The naming meaning of Carmen
A prostitute as an atonement sacrifice
Carmen's passion for life and times.
The desire to tease men
Poisonous weeds in Carmen's soul
Young officer Hauser
"Is this really your first time?"
Physical selfish love
Jianghu justice, national justice, love ethics
Tragic vitality
Free skills of self-practice
Wandering modern self-consciousness
"I want you to empty me."
Carmen's crime
We're all accidental bitches.
Tragedy has no way out.
The naming meaning of Carmen
Whether you admit it or not, women in modern society have become more and more like men, and men are becoming less and less like men. There is a question of judging criteria hidden here: what is a man?
There is no doubt that the three most famous people in ancient western society are Achilles, Alexander and Caesar-you will find that they are all soldiers among soldiers. If Achilles was still a mythical hero in the semi-barbaric era, driven by instinct, and his outstanding virtues naturally revealed, then Alexander appeared as a great politician and conqueror. Although he tried his best to imitate Achilles' glorious deeds all his life, he has begun to get rid of the instinct and arbitrariness of Achilles-style individualism, which was strongly expressed in the movie Troy. He already knows how to practice the skills of master self-control, otherwise he can advocate. But Alexander is still a child-a real soldier is still a child, even Caesar. But because Alexander was born a king, and Caesar was poor all his life, the times also required him to be more thoughtful and resourceful-Odysseus was different from Achilles, and on his way home, he had already shown signs that human beings were moving towards rational maturity.
Carmen is a film named after women, which means that in ancient society, usually anonymous women began to change their names-say "Bei", because the act of changing their names was done by men. For example, Vicente Aranda, the director of Carmen, is such a man who changed the name of a woman. Of course, he wants to express more than that with the help of film art language. "Enlightenment" has long been an inappropriate big word in the eyes of post-modernist believers. It is empty and autocratic, grandiose and conceited, but postmodernism can't get rid of these shortcomings. I don't know what a postmodernist can do except sing praises for Carmen. It is the "Enlightenment" that has completed and continued the awakening and liberation of the lower classes in modern times-it means that the "Enlightenment" represents the inevitable result and peak of the logical deduction of the Renaissance and the Religious Reform; Say continue, because "enlightenment" is still unfinished business, haven't you heard the noise of "continuing enlightenment" To tell the truth, postmodernism is nothing more than a distorted disciple and follower of enlightening modernity.
A prostitute as an atonement sacrifice
Women in ancient society, whether in the West or in China, have no so-called independent personality and individual dignity in modern times-these wonderful terms are brought by Christianity in the West, and the poor Nazarene showed all humble lives what they needed to do in order to liberate their cause. In ancient Greece, women only belonged to the managers of men's property in the field of housekeeping-these properties also included slaves, and even women were only a part of men's property, even though sometimes it might be the most precious part. The field of housekeeping (economic management) is between the natural field (slave labor) and the political field (citizen action), and women exist between "speaking tools" (slaves) and free people (city-state citizens).
Women who are really likely to set foot in the public sphere are often prostitutes-they first sacrificed themselves to men full of desires in the temple as sacrifices, that is, the gods sacrificed their natural bodies to save human sins. At that time, compared with the women who were monopolized by a man in the family-they were just personal belongings-they were somewhat sacred, because only their existence as women belonged to the public domain and was shared by the public. You can't use words like morality or dignity to evaluate that era, just as we are talking about the legalization of prostitutes' occupation now, except for the various economic and social benefits brought by industrialization, we can't talk about morality and dignity. You know, Perikles, the greatest politician in ancient Greece, openly took the most beautiful prostitute in Athens as his mistress, while Socrates, a philosopher who is a master of love, was most willing to talk with those beautiful public figures-talking is midwifery in Socrates' view, so it can be said that philosophers are willing to use their words to have reproductive activities with prostitutes.
Carmen's passion for life and times.
