Recently, with the broadcast and release of the TV series "Xiao MinJia" and the movie "Love Myth", "middle-aged love" has become a hot topic among the audience. Compared with the previous attention to how middle-aged people pull and maintain in love and marriage, how to escape crisis and pain with hidden tolerance, today, the public pays more attention to how middle-aged men and middle-aged women as individuals can put aside the appearance of self-hatred and self-pity when they are in the most difficult situation in life, retain their complete self, and then find a better self in their feelings.
In the final analysis, rather than saying that the audience resonates with "middle-aged love", it is more urgent to find some kind of self-consistency in life for the middle-aged self.
"Xiao Min Jia" starring Huang Lei and Zhou Xun is a recent hit drama.
——Why——
A. Middle-aged confusion is more realistic and more reference value
"Xiao Min's Family" presents the real confusion of many middle-aged people: Chen Zhuo (played by Huang Lei) and Liu Xiaomin (played by Zhou Xun) choose to start a new life together after divorcing each other. But children's education and love, the interference of ex-wives and ex-husbands, empty nest elderly pensions, career bottlenecks, and whether to enter marriage again, etc., have made them constantly question life, but still try to find a method of a happy life in it. In the same way, "The Journey of Not Confused" starring Chen Jianbin, Mei Ting and Tu Songyan tells the story of Ma Liewen, a book publisher who is facing a career bottleneck, and a female teacher in North Drift, who chooses to smile and face the confusion of life after experiencing the emotional twists and turns of middle age and the reality of the ideal.
Chen Jianbin and Mei Ting starred in "The Journey of No Confusion".
Compared with other emotional genres, middle-aged emotional works seem to be easier to show and extend the "confusion" and "reality" of real society. This is one of the reasons why such works are more resonant.
Han Jie, the director of "The Journey of No Confusion", said that middle-aged people are the mainstay of society, family responsibilities, social burdens, and the search for self, which have reached a very critical moment. Therefore, their confusion on the spiritual level is the most important thing for society to pay attention to, and it is also worth portraying and expressing in literary and artistic works. "We will always go from young to middle-aged, and then from middle-aged to old age, and middle age is the stage of taking responsibility the most."
Shi Yu, a national second-level psychological counselor, told the Beijing News reporter that she has received many middle-aged people who have encountered emotional tests, and the vast majority of pain points lie in the ordering and balance between family, career and emotions. At the age of 20 to 30, young people are facing the golden years of work, and if they want to get results, they must invest most of their time; correspondingly, they will give up emotionally, and even choose to marry later and have children later. When people reach middle age, career, family, and emotions come at the same time, and almost everything is easy to face a chicken feather.
"The perfect love in idol dramas, or for those unmarried little girls, may make them look forward to perfect love and marriage." But for middle-aged people who have been practicing in marriage and the workplace for so long, they may no longer need sweet stories, but more hope to project some of their own shadows in the play. For example, when the heroine encounters a conflict between workplace and emotion, how does she weigh it? Can I use it? In Shi Yu's view, the confusion and story shown by the middle-aged emotional drama are more realistic, and for most viewers, the reality has a strong reference significance, which is worth spending time and cost to see.
B. Middle-aged people begin to face up to emotional expression
The preference to reveal feelings and love is another change in the emotional drama of mid-years in recent years.
In "Love Myth", Gloria, played by Ni Hongjie, is a middle-aged woman who dares to love and dare to hate, never hesitates and tangles about love, and dares to pursue sincere love. Facing Lao Bai (played by Xu Zheng), she told him freely, "A woman will not be with a man because he is a good person." ”
In "Love Myth", Ni Hongjie played Gloria.
