Spring Festival Gala Comedian: From who is on who is hot, to who is on who is hot

Author| Cha Xiaobai

January 21, Chinese New Year's Eve night.

As in previous years, Zihan and his family sat in front of the TV. There is still a period of time before the start of the Spring Festival Gala, the warm-up program before the start of the Spring Festival Gala is playing on the screen, and the host is showing up at the guests of the Spring Festival Gala gossiping.

In one scene, Xu Zhisheng and He Guangzhi, who starred in this year's talk show "Give Me a Minute", sat next to the CCTV host. This scene, which seemed ordinary to Zihan and his sisters of the same generation, instantly attracted the firepower of the elders' topic, first asking who these two were, and then questioning their third-rate level of speech, which was not atmospheric enough.

In fact, Zihan did not find this warm-up show much interesting, but more importantly, he realized that the famous stand-up comedians were both out of touch with the context of their middle-class narratives and did not conform to the aesthetics of the older generation, which made the "Spring Festival Gala" inviting them to participate in this family celebration seem a little contrary to the original intention.

The reason why they appeared on the Spring Festival Gala may just be their own traffic. However, who remembers that the Spring Festival Gala was once the biggest traffic manufacturing machine.

It was a sloppy but pyrotechnic era, and the word "Spring Festival Gala" meant Chinese one of the few moments when they could toast together.

For comedians, the Spring Festival Gala is a touchstone, a ladder to the sky, an opportunity that can be known to the whole people overnight, and "who is on fire" is the most noble consensus on the Spring Festival Gala in the industry. Through the Spring Festival Gala, people have Zhao Benshan, who they miss frequently, Zhao Lirong, Guo Da who they miss, and Song Dandan who they miss.

But the wheel of time rolls forward, comedy performers have become actors with familiar faces in the country, have become rookies with high traffic, "traffic" has become an important criterion for casting the Spring Festival Gala, and even this year, in the comedy track of the Spring Festival Gala's advantage, it is also necessary to select comedians from the "Talk Show Conference" and "Annual Comedy Competition", and no one has become a famous comedy master by relying on the Spring Festival Gala.

Since then, the feast has never been absent day after year, except for the party.

Those reckless days

In the fall of 1989, Zhao Benshan got on the train into Beijing, carrying ten bottles of Maotai in his backpack.

For him, the experience was impressive enough - a year ago, Jiang Kun gave him a chance to report on a performance in Beijing, and after receiving an affirmative reply from the leader "good sketch", he happily spread the news that he was going to the Spring Festival Gala across the mountains, and then enjoyed the honor of returning home as a star.

However, on Chinese New Year's Eve day, until he and villager Zhang Luo's table of good dishes were cooled and snowflakes appeared on the screen, he could not wait for his figure, and later he learned that the leader felt that his image was too "wizened" and did not conform to the joyful tone of the Spring Festival Gala, and the program was temporarily replaced.

He attributed this faceless experience to "not understanding people's feelings", so there was the opening scene, and he hoped to fight for himself again at the Spring Festival Gala.

But despite the effort, as a result, he didn't even see the leader. The last man hid in the hotel, drinking a bottle of Maotai every day, and when he finished the last bottle of wine he brought, he picked up his bag and did not go back to the ground to get on the train.

And this is the third time that Zhao Benshan has been rejected by the Spring Festival Gala. The reason for working so hard is not only for face, but also for a future.

At that time, less than ten years after the opening of Zhao Zhongxiang's first Spring Festival Gala, "Dear audience, in this joyful Chinese New Year's Eve, all the staff of CCTV wish you happiness and good luck for your family, and a happy Spring Festival", but it has already allowed comedians to see the possibility of this national stage.

Chen Peisi ate four bowls of noodles, from gobbling up to being sent to the hospital, and finally surprised the four with his non-physical performance skills, and in the following 8 years, he and Zhu Shimao contributed "Lamb Kebab", "Pepper Noodles", "Protagonist and Supporting Role", "Police and Thief", "Brother-in-law and Brother-in-law" and other works, all classics.

Ma Ji was in the studio, smoking while playing poor, this stand-up comedy originally named "A Salesman" made the audience remember the name of "Cosmos Brand Cigarettes" to this day, and three years later, his "Five Senses Fighting Gong" successfully led Feng Gong, and the phrase "I want to die for you" accompanied the audience for more than ten years.

