丛林热

要是没有这场疫情，对于影迷来讲，最近最火的新闻是什么呢？

当然是戛纳电影节了。

我记得当时官方宣布斯派克·李为今年戛纳电影节的评审团主席时，国内网友清一色地“政治正确言论”。

第一次听说斯派克·李的大名是在2019年的奥斯卡上，他执导的《黑色党徒》获得最佳原创剧本奖。

首先声明，《黑色党徒》这部电影我很喜欢。

后面的奖项陆续揭晓，《绿皮书》最终拿下了最佳影片的桂冠。

斯派克·李在典礼结束之后，对最大赢家《绿皮书》不屑一顾。

当时的我，想当然地把这位导演划为“柠檬精”一类。

直到看过了他执导的黑人电影和种族电影，我收回原来的话。

斯派克·李，好莱坞最为知名的黑人导演。

作为一名黑人导演，他拍出来的黑人电影、种族电影，更加真实。

因此，除了奥斯卡，他在三大电影节上也颇受欢迎，尤其是戛纳。

斯派克·李的《黑色党徒》曾获得过戛纳评审会大奖；

在这之前，他有一部电影，虽然没有拿下金棕榈或者评审团大奖，但在那届的戛纳电影节上，这部电影的风头一时无两。

这部电影就是1991年在第44届戛纳电影节主竞赛单元提名的《丛林热》。

电影的主人公是黑人Flip和白人Angie。

两人在一家公司办公，一来二往、情不自已、互生情愫。

当Angie的父亲得知自己的女儿和一个黑人上床后，怒不可遏，将Angie痛打一顿，扫地出门；

Flip的父母是牧师，倒不像Angie的父亲一样粗鲁。但文人有文人的办法，在宴席上，Flip的父亲一席话，让Angie很是下不来台。

许多人以为美国的种族歧视只是白人对黑人，殊不知，黑人对白人亦是如此。

两人顶着身边的压力依旧在一起，那个时候，他们相信爱情能战胜一切。

可在一个晚上，两人在市区里打打闹闹，却引来了警察。

差一点，Flip就成了警察的枪下之鬼。

两人爱得死去活来，可身边的人却水火不容，发生的种种令两人的关系接近破裂。

Flip分手时，和Angie说了这么一句话：

“爱情可以战胜一切，那只会出现在迪士尼电影里。”

梦想很丰满，现实很骨感。

最后，Flip回归自己的家庭，Angie和自己的加入和好，这一切就像是一场梦，留下的只是醒来后的感动。

《丛林热》与《绿皮书》大相径庭。

如果作为一个旁观者的角色，看《绿皮书》这样的电影当然赏心悦目。

但深入了解美国的种族文化之后，你就会发现，《绿皮书》只是一碗鸡汤。

现实生活中大多数的人都是像《丛林热》里的人一样。

毕竟，美国的种族主义从19世纪末开始，一直到现在，已经200多年了。

冰冻三尺非一日之寒，若想冰化，是不是还需下一个200年。

我们中国人没有经历过种族歧视这样的黑暗时刻，所以，我们想当然的把关于”黑人“的一切理解为政治正确。

斯派克·李的电影里从来不避讳黑人的恶。

作为一个黑人导演，他很清楚黑人的性格、受教育程度以及所处的环境。

于是在他的电影里，黑人张扬跋扈、游手好闲、惹是生非。

有人看完他的电影对黑人的态度进一步恶化。

比如，在他的电影《为所应为》的页面下，有这么一句评论：

“一帮人，不读书，酗酒发疯，然后到20岁的时候走上街头问‘为什么不给我工作’！”

