Nowadays, the TV series "Human World", which is based on the winning work of the writer Liang Xiaosheng and the Mao Dun Literature Award of the same name, is being broadcast, and the whole drama shows "big events" with "small stories", presenting an epic of Chinese-style family changes by depicting the perseverance, kindness and optimism of ordinary people in the big era, which has aroused the emotional resonance and universal praise of countless audiences; also at the beginning of the year, a web drama adapted from the novel novel of the same name by Pray Jun, "Beginning", with its novel theme setting, meticulous plot design, "infinite flow." The story structure has also gained high attention and good reputation, becoming the first online "phenomenon drama" this year; on the drama stage, the drama "Protagonist" created by the Shaanxi People's Art Theater will soon appear in Xi'an, and dramas adapted from the novel of the same name, such as "Red Sorghum Family" and "I Am Not Pan Jinlian", will also be on the stage one after another within the year... A series of literary and artistic creations on the deep integration and connection and development of literature, film and television, and drama are extending the value of literature in different ways of presentation. So, what characteristics do current literary adaptations embody? In the face of the trend of other literary and artistic disciplines returning to the "mother" of literature, what new connotations will "literature +" bring to its content and form?
Pure literature has become an important "motherbook" for film and television adaptations
The trend of pure literary adaptations of film and television works has not only emerged in recent years. Since the 1980s, there have been a large number of film and television works adapted from novels, such as "Furong Town", "Yellow Land", "Red Sorghum", "Big Red Lantern Hanging High", "Qiu Ju Fights a Lawsuit", "Ju Dou", "Siege of the City" and so on. As an important form of artistic expression, film and television works fundamentally pursue perfect artistry and profound ideological connotation and spiritual purpose, which is related to literature. Pure literature has thus become an important source of texts for film and television works, providing a solid humanistic foundation for the birth of excellent film and television works. Since the beginning of the new century, with the acceleration of the pace of life, the surge in entertainment demand, the advent of the Internet era, and the change of batch after batch of "traffic", film and television works and pure literature have gradually drifted away, and a large number of creative resources have been tilted towards popular literature and online literature.
Compared with pure literature, popular and online literary works take more care of readers in narrative, pay attention to the coherence and ups and downs of the storyline, read more easily, spread more quickly, and have a huge reader base and are more favored by the film and television industry. Since the beginning of the new century, although many pure literary works such as "Ordinary World", "White Deer Plain", "Long Hate Song", "Historical Sky", "Dark Calculation", and "Tuina" have been adapted into films and television, and many excellent adaptations of ideological and artistic qualities have emerged, the influence of pure literature has not been better demonstrated compared with the topic heat formed by adaptations of popular and online literature. However, in the past two years, the wind direction of film and television creation is changing. Writer and screenwriter Haifei believes that in the film and television adaptation market of literary works in recent years, more and more problems have been exposed in works adapted from online literature and popular literature, such as the huge volume of online literature itself, and the "daily change" model has led to unstable story structure; the copyright cost of online literature is too high, resulting in a decline in the cost of adapting screenwriters, thus losing the joining of a group of screenwriters with strong original ability. Correspondingly, pure literature is gradually favored by the film and television market. Film and television dramas adapted from pure literary works such as tv dramas such as "Loading Stage", "I Am Yu Huanshui", "Rebel", "Breakout", movies "Lyceum Theatre", "First Burning Incense" and other film and television dramas adapted from pure literary works have appeared in the past one or two years, indicating that film and television adaptations will once again move closer to pure literature. The release of tv series such as "This Side of the Landscape", "Protagonist", "Blossoming Flowers", "Going North", "Fat Buttocks", "Wencheng", "Ancient Street" and other film and television projects shows that pure literature is once again becoming an important content resource for the current film and television adaptation, and intensive cultivation and content are king the foundation for the healthy development of film and television and the recognition of the audience.
"Literature is the best mother of film and television works, with roots, growth, vivid and flexible. The alliance between literature and film and television will make literature more to the audience, and it will also make film and television more grounded, and have a stable and solid foundation. In the ocean of stories, novels have countless ways to wander, and film and television adaptations are undoubtedly the most direct form of creating fine works for the public. Haifei said.
Looking for the possibility of a breakthrough in Chinese drama from the world of fiction
Like film and television dramas, pure literary works are also an important source of text for stage art, and their adaptation history is longer than that of film and television dramas, and the relationship between the two is closer than that of film and television dramas. Taking last year's drama performances as an example, there are the drama "Diary of a Madman" adapted from Lu Xun's novel of the same name, the drama "Position" adapted from Wei Wei's novel "Dongfang", the drama "Activity Changes Human Form" adapted from Wang Meng's novel of the same name, the drama "Long Hate Song" adapted from Wang Anyi's novel of the same name, the drama "Dust Settled" adapted from Ah Lai's novel of the same name, the drama "Human World" adapted from Liang Xiaosheng's novel of the same name, and the drama "Blossoming Flowers (Season 2)" adapted from Jin Yucheng's novel of the same name. More than ten works have been staged, and the quantity and quality have improved significantly compared with previous years.
