克莱尔的相机

〈Claire's Camera〉译为《克莱尔的相机》中学老师Claire带着相机进入了自己不熟悉的文化空间，机缘巧合她看见了导演Wansoo光环后畏缩的内心，制片人Yanghye眉宇间的狡黠，以及为他们工作又被迫离开的Manhee掖着的一些孤独。Claire透过她的相机看见的一切既远又近，仿佛比这三个人本身见到的彼此都更加亲密。

在遇到Claire之前，制片人Yanghye出于私心希望Manhee离开这个团队，特别是远离导演。不愿丢掉体面的Yanghye并不亮明自己与导演之间的关系，她围绕着Manhee和导演一种不存在又可能会产生的关系，顾左右而言他，反复与Manhee讲述了她如何在意人的率直，最终留下一个“难道我真的不率直么”的疑问给Manhee。

而导演Wansoo非常清楚身份带给自己的社会价值，他总是带着一种对Manhee多余的审视，也是一种期望，可能他更期望Manhee很多不经意的行为是看中他身后的价值所做出的。但有点滑稽的是，导演又害怕面对如果真的如他期望那样，和着制片人，一切便成了非常难处理的一个又一个人的关系，导演心中的难堪被转换成了愤怒，而Manhee又成了唯一的承受者。

Manhee被迫成为了这段带有多重属性的人际关系的局外人，这一切的发展与结局离不开他们所处社会文化的影响。而Claire怀揣着对韩国文化的一份好奇，看见了那个被暂时被排除在这份文化，游离的Manhee，也许也正是Claire这份有距离的视角里产生了接纳，看见了深刻。

clit2014, jan 2, 晚交了20天，我再也不想上gender studies了我要吐了，写这篇paper不知道经历了多少mental breakdown

Women’s Experience Matters: Redefining Feminist Cinema through Claire’s Camera

As Laura Mulvey points out in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, traditional narrative cinema largely relies upon the practice of a gendered “gaze”, specifically, male’s unconscious objectification of female as erotic spectacle from which visual pleasure is derived. Her account draws attention to the prevailing feminist-unfriendly phenomena in contemporary cinema, one that resides in the language of patriarchy, privileging man’s experience while making woman the passive object deprived of autonomy. Many feminist filmmakers and theorists including Mulvey herself urge a radical strategy that dismantles patriarchal practice and frees woman from the state of being suppressed by the male-centered cinematic language.To conceptualize a mode of cinema that speakswoman’s language, or authentic feminist cinema, this essay interrogates the validity of Mulvey’s destruction approach in pursuing a feminist aesthetic. By making reference to Hong Sang-soo’s film, Claire’s Camera, I argue that feminist cinema needs to be redefined by neither the immediate rejection of gender hierarchy nor the postmodern notion of fluidity, but by perspectives that transcend the gendered metanarrative of subject vs. object, and that primarily represent and serve woman’s experience on both sides of the Camera.

Earlier waves of feminism strived to call attention to, if not, eliminate the unbalanced power relation between men and women in the society, namely the dichotomy between domination and submission, superiority and inferiority, and self and other (Lauretis 115). Feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir radically interrogated women’s rights in the political arena as well as women’s relative position to men in the society at large. However, the approaches of the earlier waves cannot prove themselves sufficient in pursuit of a female autonomy, owing to the fact that they are constantly caught in the power-oriented metalanguage which inherently privileges one over another. While it is argued that the objectification of the “second sex” is oppressive in nature, for example, the assertion already marks the subject-object dynamics between men and women by default. It fails to propose non-power based gender narratives, while obliquely acknowledging that the language spoken in this context is inevitably characterized by phallocentric symbols, ones that prioritize self over other, subject over object, male over female. In thisregard, rather than rendering a perspective that exposes and dismantles patriarchy, the outcome of earlier feminist approaches inclines towards “replicating male ideology” (Mackinnon 59), reifying the omnipresence of the patriarchal language and reproducing the effects of patriarchy.