No matter how much you don't want to admit it, Carmen is a prostitute, even a bitch. Her mother is a bitch and her father is a hooligan. When she was twelve, they sold her to a bandit leader. When she was fourteen, they forced her to meet customers in a brothel. All this was told to Carmen by the director himself. Carmen herself would never say anything, especially to the man she loves. Carmen prefers to hide her life experiences. What she is willing to bring to others is only her charming physical existence, but compared with the prostitute in front of the temple, she is not completely open. She has an independent self-consciousness, especially a sense of freedom, which makes us not only regard her body as an empty label, because this wonderful work of art is burning the passion of Carmen's life.
Not only that, we can see that Carmen gave this passion for life and freedom to Hauser, whom she really loved. Fate has insulted and hurt her, but she is a great teacher and a teacher of a promising officer. Carmen's education to Hauser here not only means that when he slept with her for the first time-the first and only woman in his life-she said that she wanted him to "learn a lot", but also pointed out that Carmen made Hauser a unique man, unwilling to be mediocre and extraordinary, even though he was a criminal in the society at that time. This is the first thought-provoking part of the film.
The story took place in Spain in the1830s, and the time and place were not random-at that time, the enlightenment philosophers in the18th century had built a "paradise city" for modern people, and Napoleon followed the stormy French Revolution and swept Europe with his sword with the concept of "freedom, equality and fraternity"; There, there are endless legends about the real hero, the matador. Although the ancient order is declining under the impact of the Great Revolution and the historical trend represented by Napoleon, its traditional forces are still trying to safeguard traditional justice-justice is indispensable for every normal society, but it has never been controversial at the same time, especially in this chaotic era when everything needs to be re-established.
Hamlet lived in an era when the ceremony broke down and the music broke down. He was entrusted with the mission of reorganizing order by his dead father, but his tragic character made him incompetent, and he was buried with a troubled world. What if Caesar comes back from the dead? Will he, like Hamlet, be tortured by meditation and unable to decide major political affairs, and can only be a dying hero with nothing but enthusiasm in modern society? Not only that, a woman like Carmen showed her heroism. Although she never undertook the mission of rectifying the order, on the contrary, she appeared as a shredder and destroyer of the old order.
The desire to tease men
Fate makes her humble, but she has a noble and proud heart. Gypsies are naturally warm and free. Can she be at the mercy of fate? Many women workers who produce cigars have the same situation. They are repeating boring actions in crowded and dreary sheds, many of which are naked or semi-naked-what is dignity? What is shame? This kind of question is so trite for them who are only fighting for their lives. Their minds have long been blinded and they have lost their basic judgment on this kind of question. However, we can still see their simplicity and charm in nature. You can say that they are uneducated and even mean, but they can express their feelings or desires out of natural nature without affectation. They can shout "Come on" to the soldiers and make their own voices freely.
A noteworthy detail is that the woman who quarreled with Carmen lifted her skirt and wiped her lower body before throwing cigars at Carmen. Cigars, originally produced and consumed by men, are similar in shape to male genitals, so they can be regarded as the embodiment of male lust. The moral of that woman's action is that although women are producing lust for men (women should roll cigars for men by themselves), women can also consume men's lust at the same time (women take the initiative to wipe their nakedness with cigars) and regard it as something they don't need-when that woman throws cigars at Carmen, it means throwing the lust of men who have been played with by herself to Carmen, which is not only contempt for men, but also contempt for men. But the latter contempt has no real meaning for Carmen. In fact, this kind of contempt represents the jealousy and hatred between women, and it is the woman's dissatisfaction and resistance to Carmen's contempt. We know that the reason for their quarrel is that Hauser has a good impression on Carmen's charm, which leads the woman to tease Carmen's lust. Can Carmen's arrogance endure being teased silently, especially by women?
Only when the awakening of individual subject consciousness occurs after "enlightenment", all insulted and damaged creatures will have subject consciousness about the relationship between society and self, such as "insulted and damaged". In ancient society, especially under the hierarchical system, "the dragon gives birth to the dragon, the wind gives birth to the wind, and the mouse's son can make holes" is a necessity of life. Nobles are born, and civilians can only accept their unchangeable fate, which is in line with justice. In Plato's utopia woven with words, the theory of "gold, silver, copper and iron"-some people are born with gold, some with silver and some with copper and iron-is the foundation of justice, and the so-called justice means that everyone takes his place and performs his duties according to the attributes of the soul. Aristotle thinks that the actual existence of slavery conforms to the standard of justice. For modern people, this theory of justice is undoubtedly not only reactionary, but also decadent and worthless, because in modern times, justice is not justice if it has nothing to do with equality, and justice means equality to a great extent.
