Chapter 5 watching movies in postmodern

Cinema is the most talked about and least understood contemporary activity. — Rene Claire In this so-called "postmodern" period, all things come together: commodification seems to be a fatal fact.Thus, the marriage of the film monopoly of transnational capitalism and film and television emerged.The Hollywood/movie industry system is like a rumbling high-speed centrifuge, stuffing a complete person/work into it, and throwing out a mess of advertisements that are up for grabs.The "Godfather" of postmodern theory, F. Jameson, pointed out that in this stage of multinational capitalism/post-industrial society, advertising has become a central issue.Commodity fetishism, or "commodity fetishism" is: to sell money, to advertise and to sell money.

Whether it can be sold for money is the only criterion for testing "truth".We make ads, we consume ads; we make movies, we consume movies; we make TV, we consume TV.Movies in the circulation link, as commodities, movies must be well-regulated, up to standards, easy to sell, and easy to digest. Anything that stimulates the audience's/consumer's neuro-mentality should be avoided (we shouldn't naively overestimate the audience's vision just because their eyesight is used to the colorful, collaged MTV and entertainment hodgepodge) affordability and IQ), the important thing is to make them relaxed and comfortable (leisurely, doing nothing), satisfied (satisfied, satisfied with the status quo and things in front of them), and the important thing is to let them flow out of happiness after they walk out of the movie theater. After tears, "have the courage to live another week".

Television and color movies, as the most typical postmodern cultural forms, highlight the postmodern flat mode and life instinct (sex/violence): super audiovisual phantoms, multiple audiovisual stimuli, video images self-positioned on the two-dimensional flat screen/screen, The signifier expands infinitely, filling the whole picture.All deep meaning disappears: there is no "little words", no "think twice", some are blurted out, and some are broadcast live.From the self-inquiry of "Why write?" (Sartre) / "Why make movies" (Godard) to the assembly line of continuous writing and continuous filming (column! weekly column!).Blood cannot flow endlessly, but there is plenty of saliva.All historical memory disappears: Since I was a child, I have never heard of the ancestors, ancestors, sages, legends, fables, and poems (in fact, no one taught me), the wonderful thing is that I start to speak now, I Start "speaking" so the only thing I can tell you is "I am me". "I want to express myself", I want to talk about my path to success... All the subjective consciousness disappears: we often confuse dreams and reality, and movies/dreams are like seven treasure towers at first glance, a dazzling array of things, and they can't be broken down into pieces.Collage, miscellaneous, colorful and colorful rushing, blinding and maddening.The overload of images, the flood of images drowns the people who are the subjects. "Language is the home of existence".But the music video is deafening. We look at each other and open our mouths, but our voice is blocked back into the throat, and we lose the power of speech, communication, and "homeland". "Language is the cage of existence", and without words, we don't even have a cage... All aesthetic distance disappears: TVs go through the streets and alleys, and news and videos watched by hundreds of millions of people at the same time, which one is the original work ?Hundreds of millions of celebrities and superstars appearing at the same time, which one is the real one?This is a reproduced image, an image for consumption only, a fleeting image.I am close to "him" and thousands of miles away, and I still cannot communicate.I wandered between fantasies and advertisements, and my insanity grew.Boring channel switching back and forth, cutting up images ("fragments"), and passing the time.Obsessing over the whole world (Paris, beauty pageants, winning championships...) in public masturbation, completing my absolute grid survival.I have images of the whole world..., of course only images.

Our poor and pale eyesight is no longer fit for any wide and deep movie screen: Don't give me depth of field, shape, meaning, don't give me Alain Resnais, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Pasolini, I just want the image, the image that fills the whole picture (it can be painted A dead white beautiful face, it can be a big bare desert, it can be a bloody stump, it can even be a little girl’s back with prickly prickles...), as long as it can make my pupils shine again Zoom in on the image once. What about sound?Dolby Noise Reduction - Surround sound echoes in the theater with the sweet words of Hollywood stars, "language that does not belong to that mouth, words that do not belong to that face... everything becomes an illusion. Nothing is real anymore, so thoughts and feelings are also false The..." The music gradually played, the curtain opened, the daydream became more and more perfect, and the more I did it, the less I knew that old age was coming...

As early as 1935, Walter Benjamin analyzed in his article "Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that movies have no "authenticity", have lost their "halo", and are inherently characterized by mechanical "reproduction". It can be seen that the postmodern "show" of film and television originally came from its inherent character.André Malraux reminds us: "Never forget that cinema is an industry." So it is the bounden duty of film and television to produce images in batches for the pleasure of addiction. But film was once "as art": film once brought a "revolution", it once created a "new way of viewing the world", a "visual thinking", and an "audio-visual concept".Jean Renoir said: "Cinema is the king of our time." But what made Bergman and Fellini exclaim: "The new, often world-frenzy power of the cinema/moving image is gradually becoming a A threat to our culture itself!"?

Movies were originally just a physics game for people's entertainment. As Werner Herzog said: "Movies are an illiterate art that originated from touring troupes and circuses." , and it seems to end up with "extraordinary skills and ingenuity". Is this its fate of reincarnation for a hundred years?