Middle-aged male characters are inferior to women in expression, but they are still frank. The old White in "Love Myth" is divorced in middle age, and he knows the many problems that middle-aged people need to face when they fall in love and get married, but they still have a vision for love, are eager to pursue Miss Li, and are willing to make breakfast for each other and wake her up. Chen Zhuo in "Xiao Min's Family", He Han in "The First Half of My Life", Yang Shu in "One Servant and Two Lords" and other characters also dare to express their love to the people they love the most in the face of many obstacles.
Shao Yihui, the director of "Love Myth", said in an interview with the media that it is easy to love each other with two blank pieces of paper, but for adults, everyone has experienced a lot, the emotional world is very rich, if you can still love someone, the weight must be different from when you were young.
The realization of more open expression in middle-aged emotional drama is also inseparable from the transformation of social psychology. Shi Yu said that in the past, middle-aged people were not without emotional needs, but Chinese were not open to the expression of emotions, or even suppressed, and everyone was embarrassed to mention it. "The original parents will teach us to hide our emotions, to be selfless; not to cry, to be strong." In the past, most of the middle-aged people who came to Shi Yu's psychological clinic consultation were reluctant to discuss emotional topics, and more hoped to explore from the perspective of being a parent or as another social identity. They seem to think that's what is allowed.
But with the development and progress of the times, in Shi Yu's observation, middle-aged people gradually began to face up to their own needs, especially personal feelings. "People are beginning to understand that apart from the identity role of society, you are yourself. We grew up under the education of forbearance. But now that we have begun to 'wake up', we feel that 'expression' is not shameful, and it is not that you do not express it, it disappears. It's still there, and it can even hurt you in another way. ”
Sociologists in the United States have proposed the concept of "emotional labor". This concept proposes that in addition to the physical labor that can make people feel very hard, there is also a high cost of "emotional labor". "For example, I give you two job options, one is that you can express emotions normally, and the other is that you must suppress emotions, such as customer service, after-sales service, etc." Most people still choose a state of emotional freedom. "In Shi Yu's view, if the emotional difference between middle-aged people is too large, just like in the past, they were considered unworthy to talk about feelings, and could only talk about work and children, then the emotions of middle-aged people will only become more and more barren and depressed." Now more and more middle-aged people are finding that only when your emotions are relatively full, you can have the power to give to others. ”
In "Love Myth", Lao Bai, played by Xu Zheng, pursues Miss Li, played by Ma Yili.
C. Middle-aged emotions gradually return to the self
In addition to the cruelty of reality and the disclosure of true love, this group of middle-aged people's higher pursuit of self is also easier to give some positive thinking and guidance to the audience who are experiencing a midlife crisis.
The self-return of middle-aged people is the criterion for today's audiences to judge whether the middle-aged emotional drama is qualified. In "Xiao Min's Family", Li Ping, who divorced and remarried, experienced advanced pregnancy, miscarriage, and found that she had illegitimate children abroad after her husband went to prison, and Li Ping did not choose to swallow her anger. She resolutely chose to divorce and go to another city to start a new business. "I wouldn't be unable to eat without him. Even if I can't make a difference, I can still walk around. "In "The Journey of No Confusion", the heroine simply came from the countryside and chose to give up a stable job to come to a big city, but found that her fiancé was cheating. But she did not choose to forgive or change the other party, but became a "resistance practitioner" with strong action ability, decisively broke up with her fiancé despite the opposition of her family, and once again gained career and love by her own ability.
In "The Journey of Not Confused", Mei Ting played Simple.
