Scholar: The new variant of online text should not fall into the old routine of film and television adaptation

Stills of "The Wind Rises" that fell into the adaptation routine

Recently, the online writer Tail Fish complained about the "magic reform" phenomenon suffered by some other works besides "Si Teng" in the process of film and television, which caused heated discussion at the same time, and once again raised the issue of how to change the film and television adaptation and whether it should respect the original work. Novels/films and television have their own laws, and it is true that the adaptation of the original work is not necessarily successful to the greatest extent. However, it should also be noted that respecting the quality of the story, not superstitious "routines", and not replacing the valuable innovation and exploration in the original work with clichés are issues that need to be paid attention to in the process of transformation from the original work to the film and television.

Taking the film and television adaptation of online romance in the past two years as an example, the problem of many film and television dramas is not whether to respect the original work, but in the process of adaptation, "to refine the fake" and "replace the old with the new". Transforming professional women into "silly white sweets" and interpreting "love" as "brainless" and "unhappy" is not so much catering to the audience as underestimating the level of audience appreciation.

Personality:

"Silly White Sweet" Wearing a New Professional Vest

From 2020 to 2021, major video platforms have launched many romance dramas adapted from online texts. For example, "The Rose of Time of Little Storm" (adapted from "Little Storm 1.0"), "Heartbeat Source Plan" (adapted from "Broker"), "March 30 of the Tenth Year" (adapted from the novel of the same name), "The Wind Rises" (adapted from "Tang Mingyue"), "Three Thousand Crows Kill" (adapted from the novel of the same name), "Tonight and What Night" (adapted from "Jade Zhaozi"), "Song with Jun" (adapted from "Sword Instrument Line") ... Although they have different types and different plots, they are all playing the romance card. These dramas either have many traffic stars participating, or have the blessing of the original IP, at the beginning of filming, at the time of the end, before the start of broadcasting, all of them make people look forward to it. However, after their launch, the ratings were not satisfactory. In fact, the problem is not whether to respect the original work, but in terms of gender cognition and narrative processing, the concept of adaptation of the drama to deal with human design and contradictions is relatively lagging behind, relying too much on the established "routine".

The author notes that in recent years, the heroines of romance dramas have moved closer to the tastes of professional women, and they have also tended to the workplace type when choosing adapted texts. But it seems to be affected by a gender cognitive stereotype, these romance dramas on the heroine in love to shape more or less biased to weaken her IQ, narrow its vision, willfully its emotions, is still a "silly white sweet" setting. These treatments are particularly manifested in the intentional selection and treatment of the original plot. Although they choose many professional heroines, they deliberately choose and deal with the "career line" of the heroine in the process of film and television adaptation with a solidified gender understanding. Although it is the scientific research process of the Institute of Viral Studies, the film and television narrative highlights the laboratory to chat about gossip, say bad things about colleagues, make small reports, and exclude new people, as if to adapt to the female protagonist group like writing the scientific research institute into a Qing harem; not to present the formal logic of business warfare, but to highlight the heroine's "little cleverness", such as secretly wearing the waiter's clothes to the bathroom to block customers to talk about cooperation; costume dramas tend to show the heroine's violation of the rules, and can not show the heroine's home country revenge and strategizing.

Therefore, after the heroine made a strong appearance, due to the scarcity of professional quality, the career line collapsed all the way, saying "there are no accidents in my dictionary", in fact, the career is full of accidents. The adaptation always has to let the male protagonist evaluate the female protagonist as "naïve and straightforward, pure and innocent", it seems that if he is not impulsive, impulsive, unsuspecting, and repeatedly deceived, he is not worthy of "innocence" and "purity". So such a female protagonist bought the company she worked in impulsively, and did not consider the follow-up business problems at all; or she was easily deceived into taking away the sample clothes in her hand, or the woman dressed as a man but drank nonsense to expose her identity; or without planning, she assassinated at will, and was powerless to save herself...

narrative:

Career "lying to win" and low-level misunderstandings in love

In many episodes adapted by the network text, the settings of the heroine's aura such as "hidden forbearance", "stoicism" and "boldness" have been weakened, and instead rely on various "lying to win" narratives, such as noble birth, divine luck blessing, incompetent supporting roles, villain anti-water... The most prominent is "boyfriend fishing". After the "hero saves beauty" routine is used badly, the semantic function will also change, gradually from expressing protection and respect for women to identifying women's weaknesses. In the original online text, mutual help and mutual rescue between men and women are often treated equally, but film and television adaptations will strengthen the function of male protagonists to promote the career of female protagonists.

