午后的迷惘

摘自：游飞. 世界电影理论思潮[M]. 中国广播电视出版社, 2002.

《午后的迷惘》是黛伦最重要的作品，片中黛伦本人扮演情感波动、心智飘忽的主人公，她受到一系列显然是微不足道事件的惊吓，以致产生了偏执和迫害妄想。由于涉及对女性的性吸引力和恐惧的展现，黛伦认为，她的影片"将一个内在世界外化到外在世界一样可以被感知的程度"。黛伦站在玻璃窗后面，双手扶着玻璃，就像羁身于牢笼之中，她没有血色的脸颜流露着脆弱，而略带惊惶的眼神中又透出几分忧郁，《午后的迷惘》这一经典画面成为了美国实验电影的注册商标。影片中，黛伦反复使用了一系列主导动机（包括一个沿花园小径梦幻般行走的影子、一朵鲜花、一把钥匙、一把刀和一支电话听筒，主角试图爬上一段楼梯），这一手法成为十几年后阿伦雷乃《去年在马里昂巴德》使用类似重复主导动机的先驱。黛伦向客观真实发起攻击，而她使用的方法是将刀变形为钥匙、鲜花变形为刀，通过镜头、拍摄角度和慢动作的运用使爬楼梯的动作显得如此艰难和痛苦。黛伦还对贞节、两性和死亡等做出综合性暗示，而观众却不能从哪些复杂交织的主题中剥离出来，从而获得确定和连贯的解释。这些主导动机音乐般而非理性式地交织在一起，将观众卷入一个无法超越的系统化迷宫。这样一来，影片就在《一条安达鲁狗》这样的超现实主义电影和《去年在马里昂巴德》、《假面》和《八部半》这样的梦幻真实之间架起了一座清晰的桥梁。

玛雅•德伦是20世纪40年代美国独立电影的领军人物，她在创作和理论上的创举影响了很多美国实验电影人，她对实验电影的影响甚至被人戏称为“她自己的前卫运动”。（1）她来自于一个乌克兰犹太教家庭，父亲是一名精神病专家，而母亲则是一名艺术家。德伦一家在1922年反犹主义盛行时逃到了美国，并将姓式由原来的凯伦诺夫斯基改为德伦。（2）曾经从事过舞蹈团助理的她对于形式的执念在她的作品中得到了完整的体现。而她1943年自导自演的处女作《午后的迷惘》（Meshes of the Afternoon）则是她的代表作品之一。

这部处女作中包含了对于当时经典好莱坞电影当中传统女性角色的思考和背叛，以及在男性中心位置下女性的反抗和失败的先锋式抽象化表现。《午后的迷惘》中精神分析式的女性主义美学状态下的白日梦甚或是梦魇的集中展示，是这部影片最主要的艺术特色。

以劳拉•穆尔维在《视觉快感和叙事电影》中的观点，一部相对于男权与父权文化具有批判力的影片只能是激进的、毁灭快感的。（3）好莱坞风格(以及所有受其影响的电影)的魔力充其量不过是来自它对视觉快感游刃有余的操纵，这虽然不是唯一的因家，但却是一个重要方面。（4）特别是在德伦活跃的四五十年代，16毫米的发展使得电影不仅仅是大制片厂的，也可以是由艺术家独立创作，这就给了德伦在自己的电影当中反对那些在毫无挑战的情况下把色情编码纳入了主导的父系秩序的语言之中的主流电影。

