing their ridicule towards the stars who are already "public figures" in this way That's all.Some people in the entertainment industry who have been rated as "ugly stars" always think clearly that the "star" that everyone looks up to is actually not the "God of the People", but the "Popular Doll".For example, when a child gets a doll, at first he or she will hug it, change beautiful clothes, and let it sleep with him or her. Half, to see what is in its belly.This behavior from beginning to end is "playing", and what happens to the doll is its fate as a doll.

Nowadays, there are also people who regard whether they have been badly changed as a touchstone for whether they have really become a star. They heard that they were teased by the entertainment section of the newspaper, that is, someone made a clown hat and asked them to "enter the hat", and they were extremely happy.I know a person in the showbiz who showed me such a newspaper one day. His smile became numb, crisp, and muddy, as if he had won the special prize of the Mark Six lottery. The reason is very Simple, if the newspaper doesn't regard him as a star, how can it spare precious space to include this person while spoiling other stars, in order to please readers, increase circulation, and attract more advertisers?

Nowadays, there are more "self-made" clown hats to try to crown yourself as a celebrity. There are many ways, but the indispensable formula is to use real celebrities as a foil. , Zhang Ailing, Yu Qiuyu, etc. are listed as "the ten most annoying figures in the Chinese cultural circle in the past century".But how effective is this?So far, it seems that there is no one who has been remembered by the common people because of this, and has indeed become a "popular doll"-people may remember the "ten disgusting" incident, but they can never remember the name of the hat maker himself.This, in turn, shows the cruel side of the world and human nature.

Now we are all in a realistic situation where no one will really put a high hat on your head by violent means. Exhibitions and promulgations, as long as you don't take the initiative to recognize Dai, after all, he is no better than you.Of course, there are times when a clown hat, or something ugly, is directed at you, not out of malice, but out of humor, or just as a low-level joke, and you don't have to take it seriously.But makers of clown hats and other ugly monsters should also be warned not to force them, even if they are not malicious, and to prevent side effects.According to the newspaper, during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake in 2001, a son-in-law in Tianjin visited his mother-in-law’s home for New Year’s greetings. Wearing blue cartoon glasses, after knocking on the door, the mother-in-law who opened the door suddenly saw such a ghost grinning at her against the background of the dark corridor, she suddenly became dizzy, and almost died of a heart attack.Of course, this was unexpected for the son-in-law who went to pay New Year's greetings.

This brings us to our current cultural criticism.The clown hat-style criticism is also quite fashionable, especially in the "cultural temple fair" space, where it is very popular.There should be such a criticism. The existence of "cultural temple fairs" and "cultural clown hats" makes us feel the ease, humor, playfulness, and joy of the coexistence of diversity. It doesn't always have to be deep, and it doesn't always have to be so real... Like the "cultural temple fair" in the United States, it is very developed. , in addition to the "Ten Best", there must also be "Ten Worst", not only the Academy Awards, but also the Golden Strawberry Award, which is dedicated to changing certain filmmakers. It can be said that "clown hats are flying all over the sky", but even though If someone has prepared a clown hat, then the film is likely to still have a box office, and the filmmaker may still continue to be popular.The Golden Strawberry Award really prepares some strawberry-shaped trophies, but the judges will not force the winners to claim them, nor will they force the trophies to be sent to other people's homes, so there will be no such incidents as Tianjin's son-in-law scaring his mother-in-law. A half-dead event. Having said that, if the entire cultural criticism, especially the literary criticism, is all "temple-fairized" and becomes "clown hats flying all over the sky", that would not be a good situation.Having got rid of the high-hat nightmare of the "Cultural Revolution" and learned the humor of the "temple fair" clown hat, we should adjust our cultural space to be more ecologically balanced and luxuriant.