Hobbes demands a desirable and possible stable political order based on the common emotions of all people-vanity and fear of death-while Rousseau thinks that self-love and sympathy are the most fundamental emotions in human society when tracing the origin of human inequality. Nietzsche cursed the liberation of all humble people, including women, while liberating all people's passion and desire with the theory of power will until Freud occupied it in classical political philosophy. It seems that only on a vulgar but solid basis can the equality of all people become possible?
Poisonous weeds in Carmen's soul
Carmen is naturally talented and wild inside, and social insults and injuries can only deepen her deep-rooted antipathy and resentment towards society. Yes, the humbler the creature, the deeper the resentment that may be buried inside, especially when it seems innocent when it is trampled by society. Once the fate of self-existence is not treated well, the soul will be covered with vicious weeds.
Carmen distributes her desires to all men equally-this desire is hardly lust, and even pure sexual desire seems far-fetched. Although there is reason to think that this gypsy woman is emotional, it is better to say that this desire is a desire for money. Capitalists pursue nothing more than making money, which has nothing to do with such illusory values as freedom, equality and fraternity. All Carmen wants is to get "natural equal" money by accepting men's desires equally, which is the most instinctive habit she developed to survive since she was a child. Here, you will see that Carmen is not as "free" as she thought-she was born with a body. In order to meet the basic needs of the body (such as eating), what does she want from the society? It is also her body that meets her basic needs by meeting the needs of men (sexual desire for Carmen or abstract sexual desire). This kind of transaction is nothing more than "prostitution".
But it's superficial to judge Carmen like this. Carmen is unique in that she is unwilling to passively accept this insulted and damaged fate. If she can't resist in childhood, it will only make her resist more strongly in adulthood. She seems to be being played by men, but she will think she is playing with men. She is very good at teasing and seduction. She was really mean at that time, but irresistible to men. When a man succumbs to her or is aroused by her lust, she is the winner. It seems that a man can play with her, but she will secretly laugh at: Who is meaner and who is dirtier? She even put contempt on her face-when she was arrested and interrogated, she hummed a minor casually, and when she seduced Hauser like any man, she hummed a minor with a more lively and wild rhythm. She seems to have put her fate behind her head for a long time, and the flesh is just a layer of rotten skin that has fallen to the end and cannot be recovered, just waiting for the arrival of the final moment of destruction.
There are many problems touched here. Is Carmen soberly aware that she has embarked on the road of depravity? Why is she willing to sink to the end, instead of resisting the fate of being insulted and hurt, and further moving towards repentance and rebirth? I don't know how many viewers are grieving at the same time, but this still can't stop us from loving Carmen-if we don't love it, at least it's not disgusting. Why is this happening? Before finding out this second thought-provoking place, let's take a look at Carmen's Education for Hauser.
Young officer Hauser
Kaufman's image of a young priest in the movie Goose Circle is unforgettable. The tragic fate of Machis, an erotic writer, and Winslet, a laundry worker, are inextricably linked with him. Although he is not the mastermind like a hypocritical bishop with authority, he is not an innocent person who stays out of it. He involuntarily contributed to the tragic events, and he himself was an involuntary defender. The root cause lies in his contradictory personality. He did not completely ban lust as required by traditional teachings. Although he has never crossed the line of Canon, he is already a lover-he loves Winslet, and he is also a loved one because Winslet loves him. However, because he is not a passionate writer with prophetic insight into the characteristics of the times, nor is he a passionate awakening inspired by the enthusiasm of the prophet, it is difficult for him to get rid of the provisions of traditional teachings on the right path and adopt a firm attitude of restraining lust. Even such a beautiful event still ends in tragedy.