A similar notion applies to defining feminist cinema. In terms of visual representation, feminist idealists encourage women to present their bodily spectacles, inviting interpretations free of erotic objectification. Despite the favorable receptions from the sex-positive side of the discourse, it is indiscernible as to whether these attempts truly free women from the dome of sex-negativism or reinforce the effect of the patriarchal language even more. This polarized debate, I believe, is due to the fact that the discourse is held captive by the language of patriarchy too powerful for one to extricate from, and that any rebellious gesture would appear to be an insufficient, passive rejection of the predominant ideology. To illustrate this point, Lauretis notes that Mulvey’s and other avant-garde filmmakers’ conceptualization of women’s cinema often associates with the prefix of “de-” with regards to “the destruction… of the very thing to be represented, …the deaestheticization of the female body, the desexualization of violence, the deoedipalization of narrative, and so forth” (175). The “de-” act does not necessarily configure a new set of attributes for feminist representation, but merely displays a negative reaction to a preexisting entity. It is important to be skeptical of its effectiveness in defining feminist cinema, as it implies certain extent of negotiation instead of spot-on confrontation with the previous value. A destructive feminist cinema can never provide a distinctive set of aesthetic attributes without having to seek to problematize and obscure the reality of a patriarchal cinema. In that regard, it is passive, dependent and depressed. More importantly, the question – how the destruction of visual and narrative pleasure immediately benefits women within the narrative and directly addresses female spectators – remains unanswered.

TakingClaire’s Cameraas an example, the film destructs the notion of a gendered visual pleasure by presenting the camera as a reinvented gazing apparatus, one that differs from the gendered gaze, and instead brings novel perception into being. Normally, when characters are being photographed, mainstream filmmakers tend to introduce a viewpoint in alignment with the photographer’s position, enabling spectator’s identification; that is, the shot usually shifts to a first-person perspective so that spectators identify with the photographer gazing at the object who is in front of the camera. Claire’s Camera, however, abandons this first-person perspective while generating new meanings of the gaze. Claire ambiguously explains to So and Yanghye the abstract idea that taking photographs of people changes the photographer’s perception of the photographed object, and that the object is not the same person before their photograph was taken. The spectacle, although objectifiable in nature, is not so passive as being the object constructed upon, but rather constructs new signification upon the subject. The notion of the gaze is therefore re-presented with alternative insights.

That being said, as I argued earlier, the destructive approach is not so sufficient an attempt at defining feminist cinema, because the way it functions nevertheless indulges feminist ideology in the role of passivity, deprived of autonomy and always a discourse dependent on and relative to the prepotency of patriarchy. In the conversation scene between So and Manhee, So, who is almost the age of Manhee’s father, criticizes her for wearing revealing shorts and heavy makeup. In a typically phallocentric manner, he insists that she has insulted her beautiful face and soul by self-sexualizing and turning into men’s erotic object. Despite the fact that the preceding scenes have no intention to eroticize the female body or sexualize her acts such that the visual pleasure is deliberately unfulfilled and almost completely excluded from the diegesis, So inevitably finds Manhee’s physical features provocative and without a second thought, naturally assumes that her bodily spectacle primarily serves man’s interest. This scene demonstrates that regardless of feminists’ radical destruction of visual pleasure, practitioners of patriarchal beliefs will not be affected at all; if any, the femininity enunciation only intensifies the social effects of patriarchy. The conversation between the two characters embodies the self-reflexive style of Hong Sang-soo’s filmmaking, in a sense that it fosters debates within the theoretical framework upon which it is constructed, and constantly counters itself in search of a deeper meaning, contemplating questions such as do we believe in what we practice, whether it is patriarchy or its opposite? And is anti-patriarchy feminism determined enough to prove itself a destructive force against patriarchy rather than a sub-deviant of a predominant ideology? The scene proves the drawback of a destructive strategy, that the way it operates nonetheless subscribes to a patriarchal manner, and that in order to escape the secondary position with respect to the phallocentric subject, more needs to be done other than problematizing the subject.

To supplement the insufficiency of destruction, postmodern feminists such as Judith Butler proposes theoretical alternative to approach the discourse. Butler argues that gender is performative and fluid instead of a set of essential attributes. The notion of performativity indeed precludes the social effects of essentialism by introducing the idea of an identity continuum into gender politics, in ways that empower the socially perceived non-normative. On top of that, Butler believes that the categorization of sex “maintain[s] reproductive sexuality as a compulsory order”, and that the category of woman is an exclusive and oppressive “material violence” (17). Acknowledging the harms that essentialist perception of gender and sexuality entails, Butler bluntly negates the very categorization of woman. This radical negation, however, evades the reality that our whole understanding of the human race is based on gender categories, despite the corresponding inequalities generated from the instinctual categorization. In fact, it is when women as a collective community have come to the realization that the female gender is socially suppressed, that they start to strive for equality through the apparatus of feminism. Butler’s rejection of the gender categorization withdraws the sense of collectivism in the feminist community, which is “an important source of unity” for the marginalized (Digeser 668). Moreover, it deprives the feminist cinema of the necessity of delineating an authentic female representation, because within the notion of performativity there is no such thing as a fixed set of female representations but only distinctive individuals that conform to gender fluidity. Since identifying with a certain form of representation means to live up to a socially perceived norm from which one deviates, a performative cinema does not encourage spectator’s identification. The failed identification will not only drastically shift the spectator’s self-understanding but also cause more identity crises. Therefore, performativity is too ideal a theoretical concept to have actual real-life applications.

