A few days ago, there was a hot search thing I have not talked about - Zhou Shen and GAI adapted Jolin Tsai's "Rose Boy", because they did not respect the original meaning of the song, causing criticism.
Even if it is occupied by the accusations and comments of fans, it is still not difficult to see the anger of the public.
Why can a cover song cause so much controversy?
"Rose Boy" is Jolin Tsai's 2018 work.
Inspired by the tragic story of Taiwanese teenager Ye Yongzhi who died of school bullying, she planned this song to sing about the difficult situation of marginalized groups similar to Ye Yongzhi.
All in all, it is a hymn dedicated to a few.
But what about in the adaptation of Zhou Shen and GAI?
The adapted version of "Rose Boy" deleted the extremely crucial sentence in the original word, implying Ye Yongzhi's name.
Never forget to read
"Rose Boy" was originally born for the Yongzhi, delete this memorial, is it still a reasonable category of adaptation?
This is debatable in the first place.
In addition, some netizens have set their sights on the connotation of the adapted version:
The new filler is uplifting, what "tiger leopard gentian", what "pull the trigger".
But is this in line with the living conditions of marginalized groups?
Especially compared with the original lyrics, the new version of "Rose Boy" has seriously deviated from the sad and even accusatory tone of the original work, and has become another cheesy inspirational golden song.
Who puts whose soul into whose body?
Whoever turns his body into a prison imprisons himself
The chaotic world is always the least lacking in whispers
Which kind of beauty will arouse jealousy
You are not guilty Of sin is the world
This is another point of controversy in this version of the cover: it not only erases Ye Yongzhi's name, but also erases the difficult experience of Yongzhi.
Piao doesn't like to buckle big hats, but in my opinion, the mistakes of the new Rose Boy are not trivial.
Gorgeous high notes, rousing raps, and tears from the audience formed a majority carnival, but there was also a kind of cruelty hidden in it—we once again ignored the few who should not be ignored.
In the hot search cooling, many people have forgotten this stubble, and even acquiesced to this cruel time.
Coming back to this, maybe it's more time.
Why is the adaptation of the new version of "Rose Boy" wrong?
We also have to start with the inspiration for this song, "Rose Boy" Ye Yongzhi.
This is a story that makes me can't help but snot when I tell it.
In fact, Ye Yongzhiben is just an ordinary junior high school student in Pingtung, Taiwan, if you have to say that there is anything "not ordinary", it is his personality - gentle demeanor, handsome appearance, like some stereotypes, girls like things...
He is also a teenager who is not much different from the image of the boy in the public perception.
And this is not like, so that he is labeled "abnormal".
Out of context, most of us probably don't think it's a big deal.
But in the school environment, especially 20 years ago, Ye Yongzhi must have been the most bullied kind of child.
You don't have to think about it to know that school bullying has never left Ye Yongzhi's life.
His classmates loved to "joke" him by dragging him into the bathroom to take off his pants to check his gender, and ridicule, verbal abuse, threats, and even beatings were commonplace.
Mother Ye said that Ye Yongzhi had written a note to himself:
Mom you're going to save me
This 15-year-old teenager has to live in endless fear because of his gender temperament.
However, perhaps it was only a small fight between children, or perhaps it was not enough to care about the students, and the school did not deal with this bad bullying behavior at that time, even if Mother Ye reflected many times, she still let it go.
This laissez-faire has finally led to tragedy.
On the afternoon of April 20, 2000, because he was afraid of being bullied in the toilet after class, Ye Yongzhi raised his hand a few minutes before class as usual and went to the bathroom.
However, he never returned to the classroom.
By the time Mother Ye arrived at the hospital, her son had fallen into a coma, when his mouth and nose were bleeding, only weak breathing remained, and the zipper of his pants was pulled open.
In the early morning of the same day, Ye Yongzhi died.
At this point in the story, it is a lamentable and downright tragedy.
But in the depths of grief, there is often a radiance of humanity - Mother Ye.