Hauser is not a young priest, but a young officer. In the great era shown in Stendhal's Red and Black, there are two best ways for a young man from the bottom to climb the social ladder: joining the army (red) and joining the church (black). Hauser belonged to that era. Since in Napoleon's army, a farmer's son can become a general only by meritorious military service, it is no wonder that a talented and capable young man like Hauser becomes a lieutenant and is expected to be promoted to captain. But fortunately, unfortunately, he met Carmen-fortunately, because Carmen freed him from the ordinary life of climbing up and down in the army but still following the rules; Unfortunately, because he had to pay the price for violating the etiquette and right path of the society at that time.
What was Hauser like before he met Carmen? He is a qualified and promising soldier, loyal to his duties. However, since it is no longer a time of war, even veterans who made meritorious deeds in resisting the invasion of Napoleon's army have become bandits. Young people in the army, like other professions, have become irreplaceable ordinary people despite their prominent position in the years. Young priests in quill pens are likely to become bishops and Hauser generals if they take the traditional road, but their life trajectories have changed because of the appearance and roles of women. At the same time, because the world without women is incomplete, it can be said that their lives have become richer and more complete because of their love for women. On the contrary, a life that follows the rules and does not dare to go beyond customs and habits is monotonous and incomplete. However, before our Hauser met Carmen, he had no experience in dealing with a woman like that priest. He wants to learn from Carmen what a complete life is. She is full of passion and unrestrained wildness. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Hauser is a devout believer, but religion also does not make him feel the integrity of world life.
"Is this really your first time?"
But Carmen didn't expect to fall in love with Hauser at first, because she didn't expect Hauser to be such an excellent man. She lured Hauser only to escape. Hauser is just a tool that she can use and despise like other men full of desire. That is to say, Carmen is shaped by life as a woman who is biased against men. Her understanding of men is as incomplete as her understanding of the world. Therefore, in the process of "educating" Hauser, she is also receiving Hauser's "education", although the result of her "education" has never satisfied Hauser. The love war between men and women, as long as it is sincere, has always interacted and influenced each other, so it can be said that love is a university owned by human beings and teaches people to know the whole world.
Carmen called Hauser a "fool"-he neglected his duty and was demoted to an ordinary soldier because he lured her away, which was definitely a foolish act that was not worth the candle in social customs. If Carmen initially called him a "fool" and just laughed at him for what he deserved, but Carmen stayed out and watched the fire from the other side, then "fool" later had a somewhat distressed meaning. In fact, when Carmen saw Hauser standing at the door performing an army dance, she might be sympathetic. After all, Hauser's love for her made her feel something, and his ambivalence when he let her escape showed his seriousness.
Finally, it seems that she invited Hauser to enjoy her body in order to compensate for his demotion that allowed her to escape. She undressed skillfully and simply, and didn't drag her feet, while Hauser was embarrassed and even a little shy. She built the Madonna-the Madonna plays an important role throughout the play-and then sarcastically said that it was better not to be seen by the Madonna. She rode on him and asked him several times, "Is this really your first time?" He was silent, just feeling, as if she occupied him and ravaged him. He knows that he can't live without her from now on. He just wants her. Once the tragedy begins, it must continue.
Physical selfish love
Carmen "enlightened" Hauser's "lust" and made him toss and turn in bed without her, unable to sleep all night. There is pure spiritual love, such as loving Jesus and loving ideas, but that kind of love does not belong to the world, and people with physical existence cannot have real human love without physical nature. Hauser experienced his own physical existence in the fantasy sex with Carmen, which made him feel that he was fundamentally different from himself who loved the Virgin Mary in the past. It was this inseparable love that made him unable to refuse any request from Carmen-he let her smuggler friend pass the customs, and it was this inseparable love that made him experience all kinds of feelings, including missing and jealousy. -Missing made him try his best to find Carmen, and jealousy made him kill the lieutenant fooling around with Carmen without hesitation.
The body is private ownership. It is dissatisfied with all the public's control over individual bodies, and can resist control crazily at the expense of itself. Of course, the body can also be nationalized, but the nationalized body will inevitably lose all its personality, making the body an abstract symbol instead of a bloody body. Therefore, love, which is inseparable from physical existence, is selfish in the final analysis, and contradictions and conflicts inevitably occur between love ethics and public ethics or national ethics. When Hauser killed the lieutenant fooling around with prostitutes, he actually violated the dignity of national ethics, because a soldier represents not only himself, but also his body belongs to the country, so he should be prepared to make contributions to the country. Hauser's act of killing the lieutenant, in terms of pure love ethics to which I belong, violates the national ethics, because killing itself is beyond the private nature, and whether or not to kill people should not be judged and executed by private people.