Whether it is her body or her social function, woman has become the commodity of patriarchy. As Lauretis puts it, “she is the economic machine that reproduces the human species, and she is the Mother, an equivalent more universal than money, the most abstract measure ever invented by patriarchal ideology” (158). Woman’s experience has been portrayed in the cinematic realm nothing more than being the (m)other and the provocative body. Historical debates have proved that articulating the problematic tendencies within gender differences only results in skepticism rather than new solutions. Thus, in order to negotiate a feminist cinema, filmmakers need to abandon the patriarchal meta-language completely, and reconstruct new texts that represent and treasure woman’s experience more than just being the other, that “[address] its spectator as a woman, regardless of the gender of the viewers” (Lauretis 161).

Similarly, what needs to be done in feminist cinema is more than just interrogating the gender difference between woman and man, but interpreting such difference in unconventional ways that liberate women from being compared to men and invite them to possibilities of having narratives dedicated to themselves. One of the ways, Lauretis suggests, is to regard woman as the site of differences (168). This signifies that the cinema needs to stop generalizing woman’s role based on her universal functions; rather, it needs to articulate her unique features, what makes her herself but not other women, from the way she looks to the trivial details of her daily life. In Claire’s Camera, the function of the camera conveniently transcends the diegetic space. In the narrative, it demarcatesthe “site of differences”, that is, how someone changes right after their photograph is taken, as well as how Manhee is presented differently each of the three times being photographed. The camera also magnifies her experience as a woman for spectator’s identification, mundane as it could be. In the last scene, the camera smoothly tracks Manhee organizing her belongings, packing box after box, casually talking to a colleague passing by, and so forth. Long takes like this fulfill what Lauretis would call “the ‘pre-aesthetic’ [that] isaestheticrather than aestheticized” in feminist cinema (159). Without commodifying or fetishizing woman and her acts, the film authentically represents a woman’s vision, her perception, her routines, and all the insignificant daily events which female spectators can immediately relate to. When a film no longer solely portrays woman as the “economic machine” that labors, entices men, and commits to social roles, it has confidently overwritten the patriarchal narrative with a female language. It fully addresses its spectator as a woman, appreciating and celebrating the female sex, not for what she does as a woman but for what she experiences.

In conclusion, the essay first challenges the destructive approach in feminist cinema regarding its sufficiency in pursuit of woman’s autonomy and its indestructible destiny to fall back into patriarchy. The essay then argues that the rejection of gender categorization in performativity theory frustrates the mission of defining a female representation. Hong Sang-soo’s self-reflexive film, Claire’s Camera, offers an apparatus to delve into the drawbacks of destructive feminist cinema and simultaneously renders a new feminist code, abandoning the patriarchal metanarrative and constructing a new narrative that truly prioritizes woman’s experience.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Contingent Foundations: Feminist and the Questions of ‘Postmodernism.’”Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, Routledge, 1992, pp. 3–21.

Digeser, Peter. “Performativity Trouble: Postmodern Feminism and Essential Subjects.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, 1994, pp. 655-673.

Lauretis, Teresa de. “Aesthetic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women's Cinema.”New German Critique, no. 34, 1985, pp. 154–175.

Lauretis, Teresa de. “Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness.”Feminist Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 1990, pp. 115–150.

Mackinnon, Catherine A. “Desire and Power.”Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 46–62.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”The Norton Anthology and Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B Leitch, W. W. Norton, 2001, pp. 2181–2192.

