By Haoran Xia
Published on: NOWNESS China
March 5, 2021
As early as 1882, the American writer F. Anstey proposed this idea in his novel Vice Versa. In the story, the protagonist Paul switches bodies with his school-averse son Dick. Paul returns to the familiar world of campus life, while Dick finally enters the adult life he has long yearned for. This whimsical and surreal premise was carried forward in later works: whether between spouses, or between mothers and daughters, most body-swap stories revolve around perspective-taking and mutual understanding within relationships.
By the 1980s, Hollywood had entered its golden age. Traditional genres - romantic melodramas, Western epics, suspense thrillers - seemed largely exhausted by both filmmakers and audiences. As a result, the body-swap narrative, with its built-in reversals, box-office appeal, and emotional payoff, was brought back into the spotlight. The 1979 film Freaky Friday (later remade in 1995 and 2003) became a defining example of the genre: a single mother and her teenage daughter, seemingly destined to clash, switch bodies after a heated argument, triggering a chain of chaotic and comedic events.
Beyond dramatic conflict, body-swap stories also test an actor’s craft. Special effects often offer little help; the transformation must be conveyed almost entirely through performance.
In the 1997 science-fiction film Gattaca, genetic screening governs every aspect of society. Vincent, played by Ethan Hawke, is a “defective” man born with genetic flaws. By exchanging identities with Jerome, a genetically “perfect” individual portrayed by Jude Law, he manages to pursue his dream of space travel. Throughout the film, no technical alterations are used; instead, both actors are given room to express, through subtle shifts, the helplessness and despair produced by social Darwinism.
Yet even this cannot fully explain the popularity - perhaps even the overuse—of the body-swap trope. In the film The Change-Up, the two protagonists share the same gender and age. One is a career-driven man with professional success and a stable family; the other is unemployed, unattached, and determined never to grow up. Each grows weary of his own life and longs for the other’s. But once the swap actually occurs, discomfort and absurdity quickly overtake their daily routines, forcing both men to reexamine everything they once took for granted.
Perhaps we are not so different from Dave and Mitch. Humanity’s instinct to “want something better” keeps us constantly watching the lives of others, dazzled on the surface, yet inwardly conflicted. Who is better? What suits me? What do I truly want?
In Mad Men, Don Draper once says during a trip to California: “We want too much, so we’re never satisfied. And after we finally get what we want, we miss what we once had so we’re easily broken.” Don himself is a deeply pessimistic figure who evades his true identity and longs to become someone else. He believes that living inside another person’s shell might allow him to escape the disasters he created, to forget his flaws. What propels this escape is desire itself.
Desire, as one of humanity’s animal instincts, pushes us - amid the wreckage of reality - to search endlessly for the next possible hope. Freud argued in his earliest psychoanalytic theories that human behavior is largely driven by desire.
A baby wants a toy because desire tells him it equals happiness; an adult wants more wealth because desire insists that money means security and status. Desire functions like an enormous compass, pointing us toward a seemingly clear and safe direction within a fractured world. In contemporary life, however, that direction often becomes a figure both distant and close at hand: “that person.”
With the rise of social media, human lives have gradually been flattened into streams of information, spreading across networks to every corner of the world. On WeChat Moments, “that person” posts nine photos per update and appears to live an almost flawless life. On Weibo, “that person” becomes an influencer overnight, with repost numbers rivaling the population of an Eastern European country.
On Instagram, that person’s body seems sculpted, strolling through Paris streets or sipping champagne in a helicopter above New York. Like Chen Xiaomeng in Endgame, who is tempted by sudden fortune, we in real life are hijacked by incomplete information and bought over by selective perfection. And so we begin wanting to become the version of “that person” we imagine.
Beyond the manipulation of desire, this wanting also stems from nostalgia and dissatisfaction with the present. The word “nostalgia” comes from Greek, originally meaning “the pain of an old wound.” Though time may heal it, the ache lingers deep in memory. Dissatisfaction, meanwhile, emerges from life’s minutiae: an unwashed kitchen sink in the morning, an unexpected rainstorm, a phone forgotten to charge. These minor irritations accumulate, eventually forming a persistent negativity - a pair of cool-toned glasses through which we view the world. They rob us of optimism and quietly supply us with endless hypothetical thoughts: “If only it were like that.”
In Big, twelve-year-old Josh is short, ordinary-looking, and unable to pursue the girl he likes. He inserts a quarter into an arcade machine and wishes to become an adult overnight. The wish comes true. As a grown man, Josh thrives - career, romance, and freedom. But as pressure builds, the adult Josh grows desperate to return to being twelve, to recover that innocence and ease.
