Waiting is the earliest form of aging: Film notes by Gu Xiaobai

Author: Gu Xiaobai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Is life or cinema more cruel? Is life or cinema more exciting? Perhaps you will find the answer in Gu Xiaobai's new work, Waiting is the Premature Aging of a Lifetime: Gu Xiaobai's Film Essays. Xiaobai, who has written columns for media outlets such as Cinema Express, Film World, Global Times in the 21st Century, Information Times, Flowers, RuiLi, NetEase Entertainment Channel, and Sina Culture Channel, has carefully collected his recent writings on film and compiled them into this book, Waiting is the Premature Aging of a Lifetime.
In my experience, film criticism is a very academic field. Thinking back to when we just graduated from film school in the early 1980s, film played a significant role in the New Cultural Movement in China (I don’t know if I can use such a term to describe the cultural phenomenon of that period). Terms like "new film language," "new wave," and "structuralism" were everywhere, and the discourse authorities were all scholars with a very academic and noble atmosphere, which made us feel quite distinguished, as if we were in an art temple. Later, around the mid-1990s, around 1995 and 1996, these masters suddenly stopped participating and quickly disappeared from the scene. After they abandoned us, we felt a sense of loneliness. Cultural criticism, which had been guiding the historical process of various arts, left a void that truly made us anxious. I think one of the main reasons they stopped was the arrival of the post-industrial era, where the concept of consumption dominated, and culture could also become a product entering the market. When they became as freely selectable as choosing a piece of clothing on a supermarket shelf, the sacred status, ritualistic elegance, and superiority of art in the upper echelons were completely shattered.
Over these ten years, with such changes, no one has really been idle. The positions abandoned by the masters have naturally been taken over by others. Due to the popularization, convenience, and freedom of commercialization, along with the inherent charm of cultural and artistic products, a new generation of professionals who transitioned from fans to the film industry has emerged. These individuals, who came from the consumer base, might be critics, directors, or screenwriters. I think their background alone would make their predecessors’ noses turn up in disdain. Quentin Tarantino, a pioneering American director, is a very typical example. His "lowly" background made him suffer humiliation when he entered the industry, but it wasn’t until 1993, when his film Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, that he finally gained recognition and marked the arrival of a new era in cinema. The French are incredibly arrogant, always considering themselves the citizens of a cultural powerhouse with a hegemonic attitude, holding the golden key to the art temple. So, Quentin’s win was a huge surprise even to him, and he still can’t forget that moment when he served as the president of the Cannes jury this year. If the times hadn’t changed, there was no way to explain this. Many things are no longer just dreams.
DV has moved from households to professional use, and television has evolved from standard definition to high definition. The era of high-definition broadcasts is about to arrive, with digital signal color reproduction becoming increasingly close to film. What else is impossible to achieve? There’s one phenomenon I hadn’t paid enough attention to until I learned about it, and I was quite surprised. It turns out that film studios had their own publications and magazines, but at some point, they were outsourced to outsiders and transformed, becoming completely different from the past. At first, I scoffed at them, thinking they weren’t professional enough. For example, Cinema Express, Film World, and New Cinema—I had long considered them mere paper extensions of cultural commodities, like guides to pirated DVDs. But then, when I saw a book similar to a reference work titled Film 2002 and others like Screaming for Hitchcock and Watching Through the Rear Window at a bookstore, I realized they were no longer just the film product guides I had imagined. Their value, comprehensiveness, and professionalism made me take them seriously.
Online platforms like "Watching Through the Rear Window" have also become representatives of the new generation of film critics. At this time, Xiaobai, who was already well-known among new critics, showed me his manuscript. He was very unassuming, discussing film with a very personal tone, almost like a fan. It was like a diary, a post-screening reflection, or a late-night chat. I could also sense the same attitude in the forum "Watching Through the Rear Window" he once moderated and its selected books. Xiaobai’s sharpness and keenness were also quite casual, like his lifestyle, without any authoritative stance. This made me look at him in a new light.
There was another reason. At the time, he was working on a script with me. I really liked the state of the characters he wrote in the script—typical "post-industrial" humans, and very typical of the urban petite bourgeoisie in China. The more I interacted with him, the more I became confused about his identity. I asked him many questions—what exactly is your major? He replied that he worked at a digital company, which was probably a state-owned enterprise. Based on my understanding of society, that was already quite off-kilter.
—Then why did you start writing scripts again? And why are you writing reviews again?
He answered, "It started online,,,, I really don’t understand, and I don’t want to ask further." But does it really matter?
Through Xiaobai, I gained a more concrete understanding of many things. The way they see cinema is very different from ours. They consume it first and foremost spiritually. Whether they admire, worship, savor, or critique it, it’s completely like treating it as a material—a kind of fetishistic tendency, while we pursue it as an ideal. Completely detached from the humanistic environment, we have completely lost our ability to judge, and the gap between their dialogue and ours is so vast.
It can be said that Xiaobai became my "rear window." Through him, I saw the growth of the new generation and their spirit.
—Li Shaohong (Foreword)