For the "adaptation fever" that appears on the drama stage, Yang Yang, vice president of the Shanghai Theater Academy and literary critic, said that the practice of creating dramas by adapting pure literary works has two sides. On the one hand, the large number of adaptations actually reflects the lack of originality in the field of drama, "especially the creation of scripts, compared with contemporary literary creations such as novels, there are few original masterpieces, which are obvious to all." One of the important reasons here is that the cultural level and life accumulation of drama creation need to be strengthened. Many playwrights feel that original works are less related to the accumulation of life, in fact, life accumulation is not a deliberate accumulation of a so-called life experience for the sake of writing. Writers lack the vision of discovery in daily life, and they cannot extract meaningful connotations from life. In this regard, contemporary fiction creation can provide some of the more useful lessons. In Yang Yang's view, the novel industry pays more attention to the conceptual things in the novel, especially the development of literary criticism, which helps to promote novelists to refine their own life experience. In contrast, drama criticism is difficult to reach the height of novel criticism, so finding the resources of drama creation from novels has become an important way for Chinese theater creation in recent years.
On the other hand, the expression methods and artistic characteristics of drama are very different from those of literature and film and television, which also means that literary works will encounter many difficulties in the adaptation of dramas, which are difficult to adapt, long rehearsal cycles, high performance requirements, and will be subject to many restrictions in time and space. Creators need to deeply understand the character image, storyline, and narrative context of the story, and adapt and simplify it on the basis of reading and understanding thoroughly, so that the original work can present the best artistic effect under the conditions of fixed stage, compact time and complex scene conditions. This requires creators to have a higher and more conscious aesthetic pursuit, have a deeper and more open artistic thinking, and do not blindly follow the trend and rush to achieve quick success. Yang Yang believes that in the absence of originality, in the past two years, there are still some playwrights who are trying to find the possibility of breakthroughs in Chinese drama from the novel world, which is also worth affirming, so that people can see that the margin of contemporary drama expansion is not stipulated, and various ways are needed to intervene in this field.
The process of adaptation is also a process of "creative transformation"
According to the "2020 Blue Book of Chinese Online Literature" released by the China Writers Association, there are about 140 film and television dramas adapted from online novels in 2020, and the proportion of online literature adaptations in the most popular online dramas is 60%. According to people's daily newspapers, in the past five years, more than 600 film and television dramas have been adapted from mainland online novels. In 2021, online literature occupies the bulk of the film and television adaptation market, among which the topic discussion is relatively high such as "Son-in-law", "Douluo Continent", "Si Teng", "Shangyang Fu", "You Are My Glory", "Ancient Dust", etc.; from the 2022 film list of the four online audio-visual platforms of iQiyi, Youku, Tencent, and Mango TV, online novel adaptation film and television dramas are still the strategic focus of major platforms, and among the 370 dramas that have been announced, there are 135 novel IP dramas. The above data shows the important position of online literature and popular literature in the episodes broadcast on online audiovisual platforms, but in stark contrast to such a large number of adaptations, the quality of these adaptations is uneven.
Zhang Huiyu, a researcher at the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University, said that different types of film and television works have different driving forces for adaptation. Some market-oriented film and television works will adapt more popular online literature, because these online literature have a fan effect, and adapting into film and television dramas will have more market security, such as "Yanxi Raiders" and "Ghost Blowing Lights". Another phenomenon worth paying attention to is that many producers pay more attention to the author himself than the work. For example, Ma Boyong is a writer with a relatively concentrated network drama adaptation, whose creation integrates different genres such as suspense, espionage, and action, and is quite modern, so it is sought after by different broadcast platforms. Following dramas such as "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", "The Wind Rises in Luoyang", "The Wind Rises in Longxi", and "The Central Bureau of the Antiques Bureau", iQiyi announced that it will cooperate with Ma Boyong in 12 works next.
At the same time, with the gradual fading of traffic welfare and IP carnival boom, the film and television industry has to re-evaluate the current industry ecology, reflect on the past film and television creation model, and re-pay attention to the content and artistic standards of works. Zhang Huiyu said that the adaptation practice of the movie "Assassination of a Novelist" deserves the attention of online adaptation. "The novel of the original Shuang Xuetao has avant-garde experimental colors, but after being adapted into a film, the director has made a second creation, making it more abundant, which not only expresses the spiritual core of the original work, but also shows that film and television and literature are two different media, and need to complete creative transformation." This provides a practical way for future film and television adaptations to learn from. ”