It was also at that time that Zhao Lirong met Hou Yaowen in "A Day in the Life of a Heroic Mother". After the classic dialogue of "Sima Guang smashing the cylinder" and "Sima cylinder smashing the cylinder", she and Gong Hanlin successfully partnered, "Tango is to walk and walk, three steps and one jump, two ah two turns" "Palace jade liquor wine, one hundred and eighteen glasses, how about this wine, listen to me blow it for you" "Nod yes, shake head no, come is come, go is go" Tangshan Rap successfully engraved into the DNA of every Chinese.

It can be said that behind every work is the story of a comedian soaring through the Spring Festival Gala.

Of course, everyone knows the story behind Zhao Benshan, and he is also a member of the Ascension. In the more than ten years since he appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, his "Selling Abduction" trilogy with Fan Wei and Gao Xiumin once became a regular program; With Song Dandan, he even opened the "White Cloud Black Earth" universe.

Overnight, Zhao Benshan, who came from grassroots roots and carried a barbaric atmosphere, went from the "end of the universe" Tieling to the end of the universe.

They are the audience's first memory of the Spring Festival Gala, and the relationship with the Spring Festival Gala is a relationship of mutual achievement - the laughter and tears contributed by the older generation of comedians have made the Spring Festival Gala a symbol of "New Year's taste", and the growing influence of the Spring Festival Gala has left them in the classic column forever.

At the Spring Festival Gala in 2000, the breath of parting came to my face. This year, chief director Zhao An directed the Spring Festival Gala for the last time, and three years later he was tried and imprisoned; This year, for the first time, Gong Hanlin did not have Zhao Lirong, and more than five months later, there was no loving smile of the old lady in the world; This year, the cattle bid farewell to the stage and flew solo, turning around and throwing themselves into ups and downs; And Chen Peisi, after "Wang Ye and the Postman", disappeared almost at the same time.

But the star-making story of the Spring Festival Gala has just begun.

Many years later, facing the camera, Zhao Benshan's words were still in awe of the Spring Festival Gala, "At that time, I felt that Beijing was very far away, and I didn't dare to think about the Spring Festival Gala." If I think about it, you can make me kneel." ”

Zhao Benshan did not kneel, it was his apprentice who knelt.

In 2009, Xiao Shenyang, who was in a white shirt, plaid skirt, and oily hair on the door of his head, kowtowed to Zhao Benshan a few times as soon as he went backstage after the performance of "Not Bad Money".

On the 17th day of the first month of that year, Xiao Shenyang parachuted into Liu Laogen's big stage, and made a grand finale appearance, 300 yuan a seat, and added a dozen that night. At the New Year's Eve concert at the end of the year, Zhejiang Satellite TV even boldly invited him with 800,000.

According to an interview with Xiao Shenyang, at that time, he earned 260 million yuan a year, and even let Zhao Benshan change the sharing rules, from 20% to 40%, and later people found that he changed more than 1 million luxury cars, and the license plate number was his year of birth.

That was the most brilliant era of star making at the Spring Festival Gala, and in just four hours, it won the top of the country, which is by no means comparable to any channel today.

One generation and another

In 2012, the rehearsal of the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Dragon, Zhao Benshan appeared in CCTV Studio 1 for the last time.

Wearing a dark blue down jacket and red trousers, he walked straight into the "F137" VIP lounge, and then asked the staff for a bottle of oxygen as the final act of the stage where he had stayed in that show for 21 years, carrying all the glory and loneliness.

But the story of the Spring Festival Gala comedy continues, but the people have changed - back then, the happy twisted Shen Teng performed the sketch "Today's Happiness" for the first time, making people remember this "Hao Jian" who looks a little bumpy and has a northern accent, and then "Today's Happiness 2" and "Helpless" successfully let people remember Shen Teng.

And he's not alone. Jia Ling's name was a little earlier than him, she was still a thin girl at that time, and she went to the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, and between teasing and pulling, she won the third prize with Bai Kainan; Deyun Society initially had Cao Yunjin's crosstalk "Struggle", and after the laughter began to change, Yue Yunpeng became the person carrying the flag again.

The world goes up and down, and the gears of everyone's fate are spinning rapidly under the spotlight of the Spring Festival Gala.

But the world does not have a perpetual motion machine, just like the dream train of the Spring Festival Gala, it cannot operate forever.

The blessing effect of the Spring Festival Gala on the "explosive factor" of comedians was the first to collapse in the old comedians.

