Keogh, James and Yecies, Brian. "Chinese Dreams of Nostalgia and Fantasy: Cultural Critique in Feng Xiaogang’s Personal Tailor (2013)" Journal of Chinese Film Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2022, pp. 95-116. https://doi.org/10.1515/jcfs-2021-0032
Brian Yecies 布莱恩·耶西斯
Professor of Communication and Media, University of Wollongong, Australia
澳大利亚伍伦贡大学传播与媒体专业教授
Originally from Arizona, Dr. Yecies has over 20 years’ experience teaching and researching Asia’s transnational film and digital media industries and cultural policy. He is also a chief investigator on the 2017-19 Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘Digital China: From Cultural Presence to Innovative Nation’.来自美国亚利桑那州的耶西斯博士在亚洲跨国电影和数字媒体产业及文化政策领域拥有超过20年的教学与研究的经验。同时，他还是2017-19年澳大利亚研究委员会资助的发现项目“数字中国:从文化展示到创新国家”的首席研究员。James Keogh 詹姆斯·基奥
Communication and Media, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
澳大利亚伍伦贡大学传播与媒体专业
Abstract
This study sheds new light on Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s most successful film directors, through an investigation of how Personal Tailor (2013) engages with the guiding rhetoric and ideals underpinning the “Chinese Dream”. The authors demonstrate how the hybrid political–commercial–artistic critique of the Chinese Dream in Personal Tailor offers poignant commentary on China’s quest for national rejuvenation during a period when China continues to struggle with increasing social and economic inequalities. By foregrounding these complex tensions between political and economic rationalism, and their intersections with an imagined nostalgia as a key story-telling trope, this study shows how Feng and Personal Tailor are expanding the boundaries of contemporary Chinese cinema in a new era of globalized commercial culture. Keywords: Chinese cinema, Chinese Dream, Feng Xiaogang, nostalgic fantasy, Personal Tailor (2013)
摘要
本文通过研究电影《私人订制》(2013)如何将影片内容与支撑和引领“中国梦”的修辞和理想相结合，为人们了解中国最成功的导演之一的冯小刚提供了新的视角。笔者展现了《私人订制》是如何通过对中国梦混合了政治、商业和艺术的批判，犀利地评论了中国为寻求民族复兴，与日益加剧的社会和经济不平等持续作斗争的努力。通过突出表现政治和经济理性主义之间复杂紧张的关系，以及它们与想象中的怀旧情结的交缠，本研究展示了冯小刚导演和他的作品《私人订制》如何在由全球化趋势下的商业文化所主导的新时代拓展当代中国电影的边界。关键词: 中国电影、中国梦、冯小刚、怀旧想象、《私人订制》（2013）
This study investigates the influence of an important contemporary Chinese filmmaker Feng Xiaogang, whose work has yet to be explored fully in English, and the dynamic ways in which he is shaping Chinese cinema. In 2013, Feng’s satirical “dream” comedy, Personal Tailor (Si Ren Ding Zhi), a sequel of sorts to his The Dream Factory (1997), was released to negative criticism by commentators writing in both English-language and Chinese outlets, despite its relative success at the box office. The film deserves a thorough investigation – not least because its satirical messages encompass a range of contemporary issues that are unfolding in an increasingly commercialized and complex social environment. 本研究考察了当代中国重要电影人冯小刚的影响力，以及他塑造中国电影的动态方式，尽管他的作品尚未被英语国家完全了解。2013年，冯小刚的戏谑“梦幻”喜剧《私人订制》在院线上映，一定程度上可以视作同样由他导演的作品《甲方乙方》（1997）的续篇。尽管这部电影在票房上相对成功，但却遭到了影评界的负面评价。这部电影值得深入研究——特别是影片中的讽刺信息涵盖了一系列在日益商业化和复杂的社会环境中展开的当代问题。We focus on the content of a pivotal speech given in January 2013, a message reinforced at the 19th National Party Congress held in October 2017 and republished in April 2018 in Qiushi, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Clearly, there are strong linkages between Personal Tailor and this speech, which have yet to be analyzed in full. A major leitmotif of the film is the utilization of nostalgia as a tool for promoting optimism and creating an emotional buffer against China’s turbulent past – an effect achieved through Feng’s distinctive blend of comedy and satire. By exploring this aspect of one of China’s most successful commercial directors, the authors aim to offer film and creative industry scholars, as well as general readers interested in China, insights into how, as a creative artist, Feng has responded to China’s recent social and economic transitions. 笔者重点关注的是电影《私人订制》与中国梦之间的关联。影片的一个重要主题是利用怀旧情绪作为促进乐观主义的工具，并为中国动荡的过去创造一种情感缓冲——通过冯氏影片独有的喜剧与讽刺相融合的风格来达到这种效果。通过从这方面入手探索这位中国最成功之一的商业导演，笔者旨在帮助电影和创意产业的学者，以及对中国感兴趣的普通读者了解这位创造性的艺术家，了解冯小刚对中国最近的社会和经济转型作出了怎样的回应。Main Melody Comedies and China’s National “Dreams”
