This article was published in the "Sanlian Life Weekly" No. 46, 2019, the original title of the original article "< modern love >, a hundred faces of love", it is strictly forbidden to reprint privately, infringement must be investigated
Reporter/Chen Lu
Anne Hathaway plays Lacey, a lawyer with bipolar disorder
In 2004, The New York Times launched a short emotional column of about 1,500 words each, allowing readers to tell their love stories in this space. The column, originally written by the wife of responsible editor Daniel Jones, explored contemporary marital issues and attracted the interest of Trip Gabriel, then editor of the fashion edition of The New York Times. He gave the two a chance to write a column and named it after David Bowie's song "Modern Love."
Initially, they thought the column might only last a year or two. However, 15 years later, "Modern Love" has become one of the most popular columns in The New York Times, often the most searched term on the New York Times website on weekends. One of the 2006 articles, "Sharm Taught Me What a Happy Marriage Is," became the most retweeted article in the site's history, and "36 Questions for Strangers to Fall in Love Quickly," which is very popular among Chinese readers, is also from this column.
As a column editor, Daniel Jones's mailbox receives more than 9,000 submissions from readers across the country each year. Over the past 15 years, Jones has read more than 100,000 personal stories about "love," and eventually combed through about 750 of them. "I bet 70% of the time, it's the most important story in that person's life," he said. ”
The enduring vitality has made "Modern Love" a favorite of different media platforms. Four years ago, NPR and The New York Times collaborated on a podcast of the same name, inviting a famous actor to read one of the articles aloud each week. This year, Amazon's streaming platform picked out eight more articles, continuing the short and pithy nature of the column, adapting it into a 30-minute TV series with a total of 8 episodes, including Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey and Dev Patel, which has received numerous praise since its launch in mid-October.
Love with people
In the process of reading, most of the stories in the column are about love. But when Amazon chooses, it seems to want to expand its definition of "love", deliberately choosing those emotional stories that connect more different people and different forms. For example, the highly rated first episode is not a love story. Maggie, a single young woman living alone in Manhattan, faces a problem every date, and Guzmin, the concierge downstairs of the apartment, will look at the man she brought back with a scrutinizing eye and whisper to her every time, "I don't like him." But when Maggie accidentally gets pregnant and prepares to give birth alone, it's Guzmin who watches over her, telling her that you're still young, have a Ph.D., have a job, and have savings, and that you'll meet a good man. Later, when Maggie came home from the hospital with her newborn daughter, Guzmin helped her open the car door, took the baby basket out of the car, and praised and encouraged: "Well done, the child is so beautiful." This is the original phrase in the article.
Like many readers at that time, after watching this episode, the audience inevitably expected a more romantic ending between the two. But the beauty of this story is precisely that this kind of love between strangers is not love, but the kindness and warmth of a father-like elder to a little girl who is not deeply involved in the world in a big isolated city. The author writes in the original text: "My daughter has an unusual affection for Guzmin, as if she understood the role he had always played, the one who welcomed her into this world with open arms, the one who was willing to guard and care for her at any time with an open heart, just like the mother he once guarded and cared for her." "It's more moving than love.
Another high-scoring story in the series was written by Deborah Copaken, a reporter for New York Times Magazine, who, in an interview with Justin McLeod, the founder of the dating app Hinge, threw up an unexpected question: "Have you ever loved?" This successfully pried open the other person's heart and brought out a past when he missed true love in college. So Kopacken also shared with him an experience from 17 years ago: two young people who met by chance in a foreign country quickly fell in love and spent a good week together, writing down their addresses on paper and meeting each other to see each other, but they lost their contact information and went to marriage. Interestingly, the two reunited many years later, and although the love did not fade, they finally let go of the relationship after a night of conversation: one decided to be kind to his wife who had been with him for many years, and the other decided to end his loveless marriage.
This story is full of an adult's wisdom of life, and the aftertaste is endless. But what makes her more attractive is that she did not allow this young man who had given up to continue to miss true love in front of her. Whether in the story or in reality, the article that was finally published helped the two to get back together.