In 2013, Cai Ming made her first bold attempt, different from Allen, who switched between Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Henan dialects at will in "Father", different from the robot with changeable modes in "Robot Fun Stories", and she played the poisonous tongued old woman in the sketch "Jump If You Want to Jump".

"Life lies in stillness! Look at that Wang Ba, how many years has he lived there motionless? "It's all a thousand-year-old fox, what do you play for me, what kind of chat" and "disgusting open the door to disgusting, disgusting to home" and other golden sentences, became the hit of the year.

However, a rather historical tragic foreshadowing is that in 1974, in the movie "Haixia", Cai Ming played Xiao Haixia when he was a child, a slightly tragic character - comedy and tragedy are two sides of life.

This is the last stage of Cai Ming's good reputation. In 2022, Cai Ming participated in 27 Spring Festival Galas, and the number of Spring Festival Gala debuts was second only to Feng Gong, but no matter how hard she performed joy, anger and sorrow on stage, the negative comments of aesthetic fatigue and excess medical beauty pushed her into the established track of "no longer needed by the audience".

At the same time, Guo Donglin, another acquaintance of the Spring Festival Gala comedy, also quietly withdrew from the stage and turned around as the male protagonist of the shaky skit. The "Mr. Warm Man" series was once popular, but it also fundamentally indicates that this is no longer the era when comedians can fill the pot with the name of "Spring Festival Gala".

In the past two years, the last group of people who ate the dividends of the Spring Festival Gala have taken on the heavy responsibility of "feeding back the Spring Festival Gala".

People gradually became because Ma Li, Shen Teng and Jia Ling came to see the Spring Festival Gala, instead of watching Ma Li, Shen Teng, and Jia Ling by the way because they watched the Spring Festival Gala.

But even so, the laughter of the old era is lying flat in the new era. Jia Ling and Shen Teng have gained a foothold with the box office of the movie, but their sketches are no longer as happy as before, and in the sketch "Mother-in-law", the only thing people remember is Zhang Xiaofei's pink sweater.

And Xiao Shenyang even said directly in "I am an Actor": "I gave up the sketch." ”

The comedian's Spring Festival Gala dream should land, and no old people or new people will be seen.

After losing laughter

In the past two years, after Chinese New Year's Eve night, every time people meet, everyone will begin to discuss why the Spring Festival Gala is not funny, and the reasons are mostly divided into several reasons.

Talking about the changes in the source of comedy, saying that the audience has long been tired of the ever-changing form, saying that the art of talk show, which is mainly expressed by irony and spit as the main means of expression, is not suitable for the scene of family fun.

The second is to talk about the content of comedy creation, to say whether comedy should be "happy and sad", to say that the pressure of reality makes many words that have been held back for a long time, and it is necessary to say it with a smile, saying that laughter carries many functions and many meanings, but it is less pure.

But few people talk about lost comedians.

As a side branch of performance, comedy does not have its own independent theoretical system, does not have an independent talent training system, and the people who are wrapped up in it have no fixed income and no definite future.

Once, they had the Spring Festival Gala.

But now, the Spring Festival Gala no longer has the strength to give newcomers more opportunities. The loss of focus of entertainment channels, the loss of content quality, and the Spring Festival Gala are no longer the only companions of the audience, and it is difficult to save themselves.

Therefore, on the comedy stage of the Spring Festival Gala, there are more and more faces of national actors, traffic idols, they have attention, their own traffic, even if the performance is not natural enough, the content is stretched, there will be young people to pay. And "let the comedian do the comedian's business, let the actor do the actor's business, and let the singer do the singer's business" has almost become a luxury.

The comedians no longer have expectations for the Spring Festival Gala, but the Spring Festival Gala is still waiting for the new comedians to save.

This year, not only Zhao Xiaohui, Qiu Rui, He Guangzhi, Xu Zhisheng from "Talk Show Conference", but also Ma Xudong and Yan Peilun, the strongest assistants in the second season of "Annual Comedy Competition", the former partnered Yu Zhen, Sun Qian and others starred in "First Sight Photo Studio", which became the "only laughing point" of the show, and the latter and Jin Jing and Zhou Tienan's "50 Seconds of Eye to Eye" also brought "two joy" elements to the Spring Festival Gala stage.

In fact, this step of the Spring Festival Gala may be earlier than the audience imagined. Shu Huan, the coordinator of the language program of the Spring Festival Gala last year, publicly said, "We have sent invitations to many new comedians."

And when the first season of "Annual Comedy Competition" was recorded, he was sitting in the judges' seat.