花 钥匙 刀 镜

在《午后的迷惘》当中，德伦采用了多次重复的手法，展现了恋人之间的爱与背叛，并一场谋杀作为结束，同时在影片中她反复使用一系列主导动机，如一个沿着花园小径梦游般行走的镜面怪人、一把刀、一把钥匙、一朵鲜花等，最后刀变成了钥匙、鲜花变成了刀。在这部电影当中，花象征男性经过修饰和伪装过的阳具，比如在影片中，女主人午憩时将鲜花放在了自己的阴部；而由于钥匙既可开又可锁，故通常与持有者所拥有的监禁和释放的权力相联系，而在基督教艺术中，天堂的钥匙是圣徒被得的主要象征，也是教会的象征。例如在《午后的迷惘》的开头，女主人公先是从地上捡起了一个黑衣人匆匆丢下的鲜花，然后回到了自己的家中拿出钥匙开门，但钥匙掉下了台阶，这样显示了女性权利在男性的诱惑中一种丧失，而这种权利的丧失和争夺在电影当中一以贯穿；刀的意向则非常明显，他是男性费勒斯中心主义的最直白体现，但是从各种表现形式来看，菲勒斯中心主义存在着自相矛盾之处，它依赖于被阉割了的女性形象来赋予其世界以秩序和意义。关于女性的观念是这一体系的关键：正是她的缺乏使得菲勒斯成为象征性的存在．而菲勒斯所指代的则是她弥补缺乏的欲望。（5）所以在影片中，女主人公可以拿起刀，捍卫自我，将镜面人的脸砸碎。 镜面人则代表着一种男性的代表，在拉康的理论中，婴幼儿会在18个月时经历自己的镜面阶段，这个阶段主要是婴幼儿对于自我的认知的建立阶段，同时婴儿照镜子就是一个“在场与缺席的游戏”：镜像是“在场的”，而所指(那个婴儿自身)却是从镜像本身当中“缺席的”（6）这可以直射到在这部电影当中的男性主人公的存在，他几乎是到了最后一段才匆匆露了几面，但是当女主人公拿起刀子想要戳向他时，却是镜面的破碎。 如果以这条线索来看，整部电影的四次重复就有了解释的可能。一开头的拿起花，掏钥匙，进入屋中，发现刀（此时的刀是插在面包上的，及此时男性的费勒斯意识仍是比较隐秘的）到位置上坐下来休息，这些表明了此时女主人公已经受到了引诱，但权利仍在自我的手中。而第二次重复时，镜面人露面了，并且拿走了地上的花，而女主人公回到家里之后，刀就明晃晃地插在了台阶上，这表明此时男性收起了伪装，更为直露地表现了自己的欲望，而德伦此后的一些列表现都非常惊惶。她在窗前看到另一重自我追逐于黑衣人无果之后，从嘴中拿出了钥匙，这表明她开始了自我反思，已经开始自觉地开始维护自己的权利——把它放到最私密处保管。第三次重复中，黑衣人直接拿着花进入了屋内，走上了楼梯，将花朵放在了床边后消失，而这时可以看出，德伦的表情是游移不确定的。她看到的是在熟睡的自己身旁，明晃晃的刀，她并不信任这朵花。并且在最后一次的重复中，钥匙变成了刀，她要进行最直接的反击。而这时的男主人公直接出现在镜头前了，对他的反抗就是将镜面敲破了，好像女性最终得到了胜利。但是，在结尾我们可以看到，男主人公推开门，发现了死在椅子上的德伦，她是被镜面的碎片杀死的，这反映了德伦在拍摄影片时对于女性命运的悲剧性的思考，女性不论怎么样抗争，最终的结局只能是被镜面碎片所代表的菲勒斯中心世界秩序的痼见给扼杀。

动作 肢体 凝望

《午后的迷惘》以默片形式排成的，观众们可以看到女主人公从楼梯上，从轻纱里掠过的曼妙的身姿，但是你听不到声音，因为影片抛弃了语言，代以女性的肢体语言和面部表情动作为主要的叙事对象，主要是想同以类似语言的方式构建的无意识作斗争，这种无意识在语言出现的关键时刻形成，现在仍受制于父系语言（5）德伦曾经提出过诗意实验电影与好莱坞电影在结构上就可以区分，实验电影往往是“垂直地”去挖掘主题，不考虑动作本身，而去研究“动作的超验性内涵”；好莱坞电影则受到了线性原则制约，没有很多时间来研究某种特定的情感的含义。(7) 这样的刻意代替，也是反抗当时主流好莱坞的一种手段。 另外，在三四十年代的好莱坞，梦露，嘉宝，黛德丽这样的女神的脸，成为了男性观看和凝视中心的物质化代替品，而男性却相反，他们身上没有色情观看的任务，主流的男性观众是不喜欢看到同性的身体的，这就阐明了电影表现女性的模式和关于故事世界成规之间的张力。这两个方面都和观看联系在一起：观众直接窥淫癖似地观看供其享受而展示的女性形体；观众迷恋于在自然空间幻觉中其同类的男性形象，并通过这个男性控制占有故事世界中女性(8)这种张力及其他在两极之间的移动就可以构成一个单一的文本。