It is this inner conflict between love ethics and national ethics that leads to Hauser's tragic fate, but it is also this conflict that makes Hauser show his character in the unfolding of the tragedy, making Carmen really love him and say "I only love you".
If there is no common laws and regulations of society and the state, isn't private love very reassuring? But fundamentally speaking, Hauser was driven to the mountain by his passion for Carmen, not by national ethics. Compared with the external norms of national ethics, an individual's internal life temperament has a greater influence on his fate. Carmen ignited Hauser's passion for life, but whether she can put it out is beyond her control. Strangely, even Hauser can't control it. He feels driven by it and can't be independent. Loving someone seems to be active, but in essence it is passive. This love made Hauser kill the lieutenant and Carmen's husband.
Jianghu justice, national justice, love ethics
We can't know how Carmen spent so many years with her husband, but just look at how he treated her openly and without scruple in front of everyone including Hauser after he got out of prison, and you can imagine the tragic degree of Carmen's fate. He is ugly and clumsy, stupid but arrogant. He regards Carmen as a tool, which can be used to vent his sexual desire and seduce other men to achieve his other goals. There is no trace of love, and there is no feeling like a person.
There is no doubt that Carmen has lived in fear and resentment for a long time. No matter how clever and cunning a woman is, she can't get rid of the control of great power. As a weak person, since you can't change the injustice imposed by fate, you can only obey and get used to it. But what is terrible is that she may lose her basic judgment on "what is justice" and "what is justice", which will be the most destructive force to the right path. When a person encounters misfortune, he can complain and curse, but according to the general view, he should not exaggerate his misfortune too much, let alone ignore the common moral standards that make public life possible. Otherwise, his fate will be tragic. Carmen is like this, Hauser is like this.
In fact, the existence of bandits and smugglers has gone beyond the scope of national justice. They do not recognize the existing legal and ethical order, and dissociate themselves from it, just like selfish temperament and love ethics, as a disintegrating force. If there is a crisis in the dominant national justice at that time, this kind of justice is likely to be replaced by a spark, but its premise is that it must have the strength and advantage to win the hearts of the people. But Carmen's husband is the kind of heartless bandit. With the strength of national justice, it is only a matter of time before he dies. However, due to Hauser's appearance, he was forced to fall into the love ethics network interwoven by Carmen and Hauser.
Strictly speaking, there is no love between Carmen and her husband. This relationship can be regarded as the condensation and representation of the relationship between Carmen and men who only covet her beautiful body. They all appear as soulless creatures, so they cannot be said to constitute an ethical relationship. This relationship is essentially bullying and bullying by the strong to the weak. If the national justice allows it to appear and do nothing about it, it means that the national justice is in danger and can no longer be convinced. The formation of the ethical relationship between Carmen and Hauser can not be separated from the promotion of corporality at first, but once it is firm and tenacious, it will inevitably open a space of alienation under the strong or weak ethical network of national ethics. If national ethics itself has fallen into a dark and unknown situation, this space may also make people feel bright. However, whether Carmen and Hauser created a bright existence is still a question, not only because their national ethics are not vague enough, but also because the ethical relationship of love is extremely complicated.
Tragic vitality
In the cave where the bandits lived, Carmen had sex with Hauser in front of everyone. Hauser, who has been waiting for a while, will feel a little overwhelmed by this unusual stimulus. Carmen sat on him and said flatly, "What's the matter with you? Don't let me work hard alone! " Even his partner was dumbfounded, but he was obviously not surprised by the act of making love in public. He should get used to what Carmen and her husband did. He was surprised by Carmen's uncontrollable passion or lust for Hauser, which seems to be what people often say about love? Later, when Hauser killed her husband with Carmen's help, the partner confirmed her idea. You know, he is the man who once took part in the Spanish war against Napoleon and then became a traitor. He is an old and wise man with enough life experience and is familiar with the complex entanglements among national justice, Jianghu justice and love ethics.
