"Listen to me thank you"

What text can I bring my own sound effects?

- "I heard I thank you".

Lately, you may have been brainwashed by this song too.

Created in 2019 and specially prepared for Teachers' Day, the song was later used to express gratitude to frontline personnel during the epidemic, often dancing in sign language during performances. In the three years of the epidemic, songs have spread rapidly through short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, becoming a new trend of imitation.

Relevant statistics show that on Douyin alone, the number of users of this song exceeds 10 million, and the number of video plays of the topic of the same name exceeds 2.02 billion.

What followed was the controversy over the misuse of the song since March this year, in which the performers performed selflessly regardless of the occasion and regardless of whether it was convenient for the medical staff. Children are often seen standing in the team for nucleic acid testing, dancing to music, nucleic acid collectors looking down at their phones, and parents holding up their phones next to them.

What's more, there are many "funny" scenes of falling down after dancing to the "big white" (epidemic prevention personnel), and then, the way of gratitude continues to evolve, and the richness of the dance is beyond imagination.

The song "Listen to Me Thank You" has become the object of disgust of many people, and the author and singer of the song have also become the object of Internet violence, on April 16, 2022, the song producer Li Kai and a family of three issued a statement video apologizing for the abuse of the song and the interruption of epidemic prevention work.

There is a recurring comment about this kind of strange phenomenon: "This is really weird." "Keqi" is a term for popular culture research, and it is indeed used to describe this kind of phenomenon of "blindly following the trend".

However, how does something that seems to have a good starting point become a strange phenomenon? Even opposing this kind of curiosity has become another kind of curiosity?

01.

Ketch, what exactly is it?

Before analyzing the emotions of "Listen to Me Thank You," let's go back to the word Kitsch itself.

It is derived from the German language, and in 1939 the art critic Clement Greenberg published Avant-garde and Kitsch, which devoted himself to dissecting the artistic phenomenon of "mass reproduction" at the time.

For example, the kind of doll ornaments made of fairy tale elements (Santa Claus, dwarfs, etc.), that is, simple use of existing elements, without more individual design and batch copying, this is the original meaning of Keqi. Now we seem ordinary, because contemporary people have long been accustomed to this, and this kind of curiosity has become an inseparable link in modern social life.

Common Christmas tree decorations, pictured: Polar Express

From the second half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, it was the era of large-scale industrialization that led to the rapid promotion of light industrial products after the Industrial Revolution. Greenberg directly satirized this: "'Ketch' pretends to have no demands on customers, except to ask for their money", in his view, blind imitation of "valuable" works of art, resulting in a large number of cheap and inferior products.

Greenberg's perspective is more from the perspective of defending the specific and higher values of classical art. But in this article, he put forward three criteria for "Ketch":

The object or subject described by "Kerch" is highly filled with ready-made emotions;

The object or subject described by "Keqi" can be immediately and effortlessly identified;

"Kerch" does not substantially enrich our associations with the object or subject to which we are described.

When industrialization swept through every corner of the world with an unstoppable force, artistic and cultural works that were inseparable from industrial production naturally became part of the production of Keqi, such as the fast-producing films in the Hollywood assembly line, which often became the typical object of criticism.

Of course, around the 1950s, modern art also began to deconstruct the quirk, and Pop Art, and later Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and others, simply sought inspiration from popular culture, trying to bridge the line between the high and the low.

In the social sciences, critics like Baudrillard, who focus on popular culture, are further concerned with the impact of the quirky phenomenon on popular psychology and culture.

Like the term "inner volume" originally used to discuss the field of sociology, "Keqi" gradually entered the public's field of vision and became a new academic term commonly used by the public.

In fact, as early as the early days of the epidemic, from the mainstream media to the self-media, "Hear I Thank You" was repeatedly used to praise the hardships of medical staff. Why does the same song two years later trigger very different feelings for most people?

The first is the problem of application. When the lyrical song and dance that are more suitable for appearing at the performance meeting are repeatedly appearing in the quasi-"battle" scenes of serious tension and fatigue, the praise and praise emotions that come with the song and dance are incompatible with the atmosphere of the scene, and the two form a distinct sense of absurdity at the same scene. When this scene sweeps through, the vast majority of people, whether on the scene or at the other end of the screen, can only feel their emotions being forced to feed again and again, so they have a strong discomfort.

