Wen Feng Yi
At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the video platform iQiyi was exploded and began to lay off employees, and the news that the proportion was between 20% and 40% attracted the attention of many people. As one of the important platforms for the output of film and television drama works, the important reasons for iQIYI's layoffs are not only the long-term losses of the platform, but also the sharp decline in popular dramas and the stagnation of membership growth in the past year.
Once upon a time, Chinese's happiest family activity after dinner every night was to sit on the couch and watch TV dramas together. Gradually, with the increase in the number of dramas available and the development of Internet platforms, people began to hold electronic devices and chase their own TV series. In 2021, affected by policy adjustments and entertainment industry rectification actions, domestic TV dramas that have been born for 40 years have also reached a crossroads.
The changes and changes of domestic TV dramas in the past 40 years
In the early 1980s, reform and opening up promoted the rapid development of the domestic economy, and the people began to have the desire for cultural consumption for the first time after solving the problem of food and clothing. At that time, the screen was dominated by TV dramas filmed by Hong Kong and Taiwan, such as Jin Yong Gulong martial arts dramas, Qiong Yao's love dramas, or "Shanghai Beach" and "Huo Yuanjia" set in the Republic of China. Audiences need to be more grounded and appear in the same cultural context as domestic dramas.
"Eighteen Years of the Enemy Camp", broadcast in 1981, was like a wedge, slowly opening the curtain of the national drama. In the second year after its broadcast, 11 TV series and more than 50 short dramas were produced.
At that time, the selection of domestic TV dramas was still limited to mythological interpretations, four famous works, and folk legends that already had a broad mass base, and most of the content copied the original works, not to mention reflecting reality and innovation. However, the TV dramas filmed during that period, such as "Journey to the West", "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Jigong", "Liaozhai", "Fengshen List", etc., almost all became classics, which is enough to prove that the technology and aesthetics of the Chinese television drama industry at that time can be highly restored to historical masterpieces.
The economic base determines the superstructure, and in the 1990s, the door of the country was further opened, and the emergence of a number of special economic zones had a more profound impact on China's economy, and the butterfly effect in culture was reflected in more and more TV dramas of different genres, styles and perspectives. Reality-themed TV dramas, such as "Beijingers in New York", "Foreign Sisters", "Debt", etc., began to show unique charm.
In 1988, in rural Shaanxi, many neighbors gathered around a black-and-white TV to watch TV dramas.
Since 2000, domestic dramas have exceeded 10,000 episodes per year, and since then, the total number of episodes has increased every year, and by 2013, it has exceeded 20,000 episodes. In particular, in 2019, a total of 535 TV series were broadcast, which is 4 times more than 20 years ago.
More valuable than the leap in quantity, what is more valuable is that the types of domestic TV dramas have begun to diverge continuously, not only the martial arts dramas, historical dramas, sitcoms, and police dramas that dominated the screen in the 90s, but also refined into different dimensions such as war, suspense, espionage, military service, occupation, fantasy, pure love, and campus.
However, with the deepening of urbanization, the rural themes that once occupied a place in domestic dramas have gradually lost their voice, and people can no longer see works such as "Fences, Women and Dogs". A "Mountain and Sea Love" at the beginning of 2021 is the only rural drama out of the circle in recent years, and now, if you want to see rural life, the audience can only go to "Rural Love" to watch sketches.
2014 is known as China's "first year of network self-made dramas", derived from xianxia, science fiction, crossing and other more subdivided dramas, vertically to meet the needs of different audiences, the traditional TV series "what kind of story to shoot to the audience" logic, into "for what kind of user to shoot stories", quality network dramas continue to emerge.
Due to policy reasons and the impact of the epidemic, on the one hand, more than 5,000 film and television companies across the country have announced the closure, and on the other hand, the redefinition of "short dramas" by short video platforms.
Throughout the 40 years of the development of Chinese dramas, it is not difficult to find that TV dramas with ethical conflicts can often contribute to high ratings, such as the early "Chinese-style divorce", "Holding Hands", "Coming and Going", "Romantic Things", "You Are My Brother", "Golden Marriage", "Parental Love" after 2010, "Naked Marriage", "Tiger Mother and Cat Father", "All Very Good", "Thirty Only" after 2010... From simply discussing the siege of marriage, it was refined to many hot topics at that time: phoenix men, urban-rural contradictions, naked marriage, house slaves, school district houses, older leftover women, native families and so on.