There is no doubt that Hauser is jealous of Carmen's husband, but this strong feeling is not only the jealousy between men, but also Hauser's anger at injustice after seeing his beloved being ruined into an object. If Carmen is not the person Hauser loves, perhaps this resentment will not be so strong, but Hauser just thinks Carmen should belong to him, and the connected lifeline and inevitable possessiveness make Carmen unable to bear it calmly. Especially when he watched Carmen having sex with her husband like an old partner, it is no exaggeration to say that that feeling is like an arrow through the heart, which is very painful. So Hauser either dies or forbids anyone to possess Carmen. This intention was first revealed when he killed the lieutenant, especially when he killed Carmen's husband.
Carmen was nervous about Hauser's life and death when the two sides dueled. Maybe this is love. It was this nervousness that made Carmen cover her husband's head to help Hauser kill him. Murder your husband? The relationship between Carmen and her "husband" is probably not recognized by the national legal norms at all. The reason why she said "husband" is only nominal is to show that "this is mine, and no one is allowed to touch it unless I approve it." Rousseau said at the beginning of the second part of On the Origin of Human Inequality: "Whoever is the first to enclose a piece of land and think it is mine, and find some simple-minded people to actually believe what he said, is the real founder of civilized society." If the founder of national justice is a "thief", the founder of Jianghu justice is a "thief", and the ethical ideal of love is to get rid of the shackles of these two unjust "justice" and gain freedom. In other words, there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the individual and the whole, and the harmonious state is only an ideal state.
Hauser's murder is murder on the surface, but it is actually a struggle against social injustice and an act of fighting for Carmen's freedom with himself. Carmen thinks she is free in the face of fate, but in fact she has given in to it. Her happiness with the second lieutenant is only for money, perhaps because she can't get rid of the entanglement, and her relationship with the mountain thief is also a last resort, but she has to give in. Although it seems that she is satisfied with that lifestyle, in essence, she just can't resist it. Only when she inadvertently ignited Hauser's passion for life and saw the great power contained in Hauser, was she inspired by the amazing power that resonated with him. In this sense, we can say that Hauser is both Carmen's student and Carmen's teacher. But this kind of power is too personal for Hauser's life, so that the conflict with national justice only happens to a certain extent; This kind of power is too late for Carmen's life, and it is also a long-lost one. She can't completely get rid of the lifestyle she has been breathing for a long time and the self she has already shaped, and only tragedy awaits her.
Free skills of self-practice
Julien Soller's tragic role in Red and Black is similar to Hauser's. They lived in an era, they were all lower-class farmers, but they all had excellent qualifications and bright prospects, but they were all entangled in love and were finally sentenced to death. Most importantly, they are all passionate and energetic men. But the difference between them may be more subtle and noteworthy.
Julian was ambitious and bent on climbing the social ladder, but when he got the ladder, he saw that he wanted more than an apprentice. Two women-Madame de Lena and Mathilde-appeared in his life, which helped him to know his true self. Madame de Lena showed him what is natural and simple nature, what is noble and outstanding soul, and what is worrying love, but at first he didn't know how to cherish such a precious gift-at first he just wanted to conquer this noble lady, just to conquer and try to prove his uniqueness. Only when he saw clearly the prejudice and absurdity of love in the so-called real "aristocratic society" did he know the right and wrong of yesterday and today. But even this awakening requires him to pay a high price, including his life, his family and the people he cherishes. In fact, even before he drove his horse back to the church to shoot Mrs. De Lena, he was still dreaming of success in his career. We don't know what the marriage life between him and Mathilde would be like if there was no frame-up, but judging from his impulsive and passionate life, he was out of tune with the customs of the whole upper class at that time, and even if he tried to integrate into it, he couldn't get rid of the fatal sense of alienation. Only when Mrs. De Lena, a woman who loved him deeply but was shot by him, was kindly tolerated and pardoned after her death, did he really realize his sin and her nobility. "Red and Black" is a tragedy, and finally he dies, but the meaning of Lian's death is different from Hauser's, just as they met Mrs. De Lina and Carmen are two different women.
If "Red and Black" is intended to describe the class contradictions in society at that time, then "Carmen"