《为所应为》里的三个黑人。

一个成天扛着大喇叭，到处扰民；

一个非要在人家意大利的披萨店里挂黑人的头像；

一个领着别人的工资，却不干事，最后还把老板店铺给砸了。

确实，刚看完这部电影，的确有很气愤，但仔细想想事情并没有那么简单。

我把美国的黑人比作中国的农村人。

关于中国的农村人，有两种截然不同的看法。

一些人认为农村人善良、淳朴；也有一些人说“穷山恶水出刁民”。

持有前者想法的大多都是城里人，他们可能在农村待过一小段时间，于是，就产生了这样的想法；

后者的簇拥者大部分是从农村走出去的人，他们生长于斯，所以，他们很清楚农村人到底是一群什么样的人。

中国有好多现实主义题材的影片都是讲述“穷山恶水出刁民”的。

《鬼子来了》、《天狗》、《盲山》、《光棍儿》等等。

看完这类型电影的人，也会想当然地把农村人妖魔化。

其实不然。

“穷山恶水出刁民”，这是一种现象，那造成这种现象的背后是什么呢？

“穷山恶水”代表的是什么？是物质基础差。

当物质基础尚且没有得到保障时，又怎么能够“知礼节”呢？

所以说，我们应该讲的是“为什么穷山恶水出刁民”，而不是一味地强调“穷山恶水出刁民”。

美国的黑人亦然。

观众只看到了电影里的黑人的恶，没有深究黑人恶的背后是什么。

黑人的居住环境、黑人的家庭状况，黑人的受教育程度，黑人的受教育资源，黑人的合法权益等等。

这些都是问题。

不看斯派克·李，你不会了解黑人的生活状态究竟是怎样？

不看斯派克·李，你永远不知道美国社会的割裂有多严重；

不看斯派克·李，你永远不懂美国的种族隔阂！

In Spike Lee’s production filmwork of “Jungle Fever'', a tragic story calling out the struggles and hardships of inter-racial romance (in this context, a black versus white romantic relationship, or to be more direct, a love affair in its very essence) has been presented and shown to its audiences, which is apparently also the first ever time cross-race romance has became one of the most important main/central focus topics of the director (the audiences could be able to tell this from watching the preceding film piece of “Mo’ Better Blues”, which Lee happened to touch a bit on this topic as a sideline or side plot). However, this specific filmwork is indeed way more than simply/merely being a sad tale of a failed inter-racial romance at work, but should rather be interpreted and seen as something which goes/dwelves way deeper than that of the surface value, that it is about the steady and firm racial barriers that have been intentionally built/constructed up, as the sense of high walls/tall upper fences being constructed between the dominant group (Caucasian whites) and minority races (in the specific case of this particular movie, African Americans) lasting from generations ago until now at this current point, as well as about the subtly covert, yet without a question deep-rooted racism that is also long-lasting and apparently still on-going, which by itself could probably be easiest to tell and observe within the seemingly normal day-to-day interactions between different races themselves, resulting and arising from that crawling uneasy feeling, which cannot be tracked to its very origin with clear certainty.

On the outside surface or simply based on first impression, as a quite successful businessman living in/residing within the busting Big Apple himself, Flipper has nearly everything going for him, at least that was the case before he met with Angie, an attractive Italian-American young woman who was being introduced to the cooperation to work with him. But as one could still sense somewhat, maybe it is the case that there were already previous cracks existing in the marriage itself, or maybe Flipper has simply gotten a bit bored out by the unchanging daily routines of the married life, anyways, he has later gotten himself into this total “guilty-pleasure” like affair with his co-worker Angie, whom he has only known for a rather short period of time, and which drastically changed/altered his entire life path to a different direction. Throughout this entire film piece here, Spike Lee has mainly and mostly casted his focus/attention on the specific class of people who are usually referred to as the “working class whites”, and his heavily concentrated portrayals of them are not much of positive ones, but rather, more in a critical manner and light. This can be clearly seen within a lot of different scenes coming from the film itself, especially that one particular scene of the so-called “war committee/council” - when Flipper happens to have a huge disagreement, argument, and quarrel with two of his Caucasian co-workers in a private office meeting/conference setting within the corporation which he works at, which the argument keeps on escalating to the next level, which made/urged Flipper to be saying something like “I can see that you guys have absolutely no respect for me” straight to the other men’s faces, and then walked out on them. The actual selfishness/self-centeredness, or perhaps, “racial ego’ which these two white co-workers happen to carry with them has been revealed through this particular scene depicting the certain conflict which happened, although in a quite subtle and covert sense, but is still possible to spot. It is indeed “racial prejudice'' in its best and most appropriate description, in a social situation where the three men are each supposed to be status equal with each other. That is exactly the reason why the specific racial approach of so-called “colorblindness” could oftentimes be unimaginably harming and dangerous, because as human beings altogether living in a colorblind society that way, for sure without a doubt creates more of the excuses for whites in general to deny their internal racism/racist attitudes/racial ego or prejudice which ultimately results in the subtle/covert mis-treatments of other minority races out there, exactly like what Flipper happened to experience with and go through within this specific scene himself.

As generations pass by and as the society progressively develops, one obvious cultural phenomenon or pattern that could be easily seen and observed, is the seemingly “lessening’ of racial discriminations/racial mis-treatments out there within the general social environment as a whole, but this feeling by itself could be merely an illusion or a false sense of assumption, for the actual reality and truth is that, most often times for the current era, what we happen to see and experience the most are, that of the old and medieval cases of direct outward actions in terms of physical harms/violences being inflicted upon minority group individuals back then centuries ago, have since being replaced/exchanged by, as well as switched to a brand new form of very much subtly covert racial discriminations, which is being embedded within almost each and every corner of the 21st century modern society, despite and no matter of our own personal degree/level of recognitions, awarenesses, or better judgments to those different situations and circumstances out there. As a possible result, the most reasonable as well as logical conclusion which could be drawn from that, would thus probably be something that goes like this: There is still indeed, a long long way to go as well as mountains after mountains to climb, awaiting ahead for all of us here being as collective homo sapiens/human beings living on this earth, at least in terms of the general racial equity aspects and sides of things for sure.

In the beginning of JUNGLE FEVER, the camera cranes from the window of a brownstone building into its bedroom to reveal that a man and a woman is making love, immediately calls up Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), while their after-the-earth-moves chitchat imitates it is an extramarital affair (“don’t wake up your daughter!”), but mischievously, the pair actually is a married couple, Flipper Purify (a spiffy Snipes plays a soft-centered intellectual, a far cry from his usual muscle-bound screen image), is an African-American architect working in a white folks corporation, and his light-skinned wife Drew (McKee) is a Bloomingdale’s saleswoman, even their preteen daughter has a very salutary knowledge about the birds and the bees, Spike Lee, for once, veers into the fast lane of Yuppies in Harlem.