The preface to 40 Years hidden in Chinese TV dramas, a popular culture essay published in 2018, reads: "In the past half century, nothing has defined the worldview shared by a generation more than the television we have watched together, and nothing has more illustrative significance than those television texts that have been born in the unique context of certain eras but have persisted in the social and cultural space in the form of memory imprints." ”
As a popular culture, TV drama is the most intuitive mirror image of social narrative, and the 40 years of Chinese drama are also a series written by generations.
Beijing circle drama: from one family to a hundred flowers blooming
The TV series "North And South" that was launched on the online platform in July 2021 is the first web drama filmed by Feng Xiaogang. This story of struggle from a female perspective, even the guest list is Spring Festival Gala: Huang Bo, Song Dandan, Zhu Shimao, Zhu Yilong, Ren Suxi. But Rao has such a topic degree, but "North and South" is still ridiculed by the audience as a middle-aged version of "Small Times". At the same time, people also found that the "Beijing circle" involved in this drama is no longer the voice of the times.
Whether it is the classic "Four Generations Together" in the 1980s, or the first indoor long-form TV series "Longing" in the transition period of Chinese drama in the 1990s, the first TV humorous light comedy "The Story of the Editorial Department", and the first TV series "Beijingers in New York" with its own assets as collateral, full loans, and all shot abroad, it is inseparable from a name: Beijing Television Art Center. Behind it is the mysterious "Beijing Circle".
The Beijing Television Arts Center was established in 1982, a year before CCTV's TV drama production center. In the same year, a large courtyard boy named Zheng Xiaolong graduated from college and was assigned here. He handed the leader a script, "Air Hostess", which was originally written by the writer Wang Shuo.
Zheng Xiaolong also strung together the earliest "Beijing circle": Ye Daying and Wang Shuo were introduced by Zheng Xiaolong; Feng Xiaogang was able to find an art job in the art center through Zheng Xiaolong's promotion, and at the same time, he also relied on Zheng Xiaolong's lead to "chasing stars successfully" and got to know Wang Shuo, which was fortunate enough to participate in the creation of "The Story of the Editorial Department"; when filming "Air Hostess", Zheng Xiaolong also discovered Zhao Baogang, who not only won Wang Zhiwen and Jiang Shan through a "Passing Addiction", but also successfully accepted by the Beijing circle Jiang Wen, who is also a child of the courtyard, introduced himself to Zheng Xiaolong, got the male number one of "Beijingers in New York", met Wang Shuo, and found inspiration for his film debut "Sunny Day"; and Yingda also followed "big brother" Jiang Wen into this circle.
Slowly, this circle with the children of the courtyard as the main body expanded larger and larger, in addition to Shi Kang, Ma Weidu, Liu Zhenyun, Zhao Danian, Haiyan, Gao Xixi, Liu Xingang, Wang Zhongjun, Wang Zhonglei, Wang Jinghua, etc., there were also Ge You, Song Dandan, Liang Tian, Xu Jinglei and other royal actors of Beijing circle dramas.
In the most prosperous period of the Beijing circle, the TV dramas produced such as "Year after Year", "The Happy Life of Poor Mouth Zhang Damin", "Ten Years of Marriage", "Golden Marriage", etc., whether it is ratings, discussion, artistic value, social effects, and the speed of popular actors, are the best in the industry. At that time, in the Beijing circle, many people squeezed their heads and wanted to share a piece of the pie.
However, since the 2007 blockbuster but controversial "Struggle", the Beijing circle drama has become more and more "Versailles". The audience found that they said that they represented the common people, but they did not have bad money, and they said that they respected women, but what was fulfilled was the face of men. The 2021 broadcast of "North and South" is the epitome of these "Versailles" mentalities. In the final analysis, the big guys in the Beijing circle are still far from the lives of ordinary people. All kinds of negative news is just the last straw that overwhelms this circle.
The reason for the lower level is that now China's urban-rural gap is narrowing, the development of the network makes it easier and easier to share ideas, such as Hunan Satellite TV, Oriental Satellite TV and other local TV stations to increase the channels of expression; in the past, only TV stations were the first to look up, with the influx of various capital, large and small film and television companies have nearly 10,000, these factors have made the Beijing circle lose the capital that is looked up to.