But for me personally, my favorite is the seventh story. Aside from the reasons why "Mo Niang" Andrew Scott himself is popular, the perspective of the story is too interesting. Tobin and Andy, a pair of same-sex couples who have traditionally been marginalized in the social sense, decided to "open adopt" a child, an adoption method that allows biological parents to participate in it. As a result, they meet Carla, an urban wanderer who is on the fringes of society. Carla is not forced to wander, she sees her actions as a resistance to the negative effects of modern life, and the only criterion for choosing an adoptive family is "not enough for the two to love each other". However, in preparation for adoption, tobin and Carla's values clashed, attacking each other, but eventually reaching an understanding of each other in the dialogue.
While watching this episode, I kept thinking about one of my good GAY honeys. We both used to live under one roof and often talk about the trivialities of life. I wanted to buy all kinds of things in the rental house, but he always criticized him for spending money indiscriminately. He had a good salary, but he was a miserly man who was muttering all day long. It wasn't until after a few beers late at night that he told me that he wanted an acknowledged wedding with his boyfriend and longed to have his own children through surrogacy in the future, all of which cost money.
The story of encounters with people, so that different individuals can understand each other, is the charm of this column. I believe that many people, like me, first learned about the existence of the emotional psychosis of "bipolar disorder" through this TV series.
In the episode in which Anne Hathaway plays Lacey, a lawyer with bipolar disorder, she is sometimes in high spirits, crazy as if every moment is a set of song and dance youth, and sometimes depressed, even difficult to get out of bed. I even wonder if this is an over-performance of the film's dramatic effects, otherwise how can it be so extreme? So I found the original text, which said that when she was depressed, "My body felt like it was soaked in slowly drying cement." All I could do was take a breath and exhale it, over and over again. Bored enough to want to cry, but too tired to shed tears." But a few weeks later, when she woke up from this state, "the whole world is like Disney: daffodil-colored sunshine, robin-egg blue skies." The birds chirped outside my window, and there was no doubt that the songs they sang were made specifically for me. I can't stand it for a moment."
In episode four, Rob and Asmin start a bad date and gradually open themselves up
A city love letter
The first season of Modern Love has just ended, and the second season has been renewed. I'm especially looking forward to the second season of "Can You Marry My Husband" and the following "My Wife Says You Might Want to Marry Me" two episodes. These two stories made me cry in the middle of the night.
The author of the first article, a wife who was diagnosed with cancer, joked that her encounter was an unappetizing joke, and listed one by one how easy it was for her husband to fall in love with: well-dressed, skillful, music-loving, fond of painting, romantic humor, and handsome looks. So she wrote this article to recruit the right person for this lovely person who could help him start a new love after he left.
A year later, her husband wrote "My Wife Says You Might Want to Marry Me," which was also published in the "Modern Love" column. He said his wife died 10 days after the article was published, but letters pouring in from around the world also brought him some solace. And what he learned from this gift is that the freedom that the deceased can give the living to continue their lives will enable them to finally regain meaning. Although the process is very painful, when they know that they have your permission, and even your encouragement, they will continue their lives and start a new future.
Jagged and different loves constitute the connotation of "modern love". As Daniel Jones looks back on the stories he's read over the years, he can't help but lament that "love is one of the most wonderful things, and it's because of how hard it is to grasp." Many people say that this show is the real "New York, I Love You". Even Iulie Hogben, the original author of the first story, said in a return interview with The New York Times that many of the scenes in the TV series are "especially New York" and can arouse everyone's memories. I think that what really moves everyone in "Modern Love" is that it is these delicate depictions of simple daily life and the reproduction of real life that make us find emotional connections outside the story and be able to watch it with relish.
When I used to watch "Love at Sunset and Dusk", I was very touched by a passage that Selena said: "I feel that I will never forget everyone I have interacted with... My mother told me that I was often late for school, and one day she followed me to wonder why, and I was watching chestnuts fall from the trees and roll onto the road, or ants crossing the road, reflections of leaves reflected on the trunk of the tree, and so on. I think, too, for people, I see their details. You can't replace anyone, because everyone has his own beautiful, unique nuances. ”
These nuances also make up our entire impression of a city. It's as if I came to New York alone a few years ago, and the first impression of the garbage flying on the streets was that the city was terrible. However, when I was dragging a large suitcase to the Bronx district of New York to find a friend, but I was worried about the high steps outside the New York subway station, a black man quickly took the suitcase from my hand, and a "Let me help" (Let me help you) had not yet dissipated from my ear, he had already helped me lift the box above the subway station and quickly disappeared into the crowd. At this time, my liking for New York and New Yorkers gradually climbed with the midday sun.
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