Cultural Industry Review No. 3410
From the release of the film is not taken seriously, to the Douban score jumped from 8.1 at the beginning of the score to 8.3, "Love Myth" was listed by many netizens as a high-scoring surprise at the end of 2021. As an all-Shanghainese dialogue film, "Love Myth" has not only been appreciated by the audience in Shanghai for the Shanghai dialect, but also criticized by many audiences in other parts of the country. Dialect blessing makes film and television creation have a sense of reality, while showing regional culture, and should also reflect on the popularity of dialect films themselves and abuse.
The author | Guo Xuemei (Cultural Industry Review Author Group, Researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Editor-in-chief | Lu Min (Assistant Researcher, Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism and Sports Research Institute)
Edit the | peninsula
The source | Cultural Industry Review
On Christmas Eve, as soon as the "Love Myth" interpreted in the background of the magic capital of Shanghai was released, it began to arouse heated discussion among netizens. On the one hand, it is the rise of female consciousness mixed in, and on the other hand, the desire to satisfy the Shanghai dialect has not been fully interpreted for a long time.
Up to now, the film has received a score of 8.3 on Douban. According to Lighthouse Pro, "Love Myth" also won the box office championship on the opening day of the Christmas slot in 2021, with a total box office of 173 million (still rising).
As an almost original film that presents Shanghainese people and sophistication, "Love Myth" is also properly combined with modern elements. If you go back, in fact, as early as many years ago, the Shanghainese films "Stock Madness", "Sea Flowers", "Romance of the Demise" and so on also attracted people's attention to Shanghai. However, this time it also inspired more discussion to see the rare pure Shanghai dialect.
△ Taobao ticket "Love Myth" front row review
The "Golden Age" of Dialect Cinema
The phenomenon of abandoning Mandarin and choosing dialects to show the lines of movies has actually been relatively prosperous in recent years. The Cultural Industry Review (ID: whcypl) found that there are at least 17 dialects that have appeared in film creation through incomplete statistics, and in addition to the table, these 17 also include Cantonese films and Shanghainese films represented by "Love Myth".
Dialect movies are thriving and have even become a topic of conversation. There are also some basic laws behind its development.
The director's regional characteristics
The emergence of many dialect films is often closely related to directors, especially some dialects that are inherently lacking in the public. Wan Ma Tse-dan, who was born in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and Bi Gan, who was born in Kaili City, Guizhou Province, have successfully entered people's field of vision through directing films with their own regional characteristics, such as Wan Ma Tse-dan's Tibetan film "Crashed into a Sheep", and Bi Gan's Guizhou Kaili film "Roadside Picnic".
In fact, going back a little further, Zhang Yimou's early filming of "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit" and section chief Jia Zhangke's series of praise films "Xiao Wu" and "Heaven Destiny" all used the dialect of their hometown.
On the one hand, this facilitates the director to more elaborate the theme he wants to express, and at the same time, it also establishes the director's personal aesthetic style through the continuous introduction of dialect films, thus creating a "brand" characteristic.
Take "dialect" as a selling point
In addition to the director's own regional characteristics, the "dialect version" has now successfully become an influencing factor that people are very concerned about when watching movies. For example, high-profile films such as "Let the Bullets Fly" and "The Unknown Generation", whose Interpretation of Sichuan Dialect is the biggest bonus to the comedic effect of the whole film, is also an important element that people are keen to discuss these films.
For example, the recently released two movies of "Lion Boy" and "Embracing You Through Winter" are more prominent in the promotion and marketing of the "dialect version". After watching the Chinese version of the movie, it stimulated people's interest in experiencing the original dialect movie, which to some extent also made the movie's popularity on the Internet increase again.
The favor and attention of dialect in film production seems to be a natural thing for directors and filmmakers to create and promote, but it actually affects the overall emphasis on dialect in the film and television industry, such as whether the actor has enough line skills (Shandong Ren Suxi in "The Unknown Generation" is crazy Sichuanese), and the regionality of the actor (almost all the main actors in "Love Myth" are from Shanghai).
The unique charm of dialect movies
The use of dialect is loved in film creation, not only because of some of its own external additions, but also because of its important role in the authenticity of the film plot and the restoration of regional style.
The taste of the city of film and television creation
Yang Haiying, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, once said, "Why do some movies use Henan and Shanxi dialects instead of Mandarin?" I think it's mainly about showing different states of existence. For example, Director Diao Yinan's "The Party at South Station" adds Wuhan's unique slang in the dialogue, such as "disobedient Zhou" (meaning unconvinced) "poor fire" (immoral, not like words, etc.), Bi Gan's "Roadside Picnic" in Kaili dialect reading poetry, "Jinling Thirteen Chao" using the chaotic beauty Wu Nong soft language, these are all reflecting the living conditions of the film characters.