On January 1, 1997, in Beijing, Ge You, Lü Liping and Wan Ziliang were filming the scene of "The Story of the Editorial Department".
In the 1990s, when the Beijing circle was the most popular, it is estimated that no one expected that Tencent, founded in 1998, Alibaba, which appeared in 1999, and Baidu, which was founded in 2000, in addition to bringing the Internet into ordinary homes, will also become a remote control for people to "see" in the future: Tencent Video, one of China's three major video companies, is a subsidiary of Tencent, and iQiyi and Youku are merged by Baidu and Alibaba respectively. Regardless of the number and type of episodes, the funds in hand, the actors who can be mobilized, it is enough to compete with the TV station, and even the advertisers of the TV station have been robbed of a large part by them.
Even the comedy camp, the Beijing circle, has not been able to hold. After "I Love My Home", Yingda's "Computer Home", "Northeast Family", "The Story of the Waiting Room", and "Networm Diary" have not become blockbusters, and 2002's "Idle Centaur Sister" is the last sitcom with audience popularity in Ying's Film and Television, and then the "Olympics in My Home" and "Our Family" filmed later are all silent and embarrassing states.
It is not that the audience does not like to watch sitcoms, but the people who shoot sitcoms have changed one after another: "The Story of the Cooking Class", broadcast in 2002, produced by the Television Art Center of the Political Department of the Air Force of the people's liberation army of the Chinese, the director Shang Jing is a Tianjin native who grew up in Chengdu, although his relationship with the directors of the Beijing circle is good, but he is by no means a "root red miaozheng" Beijing circle person, the royal actors are also different from the Beijing circle, 4 years later he filmed "Wulin Waichuan", Douban score 9.6, both the quality of the series and the national degree are higher.
Historical Drama: From Drama to Nonsense
"In addition to the name, where else can the Great Song Palace Words be compared with the Daming Palace Words? This is Li Shaohong touching his own porcelain. On March 20, 2021, under the banner of restoring history, the famous director Li Shaohong's "Great Song Palace Words" was launched on the three major video websites of Aiyouteng, from awkward acting, suspension of human settings, to the plot of Mary Sue, editing chaos, the audience's mouth spit up without mercy, the Douban score of this drama was finally fixed at 3.8 points.
In recent years, there have been fewer and fewer high-profile historical dramas on the screen. From 2017 to 2021, in addition to "The Rise of the Great Qin Empire" and "The Army Division Alliance of the Great Army Division Sima Yi", few historical dramas have entered the list of "Annual Top 10 TV Dramas", and even the costume dramas with more than 8 points in the Douban score in recent years are only the two mentioned above.
Chinese's belief in history is unmatched by any other country, and the film and television industry is naturally second to none. As a special branch of costume drama, historical drama has been the most important category since the birth of Chinese opera.
Whether it is the "Yongzheng Dynasty", "Kangxi Dynasty", "Granary of the World" that are partial to historical dramas, "Young Heavenly Son" with a mixed history of zhengshi, "Secret History of Xiaozhuang", "Secret History of the Crown Prince", "Secret History of Kangxi", or "Private Interviews of Kangxi Micro-service", "Ji Xiaolan with Iron Teeth and Copper Teeth", and "Liu Luoguo, Prime Minister" that are more historical than historical facts, Qing Palace dramas can be said to be the first historical genre dramas to enter the audience's field of vision.
Not only because the Qing Dynasty is the closest feudal dynasty to us, but also because in the earliest historical dramas imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the wild history of the Qing Dynasty is a well-deserved protagonist: Hong Kong director Li Hanxiang restored the history of the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China and cixi's mysterious life through "Burning the Yuanmingyuan" and "Hanging curtains to listen to the government". In 1992, "Joke about Qianlong" was introduced by the mainland, and the wind of "joke talk" and "braid" was officially blown.
Among them, the three most legendary emperors, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, naturally have to be "eaten dry and wiped clean" by film and television creators from the inside out.
By the second part of "Huan Zhu Ge Ge" in 1999, this kind of joke style had been consumed to the extreme. At that time, the audience joked: turn on the TV, full of braids.
