In Chen Peisi's "embarrassment", there is the true meaning of comedy

Insight in "embarrassment"

"Gold Medal Comedy Class"

In the recently broadcast comedy heritage variety show "Gold Medal Comedy Class" by CCTV and other platforms, Chen Peisi sat firmly in the C position of the mentor seat, highlighting his weight in the Chinese comedy industry, but the situation was somewhat "embarrassing". During the class assessment, several programs praised by the other two instructors were pointed out by him, which attracted the complaints of many contestants and even the host; at the end of the first program, only he did not recruit students for the time being; in the small examination stage of the class, he unreservedly "output" six hours of dry goods in the comedy theory class, but the students did not buy it much.

Chen Peisi's speech is straightforward and does not cooperate with the program team to create effects. For the "embarrassing" situation, he did not take the initiative to resolve it, but calmly faced it. Starting from his own experience in comedy creation and practice, he calmly preached, taught, and solved puzzles to young people who loved comedy performance, and told the secret of excellent comedy creation and performance: to paraphrase the phrase "drama originates from life, higher than life", comedy should "pursue logic, break logic", and form a "bad trend" with life.

"Comedy is drama, theatrical activity that creates laughter." "What is drama? Conflict of characters and plots. Now it's not about conflict, it's about talent. "The points of comedy are a bit arbitrary, not very solid from the character, the events to generate, want to emphasize more baggage." 」 "Don't forget what we're acting for, it's the root. It is best to use the best state of behavior and creative state to win the laughter of the audience. ”

Looking at Chen Peisi's remarks and performances in the "Gold Medal Comedy Class", it can be said that the standards are strict, the attitude is serious, the theory is rigorous, full of insight, and reflects the style of a master. He values the effect of baggage and cares more about the structure of the whole play. This kind of creative requirements of taking into account the whole and the part, both observing society and transcending life, is quite difficult for most players. However, Chen Peisi did not expect them to be able to immediately understand and digest his heartfelt words, and then used them for comedy creation, and he also used one work after another, through years of exploration, to slowly form a systematic comedy theory.

Movie

Start by respecting the resilience of life

The current comedy market is dazzling, but the vast majority of creations are not worth mentioning, not works. They are either possessed by "Versailles" and pretended to be high and not funny, or they pursue vulgar "lower three roads" paragraphs in shallowness, or like many of the current evening sketches, "sad and happy tail", the audience just read the beginning and guessed the end, the real "human comedy" gradually lost its place. Chen Peisi's comedy has always really landed in the world and taken root in the folk.

Comedies starring or directed by him, whether they are sketches that remain in the depths of national memory, or film and television dramas, short films, and dramas, most of them use small people and small perspectives to peek into the big times and big society, close to reality, close to the people's livelihood, ironic humor and laughter, and deep humanistic feelings of compassion. At the level of spiritual temperament, they even communicate with Chaplin's films, including the "modern era" sour "gold rush", and there are also "city lights" that illuminate the "homeless", which can make ordinary people laugh and think about it - the "origin of comedy, related to pain" he threw out in the "Gold Medal Comedy Class", indicating that good comedy must be laughter with tears and sorrow in joy. In 1979, dragon set actor Chen Peisi picked the beam for the first time, starring in Wang Haowei's "Look at this family". The drama actors he portrayed made a lot of jokes that the audience would like because they did not read much and did not learn well. Four years later, wang Hao looked for him to star as a young man who was idle in order to shoot "Xizhao Street", and his mantra "Bye bye, you" once became a national buzzword.

Both films use comedic techniques to depict the changes in the lives and mental outlook of ordinary citizens in Beijing in the early days of reform and opening up, sandwiched among a number of scar films that trace trauma, such as "Little Street", "Wrangler", and "Bashan Night Rain", which obviously belong to an outlier. However, it is the alien attributes that make them break out of the siege and are widely sought after by the audience, because the Chinese people have not seen huan for a long time.

It is said that the two films that are common in the city make the audience feel real and interesting, and because the father of the character played by Chen Peisi is played by his father, the well-known film performance artist Chen Qiang. The real father-son relationship between the two moved to the play, increasing the texture of the collision of pots and pans, making the comedy contradiction more lifelike. Chen Qiang and Chen Peisi probably realized this, and in the 1980s and 1990s, they chased after the father and son files and launched a series of ethical comedies including "Father and Son", "Second Son Opens a Shop", "Silly Hat Manager", "Father and Son Classic Car", "Grandfather and Son Open a Song Hall", etc.

The five films use contrast, dislocation, contrast and other techniques to create a comedic effect. Around the son's participation in the college entrance examination, self-employed business, to shenzhen special zone to earn money and other events, the two grandfathers and sons interpret the traditional father-son relationship at the same time, but also deconstruct the patriarchy, many of the father's actions are subject to the son, no longer authoritative and serious. However, the change and even the opposite of the father-son identity is placed in the context of the times rather than discussed within the family, and many times it is necessary to live a more dignified and decent life, and it is ironic to write about the chaos and people's livelihood in the period of social transformation. In "Silly Hat Manager", the son is the "boss" father to "work", the father and son identity will be reversed from time to time, and the grandfather and son will become "grandsons" in order to make the hotel operate normally, not to be arbitrarily charged and fined.

