午后的迷惘

玛雅·德伦，称为美国先锋电影的代言人。是她催生了美国前卫电影的产生。她既是创作者、发行者和宣传者，也是一个理论家。先锋和前卫，都有悖于正统的电影。它无法与传统相抗衡。它只是一个稀有的参照。一束微弱的光，从幽深中缓缓而来。

诸多的意象，碎影纷飞。意象成了光影的主导者。在她《午后的迷惘》中显得很突出。午后的烈日，格外灼人。热浪烤焦了女人心，游丝晃动。如影随行的，是可能的陷阱。没有对白，没有完整的故事。彻底颠覆电影的结构，提供人们一个想像的空间。意象成了电影的主宰，也成了电影的灵魂。

《在陆地上》、《为摄影机而做的编缉研究》、《变形时间的仪式》和《夜之眼》等，都无一例外的沉浸于意象的表达中。只有《暴力的冥想》是一个特例，感受到她要借用中国一个传统武师的表演，达到某种舞蹈美的可能。中国武术套路，不管是南拳北腿，太极少林，都有一种观赏美和艺术美。但玛雅·德伦却给此一个永远的定义——“暴力的冥想”。是对武功的延伸之意。这是最终的思想表达。

玛雅·德伦的实验电影，实际上，是对好莱坞庞大工业的反叛。她要完全表达自己。但这注定只是一种歧路，难登大雅之堂。电影本身有着完整的结构，拆解和分离，只能是作者的自我实现，而不能让观众乐见其成。永远只能限定于小圈子把玩观赏。

从这一点上来说，你更欣赏雅克·图尔尼尔、奥尔顿和塞缪尔·富勒这些背叛好莱坞的独立电影人，正是他们用小制作、低成本，实现了电影表达的另一种可能。这些人影响更深远。但世界上，总需要少数离经叛道之人。他们所做的不一定是别人喜欢的，但开创性的探索，却是弥足珍贵的。所以，70年前的玛雅·德伦，仍然会在影迷中有一席位置，有她的意象表达的特殊之处。

2009、7、12

拉片版最详细解读，仅供参考，欢迎讨论。

花是欲望的体现，一直追逐的意象凝炼物。钥匙既是打开心门，打开选择的钥匙，同时也是男性性器的表现，一定程度上象征了男性赋予的权力。所以回过头来看，这个故事显得更加有意思，在男性赋予的权力下进行女性自我意识的觉醒，也为影片最后的结尾埋下了种子。

从影片开场，花被女性的手放置在这个世间，自我拾起，走向房子，远处模糊的男人离去，似乎是男主人、男性离场的意思。

如果说花是寓指男女关系中的纯粹感情，则房子本身或许也可以理解为进入了婚姻、家，女人携带着欲望、感情进入了家。

而当女人掏出钥匙，又丢掉钥匙（注意是主动的丢掉，我并不认为是不小心掉了的行为），女人的手停在花台（注意花台的出现），下楼梯匆忙去捡起钥匙，这里其实通过影子的拍摄更加强调了一点：“我”开始分裂，出现了：本我和自我。本我丢弃钥匙，自我捡起钥匙。

这时候就出现了一个问题：钥匙代表了什么？如果房子指的的是婚姻实体，钥匙便是爱情与婚姻连接起来的介质，而钥匙本身又是代表了一种权利，拥有钥匙的人就拥有了打开房间的能力，拥有看到刀的权利，拥有不断在房间里进行多次选择的基础。

接下来，女人进入在餐桌上发现插在面包上的刀，面包还是代表了“生活”，而刀从面包上掉了这件事就更有意思了，是暗藏在身体中的自我的能动性想要这把刀的体现，但是这时候本我占的主导，并没有拿起刀的能力或者强烈的想法。

楼梯上出现掉落的电话（混乱的无序），女人步上楼梯，被风吹过的窗帘、床头的烟、地上的裙子，一只不知是男女的皮鞋、播放的黑胶唱片机。个人有两种隐约的猜测，一是一种看起来还比较有情调的景象，另一种是不明对象发生关系的事后现场。

随后女人快速扭头，转到了楼下，将花放在了小腹处（性暗示），然后自我疲惫，开始睡觉。 镜头后拉，镜面人带花出现，女子影子先出，追赶她。没有追上，转身踏上屋子前的楼梯，她又看着那一片花台，花台一片荒芜，剩着一些乱草。这个花台在这个时候又出现两个含义：一是根据弗洛伊德的理论而言，这是心灵状态的外化成环境：荒凉，二是我认为这可能就是这朵花生长的地方，而其含义也就更不用多说了，非常明显。