After that, the historical drama was no longer limited to the royal family of the Qing Dynasty, but aimed at various dynasties and generations, about the Han Wudi Liu Che, there are two versions of "Han Tianzi" in 2001 and "Han Wu Emperor" in 2005, "Wu Zetian", "Genghis Khan", "Qin Shi Huang", "Great Qin Empire", "The Legend of Lü Hou" almost all the legendary emperors.
In addition to the emperor, the officials and small people with stories have also begun to become the protagonists: "The Great Song Ti Criminal Officer" is a detective collection of the Southern Song Dynasty Criminal Officer Song Ci, "A Generation of Honest Officials in Jackie Chan" tells the biographical history of Yu Chenlong, who is praised by Kangxi as "the first incorruptible official in the world", "Soul Break Taiping" presents the complex human nature of Zeng Guofan, "Hu Xueyan" is a red-top merchant at the end of the Qing Dynasty, "Sunset Forbidden City" shows the crumbling late Qing Empire from the perspective of a small palace girl, and the protagonist of "The Great Dyeing Workshop" is Chen Shouting, a printing and dyeing wizard in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. There are also official group portrait dramas such as "The Granary of the World" and "Daming Dynasty 1566", as well as "Daming Palace Words" that emphasize text and aesthetic innovation in expression.
But on the other hand, these conscience historical dramas are "applauded", such as "Daming Dynasty 1566" and "Towards the Republic", although the Douban score is as high as 9.7, but the ratings are dismal.
With the prevalence of entertainmentism, palace fighting dramas represented by "The Biography of Zhen Huan", "The Legend of Wu Meiniang", and "Yanxi Raiders", the cross-over dramas represented by "Gong Suo Xinyu" and "Step by Step Frightening", the Xianxia dramas represented by "Ancient Sword Qitan", "Flowers and Bones", and "Three Lives and Three Worlds and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms", as well as "Shangyang Fu", "Glory of data", "Yan Yuntai" and other dramas dressed in the cloak of historical dramas and carrying the reality of idol dramas are becoming more and more popular.
Now the costume drama that dominates the screen, whether wearing the "vest" of real historical figures or overhead history, the core has become an idol drama, like returning to the origin of "Joke about Qianlong". Looking back at "Joke about Qianlong", it is nothing more than the mercurial Qianlong who fell in love under the Jiangnan, there is no temple and monarch, and it has nothing to do with the people's livelihood and social welfare. The bottom line of pseudo-historical dramas has degenerated from "jokes" to "nonsense".
It is also based on this trend that there will be a "restriction order" issued by the General Bureau. In 2019, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a new regulation for major television stations: the total number of costume dramas broadcast each month and year during prime time shall not exceed 15% of the total number of episodes of all dramas broadcast during the month and the prime time of the year. The scope of the spread includes history, martial arts, fantasy, crossing, biography, palace fighting and many other categories.
This is not the earliest "limited ancient order", as early as 2006 at the Guangzhou Expo film and television program exhibition, the number of costume dramas has decreased significantly, in the 43 dramas that have been approved, there are only 6 costume dramas, and the exhibition is the vane of the annual TV drama market. In 2012, the General Administration began to ban palace fight dramas and crossover dramas from being broadcast on the golden file of the Shangxing Channel.
Just at the beginning of 2021, Youku launched the "Palace Struggle power conspiracy drama" "Shangyang Fu", Hunan Satellite TV launched the "Wind Rises Neon Dress" based on Tang Gaozong's famous minister Pei Xingjian and female official Ku Di Liuli, followed by the Focus on the Tang Dynasty's "Li Ge Xing", "Long Song Line", "Dream Awakening Chang'an" one by one. The audience's viewing medium has long since shifted from television to the Internet, and the "ancient restriction order" seems to have died in name only.
In fact, historical dramas are not to be filmed according to history books, even if it is empty history, the premise is to provide a "strong plot", in this regard, "Langya List" and "Qing Yu Nian" give positive reference significance.
Women's Drama: From a Female Perspective to the "Queen" Counterattack
Parents died, childhood lack of love, dropped out of school to work, starting from low, step by step, brave entrepreneurship, in the process of "upgrading and fighting monsters", there are two flower protectors around the bully and the warm man... This is the story told by the most recently rated drama series "Sea of Stars". The middle-aged idol drama presented in the original trailer, with the standard big heroine style after the launch of the film, let the audience catch up with the drama.