Moreover, this kind of work that is relatively superficial to write about the culture of gratitude, once it lacks the support of specific content, itself becomes a kind of strange symbol.

Milan Kundera described a very similar scene in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Life to illustrate this kind of strange behavior.

"When he saw a child running on the lawn, Yuki caused tears that were closely connected in two rows: the first line of tears was: how good it was to see the child running on the grass; the second line was to be with all human beings, touched by the children running on the grass, how good." 」 He emphasized that "the second kind of tears makes Ketch even more cunning".

Kundera devotes many chapters to the concept of kerchi in popular culture in such near-interpretative discourse—the first large-scale interpretation of kerch in Chinese world. Although in many contexts, Kitsch is translated as "kitsch," which is a mistranslation.

"Unbearable Lightness of Life" adaptation of the film "Prague Love"

The Unbearable Lightness of Life is a work of literature full of metaphors, kundera's real opposition has never been "customary" itself, and the point of this passage is not to deny that a person may have a genuine liking for a child, but to show us how people can be influenced by conventional pop culture.

When a person is in a culture where "children are cute", his liking for children is entirely possible to be implied and influenced by popular culture (those who may not like children so much, their feelings are ignored, people seem to think that only liking children is natural), and in this influence, he shed his first line of tears.

There is a scene that we are all familiar with, during the Spring Festival, many individual feelings need to give way to the "atmosphere of family reunion during the festival", and we are half forced to feel that "it is really good to have a lively festival". Indiscriminately embracing the dominant culture and theme of pop is the first re-enactment of Kundera's criticism, which means that a person is influenced by external forces and abandons his true feelings.

The second line of Kundera's tears is more twisted, he means, see others like children, you also follow the trend and feel that you must like children; others cry, you also feel that it is not right not to cry; others are lively and lively, you also think it is really good to follow the lively and lively. In short, you don't think about your true feelings, you just think that it's good to "follow along", and you are touched by the fact that you are moved.

This is a narcissistic second engraving, which is more serious than the first reticule, because it not only means being forced to give up feelings, but also symbolizes that people have completed the spiritual self-castration through narcissism and self-gaze, actively pandering to standards.

Compared with the popularity of the song and dance "Listen to Me Say Thank You", it can be said that the first engraving is the earliest behavior of spontaneously disseminating this song unconsciously and spontaneously under the influence of "gratitude culture", regardless of the actual complexity of quarantine.

First of all, the content of the transmission of Keqi behavior is usually abused expression: these highly homogeneous short video songs and dances can accommodate very limited cultural and aesthetic values, and they achieve the effect of rapid brainwashing and dissemination through high repetition.

Many times it is extremely abused by the modern and contemporary media. For example, some advertising songs deliberately bombard us by constant repetition, and some choruses of square dance divine songs deliberately abuse simple repetitive tunes. This kind of lingering content that burrows into the mind, repeatedly appears in a short period of time, not only will make people quickly produce aesthetic fatigue, but even a punishment for the recipient, it will even trigger physiological sensations with a "creepy" (creepy) nature.

The discomfort caused by the second and more serious Kerki is not just the song and dance "Listen to Me Say Thank You", but the Kerki act itself.

What makes many viewers uncomfortable is not only the physical boredom of simple repetition, but also the psychological discomfort of simplifying or even erasing serious issues. For example, in scenarios such as nucleic acid testing, the tested and staff are tired; under the epidemic, many specific pains and troubles are real, and they need to be solved one by one.

If in the network communication, not only can not see the truth and complexity of the issue, but also forced to watch all kinds of strange carnival, the sense of separation and absurdity generated by the viewer will double the pain caused by these contents.

02.

"Kerch is the basic scene of life"

When the mainstream content of these two engravings is only presented with cheap and unified superficial emotions, it seriously weakens the subjectivity of specific individuals in the pain of the times, and even constantly distorts and devours people's normal emotional expressions.

And the protagonists in "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" also happened to encounter the pain of their time. Set in Prague in 1969, the Czech people under the control of the former Soviet Union are trapped and manipulated by many popular consciousnesses, and they have suffered many of the pains of the times, and this context can still arouse widespread empathy today.

