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Script killing is a new entertainment business model that has rapidly become popular in China in recent years, and its essence is a kind of text interactive game. The excess of information in modern society makes it easy for young people to get used to the rapid characterization of script killing, a game of symbolic information. As a subcultural consumption, the reason why script killing can be popular in major cities across the country, its popular charm must not only lie in the semi-closed circle culture of "murder script lovers in the secret room", in a broader sense, script killing alludes to the identity anxiety of contemporary Chinese urban youth "alienation" and "namelessness" and the unique "thirst" and "seeking" social mentality of the "atomization" era. Contemporary young people are nurtured by the modern culture that advocates individuality, but they are suffocated by the discipline education of a thousand people, the desire for new social roles, the desire for a new world full of possibilities and imagination, and finally its safe landing through the way of script interpretation. For most script killing fans, the fun of the game is only within the game, and the meaning of "rebellion" and "self-confirmation" carried by traditional subcultures has gradually faded. "Post-90s" and "post-00s" are a generation of people who live completely under the influence of modern humanistic spirit, confused but full of self-confidence, they have lived in a pluralistic "circle" cultural ecology since birth, and another understanding of "enclosure and self-germination" is "self-sufficiency of meaning".
Chamber of Secrets Script Kill: "Fantasy Drift" in the City
Wen 丨 Xie Shenyue
Script killing is a new entertainment business model that has become rapidly popular in China in recent years, according to the forecast of the statistical report of the China Commercial Industry Research Institute at the end of 2021, the scale of China's physical script killing market will reach 18 billion yuan in 2022.
The core of the material carrier of the script killing game is the text, or its essence is a kind of text interactive game. People who have never actually experienced "script killing" may easily ask a common question: how does script killing make a group of people produce such real emotional shocks just by acting in a "script" with a small cabin a few meters square? So much so that there are many reports that often mention that there are cryers, laughter, and madness. If we try to further think about the reasons why script killing can attract young consumer groups so much, then we must go deep into the living conditions and spiritual world of a considerable number of urban youth in contemporary China, so as to explore their real consumption motivations.
The excess of information in modern society makes it easy for young people to get used to the rapid characterization of script killing, a game of symbolic information. Before people first came into contact with the game mode of script killing, most of them had learned the habit of fragmented text and video reading habits for rapid information acquisition from headlines, vibrato, and even various short messages and short video APPS. Familiarizing yourself with the basics of your character in a very short period of time and quickly jumping into immersive games is not something new for today's young people that requires a long period of learning to adapt. In addition, the age range of the main consumer group of the script killing is roughly consistent with the mainstream group of online games (or novels), all of which are between 20 and 35 years old, and the role setting and scene substitution can be described as the "basic skills" of the Internet age. As an enclosed space, the secret room is also similar to the small space familiar to contemporary youth such as offices, classrooms and even bedrooms for long-term living, and in the post-epidemic era, most of us are actively or passively constantly contacting and adapting to the "home" culture, and then adapting to a new type of "home" social and game mode. The Chamber of Secrets itself also constitutes a dream space, the host's seductive language introduces the player into a common virtual situation, and the carefully selected soundtrack and different profile cards work with the players who have received hypnotic hints to create a collective escape for the everyday and banal "Inception" in a small "drifting space" in the city.
As a subcultural consumption, the reason why script killing can be popular in major cities across the country, its popular charm must not only lie in the semi-closed circle culture of "murder script lovers in the secret room", in a broader sense, script killing alludes to the identity anxiety of contemporary Chinese urban youth "alienation" and "namelessness" and the unique social mentality of "thirst" and "seeking" in the "atomization" era. In a world where creative imagination is extremely scarce in every way, it is sometimes easy to fall in love with the possibilities of characters who are pointy but full of functional stimulation, so that they experience more and more frequently the script characters who are as full of texture as possible in detail, although virtual, even in the dream country, but it is the novelty and reality of that moment and the freedom and invigorating freedom to break free from the shackles of identity that are enough to linger. As Baudrillard reveals to us in The Consumer Society, "The price of rapid development in the production of wealth in society is the mobility of labor, that is, the instability of occupation." As a result of the renewal and circulation of personnel, the social burden becomes very heavy, especially the insecurity that will arise", in the consumer society, young people face increasing social pressure and increasingly cramped living space, and the huge mobility of urban life wraps around the body and mind of young people who are difficult to settle down. Urbanization and industrialization have blurred the unique face of people, and the fire of a song called "The Unknown Generation" undoubtedly sings the struggle and contradiction of countless contemporary young people who were originally the most ostentatious age but were sunk and deceived by the era of consumer society and mechanical reproduction.
Taking Shanghai, which has the largest number of script killing stores, for example, according to national census data, the permanent population of Shanghai has reached 24.87 million in 2021 since it exceeded 20 million for the first time in 2007. The meticulous and barrier-level division of labor in developed industrial societies and the deteriorating competitive environment have made young people constantly deepen their self-"alienation" in social life such as work or study, and the industrial society characterized by large-scale production and high consumption has turned people into tools and commodities. The rapid urbanization process over the past few decades has created a group of urban youth with complex sources and frequent flows, some of whom are local "indigenous", some of whom are second-generation urban residents, and some of whom are "county" youths who have migrated to the city to work, and the changes in China's urban and rural areas in the past two decades are no different from the vicissitudes of the sea. When the old social ties have collapsed or are out of reach, and the new modern urban social structure is difficult to understand and integrate, the fast-paced life and the high-speed phantom information network corrode the original appearance of people, the city is like an endless hive, the so-called people live in high-rise buildings, and the soul is raining outside the house. Contemporary young people are nurtured by the modern culture that advocates individuality, but they are suffocated by the discipline education of a thousand people, the desire for new social roles, the desire for a new world full of possibilities and imagination, and finally its safe landing through the way of script interpretation.
Different from the Chicago School's judgment that subculture is a "deviant behavior", and also different from the Birmingham School's interpretation of youth subculture through the framework perspective of class antagonism as "stylized ritual resistance", the script kills the obvious signifiers of text, sound, image, etc. as symbols, and the characteristics of postmodern pop subculture represented by pluralism, heterogeneity, openness and instability. In the postmodern context, there is no longer a clear binary opposition between youth subculture and mainstream culture, such as "marginal and central", "non-mainstream and mainstream", and "resistance and integration". For most script killing fans, the fun of the game is only within the game, and the meaning of "rebellion" and "self-confirmation" carried by traditional subcultures has gradually faded. "Post-90s" and "post-00s" are a generation of people who live completely under the influence of modern humanistic spirit, confused but full of self-confidence, they have lived in a pluralistic "circle" cultural ecology since birth, and another understanding of "enclosure and self-germination" is "self-sufficiency of meaning". When grand narratives have waned and the perceived surface world is made up of countless "little stories," it's no surprise that script killing as a unique post-subcultural new landscape is rapidly embraced by young people.
(The author is a 2021 master's degree student in literature and art from South China Normal University)