Young audiences will not know that as early as 30 years ago, domestic dramas have already dedicated one such TV series: the story of 6 mountain village girls who hope to change their fate, come to Guangdong to work, and finally make different life choices. In the end, the heroine Zhao Xiaoyun, played by Chen Xiaoyi, became the director of the factory and began the road to entrepreneurship, while Jiang Sheng, a Hong Kong businessman who had emotional entanglements with her, had forgotten about the jianghu when he said goodbye. Its name is "Alien Sister", and many people over the age of 40 may still be able to hum its theme song "I Don't Want to Say".
Strictly speaking, the term "big heroine" began to be popular from the "Biography of Zhen Huan" in 2011, and in the following years, whether it is costume dramas, palace fighting dramas, xianxia dramas, or modern dramas, campus dramas, idol dramas, and workplace dramas, the concept of "big heroines" is emphasized:
In 2015's "The Legend of Wu Meiniang", the heroine has at least 5 spare tires, which is an evolutionary history of "Tang Mary Sue Wu Ruyi"; in 2016, The protagonist of "Qin Shi Liren Mingyue Xin", Gongsun Li, had a series of grudges with Yin Zheng, Jing Ke and Han Shen; 2017's "That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon was Round" described the ups and downs of the life of Zhou Ying, the richest woman in Shaanxi at the end of the Qing Dynasty; and "Ruyi Zhuan" in 2018, which told the life of the subsequent Ullanara Ruyi and the Qianlong Emperor from love to emotional breakdown; In 2021's "Shangyang Fu", the heroine Wang Yan and Xiao Qi first married and fell in love, guarding the homeland.
Stills from "Langya List".
Even the audience summed up the law, all called "so-and-so biography", such as "Zhen Huan biography", "Mi Yue biography", "Chu Qiao biography", "Ruyi biography"; "so-and-so legend", such as "Lu Zhen legend", "Wu Mei niang legend"; "so-and-so line", such as "long song line", "Li Song line", and directly called its name, such as "Flower Thousand Bones", "Lanling Princess", "Splendid Weiyang"... It can basically be concluded that it is a "big heroine" drama.
Although the big female protagonist drama can also be subdivided into different types such as harem fighting, chaotic growth, revenge in distress, entrepreneurship to earn a living, workplace ups and downs, etc., as long as you have seen more than three, you can find out the routines of these dramas: ordinary birth, but people are beautiful and kind, and the fate is uncertain, but the protagonist's aura is strong, and behind each big heroine there must be a group of men who silently support her, and in the end, love, wealth, and power are all in the pocket.
Unlike the silly white sweetness in idol dramas, the big female lead drama needs to be cloaked in inspiration, even if it is still the truth of Mary Sue. Like Tian Dan, the heroine in the spy war drama "New World", since falling in love with the male protagonist, she has become a "love brain"; "Perfect Relationship" is under the banner of female professional drama, and the female protagonist counterattacks but relies on the male protagonist. Not to mention that in 2018, there will be a drama like "Niangdao" released.
Taking Zhang Ziyi's investment and starring in "Shangyang Fu" as an example, leaving aside the 38-year-old Zhang Ziyi's inappropriate role as a young girl, this drama under the guise of "strong women" dilutes the part of the power plot that should have been there, and uses a large page to show the wisdom reduction plot of male characters who love "I".
The reason why the film and television industry is increasingly pleasing to women is not difficult to find: DeTaven's recently released "2020-2021 TV Drama Market Analysis Report" shows that the audience structure in 2020 is still dominated by women, accounting for 62%. Up to now, the number of female mobile Internet users in China has reached 547 million, and the penetration rate of the online video industry is 77.1%.
Stills from "An Jia".
As the absolute controller of the remote control, women have become the wealth code in the industry. Of the 294 online dramas broadcast in 2020, women as the main audience accounted for 63%, in addition to the big female lead dramas, urban emotions, costume romance, sweet pet dramas, and campus dramas also accounted for a large proportion.
But among them, like Shuangwen, it is the big female protagonist who can escape from real life to the greatest extent, satisfy the pleasure of self-substitution, and realize immersive emotional compensation.