但是在《午后的迷惘》中，观众能看到很多玛雅德伦的眼睛的特写，甚至有一段，德伦的眼睛成为了一个突起状的金属球一样的延伸物，这显示了一种女性凝望的机制。观众大多数是从女主人公的角度出发，看待发生的一切，而男性及他们的化身（镜面黑衣人）则是被观看的对象。当然，在影片的结局，视角发生了变化，观众和男主人公的视线合为一体，因为此时的玛雅德伦，已经被杀死了，我们只能和男主人公一起，凝视着这一幕。这也是对于女性最终悲剧的一种阐释。 在这里面，德伦的身体虽然也非常曼妙，充满欲望，从其后男主人公登场对她身体的爱抚就可以看出这一点。但是在这里的肢体，已经不仅仅是一种物化肉欲的展示，而是对男性在性方面伪装的一种直白的嘲讽和反抗，我们可以看到，在男主人公抚摸之后的镜头，连接的是德伦丰满的嘴唇的大特写，这个时候是男主人公欲望的主观呈现，但之后，就是德伦拿起刀，奋起反抗，刺向男主人公，打碎了镜子。在精神分析电影理论中，镜子常被当做电影银幕的替代物。这就是德伦用这样一部实验女性主义电影想，像好莱坞幻梦的银幕发起的最后的冲击，但是，我们最终会可悲的发现，这样的反抗结果终究只能是昙花一现，这就是女性之殇。反抗的，永远只是微不足道的个体。 从这部玛雅•德伦自导自演的电影当中，我们看到了精神病患者一样敏感的女主人公的臆想，白日梦一样的重复，摇晃的摄影，舞蹈一样的动作，以及对于传统主流电影的打破和重立。这位“前卫电影之母”把自己对舞蹈、原始宗教、主体想象心理学、超现实主义的兴趣综合运用到影片中去，给我们以物理现象之后蕴涵的哲学意义，使我们的心灵在替换、旋转、重击或消逝中跳动。（9）而她其后的作品，又显示了她不断在精神分析领域里的转变，逐渐从弗洛伊德的学说中过度到荣格的神话宗教的内容，显示了德伦不断前进的探索。 （1）（7）（9）世界女性导演 刘翔，胡志军主编 141页 （2）Maya Deren: The High Priestess of Experimental Cinema Wendy Heslam http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/deren.html （3）电影批评 戴锦华 125页 （4）（5）视觉快感和叙事电影 劳拉•穆尔维 （6）分析传统下的电影研究：叙事、虚构与认知 黎萌 134 （8）珞珈艺术评论 第2辑 彭万荣主编 149页

出生于基辅的梅雅·黛伦是美国先锋电影之母，精神生活至上的她利用影像探求人类（女性）的基本情感和终极命运，被公认为现代美国先锋派实验影片的拓荒者和奠基者。作为梅雅最著名的作品，《午后的迷惘》反映出她探求女性心理和存在性的意愿。我倾向于将这个短片理解为女性之梦。它较为分明地被分成五个段落，即五场梦。

梦1：这里交代了一些贯穿始终的意象。梅雅·黛伦扮演的女人在午后捡起黑衣人留下的鲜花，追逐黑衣人未果，回到家门前。开门时钥匙滑落，几经辗转女人捡起并开门。在此处鲜花象征一种伪饰，或被遮掩的危险（来自男性的）；钥匙或可视为探求女性内心欲望的工具，难以握住的钥匙即代表愿望受到阻碍。走进家门，餐桌上的刀从面包上掉下。刀是男性菲勒斯的极致体现，潜在的危险被暴露无遗。将鲜花搁于身上，在躺椅上睡去。梦中看到窗外奔跑追逐黑衣人的另一个自己。黑衣人拥有一个镜面的脸，象征透过“镜”对自我的凝视。滑入下一段梦。

梦2：重复梦1的动作。来到屋内的女人犹疑地跨过台阶上的刀，轻盈地飘上楼梯，惊诧地在卧室中发现藏于被褥内的刀。看到躺椅上熟睡的自己。凝视窗外追逐黑衣人的另一个自己，从口中（体内）吐出钥匙，表明准备进一步探求内心欲望。

梦3：走进屋内。看到手持鲜花的黑衣人上楼，并将花搁在床上，意指危险的进一步接近。看到躺椅上熟睡的自己。凝视窗外的另一个自己，口中再次吐出钥匙，不同的是这次钥匙变成了刀。这无法不让人想起布努埃尔的《一条安达鲁狗》中书变成枪的画面，而刀和枪无疑都象征男性菲勒斯的危险。刀在女性手中显示出带有强烈攻击性的反抗欲望。

