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Chapter 16 14. What dream did Jin Yong make up for us?

law of blood reward 吴思 2737Words 2018-03-03
It has long been said that martial arts novels are fairy tales for adults.In recent years, the adult fairy tales woven by Jin Yong have become popular in the Chinese-speaking world. In 2001, they entered the film and television industry in a big way, sweeping all fields of popular culture.So, what dream did Jin Yong weave for us?What is the daydream sweeping China made of?What does our reading of Jin Yong so addictively reveal about us and our society? Jin Yong's imagination of martial arts is colorful, but the core point is to have a supernatural ability to protect himself from violence and harm, but he has the ability to hurt others at will.

Of course, having the ability to hurt someone doesn't necessarily mean using that ability.A true martial arts man, who can be called a chivalrous man, must have martial virtues and abide by the way of heaven. Not only do he not use extraordinary violence to harm others, but he also protects the weak, and he draws his sword to help when the road is injustice.Wuxia is a person who supports justice with his own strength, and is also a person who does justice for the sky. Are we willing to be such a person?If you need to calculate before answering, well, please pay attention to the following conditions.

First, the threshold for such a person is very low.No special family background or superhuman qualifications are required, ordinary people of my generation can be selected.After you are selected, you don't need to work too hard, and a few inexplicable adventures will enable you to acquire the skills that ordinary people need decades or even hundreds of years to accumulate.To maintain this kind of effort, there is no need to abstain from alcohol and meat, let alone women. Second, once you become such a person, there will be beautiful women - usually more than one - who will have a secret heart, making your life full of moonlight and flowers, and full of fun.

Third, your name is known and respected by everyone in the Jianghu.With this name, you can eat wherever you go, with beautiful clothes and beautiful houses, and you can easily earn hundreds of taels of silver (the annual income of ordinary people in the Ming Dynasty is only twenty or thirty taels), so you don’t need to be like a cow or a horse for rice. , Never have to worry about trivial matters such as firewood, rice, oil and salt. Fourth, the law has nothing to do with you.Even if they kill people like hemp, the heroes don't have the pain of being wanted and fleeing.There is no night check, no ID card and household registration book, and there is no need to register your name when staying in a hotel.

In fact, there is no need for such sufficient conditions, as long as one or two are enough for me to be satisfied.Confucius said, if wealth can be obtained, I will do things like holding a whip.If I can't ask for it, then I will do what I like (The Analects of Confucius·Shuer).The heroes in Jin Yong's works are both rich and noble, and they do what they like, righteous things, and things that are appreciated by others. I hope that such perfect and good things can hit me. Of course we know that justice is troublesome.In contemporary society, it is the prosecutors, lawyers, and judges who have consumed huge manpower and material resources, spent countless painstaking efforts and troubles, and may not be able to maintain a rough idea just barely.It is simply a myth to expect a martial arts master to distinguish right from wrong in a short period of time and maintain fairness and justice with violence.But the myth is precisely a story that saves trouble and worry.We are particularly afraid of trouble, trouble, restraint, cooperation, dealing with complicated interpersonal relationships, complicated organizational procedures, and memorizing complicated legal provisions. We fantasize about giving up all these troubles and paying no price, Invoke the gods to call justice out of the sky.

It turns out that our daydream is the rich fantasy of a lazy man with a sense of justice. What kind of person has super violence, is not threatened by violence, but can use violence to carry out his intentions?What kind of person can have no worries about food and clothing, be rich and expensive, and be surrounded by clouds of beauties?There is only one social role in Chinese history that has the status of supporting justice and obtaining legislative and law enforcement authority through violence, and that is the emperor.The emperor's life is the happiest life in the world that the Chinese can imagine.But Jin Yong imagined a character happier than the emperor for us, that is, the hero.

The emperor still has many unfreedoms, and he also has the obligation to go to the early court and deal with official documents. He can't sleep late, he can't freely go in and out of the people, and he is forced to endure many constraints.Emperor Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty was deeply distressed by this, and had a lifetime of trouble with civil officials.Wuxia doesn't have these annoying things.This is a character freed from obnoxious obligations and able to enjoy life to the fullest.Apart from his heart, there is no power that can restrain him. In short, the martial arts dream is the improved emperor's dream of Chinese men.