It is precisely because of the large audience of the big female protagonist that more and more capital has poured into this genre, resulting in the current situation of oversupply. According to industry statistics, of the about 16,000 episodes of TV dramas filmed in 2019, 40% are modern dramas, more than half of which are big female dramas, and 35% are costume dramas, and feminist themes account for more than 70%. Extrapolating from this, there should be at least 100 big female lead dramas on the star or online on the network platform in 2020, while the actual broadcast volume is only 20%.
In fact, in the early years, domestic dramas have many episodes from the perspective of women, which has triggered thousands of empty alleys of "Longing" Needless to say, "Miss Public Relations" in 1989 is the earliest professional drama and a TV series that reflects the female group; "Woman Is Not the Moon" The orphan girl of Zhongshan Village "Buckle" Although the fate is bumpy, but finally achieved self-liberation; "Shanghai Family" is the story of "a family" that occurred in the shantytown of Shanghai Beach from the late 1920s to before the liberation of Shanghai, and the heroine of the play, Ruo Nan, although there are three men admiring, But did not rely on them, and finally relied on their own to achieve the ideal; there are "pink girls" composed of four single women, "marriage maniacs", "men and wives", "millions of fans" and "ha sisters", and also put forward thinking on the concept of marriage and love, family and life. These women do not necessarily become "big" heroines in the end, and even struggle to survive in the red dust at the end.
Compared with the costume drama that has caused aesthetic fatigue to the audience, the urban drama from the female perspective has a stronger market demand, and dramas such as "Ode to Joy", "An Home", "Thirty Only", "I Am Good in Other Places" and other dramas have continuously broadened the boundaries of "women +". The way of group drama also solves the tendency of supporting actresses to face.
In the just-broadcast "Sea of Stars", Jian Ai, played by Liu Tao, jumped into the river to commit suicide in order to get rid of the pursuit of the rich second generation male protagonist, and when the male protagonist was engaged to others for the sake of family interests, Jian Ai borrowed wine to dispel his sorrows. This plot can't help but be reminiscent of "Foreign Sister", when the young daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman inadvertently pointed to the brooch sent by the rich businessman on Zhao Xiaoyun's clothes and said: "Dad calls this emotional investment." Hearing these words, Zhao Xiaoyun completely cut off all illusions. At the finale, the rich businessman saw Zhao Xiaoyun again at the airport, and the narrator said: "He saw a different Zhao Xiaoyun." It turns out that 30 years ago, we already had a big heroine who was bent on doing business.
Values: Domestic dramas can no longer tolerate the "poor"
With the development of the times, people's three views have also been unconsciously changed. I don't know when it started, the "love" in domestic dramas is more and more demanding matching.
"Vacuum Love Record", broadcast in 1996, is regarded as the first domestic idol TV series, Cui Xi, who came from a family of diplomats, fell in love with Chu Zhengyan, who had excellent grades but was not rich in his family; in "Spring in summer", Ma Su played the spring family who was well-off and eventually chased to the poor boy Plateau; 1997's "Beijing-Hong Kong Love Line" not only had differences in status, but also a huge cultural gap between Beijing and Hong Kong.
Starting from the "New Marriage Era" in 2006 and "Double Sided Tape" in 2007, the same "peacock woman" married the "phoenix man", the disparity in family conditions and the difference in life background laid an invisible bomb for their married life, and the intervention of the man's family directly led to the tragedy.
In 2009, when the audience watched "Snail House", they sympathized with Seaweed's boyfriend Xiaobei. The two are a poor but happy little couple, originally planned to get married, but in order to meet the needs of their sister to buy a house, Seaweed "sent" himself to the magnate Song Siming. At that time, the seaweed was put on the hat of "three views are not correct" by the audience, and Song Siming was also a villain who took advantage of the void. However, now open this drama, what pops up on the bullet screen is "Xiaobei is unwilling to lend money to the eldest sister-in-law, and should be green", "Xiaobei is too picky, except for gentleness and thoughtfulness, there is no advantage", "Song Siming has a person with grace, and if he marries someone, he must marry Song Siming", although Song Siming in the play is a person with a family.