梦4：拿着刀的女人冲入房间，三个不同时间的自我在同一空间内相聚。三个自己分别拿餐桌上的钥匙，钥匙在最后一个自己的手中再次变成刀。拿刀的女人准备刺杀躺椅上熟睡的自己，但转换视角之后突然变成了男人。这个镜头深刻地体现出女性意识到潜在的危险不仅来自男人，也会来自自身的欲望。刀依然作为菲勒斯象征，观看主体转换到男性身上，镜头切入梅雅·黛伦充满欲望的曼妙身姿和丰满嘴唇，这种观看呈现强烈的偷窥意味。之后女人奋起反抗，鲜花变成刀刺向男人的脸，脸化作镜面被打碎。

梦5：男人重复女人走进屋内的一系列动作。捡起鲜花推门进入，发现被破碎镜面杀死的女人。这一段或可解释为现实，但我更倾向于把它也看成梦。

五重梦中，在画面上表明的多重自我之外，黑衣人的意象或许代表另一个自我。除了镜子做成的脸投射自我的欲望，他是鲜花的直接来源，并承载象征菲勒斯的刀。这个意象即是外界（男性）的危险，也是源于女性内心的深刻和隐秘的欲望。而最终女性的死亡，表明梅雅·黛伦对菲勒斯中心社会中女性的一种哀悼。

In chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, John Berger explores how the nude in western art systematically objectified women, and this tradition has been continued by other contemporary media including film. In this paper, I want to focus on Berger’s claim woman constantly surveys herself that “she is almost continually accompanied by her own image”[ Ways of Seeing, John Berger, P46] and connect it to Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon. Meshes of the Afternoon, with its exquisite use of symbolic associations, aligns with Berger’s feminist critique on visual culture by presenting women as self-surveyor and questions the possibility of emancipation in a surreal manner, challenging the male-assumed way of seeing and proposing a radical understanding of the self.

The overall structure of the film can be seen as a surreal mental maze of the woman played by Maya Deren herself. This multi-layered mental maze, with each layer featuring a representation of the woman’s self awareness, is fundamentally driven by her impulsion to survey herself. However, the woman’s consciousness constantly tries to emancipate herself that from this self-surveillance self-reflection arises. In my opinion, the beginning of the woman’s first entrance into the house and the ending where she kills herself are the two layers that actually take place externally in the world of the film; the other three seemingly repetitional layers in between, beginning with a zoom out from a circle-shaped window which signifies the entrance to the woman’s dream world, each represents a state of consciousness of the woman in her dream and an alternate reality. All these layers are structurally connected by the use of symbols, as these symbols repetitively appears throughout the film, forming a complex yet solid gender critic and a radical claim on the self.

Symbolic associations use discrete objects to generate abstract meanings-either meanings already given by a culture or created by the film itself. There are many symbols in Meshes of the afternoon. I will focus on the three most important symbols-the key, the knife and the mirror-to explain in evidence what meaning they convey individually and collectively and connect them to a the topic of self-surveillance in conversation with that of Berger.

The mirror, in my perspective, is the central symbol of the entire film because it really exemplifies the notion of self-surveillance and self-reflection. We often look into the mirror when we want to see our own image. In a broader cultural context, mirror represents a subject’s self awareness, self reflection and the desire to regulate one’s own appearance in accordance to certain social norms and at the same time to maintain a consistent self identity. Deren built upon such common understanding of mirror and transcended it with her adept use of symbols. In the film, the mirror first appears as the face of the cloaked figure, who we later know as the woman’s projection of her husband in her “dream.” When the cloaked figure turns at Deren’s character, she sees no reflection of herself in the mirror-face but only glass and a pure blank. Here, we should be aware that we are actually seeing the image from the woman’s mind. In this sense, the mirror-face does not simply appear contingently as an external being. Instead, the women envisions him with her eyes of the mind. This indicates that she is eager to see her own image in the first place through the mirror. However, she sees no reflections of herself from the mirror-face. Later in the film, when she is looking at the mirror in the bedroom, what she sees is only an ambiguous image of herself that no clear figure can be identified. In contrast, when the man, very likely the woman’s husband, looks into the same mirror later in the film, his reflection is clear and legible. What does this mean?