Children and adults, both products of natural law, remain locked in a silent rivalry - much like ourselves and “that person.” We envy one another, long for one another, and when the exchange truly happens, end up sympathizing with each other instead. Children want to grow up so they can escape school and gain independence; adults want to become children so they can pause, simplify, and lay down the weight of responsibility.
In cognitive psychology, the concept of social cognition suggests that within highly interactive societies, we better understand our own value by viewing ourselves through others’ perspectives - their identities, genders, and social positions. Humans are advanced creatures endowed with empathy. We help friends in hardship; after lovers quarrel, we reflect from the other’s point of view, asking what we did wrong.
In Mad Men, when Betty discovers Don’s true identity and decides to leave him, Don begs desperately. Betty, nearly broken, asks a devastating question: “If you were me, would you love you?” This everyday act of perspective-shifting is empathy itself: a psychological practice that helps us understand others and face the world. Through it, we step outside our habitual thinking, enter unfamiliar mental frameworks, and arrive at more objective answers to the same problem.
At the end of these stories, once the characters return to their original bodies or identities, they often feel an immense sense of release, as though soaking in warm water. Body-swapping may appear to be a reset button for life, full of novelty and promise, yet behind that reset lies a second construction from nothing. A so-called second life is still built from countless unknowns. We cannot guarantee that the outcome will be better, nor that it will satisfy our desires. The only certainty is: after the exchange, we become more aware of our own worth and the preciousness of the present. The self we criticize may seem full of shortcomings, but reflected through another’s eyes, there is always something worth keeping.
“Humans and animals follow the same logic - why insist on six realms of reincarnation?” Mo Yan writes in Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. In the novel, the protagonist Ximen Nao dies unjustly and is reborn successively as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, and finally a child. Across lifetimes, he remains busy being born, busy dying, busy experiencing history through different bodies. In the end, he becomes a mere observer. And perhaps that is the ultimate question the novel leaves us with: does the identity through which we live really matter that much?
