21世纪中国公路喜剧电影中的大众文化：城乡叙事、性别关系与世界主义 = The popular culture in 21st-century Chinese road comedies: urban-rural narration, gender relationships, and cosmopolitanism

Abstract

公路电影在美国上世纪60年代发展伊始就带有对主流秩序抗争并渴望颠覆的悲剧性色彩，但在21世纪的中国，公路电影多用喜剧的表现形式映射中国社会问题与大众文化趋势。其中，徐峥主演的公路喜剧片大体在票房和口碑上都取得良好成绩，如《人在囧途》（2010）、《人再囧途之泰囧》（2012）、《心花路放》（2014）等。本文将从城乡叙事、性别关系与世界主义三个维度着重分析这三部影片，从而解码这类中小成本公路喜剧电影如何迎合当下中国市场，并怎样在看似荒诞滑稽的叙述中疗愈现代人的焦虑、揭示社会转型中的个人心理与时代秩序的异化。城乡叙事透析了中国改革开放以来迅猛的经济发展拉开了贫富差距，形成了不可跨越的阶级鸿沟，夹杂其中的小镇也成为异化的产物；而公路喜剧开篇就使小资本家与农民工一同上路，从开始的矛盾到最后的理解，是城乡文化冲突和化解的过程，也是对于中国城乡政策的隐形宣传。性别关系的体现在于影片中扁平化、甚至负面化的女性角色与男性主导的公路母题之间的反差；性别地理中男性代表的公路和女性代表的家庭体现出自由与现实的抵牾，公路上的艳遇和无处不在的凝视满足了男性观众突破禁忌的意淫，最后回归家庭珍视亲情则消解了女性观众在父权社会现实中不公境遇的困顿。关于世界主义的呈现表达为对于欧美流行文化的解构戏谑以及青年亚文化糅杂景观的描绘，世界主义包容的表象下是对于中国性的强调；国产公路喜剧片已经摒弃了好莱坞的大片叙事，而是藉由公路电影的形式诉说一个只属于中国人的故事，短暂旅途后的重归平实重申了传统价值观的胜利。 Since the commencement of road movies in the 1960s’America, it has been enveloped with the tragic hue of resistance and subversion towards mainstream ethos and hegemony. Yet the majority of road movies in China after the 21st century are in the form of comedies to reflect Chinese social issues and popular cultural trends. Among them, the actor/ director Xu Zheng’s road comedies always harvest praise and profits, like Lost on Journey (2010), Lost in Thailand (2012), and Breakup Buddies (2014), etc. This thesis will analyze these three movies from the urban-rural narration, gender relationships, and cosmopolitanism to decode how the low-budget road comedies cater to the present Chinese market. Also, it will concentrate on how the seemingly comical and absurd narration pacifies people’s anxiety, revealing individuals’ psychological alienation as well as the era’s ideological change during the abrupt social transformation. The urban-rural narration focuses on the unsurmountable wealth and class disparity in the accelerating economic development after the 1978’s reform and opening-up policy. Road comedies are inclined to arrange a rich entrepreneur and a humble migrant worker to travel together in the same vehicle to create conflicts and finally mutual understanding, indicating the process of reconciliation and indirect propaganda. Gender relationships embody the contradiction between the flat or even negative female characters and the male-oriented road theme. Road and family represented by men and women in gender geography incarnate the ambivalence between liberty and reality. Romantic affairs within the journey satisfy male audiences’ gaze and sexual imagination regardless of prosaic moral constraints, while the eventual return and nostalgia of family alleviate female viewers’ frustration with patriarchy. Cosmopolitanism encompasses the deconstruction or parody of occidental popular culture and hybridity in the youth-subcultural landscape. Under the tolerance stressed in cosmopolitanism, road comedies accentuate unique Chineseness and discard the model of Hollywood’s blockbusters. They tell a story that only belonged to the Chinese, the road journey’s temporary escape leading to the return of monotonous life and reiterating the triumph of traditional Confucianism.