Female characters are also not spared. "Fan Shengmei" in "Ode to Joy", "Fang Xiangjin" in "An Jia", and "Su Mingyu" in "All Is Good" are all from civilian families, and their original families are destined to be shaped into blood-sucking and son-preference.
In some domestic dramas now, the "poor" not only do not deserve to have love, but even the "good character" does not deserve to have: in the past, they were diligent and self-reliant, honest and kind, but now they have magnified more of the side of cutting doors, loving face, mother's treasure, sensitive and suspicious, good and happy, despicable and sinister, cowardly and useless, and insatiable. Like "Qi Tongwei" and "Gao Xiaoqin" in "The Name of the People", the viewpoint of "it is difficult to get out of the cold door" has been interpreted again.
However, in recent years, with the rise in prices, the pressure of life and other reasons, some people have become more and more undisguised in their Muqiang complex. Whether it is an idol drama or a life ethics drama, the handsome and golden "overbearing president-style" male protagonist is the standard.
On the other hand, the audience also has a strong emotional cleanliness for the male characters in today's domestic dramas: the heroine abuses me thousands of times, and I treat the heroine like a first love. In the face of any temptation, we must sit still and not be undecided. If "Carry Love to the End" starring Xu Jinglei and Li Yapeng in 1998 was broadcast today, Yang Zheng, played by Li Yapeng, was definitely a scumbag. "Love Is Deep and Rainy" broadcast 20 years ago, in 2020, relied on He Shuhuan's "Scumbag Quotes" to go out of the circle again.
"Little Third Child" is even more for everyone to shout and beat, "Ellie" in "The Temptation to Go Home", "Ling Ling" in "The First Half of My Life", "Erqing" in "Yanxi Raiders", "Lin Youyou" in "Thirty Only"... Even if "The First Half of My Life" and "Thirty Only" have tried their best to break the stereotype of "Little Three", the audience only wants to see "the original match to play Little Three".
In our previous domestic dramas, "third party" was a neutral word. Wang Chun, played by Yu Feihong in "Holding Hands", finally could not stand the condemnation of conscience and left Zhong Rui; Xiao Nan, played by Xu Qing in "East Sunrise and West Rain", was tired of being swayed by money to create his own company; Lin Zhu, a workplace woman in "Coming and Going", figured everything out, had a breakup meal with her lover, and went abroad. At that time, domestic dramas spread out and magnified the repressed marriages of middle-aged people, although there was no moral and ethical tolerance for third parties, but the audience would not "judge" them by public opinion.
Not only for money, but also for the presentation of domestic dramas on the original family, there are also subversive changes. "The Tree of Affection," aired in 2003, tells the story of a special family of the policewoman's own daughter and the children of three unrelated female prisoners. The heroine played by actor Ju Xue was originally married to the master's son, but because she had to take care of her younger siblings, the marriage ended in divorce. At that time, the audience thought that the heroine's ex-husband was too "calculating". Looking back at this series now, the comment area mostly calls the heroine "Brother Demon", and believes that divorce is the right choice.
The works of any era are a projection of the current social situation at that time. 1990's "Longing" was empty when it was broadcast that year, but today, this willing female design is no longer pleasing.
Qiong Yao's works were indeed groundbreaking in the 1970s and 1980s, when they were bound by etiquette. But in the contemporary era when people's emotions are becoming more and more inward and more and more self-sufficient, people's subconscious appeals are exactly what they see on the screen now, people yearn for superior life, career success, and hope that their partners are handsome and golden, and their feelings are single-minded. In the midst of great changes, moderate overcorrection is often forgivable.
"Liu Huifang", once played by Zhang Kaili, carries all the imaginations of Chinese straight men for a good Chinese wife. 20 years later, Zhang Kaili in "The Naked Marriage Era" became a snobbish "mother-in-law" and said to the son-in-law: No money, no car, no diamond ring, what marriage?
Although the 40 years of domestic dramas, there are still many regrets: aphasia of rural themes, professional dramas that cannot shoot professional dramas, martial arts dramas that have repeatedly fried cold rice remakes, IP flooding, traffic actors are in charge... But in this era when values are constantly being shattered and reshaped, we have a slowly awakened female consciousness, a "mist theater" that has created countless fine products, an ethical drama that keeps pace with the times, and a platform where ordinary people can also speak, and it seems that there is no need to regret it.