Author | Between red and black
"I think this video is a very good evaluation of #Lion Boy.# So, no matter how good the story #Movie Lion Boy does, I can't accept it. Also, I also hope that some squinting-looking friends do not have too much sense of substitution, and everyone is not unable to accept squinting, but cannot accept that squinting is beautified to represent the image of ordinary Chinese. ”
Since the large-scale screening of "The Lion Boy", nearly 20 days have passed, and the debate about the character modeling has not stopped. Sina Weibo search for the four words "Lion Boy", the most popular content is not the solo dance clip on the rooftop released by the film party in the later stage, nor is it some fandom mixed cut, it is still the above discussion about "squinting eyes".
With the fermentation of advertisements such as Three Squirrels and Mercedes-Benz, the image of "Lion Boy" in the field of public opinion has been difficult to win back a city. Even if they have the endorsement of CCTV news and well-known actor Wu Jing, and even most of the audience who walk into the cinema are willing to give a good review, more people are concerned about whether it is "insulting China".
Freezing three feet is not a cold day. Inspired by the inspiration of predecessors, the realistic + ugly + mournful character image set at the beginning of the project of "The Lion Boy" is close to completely invalid today in 2021. Collage and misinterpretation in the process of information dissemination further accelerate the departure of ordinary people who do not know the truth away from "The Lion Boy".
What plays a decisive role in the controversy of "The Lion Boy" is the rapidly changing field of public opinion. Things that people didn't care about two years ago could spark new storms today. When the two sides of the fierce debate are lined up and ready to go to war, the truth becomes the least important part.
Like many works at the center of the whirlpool of public opinion, "The Lion Boy" is not the first, and certainly will not be the last. Blowfish Jun has no intention of participating in this controversy about whether "Lion Boy" is insulting or not, but only wants to restore how this domestic "high reputation" animation has gradually fallen into controversy and clarified the truth of some rumors.
First, the temperament undertakes the great saint Nezha, and the loose public opinion field creates a young male lion
The time is set back to 2019.
Chinese animation in the cinema market has long been not the tepid appearance of the first decade of the new century. The two major IPs of Pleasant Goat and Bear Haunting are still continuing, and the emergence of "The Return of the Great Sage" and "The Demon Boy of Nezha" not only proves that animation can become the box office responsibility of the film market, but also proves that the audience can accept different animation images.
When "The Return of the Great Sage" was first published, some people questioned whether this decadent and careless long-faced Sun Wukong could be accepted by the public. But no one thought that the combination of the young Tang monk and the decadent uncle could burst out infinite energy at the end of the animation and in the subsequent market performance.
The same is true of "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending". Unlike those heroic Nezha in the past, this Nezha, who has earned 5 billion box office, does not look like a god at first glance, but more like the "magic boy" used in the title of the movie. Uneven teeth, deep black smoke rings, energetic enough to destroy everything around it.
The Nezha of this image is the same as the plot trend of "The Return of the Great Sage". After shouting "My life is up to me", the Nezha who was really angry and heroic appeared in front of us again.
Through the above two animations, it is not difficult to see that the audience's acceptance of the animation image in the new era is actually quietly changing. The ugliness in the aesthetic sense of the public is not the threshold for ordinary people to accept roles, and the decadent temperament is easier to get close to young audiences, and these roles have realized the value of life at the end of the movie.
So in August 2019, "Lion Boy" was established.
Director Sun Haipeng never mentioned the relationship between "Lion Boy" and the previous two films in the interview. However, it is not difficult to analyze "The Lion Boy" to see that the character image of the protagonist Ah Juan is also not a "handsome man" in the public aesthetic sense, with some weak and mournful temperament.
The only difference from the previous two animations is that Ah Juan, who jumped on Optimus Prime, did not have worldly success, which is also regarded by some fans as one of the signs that she really found the core of Stephen Chow's films.
So in the public opinion field in 2019, has the image of a similar squinting figure been clearly identified as an insult to China? The answer is no.