主旋律喜剧与中国的民族“梦”
The Personal Tailor team members are reminiscent of the “One-Day Dream Trip” personnel in The Dream Factory who “go to extraordinary lengths, and seemingly unlimited expense, to realize the fantasy for their customer, even if in several cases the client comes to regret the fantasy once it becomes reality” (McGrath 2008, 176). Each of these “dreams,” and the physical and psychological spaces they inhabit, offer sharp insights into the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens and the major social and cultural issues that affect them, such as corruption, hyper-commercialization, the growing wealth gap, and environmental degradation. 影片中的“私人订制”团队成员让人联想到《甲方乙方》中的“好梦一日游”业务人员，他们“不惜一切代价地帮助客户圆梦，即使在一些情况下，当幻想成为现实，客户马上就会后悔”。透过每一个这样的“梦”，以及它们所处的生理和心理空间，可以敏锐地洞察普通中国公民的生活，以及对他们造成影响的主要社会和文化问题，例如腐败贪污、过度商业化、日益扩大的贫富差距和环境恶化。
Made immediately following the 2013 speech, Personal Tailor explores the implications of these challenges for China, adding as a very contemporary twist the commodification of the Chinese Dream as a product placement in and of itself. The Chinese Dream as envisaged here draws on a national ethos like the well-known American Dream that came to prominence in the 1950s. Xi’s version of the Dream represents an extension of government rhetoric regarding national rejuvenation that has been familiar to Chinese audiences since Mao. The film depicts the lucid “dreams” cherished by ordinary Chinese - aspirations that the Party-state has promised to fulfill through policy development. The black-and-white prologue sequence of Personal Tailor, as well as all five of its remaining segments (shot in vivid color), can be interpreted as a reflection of Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation achieved through a modern socialist market economy. 《私人订制》将中国梦作为一种商品植入其中，以一种现代化的方式将二者捏合。这里所设想的中国梦借鉴了一种民族精神，就像20世纪50年代兴起的著名的美国梦一样。新时代的中国梦是对新中国成立以来中国观众所熟悉的关于民族复兴的论调的延伸。影片清晰地描绘了普通中国人所珍视的“梦”——亟待通过完善政策来实现的愿望。影片中黑白色调的片头，以及其余（以鲜艳的色彩拍摄的）五个片段，都可以解读为通过在当下建设社会主义市场经济以实现中华民族伟大复兴的新时代的中国梦。Popular Films as Commercial–Cultural Hybrids
作为商业与文化混合体的流行电影
While New Year Films incorporated domestic and local elements while maintaining a commitment to state propaganda and ideology, their sponsors’ primary aim was always to achieve commercial success. Since the 2010s, China’s film industry has been experiencing an unprecedented transformation that is an inevitable by-product of the Party-state’s adherence to a market-driven rationale as power, money, and commercial aims align. Over the past two decades, the Communist Party of China has regarded political ideology as central “to the Chinese export profile” (Keane 2007, 117). For this reason, government-backed main melody-style films that strongly promote state ideals are often stigmatized as part of the “Old China.” China has produced few “cross-over” feature films that appeal to both Chinese and Western audiences, primarily because comedies (as well as other genres) are notorious for being difficult to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers in the global trade. 贺岁片在坚持国家宣传和意识形态的同时，也融合了中国元素和地方元素，即便如此，赞助商的首要目标始终是获得商业上的成功。自2010年以来，中国电影产业经历了前所未有的变革，这是我们坚持以市场为导向的理论必然导致的间接结果，因为权力、金钱和商业目标一致。在过去的二十年里，政治意识形态一直被视为影响“中国出口形象”的核心要素。出于这个原因，政府扶持的、宣扬相应思想的主旋律电影常常被贴上标签。中国很少能制作出同时吸引中国和西方观众的故事片，主要是因为喜剧片（以及其他类型的电影）在面向全球输出时难以逾越文化和语言障碍。