作者：夏浩然
发表于：NOWNESS现在
二零二一 三月五日
早在1882年，美国作家F·安斯蒂就在小说《反之亦然》中提出了这个概念。男主角保罗和厌学的儿子迪克互换身体，他回到了熟悉的校园时光，而迪克则开始了自己向往已久的成年生活。这个天马行空、超现实的设定在随后的一些故事中延续下来，无论是夫妻双方互换，还是母亲和女儿，大多讲的是关系中的换位思考和相互理解。 到了20世纪八十年代，好莱坞进入黄金时期，以往的浪漫爱情片、西部拓荒片，悬疑惊悚片等等似乎已被电影人和观众消遣殆尽。于是，“互换身体”这个有反转、能带动票房，还能满足观众内心需求的题材再度被提上日程。
1979年的《怪诞星期五》（后来分别在1995年和2003年重新翻拍）就是当时这一类型的标杆——单身母亲和青春期女儿，仿佛天生不对付，两人在一次争吵过后身体对换，引发了一连串啼笑皆非的故事。 抛开戏剧冲突，“互换身体”对演员的表演功底也是一种挑战。很多时候特效帮不上忙，只能靠演员自身来完成互换前后的角色转变。
在1997年的科幻片《千钧一发》中，基因筛选是人类社会的第一法则。伊桑·霍克饰演的文森特就是一个有基因缺陷的“病人”，他通过和裘德·洛扮演的“正常人”杰罗姆身份对调，实现了太空旅行的梦想。电影从头至尾没有进行任何技术调整，而是给两位演员空间自由发挥，让他们自然流露出在社会达尔文法则前的无奈和绝望； 但这些似乎还不足以解释“互换身体”梗的流行，甚至是滥用。在豆瓣评分6.7的电影《两男变错身》中，两位主角性别、年龄都相同，区别在于一个是事业成功、家庭幸福的工作狂，另一个是无业、无稳定伴侣且不打算长大的浪荡子。两人都对自己现有的生活感到厌倦，渴望拥有对方的人生。然而真的互换后，不适和荒谬迅速占据了他们的生活，也让他们反思起自己过往获得的一切。 或许我们就像《两男变错身》里的戴维和米奇，人类“想要更好”的思维和欲望让我们总是观望着他人的生活，眼花缭乱的同时，内心还在不停地挣扎——到底谁更好？到底我适合什么？到底我想要什么？
《广告狂人》里的唐纳德·德雷普在一次去加州的旅行中曾说：“我们想要得太多，所以我们不完美；在得到那些梦寐以求的东西后，我们又怀念以前曾拥有的，所以我们那么容易被击垮。”唐纳德也是一个逃避自我、一心想要成为他人的悲观角色。他认为只要他活在另外一个人的壳里，就能躲避一切自身造成的灾难，忘记自己的缺陷。而推动这一躲避行为的，正是他的欲望。 欲望作为人动物性本能的一种，在接二连三的现实残骸里，刺激我们去寻找下一个可能的希望。弗洛伊德在他最早的心理分析学中提出：人的行为驱动力很大程度上来自于欲望。
婴儿想要一个玩具，是因为他的欲望在告诉他，玩具代表快乐；成年人想要更多的财富，因为他们的欲望说，财富是安稳、是地位。欲望犹如一个巨大的指南针，在碎裂的现实里，为我们指点一个明确又安全的方向。而到了当代，这个方向变成了远在天边、又近在咫尺的“那个人”。 进入社交媒体时代，人们的生活正逐步变成一个个信息，通过网络扩散到世界各个角落。在朋友圈，我们总能看到发文必配九张图、过着几乎完美的生活的“那个人”；在微博上，“那个人”一夜之间成为博主，一条微博的转发量能与东欧国家人口相比较； 而在国外社交媒体上，TA通常身材如雕刻，漫步于巴黎街头，或是坐着直升飞机在纽约上空喝香槟……就像《人潮汹涌》中见财起意的陈小萌，现实生活中的我们被残缺的信息挟持，被片面的完美收购，所以我们想成为我们眼中完美的“那个人”。
除开欲望的操控，“想”也源自人本能的怀旧，和对当下生活的不满。怀旧一词“nostalgia”来自希腊语，本意是“旧伤口的疼痛感”，这种疼痛感或许会因为时间淡化，但它就像回忆，会一直停留在脑海深处，挥之不去。不满情绪来自生活的种种细节，它可以是早上没清理干净的厨房水槽，也可能是意料之外的下雨天、忘记充电的手机。这些平日里小小的“不满”，日积月累后成为一种消极情绪，为我们戴上一副冷色眼镜，不仅让我们在看待事物时失去了那份乐观和希望，还不断替我们做出假设——“如果那样，就好了”。 在《长大》里，12岁的乔什个子太矮、相貌平平，不能追求自己心仪的女生，他在游戏机中投入25美分，许愿自己能马上变成大人。第二天，乔什愿望成真，成为大人后的他如鱼得水，工作爱情双丰收。但生活的压力一点点累积，已经成年的他又迫切地想回到12岁，重新体验那份天真和无忧无虑。
小孩和大人，这两个自然规律的产物始终在与对方进行着无形的较量，如同我们和“那个人”，大家都相互嫉妒着、渴望着，真的互换了又彼此同情。小孩想成为大人，因为他们想要长大，这样可以不用上学，拥有独立的人生，而大人们想成为小孩，因为他们想暂停、想获得单纯生活，卸下沉重的责任。
认知心理学中的社会认知概念提到，在当代社会这个交流性极高、互动性极强的群体里，我们从他人的角度，或从他人的身份、性别、阶层能更好认知自己的价值。人是一种拥有同理心的高级动物——朋友遭遇苦难时我们会给予帮助；情侣争吵后会站在对方角度反思，自己做错了什么。 就像《广告狂人》中，贝蒂发现唐纳德的真实身份后决定要离开，唐纳德苦苦相求，几乎绝望的贝蒂说道：“如果你是我，你会爱你自己吗？”这类生活中常见的“换位思考”正是同理心，是我们理解他人、面对世界的一种有效心理实践。在这种实践当中，我们会跳出自己的惯性，进入另一种陌生的思维模式，对同一个问题进行换位思考，给出更加客观理性的回答。
在这些故事的最后，主角回到自己的身体/身份后通常会十分释怀，仿佛泡进温水池。“互换身体”看似是一个能带来乐趣和挑战的人生重启键，但这重启背后是“从无到有”的二次建设，看似充满希望的二次人生实则也是由无数个未知推积而成。我们无法保证未知的结果是否乐观，也不能肯定它能满足我们的欲望和需求，但唯一能确定的是，在互换后我们更能感知自身的美好和当下的可贵。“我”眼中的自己也许处处不如意，但他人镜像中的“我”却总有可取之处。
“人畜其实同理，轮回何须六道？”莫言在《生死疲劳》中写道。《生死疲劳》中的主人公西门闹含冤而死，落入阴曹地府后他重生为驴、牛、猪、狗和婴儿。几世之间，他忙着生，忙着死，忙着用不同的身体体验时代变迁，最后他成为了一个旁观者——以什么身份活着，真的有那么重要吗？