Chen Peisi later directed and starred in film and television dramas such as "Moving Forward for a New Life" and "Filial Piety and Grandchildren Waiting", the "Master-Apprentice Music" series of short films, and the "Father and Son" theme films, which record the changing times and carry the ups and downs of people's hearts. In "Filial Piety and Virtuous Grandchildren Waiting", the old lady played by Zhao Lirong tests the filial piety of her children with an absurd drama of suspended animation, causing her son and daughter to almost empty their respective family property, and various ethical disorders also follow: the old lady's brother helps her enthusiastically zhang Luo "funeral", but wants to amass wealth; the monk responsible for "super soul" at the "funeral" is disguised by a group of young actors and actresses of the troupe.

What is significant is that many of the small characters interpreted by Chen Peisi in film and television dramas have various shortcomings, but they all lose their kindness and innocence. Although they have repeatedly encountered what Chaplin called "dilemmas", they are often treated unfairly by society and feel the pain of being alive, but they will not lose confidence in life. For example, the second son in the father-son ethics comedy, when he encounters the dilemma of not paying back, although he will be lost and depressed, he is also particularly good at starting another mountain and starting over. This is not the Ah Q Spiritual Victory Method, but highlights Chen Peisi's respect for the wisdom of folk survival and the tenacious vitality of ordinary little people.

opusculum

Empathize with the "little people"

In the "Gold Medal Comedy Class", Chen Peisi repeatedly proposed the concept of "bad potential". He believes that the comedy is a spectator relationship, and the audience is higher than the characters in the work. Although their eyes on the characters in the play are far from the "perspective of the emperor", they often know the overall situation in advance than the people in the play. The banana peels or traps that people in the play can't see, the audience can see. Knowing makes the audience feel a sense of superiority and anticipation, and the more the character is overwhelmed in front of the situation, the happier the audience will be. In other words, the more unequal the information between the audience and the actors, the greater the "bad situation", the better the comedic effect.

But the value of Chen Peisi is that he does not use vulgar language with sarcasm or offensive connotations, or humiliating and strange moves, deliberately increasing the "bad situation" - in his works, whether it is the aforementioned film and television dramas, or the sketches he performed with Zhu Shimao on the spring evening, the small people who slipped or fell into the trap by banana peels, never the marginal people with physical defects, nor the nose and blue face or even the problems.

Chen Peisi has always stood from the perspective of empathy, looking at the "dilemma" encountered by the little people. In his frequently watched novels, the police, protagonists, film directors, and law enforcement officers played by Zhu Shimao, who has thick eyebrows and big eyes, and the thieves, supporting roles, extras, and unlicensed vendors played by him, from appearance, occupation to personality and status, there are obvious contrasts between strength and weakness, which are naturally contradictory. However, the collision between the two is unfolded on the basis of complete equality, and the conflict of the plot does not have the condescending big characters to the small characters' flaws, and the comedic effect is born in the clean and sharp event advancement.

Let the two become popular at the Spring Festival Gala, and at the same time create a skit in this form of performance of "EatIng Noodles", Zhu Shimao did not use vicious words to bring out psychological contempt first because of Chen Peisi's appearance and did not look like an actor at all, but chatted with him as soon as he came up. "Lamb Kebabs", "Police and Thieves", "Protagonists and Supporting Characters", etc., are also straight to the theme, using the opposition or dislocation of the identities of the two people, the repetition, misunderstanding, deliberate distortion, mutual interference in verbal communication, and Chen Peisi's unbearable expression and body language to create "laughing fruit".

In the atmosphere of laughter, Chen Peisi often quietly implants social issues and injects humanistic feelings. In "Pepper Noodles", two characters with obvious contrasts between the south and the north can meet in the restaurant because the process of urbanization has suddenly arrived. In "Lamb Kebabs", the comprehensive sweep of the economic wave emerged and the impact on the world's style and people's hearts. In 1998, he and Zhu Shimao's last sketch on the CCTV stage, "Wang Ye and the Postman", was about national self-esteem in the context of globalization.

Stage plays

The tragic core under the comedy

Chen Peisi's sense of social responsibility extends to his nearly 20 years of theatrical creation. When he parted from CCTV because of the noisy copyright storm, the film industry was also trapped by market chaos. Unwilling to be wrapped up in the creative environment, he took the initiative to stay away from the big screen and small screen, and turned to the field of drama at the beginning of the new century, simultaneously starting the work of cultivating comedy talents and disseminating comedy ideas. So far, he has launched 10 stage plays mainly in drama.

Compared with the sketches, his plays are more complete and rigorous in structure, the form is more ingenious and elaborate, a variety of comedy techniques are interlocked, and the baggage and bridge sections are also smooth and material. These characteristics have fully satisfied the audience who have a love complex for Chen Peisi, so that his dramas can blossom all over the country and even abroad. Lifting the cloak of laughter, it is his thinking around the grassroots small people. Dramas such as "Childcare", "Balcony", and "Cave Room" involve practical problems such as marriage care fraud, migrant workers seeking wages, and naked marriage without a house, which makes the audience feel close.

In addition to focusing on reality, Chen Peisi also set his sights on history. Directed by him and co-starring with Yang Lixin, "Drama Stage" has a Douban score of 9.2. In the Republic of China during the period of warlord division, the masters of the drama class, which integrates the identity of cultural people and merchants, in order to preserve the artistic heritage left by the ancestors, but also so that the drama class can breathe in the cracks, under the oppression of power, leading to a series of ridiculous farces, outlining the portrait of the sentient beings who are also applicable to modern society.

More importantly, the "bitter tears" in "All Laughs and Talks" in "The Stage" further says that excellent comedies often have a tragic core. This is the key to Chen Peisi's high-level comedy and unforgettable to the audience, they have the characteristics of the times and social background, have style and connotation, and can make the audience both happy and resonate and reflect.

Mei Sheng