Open Baidu Search "Squint" to limit the search to 2019. Blowfish Jun found that in the public opinion field at that time, the label on the "squinting eyes" was not more "insulting", but a character with bad intentions.
Even so, many entertainment reports called so-and-so celebrities laughing as "squinting eyes" when they started the headlines. Some marketing numbers even take stock of the squinting characters in the national comics, but these images are never associated with racial discrimination.
In fact, an important reason for this situation is that there was a consensus in the public opinion field at that time, that is, if you talk about the "squinting eyes" of racial discrimination, then you must match the action of pulling the corner of the eye with your index finger.
For example, in 2017, when The Hebei Huaxia Happiness Football Team player Ravitch took a promotional photo, he made a two-handed index finger on the outside corner of the eye, and some people suggested that Ravitch's action was a racially discriminatory act.
Subsequently, Ravitch issued a relevant statement, saying that this photo is a relaxed and funny action posed in conjunction with the publicity photos taken by the Chinese Super League company to enliven the atmosphere of the scene. He had no ill will, nor did he mean to insult Chinese. Ravitch made it clear in his statement that he would take a warning in the future.
Judging by the standards of today's public opinion field, Ravitch's action is undoubtedly an act of "insulting China", and the wording of this statement is somewhat avoidant. However, the public opinion atmosphere in 2017 is far less strict than it is today, and Ravitch's skills and personal image have already conquered Chinese fans, and people have accepted the apology statement.
The relatively loose public opinion field and the successful experience of predecessors have given Sun Haipeng and the team of "Lion Boy" confidence to shape the real protagonist to be ordinary and lose a little, and the so-called "salted fish turning" can also be realized.
Everything was normal in February and June, and after the postponement, the hidden dangers of public opinion began to appear
Sometimes, the timing of a movie is also a metaphysics.
According to Beijing's wonderful March film list plan, "Lion Boy" is scheduled for August 6, officially impacting this year's summer file. Blowfish Jun looked up the fixed promotional materials at that time, and found that some people such as Sina Movies, which obviously did not have a control account, still mentioned the problem of "hanging eyes".
However, the eye problem was never the mainstream of discussion at the time. Many people said that there was finally a realistic animation in the cinema, rather than a fairy monster. In addition, there are people who care about Cantonese dubbing, and feel that Chinese dubbing will be slightly dramatic.
In early June, the "Lion Boy" team also released relevant materials for the two important nodes of Children's Day and the college entrance examination. In the comments sections of those posters and videos, there is still no more heated argument about the appearance of the characters.
Until the official announcement of the postponement to the Lunar New Year file, the comment area was also relatively harmonious, and some comments even cared about the epidemic situation in the production team's location. The quarrel over eye problems has all but disappeared. It can be said that if the film is released in the summer slot, the focus of attention may shift to other issues in the film, at least not to the eyes of the protagonist.
During the postponement of "Lion Boy", two Marvel movies such as "Shangqi" and "Eternals" were released overseas. Both films involve the so-called "touching China's bottom line."
In particular, the heroine of "Shangqi" is Okafina, who has always been regarded by Chinese audiences as a typical representative of Hollywood stereotypes. It is precisely because of these two films that the discussion in the public opinion field about whether the film and television works are "insulting China" has once again become warm. "The Lion Boy" became the first object of this topic discussion to be affected.
Third, rumors and misinterpretations fly together, and the filmmakers and the audience lose both
Perhaps because of the confidence in the quality of the film, the creative team of "The Lion Boy" chose to conduct a large-scale screening a week in advance.
As they expected, the audience who walked into the theater gave "The Lion Boy" a rather positive review. However, along with the super high reputation, there is also the protagonist Ah Juan's "squinting eyes".
During the screening, there have been many one-star reviews on Douban, and the core of the bad reviews is naturally the appearance of the protagonist's trio. The most criticized is the small eyes of the protagonist Ah Juan. Some viewers believe that the protagonist's eyes are small, and the spacing is set so wide, obviously to cater to the aesthetic tastes of the Mainstream Western, and then deepen the stereotype of Chinese.