The death of her son made her determined to become a fighter and desperately try to find justice for her child.
While pursuing the truth, she gradually discovered another reality: there was far more than one teenager similar to Ye Yongzhi.
They are all experiencing discrimination and exclusion because of their personality and temperament.
There was a high school student who wrote to me
He said it was a miracle that he survived to this day
Mother Ye chose to stand up, and she took to the streets and podium to tell Ye Yongzhi's story and call for people to care for sexual minorities.
Since then, Ye Yongzhi's encounter is no longer just a tragedy.
Because of Mother Ye's struggle, he has become an iconic figure who promotes public reflection and respect for minorities, and the word "Rose Boy" has a different meaning.
Spending so much pen and ink to tell the story behind "Rose Boy" is not just to restore the original face of Ye Yongzhi who has been erased.
More importantly, it defines for us the object of this song's dedication to—the sexual minority.
With this background, it is not difficult to see that this is not just a simple adaptation.
Strictly speaking, it can even be counted as a "cultural appropriation" against marginalized groups.
Cultural appropriation refers to the plagiarism of cultures that originally belonged to other countries, races, and groups for their own profit.
For example, Disney's remake of the Chinese story of "Mulan", or the typical black hairstyle of other races with dirty braids, are typical cases of cultural appropriation.
In my opinion, this accusation is not harsh for the new version of "Rose Boy".
What is the discomfort of cultural appropriation?
First, it is often the forcible theft of the few precious things left by the vulnerable, which is detrimental to their interests.
Second, the dominant groups that benefit from it often triumphantly flaunt their booty, which in turn brings about spiritual humiliation.
And these two points, the new version of "Rose Boy" is completely in line with.
Let's take a look at what GAI said before starting this mess:
For the song "Rose Boy"
I feel deeply and deeply that there are a lot of stories
It's pretty similar to our own experience
I can still understand the part of Zhou Shen.
He has suffered from school violence since he was a child because of his feminine voice and short stature, and he does have similarities with Ye Yongzhi.
But what about GAI?
First of all, he is very "jianghu" in school.
Second, he himself seems to be a person with a great gender bias.
From previous interviews, it is not difficult to see that GAI has disdain and contempt for men who have even a little feminine temperament.
So, could his experience have any resemblance to the story of The Rose Boy?
I tend to give a negative answer.
Of course, I can accept that he also had a past in his life when he was despised and oppressed.
But who in the past has not?
You know, the difficulties encountered by most of us ordinary people are often difficult to match the experience of minorities with congenital under-status in society.
The "Ye Yongzhis" have never taken the road that most people take, but a more sinister and bumpy dark road, which is also the fundamental reason why we call for care for the weak.
And when you misinterpret this ups and downs as a "white-eyed grievance suffered when pursuing a musical dream".
I'm sorry, but this is not only a dwarfing of the suffering of others, but also a great insult to the lives of others.
This logic is essentially no different from the antics of "men are also discriminated against in the workplace, and women are not qualified to sell misery", and it gives people a kind of cruelty of "although he lost his life, I chased my dreams very hard".
And even if we take a step back and don't examine who is qualified to sing this song, we don't measure which of the two lives is heavier.
The denial of the right of vulnerable groups to be "visible" is in itself intolerable.
The important thing about "Rose Boy" is that it tells the story of a very small number of people.
The song tells the helplessness of the soul trapped by the body, and the pain of being bullied because of gender temperament, which is a fairly rare theme in Chinese music.
How many songs with similar themes are there in the Chinese music scene? But why have inspirational songs for most people ever been lacking?
Thus, this visible opportunity is actually an extremely scarce resource for minorities who have been living in mass blind spots.
There is a newly edited passage in the adapted version that particularly makes me feel dazzling:
Rose Boy in my heart
Open your eyes and see how we got here
Whatever brand they put on
It expresses the "Rose Boy" as a cowardly side that exists in everyone's heart, so it also generalizes and normalizes this narrative.
