社会与主体性:中国情节剧的政治经济学

Society and Subjectivity:The Political Economy of the Chinese Melodrama

学界对于中国电影创作的研究,常常不可避免地会以片中人物("自我")与其所处社会空间之间的关系分析作为逻辑起点。学者们认为电影情节中的戏剧性关联从本质上能够反映出意识形态现实,这种例证在中国当代电影中比比皆是。而中国电影创作中常常贯穿、延续着新中国成立前儒家传统与新中国成立后社会主义意识形态之间的矛盾性问题,也恰恰是这种连续性和矛盾性开启了影片中自我、家庭、工作岗位以及国家——这些关涉社会整体性想像的各个基本方面之间的关系。从这些理论前提入手,本文试图讨论中国电影中最为错综复杂且激动人心的流行叙事样式,这一样式体现出传统的社会道德体系与新兴国家意识形态之间的相互妥协,进而清楚有力地阐明处在两者夹缝之间的故事中的人物情感矛盾与情节冲突所能企及的范围与表现力度。这一叙事样式正是在西方早已广为人知的"情节剧"。由于这一分类不同于传统的中国类型电影体系,所以在使用这一概念的时候,有必要进行一些理论观念的跨文化平移。

A study of filmmaking in China will, almost inevitably, take as its starting point the relation of the character （ ＂the self＂ ） to the social space in which it moves. The assumption that this dramatic relation is also, at bottom, ideological is evident in contemporary Chinese films through the continuity with and conflict between the pre-Liberation traditions of Confucianism and post-Liberation ideologies of socialism, a continuity and conflict that turn on the relation among the self, the family, the workplace, and the state, the fundamental terms of any image of the social totality. Starting from these premises, this essay argues that that the most complex and compelling popular film form that embodies the negotiation between the traditional ethical system and the new state ideology, one that articulates the range and force of the emotional contradictions between them, is what is known in the West as ＂melodrama. ＂ Because this category is not part of the Chinese genre system, its use entails a shift of cultural perspective.