During this period, the main creative team conducted a roadshow in 17 cities across the country, and director Sun Haipeng also mentioned the problem of the protagonist's appearance many times in the process of interacting with the audience. However, the most widely circulated is an interview conducted by a newspaper, and finally condensed into a Microblog.
According to the description in a newspaper's Weibo, Sun Haipeng himself knows very well that it would be safer and simpler to make the character handsome, but they need to make an exploration of different aesthetics, although not necessarily successful, but need to have such a consciousness: "Why everyone has such a big reaction to 'squinting', it just shows that our aesthetic expression of animation has been homogenized, and there is no aesthetic confidence."
Zhang Miao is more direct: "In terms of image design aesthetics, our requirement is to remove the influencer and remove the filter aesthetic. When the creator paints, there are many times in Guangdong and other places, the simplest way, everyone take out the mirror or mobile phone, turn off the filter of the lens, take a good look, think about the appearance of the people around you. We don't mean to belittle anyone, but we can think about the friends around us, and think about what they should look like if they are cats and dogs. ”
As we all know, a lot of long information needs to be streamlined in the process of dissemination. It is precisely this kind of streamlining of reporting in a certain newspaper, and with the spread of information, it begins to slowly change its taste.
As long as you have watched Zhang Miao's live broadcast and the previous report, it is clear that the person who looks in the mirror that Zhang Miao refers to is actually the main creator, not the audience to look in the mirror.
In addition, Zhang Miao's description of the wind collection part is actually to highlight how the production team makes the scene more pyrotechnic, rather than observing the appearance of the locals during the wind collection process. "Turn off the filter of the lens" actually refers to the fact that the production team has been adhering to the requirements of "de-filtering" in the art style.
Some skeptics say that the film's environment takes an extremely realistic style, why the characters should appear so exaggerated. Sun Haipeng also explained this problem in the live broadcast. He said that if the character modeling is restored according to the high precision of the real person, it is bound to produce a uncanny valley effect, so there will inevitably be exaggerated parts. These exaggerated parts are also designed to highlight the image transformation of the protagonist after experiencing life changes.
The information after the reduction of a newspaper's microblog is naturally much faster than that of a long report. In just one day, many other marketing accounts began to forward this Weibo, and some marketing numbers began to further refine this Weibo, claiming that the director came out to respond to let everyone go home and look in the mirror, Chinese/Cantonese people look like this.
Such stimulating words further strengthen the spread of power. Eventually, some netizens began to carry out PS for Zhang Miao personally, and Zhang Miao's "squinting eyes" picture and related text were circulated on social platforms such as Weibo and Zhihu in the form of memes, and further fermented.
In fact, there are also some voices on the Internet that support "Lion Boy". A UP master who learns the content of the original painting on Station B said in the comment area of a video that if you want to create a character image with a distinct personality, you must make the character face have a variety of forms of expression. But the impression of the "protagonist's face" has been rooted in many people's minds, which is actually an aesthetic degradation.
Some people will wonder if there are some voices about eye problems when the screening is first fixed, and whether it is too late to return to work as soon as possible. An animation industry insider told Blowfish Jun that modifying the size and spacing of the protagonist's eyes is a very troublesome thing, requiring modeling, mapping and binding to be all reworked, which is obviously not a problem that can be solved in a short time. He also believes that the overseas stereotype representative image Fu Manchu is actually a narrow eye distance, and the wide eye distance is actually to reflect the cute and childish temperament.
As we said earlier, the shape of the field of public opinion has quietly changed, and calm words obviously cannot overshadow those fierce voices and rumors. This has also created the image of "The Lion Boy" in the minds of the general public today seems to be irreversible. Obviously, neither the audience nor the filmmakers were the winners, the filmmakers failed at the box office, and the audience missed a good movie.
Restoring the truth and staying calm is what the entire film industry can do for "Lion Boy". Maybe it's not too late.