Xu Xiaoou, the chief producer of "Xiao Min Jia", said in an interview with "Entertainment Theory" that in the past, middle-aged love was whether it was possible to live a good life and whether it could be harmoniously integrated with the upper and lower generations. "[But] it's actually a little far from the essence of love." We have to go back to love itself. ”
Ni Hongjie, an actor of "Love Myth", also said in an interview that Shao Yihui after the 90s gave them a lot of new thinking logic, "Can girls be like this? Why should I follow the path that those who have walked before me, why can't I follow my own path? ”
In Shi Yu's view, the past era did emphasize selfless dedication in emotions and make others feel happy, but in essence, this is an emotional repression. "Middle-aged people pay attention to themselves, and it is not selfish. Only on the basis of not losing ourselves, maintaining self-awareness and self-exploration, can we have more power to do more things, to love our children, to love our families, and to do a good job. In Shi Yu's view, the return of the current middle-aged emotional drama to the self is worthy of encouragement," we should emphasize that everyone has the ability to be happy, which is equivalent to finding a healthier and more lasting way to give. ”
——The future——
A. The demand for the middle class market is greater
For the future development of middle-aged emotional dramas, Tan Fei, a well-known producer and film critic, said that in the past few years, film and television dramas have attached too much importance to young people to love, sweet pets, hegemonic and other types, just as the film and television circle once popular "traffic first", as if there are fewer people who care about middle-aged love. But this does not mean that middle-aged people are silent and have no favorite things, but this group accounts for a larger proportion and has stronger spending power, but because of the entanglement of work and family, there is not so much energy to speak out. "The desires of middle-aged people are bound to be excavated and even amplified in this era." Works such as "Xiao Min Jia" and "Love Myth" show a social trend: mature, conditional, middle-class love has a hidden and unpredictable beauty, and after being more influenced by the social family, it can produce an unknown future that resonates with fate. In Tan Fei's view, this future is more touching; such a display may also become a more mainstream creative direction in the future. "Because not only middle-aged people, but also young people can find self-consistent interest in middle-aged stories and find the amount of information that makes them feel fresh."
Shi Yu also agrees that the key point of the future of middle-aged emotions or new artistic expression lies in strong "empathy", that is, to allow middle-aged people to find some comfort in an uncomfortable reality. "And I think that once there is a situation in the play that is very similar to reality, the audience will definitely get a certain understanding and comfort." So I think these dramas will bring some positive significance to the middle-aged people at the moment, at least understand them. ”
B. The true appearance of middle-aged people should be accepted
"Love Myth" and "Little Minjia" were not without objections after the broadcast. Some netizens have said, "Why do beautiful and independent middle-aged women always have to be greasy uncles?" "Middle-aged idol dramas are also too contradictory." These seemingly contradictory voices seem to have also plunged the future creation of middle-aged emotional drama into a new question: how should middle-aged emotions be artistic?
In Tan Fei's view, the audience should slowly accept the appearance of middle-aged people in film and television dramas, such as wrinkles and stomachs, which is what real middle-aged people look like in real life. "Maybe we overemphasized that this person has to be particularly young and beautiful. This is originally a more "false" pursuit in the image. Like "Love Myth" is very popular, Xu Zheng's belly is not small, but the audience still feels that this man is very good. So I think it's still necessary to match real life and real appearance. Sincerity is always more powerful than falsehood. ”
As for whether middle-aged people can be "romantic" and appropriate "idol dramas", Shi Yu believes that the original middle-aged people are not worthy of talking about feelings, only worthy of talking about children and life, which is a kind of depression. And now that middle-aged people are "allowed" to talk about feelings, why can't they be romantic? The life of middle-aged people also needs romance, just like the plot of Chen Zhuo and Xiao min sitting downstairs in "Xiao Min's House", opening the trunk of the car, drinking red wine and counting stars. "Romance and children are not opposed, and it is not that doing romantic things will ignore children. Romance doesn't have to be particularly complicated, and it may be something as simple as mentioned above, which is easy to achieve. Many of the connections or outcomes that everyone thought were inevitable in the past may actually have serious misunderstandings. I feel that (accepting middle-aged romance) is a progressive process, which in itself is a healthier emotional model that does not require additional processing of the consumption caused by the hidden emotions. ”
In "Xiao Min's House", Chen Zhuo and Xiao Min drink red wine and count the stars.
Zhang He, chief reporter of the Beijing News
Chief Editor Tong Na Proofreader Li Lijun