I have to admit that Jin Yong is quite disgusted with the imperial system.In his writing, anyone who has the ambition to dominate the world is almost a big villain.However, put yourself in the emperor's place and think about it, how can you allow others to sleep soundly beside the couch?Dominating the world is a logical behavior to pursue the security of the country.A hero is immune to any threat with his unrivaled martial arts, and the emperor can only be immune to any threat by cutting off his dissidents.In the sense of seeking absolute security, those who pursue supreme martial arts are really the same as those who pursue the unification of the world.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with dreaming of an improved emperor.I just love doing it.Many things in the emperor's dream are also common fantasies and desires of human beings.For example, just, strong, respected, well-fed, beautiful women, safe, successful, supporting justice, lazy, not controlled and restrained, not doing boring hard work, etc.We can see, of course, that these fantasies are not only naive but contradictory.But it is precisely this naivety and paradox that we are willing to dream. The real question is not whether you will or not, but whether you can do it or not.For example, the polygamy system enjoyed by the emperor, it is obviously unfair to pin it on women, and contemporary men dare not take this system seriously anymore, so Jin Yong's works have a romantic atmosphere of monogamy from the West.Compared with "Water Margin" and "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness" hundreds of years ago, in Jin Yong's works, many teachings such as loyalty, filial piety and righteousness have disappeared, the arrogance of killing people without blinking an eye has decreased, and Western humanitarianism and liberalism have appeared. .After these adjustments, Jin Yong's dreams are more suitable for contemporary people, and it is easier to pass the scrutiny of conscience or superego with contemporary tastes. Why are martial arts fantasies so popular in China?In addition to living up to our dreams, the social climate and soil seem exceptionally suitable.The Chinese have discovered the core secrets from their long history, and discovered the "meta-rules" that determine various rules: Power comes out of the barrel of a gun—rules, wealth, respect, beauties, achievements, everything.The fantasy of martial arts is actually the fantasy of the barrel of a gun, the fantasy of having a powerful ability to hurt.There is no shortage of similar precedents in Chinese classical literature.Monkey King, the hero of Liangshan, is the owner of super violence.They are all great heroes in people's minds.Even those big devils have become the objects of envy and respect because of their high martial arts.Only civilians are not worth mentioning.In the eyes of martial arts masters, civilians are just waiters who serve people, or waiters who use to vent their anger, or ordinary people for him to rescue.This is exactly the function of the people in the eyes of the emperor.

We can compare it. In another society and era, the object of fantasy is probably no longer martial arts, but billionaires. It seems that that is the center of fantasy for Western men.Works that embody these fantasies include "The Encounter of Monte Cristo" and those best-selling biographies of the super-rich.Western men's fantasies can focus on great wealth, but Chinese wealth is so defenseless that it is not worth fantasizing about.In a society devoid of security and order, the illusion of the ability to profit is not as fundamental and unscrupulous as the illusion of the ability to do harm.That is to say, the ardent illusions about the ability to injure and defend ourselves, about fairness and justice, reflect the flaws in our society.The issue of justice is particularly acute in China, where legal controllers of violence have long failed to perform their duties.We are malnourished, our society is sick, so we are craving these things, devouring them in fantasy.

In Jin Yong's works, the male protagonist always wins in the end, eliminates the major threat to himself and the world, and floats away with the gods and beauties.However, in my opinion, a more common and therefore more profound question has just emerged at this time: what should the hero do after he wins?After escaping the chase, winning the hearts of the beauties, and clearing away all kinds of threats, the hero can finally live a normal life, just like the problems most of us face every day. How did he live at that time?How to support a family for a house?Be a bodyguard?Be a martial arts coach?Doesn't he feel dull in his mouth?If such questions cannot be asked, if the imagination to solve them does not prevail, does that mean that it is not yet time to ask them?Our nation is immature?We haven't gotten out of childhood yet?Or are we too old, lazy, tired and incompetent, so we have to have a little fun in pretending to be tender?
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