而再一次进入房间时，刀直接横放在了楼梯当中，可以理解为这个想法在“我”中更加强烈了，然后运用了升格效果拍摄女人上楼，步伐轻柔，像步入云端，脸颊拂过黑纱，我认为这是体现她步入了另一个空间，而在这里她又看见了掉落的电话，掀开被子里面藏着刀，她慌忙盖住，将电话归位，即这个时候她还是偏向于一种那时候规矩、道德规范的生活，但刀的出现仍旧体现着她潜意识中的自我意识。

随后她被卷入了混乱，镜头里体现的则是外化出来的内心混乱。她不知所措，而这个时候，通过视角的转换（我个人非常喜欢这个横摇镜头，巧妙、合适地转换视角和时空），这时候通过关掉唱片机、从口中吐出钥匙这个行为，我们可以知道这是超我的角色，即服从道德命令，是良知或内在的道德判断。而这时候，吐出钥匙这个行为在我看来是有些性暗示的倾向，且观察女人的面部表情，还有些睥睨感，这时候她是同钥匙是一体，就像是上帝的使者一般，她是守护者，而她又代表了权力。

此时本我进场，镜面人带花出现，女人上楼左右跌跌撞撞，举步维艰。然后看到镜面人将花放在了床上，镜面人消失后。此时女人在画面各处随意跳动，与前面女人行动不便形成了鲜明对比，暗指了此时她拥有了极大的自由，也可以说获得了意识，从之后女人直视刀这个画面，更加说明了这点，女性的自我意识开始觉醒。

此时又开始重复，而此时吐出钥匙后，钥匙变成了刀。随后本我、自我、超我进行圆桌谈判，本我的强势非常明显。通过他们拿起钥匙放下还是钥匙=选择道德，本我拿起钥匙，放下是刀=选择自我意识的觉醒，这里我个人有些疑惑，对于钥匙的被涂黑、手掌的涂黑的意图不够确定，可能是“黑化”？

带着圆形镜面球的本我，脚踏大地，气势雄伟，迈过万水千山的磨难，走向自我想要取而代之。而这时，男人带花回来，放置好失序的电话，刀放在餐桌，女人跟着男人上楼，来到了床上，男人又将花放在了床上，然后一旁的镜子反射到了男人的面庞，像是揭露了此前梦中的镜面人就是男子的化身。男人抚摸女人，想要发生关系，这时候本我强烈的意识占领，说明可能还是在梦中，耳旁出现了刀，她砸向男人，结果碎了一地镜片，梦境结束。

男人真正回家，路过花台时，用手搭了一下花台的动作，让观众注意到，花台上并不像梦中那么荒凉，生长着好几簇鲜花，而梦里出现的花掉落在一旁，进入房子里，发现女人坐在沙发上，碎了一地的镜片、树枝，女人死去。

简单来看，这似乎是说明了在当时社会上女人的一种困境，在我意识奋起反抗时，看似是解放了自我意识，但却死亡了。实际上远远不仅于此，这也就是我一开始所说的为什么有意识的点，男权、女权本质最终追求的必须是平权，影片里钥匙、刀这两个有权力表象的东西，镜面人的想法，都存在一种相互依存的关系，意识觉醒不是将另一方杀死，而是你要去寻求真正的平衡，男女不是非黑即白，而本我对自我真正追求意识的醒悟仅仅是第一步，影片最后的肉体死亡像是一种自我反省，去审视什么才是所谓的女性自我意识，或者说“女权”，能够正确认识到男女关系之间的牵制制约、合作协同，才能最终走向觉醒。

就像阿莫多瓦早期在接受一个采访的时候，谈到女性主义，谈到女权，认为能接受自我觉醒的女性选择做家庭主妇的决定，这才是明白了什么是女权。

梦境的嵌套和拉康镜像理论的完美应用。结尾里梦中的男人形象被证明亦是女人的镜像投射，打碎镜面人即是打碎自我的他者，同时自己也被男性秩序所扼杀。镜面人是丈夫，是对女人的呼唤不予回应的爱恋对象，也是女人自恋的投影，阳具象化为鲜花和钥匙，女主角午休时将鲜花放在阴部接受诱惑，钥匙掉落表明恋爱中女人甘受支配、以及阉割后的焦虑，女人回家发现台阶插着刀，床边鲜花消失变为刀子暴露男性侵犯的意图，女人行走中前脚落在沙滩后脚踏着草地象征探索自我的艰难，钥匙变成刀，女人要企图反抗拥有自己的菲勒斯，全片无非在焦虑贞操的献出者，模糊到具体，自恋的主体得不到满足，最后死于焦虑本身。 在男权下，女人无法以真正的内发的主观体存在，“自我”只能在他人(镜面）的定义下形成，也就是女性是被菲勒斯情结下的男权所控制的外在环境所定义的，而打破这层定义也相当于否定了现有的自我的存在，也就是迷失了自我的、女人的意义。死在被自己打破的镜中的女人才是象征了迷惘的真正开始，如何才能脱离旧有的男性社会意识形态并得到女性的新含义，是迷惘的最后问题。

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.