△ The real scene of Wuhan is shown in "The Party at South Station"
At the same time, in the movie, dialogue is an important means to promote the plot, and dialect can make the plot closer to the real face of a region, so that the audience can feel the unique pyrotechnic atmosphere.
In the most systematic Cantonese film of "dialect + region", the use of dialect has reached the point of pure fire. Through cantonese vocabulary and tone expression, accurately conveying the urban charm of Hong Kong and other regions, these auditory elements not only restore the social landscape, but also allow the audience to experience the scene in the film across time and space.
△ "Over Spring" shows the differences between the city through the protagonist Pepe in Hong Kong and Shenzhen and switching dialects
Proximity of regional cultures
Dialect characteristics in the transmission of regional culture caters to the viewing psychology of two types of people: one is the same villagers, the other is the foreigners.
The movie-watching psychology of "fellow villagers" is reflected in the fact that the audience in the dialect area will have a natural sense of cultural identity with the dialect films in the region. For example, the movie "Love Myth", according to the data of the lighthouse professional version, whether it is the day of release or the New Year's Day holiday, the box office proportion of Shanghai is the highest among all cities in the country, and there is a trend of continuing to open up the gap. This dialect-based cultural identity will make the audience have a special sense of intimacy in the process of watching the film, and if the actors are very brilliant in dialect expression, it will increase people's surprises.
△ The relevant data of "Love Myth" on the day of release and the New Year's Day holiday
Another kind of "foreigner" movie-watching psychology is reflected in the fact that audiences in non-dialect areas often show great interest in dialect movies that are rarely involved based on curiosity and fun, thus making dialect movies popular in other dialect areas. For example, the northeast dialect and Sichuan dialect movies with high comedic effects, even if many viewers can't understand it, some funny dialects are widely imitated.
Under the influence of such two psychology, dialect films that seem to have a limited audience can also usher in a large number of audience attempts in the early stage of release, and in the audience response of excellent production and good reputation, dialect films can also receive more attention and bring box office sales.
The distinction and abuse behind the popularity of dialect movies
While dialect films have gradually become an important creative form in the film and television industry, they have also unconsciously magnified the limitations of dialect films and the problem of dialect abuse.
The barrier to the mass consumption of dialects
On the one hand, dialect movies themselves come with their own viewing thresholds. Especially in dialects like Shanghainese, which itself sets conditions at the level of understanding, the audience can only know the actor's dialogue by watching subtitles, and due to excessive attention to the understanding of language, the audience is bound to reduce the experience of other elements of the film in the process of watching the movie, resulting in a broken sense of viewing.
At the same time, there are often some regional characteristics in the dialect. For example, in the comment area of Douban's "Love Myth", some netizens shared the Shanghainese connotation of "I raise nong" - at most it is a love story, most of the time it is deliberately strong, and the scene inside is empty. From this, it can be seen that the expression habits behind the dialect also set a threshold for the audience to understand.
On the other hand, due to the characteristics of commercial films to face the public, large dialects and even full-scale dialects will reduce the attractiveness of dialect characteristics. In fact, for the easy-to-understand Northeast dialect and Sichuan dialect, the dialect is a bonus, but some difficult to understand dialects will be counterproductive, which may also be the gap between "The Unknown Generation" and "Love Myth", one is a box office dark horse, and the other can only be reveled in the circle.
Abused dialect labels
In the prominent performance of dialect films, due to the excessive force of some films, the dialect itself has evolved into a groove for people to criticize. For example, some netizens have said that the dialect in "The Man Taken by the Light" does not bring a sense of substitution and resonance, but more is discomfort.
What can be pondered from this is whether all films are suitable for combining with dialects; whether the fundamental use of dialects is ignored by the creators in the case of a large number of dialect films, or even a movie with a smorgasbord of dialects; how to use dialects innovatively instead of simply piling up dialect elements is also a problem to be faced in the future.
△ Douban comments related to "Love Myth"
Compared with plot processing, story integrity, etc., in fact, dialect is not the audience's full feeling for a movie, nor is it the most core element that people abandon, but the well-received dialect movies are often willing to spend time on dialect dialogue, such as the outstanding performance of this "Love Myth". When the audience feels the intentions of the production team, in fact, dialect films can break free from the confinement of the regional circle, and even niche films can have excellent results.
epilogue
"Love Myth" has made the original niche dialect films such as Shanghainese films get great attention, and has also made many audiences feel more comprehensive about dialect films. In the increasingly vigorous development of dialect film creation, we can also see the contribution of film dialects to the dissemination of regional culture.
When the beauty of language is not limited to the uniformity of Mandarin, and the dialect of truth and originality brings us a new artistic experience, perhaps this is also a symbol of the film's origin and return to life.
Resources
Ji Bingjie. A brief discussion on the change of artistic effects of current dialect films. Audio-Visual.2018,(09):52-53
Cao Zhong,Peng Bo. The expression paradigm of the dialect narrative of the movie "The Unknown Generation". Satellite TV and Broadband Multimedia.2019,(21): 97-98