As a result, Ye Yongzhi's story will shock people's hearts and awaken our reflection power, and it will also be cut to nothing.
Just as the plight of women is not a small trouble that everyone will encounter, the poverty of the people at the bottom does not equal the lack of money that everyone is experiencing, and the misfortune of the rose teenager will not be the inspirational material that can be applied to the whole world.
Taking the narrative of the vulnerable group to the consumption of the dominant group is naked appropriation.
As Piao said earlier, we really don't lack another successful golden song.
As one of the few records of sexual minorities, why can't we keep "Rose Boy" as it is, at least like other covers, keep Ye Yongzhi's name.
Is this really hard?
At the end of the day, it's not complicated at all.
An unlikable adaptation, a tribute to the direction of the deviation, whether it is intentional or unintentional, are all nails and downs.
Of course, this does not mean that there is great evil, but it can only be said that many people really lack enough attention to marginalized groups.
But in the entertainment industry, there is a bigger obstacle to a social issue being faced: the fan circle.
When tainted with many irrational justifications and partiality, issues that are not complicated in themselves become blurred.
In the overwhelming criticism of the stars, many fans have chosen to defend and fight back, and the most typical of them is this statement:
In short, fans agree that "Rose Boy" is a song dedicated to a minority, but they also believe that anyone can be a minority, not limited to sexual minorities.
The evidence that has been excavated is that the original singer Jolin Tsai also expressed it this way:
Ye Yongzhi reminded me
In any case I could be some sort of minority
But the conclusion that anyone has the right to be celebrated by The Rose Boy is rather untenable.
To give an example that may not be appropriate – can Westerners distort "against discrimination against Asians" to "against Asians and Caucasians" because they also have adversity?
Can men share the MeToo movement with women because they are also weak?
It is inappropriate to say that it is because the issues of race and gender have their own complexities and are difficult to measure equally.
But such issues share the same logic that preferential treatment deliberately given to vulnerable groups should not be shared arbitrarily.
The emphasis that "each of us may become a minority" is a reminder to understand the weak with more empathy.
And it is by no means that we can shamelessly and feel free to pretend to be the weak, and enjoy the care that does not belong to us.
What's more, this is not a great welfare or grace, but just a song.
The term "Rose Boy" is derived from the French film "Rose Boy Dream".
The protagonist, Ludo, is also a special boy – he likes dresses.
Favorite to play with dolls.
He even naively wanted to marry a male classmate he favored.
In the beginning, people thought it was a harmless play for young children.
But gradually, the attitude of the people around me changed.
The parents of the same students were afraid of his adverse impact and wrote a complaint letter to the principal.
The boys in the same window began to aim their fists at him.
Even her mother, who had always been very protective of Ludo, had lost patience.
Ludo never understood what he had done wrong.
With his own nature, with the same naïve fantasies and hopes as other children, he is regarded as a heretic, a strange person, and even accused by his relatives of disrupting his life.
But did Ludo really do anything excessive?
The only thing he wants is that he doesn't have to change himself, and his relatives and friends can continue to love him.
Love is too scarce a resource for many marginalized groups.
Kindness, which may seem to us to be insignificant and not very tight, is for them to be a treat worthy of self-cherishing.
At the scene of the adapted version of "Rose Boy", the audience was some excited, some sang loudly, and more were tearful.
It proves that this version of "The Rose Boy" does have inspiring power.
But this inspiration should not have belonged to us.
Originally dedicated to the helpless outside the mainstream, the lyrics were originally about weak teenagers who had been bullied to the end.
The value of "Rose Boy" should remind us to see the hidden pain that we can't see, rather than let us be moved by ourselves first.
It is about the "not strong" posture of innocence, not how I became strong, how I was born strong.
Don't squeeze the only discourse space that others have, and move the "output" of your own ear cocoons.
A rose, blooming in front of the tombstone of the teenager.
And being an innocuous, dispensable, strong makeup, the meaning is always different.