According to Berger, “the mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman”[ Ways of Seeing, John Berger, P51

] throughout the history of western visual art, in which the moralizing was actually hypocritical since it is men who put mirror in women’s hands and enjoy the pleasure of gazing upon them. Deren embeds her film within that tradition only to criticize it. Deren’s character tries to seek her own image in the mirror of course, but is she doing it out of vanity? I think not. Instead, she is lost existentially and wants to pursue her self-identity by looking into the mirror. The woman’s lack of clear reflection or no reflection at all in the mirror suggests that her self identity is shattered in pieces that she cannot form a consistent and unified narrative of herself. This is an accurate depiction of women “trapped” in domestic spaces and constantly being gazed upon by male and themselves. Though, on the surface, a clear and unified self-identity, as that of the man, seems more determinate and doubtless, it is really this lack of clear self-identity that grants free and open space to interpret oneself. Different from the man who sees himself as who he is and acts according to the social norms, the woman continuously questions herself and their relationships through her mental voyage. I will discuss the last appearance of the mirror together with those of the key and the knife, but now we can agree on that Deren successfully critiques male-centered tradition of mirror in western visual art by cutting off its original function using blank reflections and focusing on the woman’s attempt of self-reflection.

The key and the knife both carries individual meanings developed throughout the film. Normally, a key’s function is to open a door; a knife(a table-knife here in particular)’s function is to cut food into smaller pieces. Both functions are depicted at the beginning of the film: the woman uses the key to open the front door of the house and sees the knife on the bread. It is worth noticing that the key bounces down the stairs and the knife falls off the bread onto the table, both of which evokes the woman’s uneasiness. This indicates that these two items in the film have meanings beyond their regular functions. Metaphorically, the key is a pathway to an answer or a tool to decipher certain meaning and the knife is a tool for violence. The “bouncing down” of the key is an signifier for the woman’s painstaking attempt to form an understanding of herself later in the film; the “falling off” of the knife serves as a prologue for the woman’s final violence to “break free.”

As the key and the knife transform into each other several times in the film, their independent meanings intertwine, forming a synthesized meaning overall. The key and the knife start to appear intensively at the “fourth layer” of the film. As we see the woman sees another self of her trying to catch the cloaked figure, she takes the key out of her month and it turns into the knife. This indicates that the key and knife has become internal signifiers of her consciousness instead of simply external everyday objects and they have a transformative relationship between each other that requires interpretations. After the third alternate version of the woman(I call her woman Omega) enters into the room and puts the knife on the table and it turns into the key immediately, the three of them finally meet. Two of them try to take the key but failed. Woman Omega successfully takes the key and it turns into the knife again with her hands turning black. This is a moment of self realization for the woman as the three versions of herself form a consensus to kill the original self with the knife, as if only by killing the trapped, unrealized version of herself can they(also her) finally be free. The key here represents the attempt to realize oneself, and the answer to that attempt is the knife which itself represents the force of violence to break through constrains by killing oneself. With these two symbols working correspondingly, a message forms: true self-reflection is a form of self-annihilation. Where is this self reflection pointing to? We should bring the mirror back into the conversation in order to answer it.

The mirror represents the attempt to achieve a unified understanding of the self, and it is so far a failed attempt for the woman because there are no reflections in the mirror for her at all. However, the blank also suggests that there is actually no absolute essence of the self that can be clearly reflected as an image. In this sense, a clear reflection of the self in the mirror is actually the real illusion(as with the case of the man). This is why the woman finally decides to break the man’s mirror-face with the knife, as he is objectifying her with his gaze exemplified by the close-up shots of her lips. After she breaks his mirror-face, an open sea representing the vast open world appears. This is a decisive moment: by breaking the mirror with which she was struggling to find her reflections, the woman is forever letting go of her very attempt to achieve a unified self understanding. Since there is no absolute self essence, the very concept structure of the self needs to be get rid of in order to achieve absolute freedom. At the same time, the mirror is also the man’s face. This synthesization of the mirror and the male face indicates that the woman’s self-reflection takes the form of male surveillance in the way that “the surveyor of woman in herself is male.”[ Ways of Seeing, John Berger, P47] By radically breaking the very structure of her own self-conception, the woman is also annihilating the male surveyor in herself. The last scene in the film brings us back to the real world: the woman lies dead on the sofa with fragments of the broken mirror all over her body--the broken mirror literally kills her. The radical self-emancipation in her consciousness comes with the greatest cost--the demise of her physical body. At the end of the day, the inescapable self surveillance of objectification can only be “escaped” spiritually with the annihilation of the body which carries the historicity of the unrealized self.

In conclusion, Deren embeds her film Meshes of the Afternoon within the tradition of western visual art that Berger criticized only to transcends it through gender and philosophical lenses. The adept use of symbolic associations, mainly exemplified by symbols such as the mirror, the key and the knife, altogether forms a radical yet inspiring message: the inescapable male surveyor within ones consciousness can only be transcended with the violent annihilation of the original self. If this reading of the film is solid, then it really exemplifies film’s striking capability of making philosophical and cultural claims through the language of image as a media.