哈哈哈，我要爱死了老洪这个推拉摇移的镜头了，多么不屑，多么随意，多么暧昧，多么犹豫徘徊胆怯摇摆无立场。老洪真是个艺术家。

敏敏说英语太好听了，hahaha，像个初高中学习很好又很乖巧的小姑娘。如果把镜头推到腰肢或者胸腹，停一秒，我感觉能看到一个高中低年级女生的“抽条感”。

看老洪的电影，看着看着就笑了。是看到某个地方，会心一笑。哈哈哈，太可爱了，又太尴尬了。有种低落的淘气和自恋。用我一片文章的话就是“不屈服的温柔狰狞”。不过老洪还不算狰狞，我觉得他年轻的时候一定“狰狞”过。

这个电影拍的真的好随意啊，不是老洪最好的电影。是“发行商写字楼味道”的老洪。不是“海味”的老洪，不是“艺术家味”的老洪，更不是“烧酒瓶味”的老洪。即便这部电影里这些元素都出现了，但这电影真的很一般，在老洪所有的电影里。

我为什么讨厌婚宴，一个桌子上总有海参和鲍鱼，甚至一个盘子里。海参和鲍鱼能顿一起吗？好像也能，但这个一百加一百小于一的事情，我很讨厌。以后千万不要把敏敏和于佩尔放一起了，即便佩姨是我们老于家的人，即便是一个天才导演，但真的做不出等于二百的东西来，更别说要出现事半功倍的效果了。

老洪真是爱拍漂亮女孩子抽烟啊。能把抽烟的女孩子拍的如此不做作，如此自然，真的好会选角色啊。

我爱老洪。老洪的电影是我的顾影自怜。

故事发展像是解迷的过程，克莱尔的相机把人物都联系起来，所有人扁平化地排列在照片里，然后展开。很多解构式的影评可以从电影的细节挖掘，相机、大狗狗、女主穿热裤、将衣服随意剪开都代表着什么，已有众多有深度的评价了。

相比《独自在夜晚的海边》侧重描写女主的心境变化，我觉得这出戏更聚焦概念表达。比如如何改变已经发生的事物呢，只能再仔细地看一次；男性凝视是怎样无理的呢；老板的嫉妒是什么样的呢。可能太注重冷眼旁观的叙事态度，感觉每一个演员在里面的个人魅力都没有得到充分发挥。

于佩尔和金敏喜的阵容，反而让这部电影的平庸变成了糟糕，不过想到片场才一个小时也就稍微能够理解它的平庸。一个小时的时长就表明了它并不着重于叙述一个故事，镜头频繁的转换和剪辑的琐碎在我看来，更像是一次又一次突然萌发的心情，正如影片当中克莱尔在诉说自己的敏感时提到，照片的当下，这个人在此瞬间和此一时的不同。变幻莫测的心情，和姑且能看做灵感涌现的狂躁，拼凑在一起，就是为了成全导演的个人的妄想。

全片，金小姐美的无以复加，这种滤镜下的美通过精致的角度和看似随意的风情呈现出来，以及口音浓重的英语口音当中的俏皮，让万熙这个人物越发显得飘忽不定，这种飘忽吸引了中年男性，这种飘忽又让中年男性恐惧，所以电影当中才会出现导演对万熙穿的热裤，指责为“短裙”的一番说教，这种说教当中是一夜情偶发下的占有欲，也是对神秘生物忌惮、无所适从下的穷横。尤其在不确定的当下，这种穷横有了自我安慰的借口。所以在被告知有男朋友前，导演对万熙念念不忘，而后呢，开除了万熙的老板又重新聘用了她。

至于于阿姨，抱歉的是，全片只要她和金小姐一起出现，屏幕就溢出一阵百合香气。于阿姨是真的受，于阿姨也是真的，起码在剧中我完全忘了这个有些神叨叨，有些艺术家的女性，是于佩尔。

最后，希望洪尚秀导演再也不要故作聪明的想拍出心中缪斯女神的美了，白白糟践了金小姐。

《克莱尔的相机》邀请了两个重量级演员：一个韩国大美女金敏喜，一个法国国宝级演员于佩尔，作为陪衬，讲述了一个极具现实意义的故事：导演怎么去寻找灵感？是否需要为艺术献身？献身后的羞耻感怎么破？

不过这个导演非常幸运，周围有个从生活和情感上都给予无微不至照顾的制片人。导演为了艺术献身，她自然应该为导演扫平障碍，哪怕是一丁点的心理阴影。缪斯重要么？重要，但为了导演的未来，缪斯也可以成为随意牺牲的陪葬品。

