@Text/Lotus Leaf Yesterday
Image source: The show's official Weibo
The variety show "Annual Comedy Competition" has set sail and has attracted heated discussion. This time, Ma Dong did not engage in debate, did not engage in bands, and after "Strange Story" and "Summer of the Band" were silenced, he started Sketch.
Sketch, that is, sketch comedy, is different from the inclusive story of traditional comedy, Sketch only focuses on one "game point", and this game point is upgraded during the performance process, and the laugh point is thrown progressively. Although it has a long history, it also meets the audience's demand for short, flat and fast messages.
This time, there are no familiar comedy faces of TV audiences, and most of the new comedians have rich performance experience - from offline theaters, wonderful supporting roles in film and television dramas, and resident screenwriters behind the scenes of variety shows. Express a variety of forms such as mixed talents, mimes, musicals, object dramas, and one-man shows, and win the laughter of young people.
Once the program was launched, the works frequently "went out of the circle". For example, the first issue of "Sanmao Defense War" focused on the hidden pain of young people today: hair loss. The three contestants played the only three hairs left on the head of a worker, and in order to defend the only remaining "three hairs", they went through twists and turns, and finally fell off the second time. After the companion "falls", it is the line that goes out of the circle - "Don't be mao in the next life, it is not easy to be mao."
Picture of "Sanmao Defense Battle" in the annual comedy competition
That night, the Weibo topic "It's not easy to be mao" was easily read by more than 100 million. A little cunning, a little absurd, a little straightforward ridicule, in addition to the "family fun" comedy, is the young people's "no heart, no lungs, double happiness".
01
The history of "laughter"
Domestic comedy expression, if traced back to the twentieth century, is most widely naturally in radio and television.
Comedy on the radio and television stage was originally dominated by traditional crosstalk. A series of high-quality and solid scripts created by cross-talk actors and screenwriters decades ago have left a strong mark in the development of contemporary comedy in China. For example, Mr. Ma Ji and Mr. Tang Jiezhong's classic cross-talk "The Best of Beijing" is still enjoyable to this day, and the aftertaste is endless – here Amway to the readers who love to laugh.
Immediately after, through the east wind of the Spring Festival Gala, sketches began to prevail. At the first CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 1983, Yan Shunkai performed "A Q's Monologue", which for the first time moved the training form of "sketches" in drama courses to the public stage. At the Spring Festival Gala in 1984, Chen Peisi Zhu Shimao performed "Eating Noodles", and the sketch was officially independent and became a universal "annotation" for the audience to comedy. In the following ten years, comedians Zhao Lirong, Song Dandan, Gong Hanlin, Zhao Benshan, Fan Wei and others stood out, and on the literary and artistic stage of family fun, sketches have since become unique and interesting.
Off the screen, the "stage of laughter" also flourished.
Cross-talk actor Qi Zhi, Dabing's Changsha Song Hall Cross-talk Stage, Deyunshe Cross-Talk Theater, Northeast China's New Duo Theater, Shanghai Burlesque And Haipai Qingkou, and even Happy Twist Stage Drama... In the spare time of the weekend, laughing becomes a way to entertain yourself without dodging.
Until recent years, comedy variety shows can be called "crowded". Since 2014, competitive, reality shows, talk shows and variety shows have emerged, and from the perspective of quantity, the audience's room for "laughter" should naturally be broadened.
2011-2021 number of comedy variety shows increase or decrease chart
However, since 2017, the number of comedy variety shows has declined year by year, and after several years of continuous output, it has gone downhill.
The first is the "old face" problem - the audience's familiar team and the "label" are repeatedly rotated, Deyun Society, Liaoning Folk Art Troupe, Happy Twist... In addition to kindness, there is also fatigue. Secondly, the script and actors are not enough to meet the high-speed operation of comedy programs, the content is seriously homogenized, and the practice of "well-known comedians with traffic stars" is more like a drinking duck to quench thirst.
On the stage of "laughter", there should have been old, middle, and young generations, but the result was "familiar faces everywhere, and young people are lost", which is really embarrassing. Therefore, fresh comedy content is also difficult to produce, on and off the stage, the sense of intimacy is still the same, but the young people feel so.
02
"Laugh, Piolevich"
What criteria should be used to define the merits and failures of comedy?
For example, the people of Lower Riba must not be as good as the white snow of Yangchun? The connotation must be higher than the sense of form? Comedy must have a tragic "bottom"?
"Comedy is the imitation of a ridiculous, flawed, action of considerable length... Vent these emotions by causing pleasure and laughter. This is how it is defined in the Compendium of Comedy.
The poll results showed that 77% of people thought that talk show performances were more important than value. The image comes from the Douban Talk Show Conference Group
At a time when anxiety is widespread, more and more young people are learning to laugh at themselves and ridicule as a good medicine to dispel confusion. We dissect the problem in a humorous way, and we also reach a certain reconciliation through self-deprecation. Life may not be satisfactory, and when I preemptively laugh at myself, the hurt from the outside world seems to be much gentler.
Lu Xun said, "Comedy is to tear apart those worthless things for people to see" - turning "those worthless things" into laughter, into healing.
Time is a fair judge, and eventually some comedic expressions will circulate, and some will shatter at the touch. "The Annual Comedy Contest" has a circle of plays - "Laughs, Piolevich". Just like the moment, as the audience, we laugh.
03
Witty "routines"?
The comedy market is vast.
Taking movies as an example, the top ten domestic films at the box office account for 5 comedy films, 13 seats in the top 20, and the 21st place "Flying Life" is also a comedy movie. This undoubtedly proves the audience's demand for comedy and the potential of the comedy market.
I remember the second and third grades of elementary school, crazy and enthusiastic about sketches on TV. On Children's Day, the class asked everyone to report the performance program, and I reported a sketch with the dead party. Every day after school, the three rehearsed "Zhao Benshan and Song Dandan" in a small park near their home. In fact, I can't remember the stage of the show, but I remember that every evening in the park rehearsal, there were always some grandparents who stopped in front of us, and every time the performance was complete, whether the show was complete or not, there was always applause.
When I think about it today, children are naturally cute, especially serious and funny children. The applause is naturally not because of how brilliant the performance of the show is, but it can't help but come from such a scene - sincere, misplaced, meticulously witty.
In the "Annual Comedy Competition", there is a popular program "Internet Physical Examination". After the work was out of the circle, after half a month, a short video called "Longzhong to Paid Edition" appeared in weibo hot search. The content is also complaining about the advertising, membership, network download speed, etc. of the video website, and the two works are too much "the same work". But for such direct jokes, the second time it tastes like chewing wax.
At the moment when the comedy market and the Internet era are mixed with many interests, the "window" of "following the trend" is really not a comedy. Immersion and sincerity make people laugh.
Happiness is the simplest and most precious, which is the explicit value of comedy, and thus becomes the most popular artistic expression. When laughter erupts, it shatters all stagnation and pretense—whether it's laughter or life.
Producer: Pi Jun
Final Judgement: Lin Yuhong
Reviewer: Chen Min, Liu Xiao, Liu Bowen
Editor: Han Dongyi Ye Xiaolin (Intern)