Feng has been a key figure in commercializing main melody drama and other films with a strong propaganda element. Maintaining “core socialist values” while also reflecting a “harmonious culture” - while subtly questioning and even undermining these values -Personal Tailor offers concrete evidence of the implementation of the concept of soft power in an era that is “characterized by a coexistence between an effort to reimagine and reestablish a sense of historical continuity and linearity, and a desire to create new fissures and offshoots that would promote new social, political and cultural changes …” (Fan et al. 2015, 319). 冯小刚一直是推动主旋律电影和其他带有鲜明宣传元素的电影的商业化的关键人物。在坚持“社会主义核心价值观”的同时，《私人订制》也体现了一种“和谐文化”，对这些价值观提出了自己的看法。《私人订制》提供了具体的论据，表明我们正处在一个“让重新想象并重建线性史观下的历史连续性的目标和制造新的分歧和分支来推动新的社会、政治和文化变革的期望达成共存”的时代，而官方对软实力的阐释在这个时代得到了贯彻落实。Personal Tailor: Fulfilling the Dream
私人订制：让美梦成真
The use of black-and-white cinematography in the prologue fantasy sequence communicates a sense of aesthetic and rhetorical tension, and evokes the “heightened self-reflexivity concerning the cinematic and photographic mediation of history” and “attention to the influence of visual representations on our historical consciousness” (Li 2012, 248). Following the monochromatic prologue, the film’s visual style abruptly transitions to a brightly colored seaside setting, featuring clear blue skies, vivid green palm trees and manicured lawns covered with iridescent flowers - all surrounded by crystal-clear ocean with gently breaking surf. The next and longest fantasy sequence, titled “Honest Instincts,” features a chauffeur (Fan Wei) who is concerned to test his own moral resilience after three of his previous employers, all high-ranking politicians, are arrested on corruption charges.片头的想象场景通过黑白摄影传达了一种美学和修辞上的张力，并唤起了“对影视化和图像化的历史中介的高度自我反思”和“对视觉表征如何影响我们的历史意识的关注”。黑白色调的片头过后，影片的视觉风格突然过渡到色彩鲜艳的海边场景，湛蓝的天空、鲜艳的绿色棕榈树和点缀着彩虹色花朵的修剪整齐的草坪——所有的一切都被水晶般清澈的海洋包围着，被浪花轻轻地拍打着。接下来便是最长的一个想象片段，题为《性本善》，讲述了一名司机（范伟 饰）在此前的三名雇主（均为高级政客）都因贪污被捕入狱后，不禁担心自己能否经受住道德上的考验。
As a filmmaker, Feng’s stance on these issues appears to be marked by ambiguity, mediated through satire and humor, contributing to a wider neoliberal discourse that aims “to endorse the government policy of economic [and cultural] reform while posing as its critic by demanding legal-political freedom and protections compatible with the global capitalist system in which China is integrated economically but not yet politically” (Zhang 2008b, 52). However, we believe that Feng goes further than this, pointing out the dilemmas involved in embracing the marketization model and, in particular, the contradictions inherent in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign in a society that is being encouraged to embrace the new economism.作为一名电影制作人，冯小刚以讽刺和幽默为媒介，在支持政府改革政策的同时，呼吁与全球资本主义体系相兼容的法律政治上的自由保护。然而，笔者认为冯小刚更进一步指出了接纳市场化模式所涉及的困境，特别是在当下社会经济环境开展反腐运动必然催生的矛盾。To sum up, despite some of the negative criticism of Personal Tailor, Feng’s “dream” film cinematizes collective understandings of the Chinese Dream by addressing some major social and cultural concerns in contemporary China. The current transformation of the film industry is illustrated through the fantasy enactment sequences, as questions of economic, cultural, political, and counter-political capital are seamlessly integrated into their respective narratives. In this way, the film cleverly subverts the narrow brand of state ideology found in the Chinese main melodies of the late 1990s (investigated elsewhere), demonstrating that Feng is not a slave to the market or the Party. Simply put, he is a savvy filmmaker who negotiates these complex elements and meets the demands of both political and commercial interests like few other filmmakers.
总体而言，尽管《私人订制》收获了一些负面评价，但冯小刚执导的这部以“梦”为主题的电影通过触及中国当下一些主要的社会文化问题，用电影化的手法表达了对中国梦的群体理解。随着经济、文化、政治和反政治资本的问题被无缝植入叙事中，影片通过设定这些想象片段描述了当前电影行业面临的转变。通过这种方式，影片巧妙地颠覆了90年代末中国主旋律电影固有的国家意识形态烙印（另有人对此做过研究），证明了冯小刚并非单纯为了迎合市场，也非生硬地进行政治宣传。简而言之，他是一个精明的电影人，他在权衡这些复杂元素的同时，还能满足政治和商业利益的需求，少有其他电影人能做到这一点。
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