于是，我们曾经腹黑、心计深沉大《小姐》金敏喜诱受，成功的变成了被随意牺牲的傻白甜缪斯。而且本片导演打破电影常规，用了几乎超越纪录片的超现实主义模式，采用家庭DV的拍摄手法，以毫不了解情况的外人——客观第三者的视角来展示这个复杂而深沉的主题。

几位主角的演技自是无可挑剔，因为作为客观第三者视角，我们大部分时间其实根本也看不到演员的表情，自是无可挑剔也无法挑剔的。

只有大师级导演才会成就这么先锋试验性的电影：完全打破一切电影镜头语言的常规要求，长时间两人对话的固定镜头；所有情节都是靠对话推进；时间顺序、逻辑顺序乱而不杂；风景优美的电影胜地戛纳，完全拍出了陈旧腐败、藏污纳垢的衰败感……我们应该为导演的大胆突破和对艺术的讽刺而喝彩！

整部影片69分钟，我感觉其中有20%是镜头的起幅和落幅，还有50%的尬聊。

不知道有没有导演解读，但是就说说自己的理解吧。故事还算明了，导演和漂亮女制片员工发生一夜情，导演的正牌女友又恰好是员工的制片老板，于是老板决定在戛纳参展的时候和员工摊牌让她滚蛋。但没想到导演其实对制片已然没有激情，也相继和女制片摊牌。

整个故事似乎并没有克莱尔啥事情，这个主角究竟是干嘛的呢？其实我觉得她就像一个用相机记录并收集各色人群经历和感情的精灵。她的存在是向观众更好地展现故事的细节，或者说强行推动故事情节的发展。

影片看到一半的时候，我就想到貌似以前听说过一个故事，好像是一个收废品的，高价收购各种废品，一个孩子想把自己小时候的东西全卖了，但是不解这些东西有什么用，收废品的说，这里面包含着人们的回忆啊，我最喜欢了。（具体啥故事我记得了，好像是类似的，如果谁也听过这样大概的，请告诉我）

克莱尔其实就让我联想到了这么一个角色，一个收集人们的故事的精灵。为什么说是精灵呢，有几个情节让人觉得她很会让别人信服于她。比如在餐厅的时候，导演问她为啥照相，她说这一秒的你和下一秒的你已然不同了，我想记录下来（这不是形而上学吗？）刚开始导演并不信服，她让他和她对视，后来竟然也把导演说的神神叨叨的，后来和制片摊牌的时候也竟然说到以前的时候和现在的时候不一样。还有一次是，克莱尔跟着万熙去吃韩国料理的时候，在楼下硬是也让万熙觉得壁画很奇怪。（当然都也可能是出于礼貌的认同）

不仅如此，整部片子最大最大令观众迷惑的地方其实就是，为什么克莱尔明明在之前见过万熙，后来在海边第三次（或者第二次）见面的时候，却好像之前没见过似的；克莱尔明明见过了导演和制片，后来和万熙聊天的时候却假装啥都不知道呢？这就是我认为可以解释为何她是精灵的原因，她需要别人释放的经历或者感情，自己才可以用相机记录。

其实还有几个小的细节，比如克莱尔和导演在咖啡厅说她是法国人，刚到没几天，可是有一个镜头是她进入了沙滩旁的桥洞里。

第二个是，万熙讲自己也会作曲，后来克莱尔说自己是个音乐老师；如果克莱尔真的是个音乐老师，那她听到万熙说她有时会作曲的时候，正常的回答应该会提及自己是音乐老师的身份吧；但是她只字不提。

其实整部片子就是克莱尔用各种谎言来引出导演、制片和员工之间的混乱故事。

甚至看到这种纪录片式的长镜头和推拉镜头，我还在想“克莱尔的相机”其实并不光是她手里的相机，还有这个正在拍摄的相机。

总之，处处透露着奇怪的诡异，这种奇幻的色彩不光是叙事时间线的混乱和尴尬的台词，还有前后处处解释不通的矛盾。至于克莱尔这个角色也是很让人迷惑。有点炫技的成分，没有表演，没有台词，感觉就是一集伦理电视剧的剧情，20分钟就能讲完的故事非要拖进69分钟里。当然如果有导演解读那最好了。

ps.看到有的影评讲可能是梦，是还没有发生的事情，这其实也能解释得通。

pps.金敏喜长得太像我的一个同学，看着看着就出戏。