Therefore, Kundera's description of Kerch in the book pins on this meaning: "Kerch is a transit point between existence and forgetting", which is to explore how individual life will face a powerful external order.

But slow to draw conclusions. "The Unbearable Lightness of Life" certainly presents this side of the keqi content (and it is also the most widely circulated), but in this sandwich novel, Kundera also said: "Keqi is a basic scene of human survival, it is everywhere."

When Kundera reopened the discussion of Kerch as a basic scenario of life, the brushstrokes were not limited to dissolving grand narratives, nor to the main line of love between men and women. The male protagonist of the novel is not written only as the only character who "correctly" confronts Kirch, his life form is relatively "light" with the two heroines, and the other characters are relatively "lighter", and Kundera does not make all affirmations or criticisms of either of them.

This ambiguity in writing, on the contrary, shows us a neutral, more multi-layered possibility of life.

Unlike most novels with the context of the times, when Kundera opposed the grand narrative of politics, he did not habitually establish a "cultural elite" narrative that was opposed to political power, and he did not care to create a "tall and complete" rebel.

Instead, he harbors a very cautious distrust of any elite narrative that might gain popularity. And it is precisely this distrust of all external discourse that constitutes his unique clear understanding of the picture of human existence and his unique respect for life rather than existence itself. He re-clarified the different forms of Kerch:

"Different keqi have different inner meanings and critical dimensions, if aesthetic keqi means to cater to the low-level artistic taste of sad works, then political keqi only blindly obeys the established order and established ideas, cultural keqi refers to the identification with the values of the majority, fluidity, and popularity, and anthropological keqi refers to the optimistic blind obedience and refusal to think attitude shown by human beings under the premise of unconditionally identifying with the existence of life."

Triumph of the Will, "Fascist Aesthetics" and Large-Scale Kiki under Nazi Political Propaganda

We will find that what he wants to present is how easily life slides to all predetermined answers, including opposition to kerkey, which can become a new kind of quirkiness, just as in the Cold War, the political quirkiness of opposing either side can also flow into another kind of political quirkiness in actual operation.

This does not mean, of course, that Kundera does not have his own value judgments, and presents the various forms of the problem sincerely and as much as possible, which is itself an honest response to a life that is constantly tending to be strange.

Kundera was always more concerned with life itself than with any external ideology, a literary self-consciousness.

At the same time, this self-realization is accompanied by an almost dispassionate gaze at "being" itself: a calm acceptance of the process of life toward oblivion. But this self-consciousness may just enlighten the latecomers on what kind of self-insistence they can carry out if they want to resist a strong external order.

03.

Opposing Kerch may become another kind of Kerki

Kerch has an ambiguous translation called "kitsch." If we think of popular culture as a whole as "vulgar", "kitsch" seems to point to a criticism of "vulgar" itself. This is easy to misunderstand as denying more of the basic emotions common to human beings in public opinion.

For example, Kundera's passage is often misinterpreted as "human beings like children", which is a "vulgar" emotion that is cheap and needs to be criticized. As a result, further misreading will make people seem to think that "not liking children" is a more "politically correct" emotion, and when this becomes a new fashion, many people will fall into a new situation of anti-curiosity.

For example, the widespread misreading of Kundera's second culmination often leads to the simplistic and crude denial of the word kerchi in criticizing the proliferation of cheap sentimentality, with part of the argument that treats all the real feelings that resonate with the collective, all the underlying voices, as innocent groans.

In this kind of action, there is indeed the characteristic of labeling emotions that Kundera summarized, and it is indeed a sign that people are beginning to forget. But in any case, the starting point for most people to participate in the act of kirk is not in itself an act worthy of direct criticism.

For example, when people collectively mourn the victims of some public events, the simple expression of such collective emotions, such as online flower offerings and waxing, although they are trivial acts, as long as this feeling is real and voluntary from everyone, it cannot simply be completely denied with sentimental curiosity. It is also just an instinctive resistance of people before they forget.

"Love in Prague"

It may just be necessary to carefully identify which feelings are guided by invisible forces and which feelings are from people's real reactions to the scene.