For example, the male protagonist has a higher capital ability or strategic ability, always sends out the information needed by the female protagonist in time, acts as an interpreter and savior, saves the female protagonist in the fire, saves the female protagonist who is kidnapped, saves the female protagonist who is framed and plagiarized... In "The Wind Rises", Liu Li is framed by Zhuo Jinniang and others, and is hunted down, all of them have to be saved by Pei Xingjian, even from childhood to adulthood; in "Tonight and What Night", every time the winter moon adventure assassination fails, it is Feng Xi who saves her, and even gives her the opportunity to be reborn again and again; "Three Thousand Crows Kill" There is such a famous scene, Qin Chuan inexplicably appeared in the confrontation scene between Fu Jiuyun and the villain Baihe Dragon King, and was shot down by the villain in a second, and Fu Jiuyun had to sacrifice himself to protect her. The female protagonist is "biased towards the tiger mountain line" but relies on the male protagonist to save, which seems to be "lying to win", which actually solidifies the existing cognition of gender strength and weakness. For female audiences in the midst of a changing gender culture, this setting seems a bit old.d'.

In terms of love narrative techniques, "misunderstanding" is an important technique to increase dramatic conflict, but it relies too much on techniques, and simplifies the narrative into the heroine's paranoia to partial generalization, judgment, and does not listen to explanations, this lazy narrative processing can not create exciting viewing effects. Because the written works use the internal perspective, the film and television works use the external perspective. The misunderstanding in the text work, through the psychological perspective of the heroine, can more or less straighten out the logic of the heroine's words and deeds in many times, and maintain the reader's sense of substitution. Limited by the external perspective, film and television works lack inner perspective, if blindly use low-level misunderstandings to create dramatic conflicts, the paranoid heroine will weaken the audience's sense of substitution, but will appear funny.

In addition to paranoid misunderstandings, the heroine's paranoid moral requirements can also weaken dramatic tension. Indiscriminately, directly reprimanding the male protagonist for being cold-blooded; being sympathetic in commercial competition; blindly occupying the high ground of kindness, accusing the male protagonist of his calculations and plots... Ethical judgment should be based on rational analysis, and good literary and artistic works will present various moral dilemmas to present the tension of human nature and the preciousness of choice. When the film and television drama indulges in letting the female protagonist accuse the male protagonist with irrational "kindness" and "compassion", and thus construct the female protagonist, it will only make the audience feel that the female protagonist is too shallow. The unequal accusations have made the relationship between the two sides lose any space for dialogue, so what makes the male protagonist go forward and stick to "love" can only be the "providence" imposed by the screenwriter.

cause:

Types and routines of misread web texts

The romantic drama adaptation prefers to shape the "brainless" hostess and the "unhappy" love model, which is to impose the prejudice of low childishness on women and women to emotions, not so much that it caters to women's self-identity, but rather that it is unresponsive to the changes in the emotional reality that occur at the moment.

Analyzing the reasons for this, in the author's opinion, the current film and television adaptation parties lack sufficient understanding of the emotional reality of the original types and routines of online literature. Although many times online literature is set against the background of an overhead worldview, this does not mean that online literary creation is a castle in the air. Their deep structure is a metaphor for the reality of the present in various ways. The success of a certain routine also has a psychological reality basis, and when this realistic basis changes, the existing routine will inevitably no longer apply. For example, this year's sinking market of women's channel online articles has changed from a "domineering president" narrative to a "female boss" narrative, and the high-end market has changed from "pure love and affection" to a variety of "element texts" and "professional texts", and many online text types have entered the era of "variations". The reason for this change is that online writers who are in close contact with readers feel the changes in the psychological reality of the reading population. At the beginning of the rise of the market, the "pure love" narrative highlighted the importance of the ethics of love, completing the initial utopian imagination and construction. But then, reason and reality were introduced into online writing, enriching and deepening the understanding of "pure love utopia", the so-called realism of romanticism. Changes in social structure and the strengthening of women's workplace functions have also made "pure love" unable to meet the needs of women's cultural consumption. However, when many new changes have been added to the original works of online literature, film and television adaptations cannot accurately grasp the core of the success of the book, change the "variants" into old routines, and roughly deal with the new elements that appear in online texts such as "workplace", "martial arts" and "scientific research", which will lead to the adaptation of romance dramas into old and old ways.

Respecting the original work does not mean that we must completely restore the original work and do not respect the laws of film and television adaptation, but that we should not discard the wonderful stories, innovative elements or painstaking contradictions and conflicts and deep thinking carefully constructed by the writers in the original works, and replace them with old and natural "routines"; do not ignore the psychological changes and mass cultural turns of readers touched by the original writers, as well as the new images and new content produced by the results, and replace them with stereotypical repetition and imitation. In addition to data, the success of film and television adaptation and IP transformation at present relies more and more on innovation such as narrative methods and emotional orientation. Facing a changing society, facing up to the improvement and innovation of content quality is an issue that needs urgent attention in film and television adaptation. When both the original author and the adaptor recognize this, perhaps both sides will be able to achieve better with each other.

(The author Li Wei is a professor at the College of Literature of Nanjing Normal University)

Source: Wen Wei Po