But the presentiment of an affaire du cœur has been insidiously set off (a virile Flipper seems insatiable and over-confident in his sex appeal), and the consequential interracial one comes about quite wantonly, Flipper, whose life is the paragon of domestic bliss and high-flying stability, the stimulus of his adultery instantly baffles the audience, off which director Spike Lee doesn’t blow the lid until the very end, as for his paramour, the Italian-American temp secretary Angie Tucci (Sciorra), obviously is fed up to the back teeth of her tedious existence, bogged down in the chores at home and an unfruitful and dead-end romance with the shiftless Paulie Carbone (John Turturro, another sterling interpretation of a put-upon man’s simmering indignation), audience can vicariously relate to her plight, as the fling with Flipper can be an easy reprieve for her, and she has no qualms about that.

That is one reason why JUNGLE FEVER is startlingly perspicacious in the gender differentiation, while a man is a feral being and can cop off at will, a woman needs more backstory ballast to take the plunge, and from stem to stern Sciorra is defiantly cool in her demeanor, to a point she even looks too frigid to be committed to the libido-driven abandon, even she has to run the gauntlet of domestic abuse, sit through a bitter homily of whore-mongering, and realizes that their fling is nothing but a false hope to take a new leaf on her life. That said, in the end of the day, Angie’s baptism of fire feels shortchanged when her story takes a back seat, as Lee, scarcely lauded for his feminist felicity, has other irons in the fire.

Deep-rooted racism, which sadly has not been ameliorated since then in the States, is granted a wider canvas in scope here, not just because the complication of the scandalous fornication, which both participants finally admit what makes them tick is the titular fever, an euphemism of sexual curiosity towards other race, other than that four-letter-word, but also through other byplays: reverse discrimination in the working place is touched on; Drew and her friends perfervidly vent their collective frustration as black women of different gradations of pigmentation and doubts about black men; Paulie, on the other hand, has his own interest in an amicable black girl Orin Goode (Ferrell), in spite of the pervading racism both at home and among his neighborly acquaintances, that milieu is a closer sibling to Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING (1989), bar the firebrand commotion in the climax.

The truth is, there is another violent sting in the tail, but that doesn’t concern racism and it occurs behind the closed door, that manifests the topos rampant among the key demographic, the drug addiction, yes, the Purify family has a black sleep, the firstborn of The Good Reverend Doctor Purify and his wife (Davis and Dee, both as expected, are terrific as a stern father and a doting mother, respectively), Flipper’s elder brother Gator Purify (Jackson), is an out-and-out hophead who spends the whole film soliciting money from his kindred, a breakthrough turn from Jackson which notably earned him an acting award in Cannes, not for BEST ACTOR, but a special BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR (an award they don’t accord annually), here Jackson is so lived-in in that jittery, jacked, importunate state as to dwarf Halle Berry’s big screen debut as Gator’s fellow crackhead into affected rants of profanity, and Lee also vehemently ram the hellscape of a crackhouse into every viewer’s throat, if that doesn’t dissuade you from shunning the substance abuse, nothing ever will.

referential entries: Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING (1989, 8.3/10); Charles Burnett’s TO SLEEP WITH ANGER (1990, 7.4/10).

看了一个黑人导演Spike Lee的电影《丛林热》，讲的是美国种族歧视的故事，电影不是简单的表现一种美国种族歧视的恶劣环境，而是展示这种被歧视的恶劣环境反过来对人所造成的深入骨髓的毒害。在一种恶劣的环境下，最巨大的伤害可能并不是你在现实中被剥夺了什么，而是那种剥夺给人心灵造成的深深的伤害。而你常常被非常巨大的伤害而不自知。 贫富差距，城里人和乡下人，黑人和白人，身高长相，专制政治，物质追求与精神追求的荒谬对立等等，这些因素都能在一个恶劣的社会环境中给人的心灵造成深深的伤害。被伤害的人可能会变得敏感，多疑，脆弱，易怒，偏激，怨恨，冷漠，自暴自弃或者攻击性很强。 当你处处疑心提防、在暴怒中争取你的权利，并认为你正在捍卫自己的尊严时，事实上你应经被毁了。你深受伤害的心灵离你本要追求的快乐生活越来越远。面对不公，愤怒或者冷嘲是必须的，但这种愤怒应该是一种发自健康的身心的非常理所当然的愤怒或者冷嘲，不存在深重的压抑、憋屈，和冷漠。 我认为一个人在一个恶劣的环境，恶劣的时代，应该让自己变得更硬朗些，更善于思考一些，排开偏见，明辨是非，如此才能尽量减少种种恶劣对自己心灵造成的伤害而保持健康。否则你将可能变成这个恶劣的环境和时代恶劣而悲剧的一部分。