This kind of screening often requires more diverse vocal contexts, and we need to accommodate more calm and plain discussions, rather than simply appealing to powerful emotions.

Because, when a single individual, faced with a strong pop culture context, is indeed prone to two extremes: either embracing a popularity or scorning a popularity. We are always susceptible to external contexts, dominated by strong emotions of like and dislike.

Another translation of Kerch is better than "kitsch": "self-flattery". It does not mean how we behave for our own sake, but rather that we may unconsciously or actively conform to the powerful order of the outside world, thus turning our own experiences and emotional expressions into a performative tool. In other words, we are instrumentalizing ourselves and allowing our emotions to dominate us in conjunction with external forces.

These external forces often attract us through cheap and low-quality replication of human true emotions. Some of the kirky phenomena, at the beginning of the epidemic, are like a lot of junk food that can't provide real nutrition, but can provide similar tastes; just like some viruses that trick our immune system into the body and use our cellular structures for a lot of replication.

Obviously, we can't destroy our own taste system and immune system. Similarly, it is impossible to completely deny the self-pleasing part of our daily feelings. The word "flattering" is always used in the various paraphrasings of the word "kitsch", "kitsch", "self-flattery", and it does represent the partial loss of subjectivity and the surrender to the other in most of the acts of kitsch.

But most of us, we don't have to, can't, 100 percent refuse it to happen. Occasional self-aesthetics, self-gaze, and self-touching are also the norms of human nature.

So, rather than resisting Kiki in general, it's more important to be wary of which Kiki behaviors can be harmful. Many times, people will always use various standards to measure the vulgarity of things, beauty, ugliness, sweetness and bitterness, and each has its own preferences and dislikes. It's not about which preferences are necessarily more problematic, and it's not necessary to get caught up in attacking each other.

At the same time, in the daily life of contemporary society, we are actually wrapped up in the torrent of information and industrialized large-scale production, and it is difficult to reject all the popular curiosity. In fact, in every field that is superficially diverse enough, there is its own quirky fashion.

Over the years, in any field, people can say the corresponding "kitsch", such as exquisite camping, outdoor show equipment; selfies when snubbing the circle of friends, gym punch cards, late-night lyricism, and the humanities field must be called Foucault, Zizek, etc.

In fact, on the surface, these are only after the specific fashion is sought after, there have been a large number of homogeneous reproductions. It is normal for onlookers to be upset when they see more, but for individuals, they do not have to follow the trend or deliberately avoid it.

The point is how much you really love these things compared to the "show". As long as we are passionate enough, keep going deeper, and be honest about our feelings at any time, we can avoid the vast majority of curiosities.

"Love in Prague"

However, we should pay special attention to the fact that in the quirk of following the trend of the pandemic, we should brainlessly pursue any kind of mainstream values regardless of the context, copy the false big empty space regardless of the context, and follow all the so-called "higher-order existence" phenomena.

Because, collective kirky actions are always easier to ignore the voice of the individual and instead follow the macro and huge existence. It often promotes the emotions of "Mu Qiang", allowing individuals to obtain an illusory sense of security by substituting for a strong external order, and at the same time discriminating against the weak and the weak.

End.

Rejecting the harmful Kerkey starts with "slow half-beat"

All of the strange phenomena that most easily trigger people's collective anti-phagocytosis have a characteristic: they are neither original, but also shield the layered and rich real feelings of individual life. Because, in essence, all the kiki is an act of falling into deliberate simple imitation.

Perhaps each of us can start from the source and try not to contribute to the tsunami of the Kiki phenomenon. For example, when every real voice is completely insufficient to compete with the mainstream voice, try to respect it, listen to it, and protect it; at the same time, when every popularity suddenly rises, do not belittle and reject it because of arrogance, but wait to see it, and spend a longer time to observe and look at it.

In short, for the weak, more tolerant; for the trender, more cautious, more slow half a beat. Use the free will of each individual to resist the uniform torrents. Paying more attention to those truly valuable beings is still our opportunity to resist Keqi, not just to resist Keqi.

"Love in Prague"

Head image: "Looks Beautiful"

Author: Su Youruo, Su Xiaoqi

Editor: Su Xiaoqi

Producer: Cat Ye