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The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

Author: Ya Ting

Editor: Takushu Kimura

The great success of "Crazy" at the beginning of the year is both reasonable and unexpected.

The reasonable part is also the advantages that the audience has fully recognized - fast-paced story progression, the overall superb acting skills of the actors, and the various reversal settings of "all the villains". Compared with the main theme dramas that have emerged in recent years to show the way of working within the system, "Crazy" realizes that it is first and foremost a mass culture work and needs to be "good-looking" enough. This makes it the best-rated drama on CCTV in recent years, and iQiyi ranks first in popularity on the whole network, contributing to the hot sales of "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and endless second creations...

And the unexpected part is also here: it is indeed not only a market-oriented mass culture work, but also a drama with the main theme created under the framework of anti-corruption and anti-gang crime. But both the main theme attribute of "Crazy" and the way the audience interacts with this main theme drama are contrary to our stereotypes of the main theme in the past.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

In the interaction with "Crazy", people are no longer just passive recipients of some kind of "right answer", but more actively, borrowing the specific experience we perceive in the drastic socio-economic changes since the new century, to read and participate in the show. The audience "watched the TV series with a magnifying glass", listed the "corresponding table of the roles of department-level cadres", and used "AI to read lips to restore the lines", trying to cooperate with the interpretation of the "Crazy" episode and the discussion of the real plot trend in the current period of social thought in reality, and actively look for the possibility of individual memory experience being placed in the main theme.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

When we think of the main theme dramas that have attracted a lot of attention in recent years, similar feelings will be clearer. Since "The Age of Awakening", we realized that the main theme drama can also have a "circle-breaking" influence in the cultural consumption situation dominated by young people. Then, in the background of the decline in the introduction channels and publicity of overseas film and television works, the market invested in its favor, bringing a large number of "key" dramas, and after experiencing the successive hits of "Mountain and Sea Love", "The World", "Police Honor" and "County Party Committee Compound" and most of the praise of "Crazy", the main theme now seems to be finally a little far from the dilemma of difficult expression.

Against the above background and the expectation of more and more future themes, we try to ask the question - why is the main theme of "Crazy" more popular? How did the audience accept "Crazy", the written and unwritten parts of the series, what possibilities does it provide for the audience to understand reality and place personal experience? Has the main theme changed, or has the audience of the main theme changed?

As early as the 90s, under the influence of the trough of domestic film box office and overseas imported blockbusters, the main theme works began to take the initiative to change commercialization and marketization.

Before and after the new century of promoting reform, opening up and modernization, although the audience no longer had to watch film and television works with revolution and struggle as the main idea, what occupied the big and small screens at that time were works with heroic and advanced figures as the protagonists and describing their arduous struggle, such as "Jiao Yulu" (1990), "Kong Fansen" (1996) and "Long March" (1996), which were meaningful but difficult to become the choice for most audiences to actively pay for them in theaters. At that time, the works with good reputation and box office or ratings in film and television works were works such as "Back to Back Face to Face Pair", "Longing", "I Love My Home" and "Beijinger in New York".

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

Beijinger in New York

Dai Jinhua in Station B: "The few films that have been acclaimed and acclaimed in the history of Chinese cinema usually have such characteristics. In the video, represented by "Back to Back Face to Face", he briefly talked about the common characteristics of these films: alienating grand political and social issues, looking forward to the positive impact that reform may have on personal life as a hope, starting from the lives of small people in the city, neither "endowing" humanity nor "robbing" human nature, but showing as much as possible the flashpoints of life that small people can empathize with.

The film and television dramas of the 90s showed such collective characteristics because under the goal of serving the modernization construction and reform and opening up, film and television works needed to liberate the individual characters in and outside the play from the collective, promote the modernization of cities, science and technology and culture in the shape of individual wishes, and place the development of individuals in the dimension of global competition and development.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

"I Love My Home"

The decade after the new century was also a period of relatively relaxed cultural creation environment, an era in which modernization was further strengthened and the narrative of a strong country was gradually completed. The scope and concept of the main theme are being broadened.

As far as TV dramas are concerned, in 2007, the then deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said in an interview with Southern Weekend, "Writing about human affection, human nature, beautiful and kind things is the main theme, and all positive, healthy, uplifting, upward, and beneficial things are all counted as the main theme." On the one hand, this is because the space for cultural creation is relatively large, China's urbanization construction is changing with each passing day, and the story of class leap is always there, and ordinary people who are getting better and better are easy to confirm the positive experience in film and television dramas according to the changes in daily life. On the other hand, in an era when local TV stations need to pay for production units, it is difficult for TV dramas that involve writing historical cognition, showing the work of the system, or emphasizing realism to be particularly "not the main theme".

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

"Just a Classmate Boy"

As far as the specific film and television drama themes are concerned, the dramas that have both word of mouth and ratings at this stage are also closely related to the development goals and tasks of social history at that time.

Take dramas such as "Bright Sword", "Soldier Assault", "Golden Wedding" and "Just a Classmate Boy" as examples. In dramas featuring the changes in the lives of small people, TV series like "Golden Wedding" not only write about the positive changes in the lives of small people due to the changes of the times, but also write about things that cannot be taken away and rewritten in the process of changing times, so as to relieve the audience's anxiety in the process of modernization and radical change as much as possible. In the dramas with the theme of the Anti-Japanese War period, they mainly write about the difficulty and emotion of defending the country, and the tragic situation of "backwardness will be beaten" in the feudal era, which not only stimulates the audience's sense of national identity, but also exports the importance of modernization and great power diplomacy and style. In a considerable number of TV series, modern lifestyles, modern ways of thinking, and modern scientific and technological development have all become remedies to solve personal daily life problems.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

In the following decade, in the 2010s, TV dramas on the themes of military travel, revolutionary history, and the lives of small people such as "The Sword of the Deep Sea", "Love Man Courtyard" and "Beibu Bay People" remained, but relatively non-existent.

The reason that is easy to summarize is that with the transformation of social media and the development of streaming media, as well as the rise of traffic stars and the emergence of "capital chaos", the audience has many choices and is increasingly uninterested in the topic of the main theme. The main theme film and television dramas are still there, but only occasionally a few dramas that show the system such as "In the Name of the People" can make a splash in the public opinion field. The film and television dramas that attracted more attention during this period were "Ode to Joy", "My Front Half", "Little Parting" and "All Very Good", which were discussed in the public opinion field of social media, and also named by the Feitian Awards and the Good Drama Selection of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

The deeper reason is that the answer to everything we saw in the main theme, that is, "modernization", is now the problem itself. The Chinese of entering modern urban life is troubled by new problems, such as the contradiction of urban middle class life, the difficulties of young people in marriage, friendship and job search, and the problem of native families.

Audiences voted for middle-class dramas born in the new era; The main theme describing the power of modernization ushered in a loss during this period.

How to answer, respond to, or even create new scenarios to settle similar losses is the new problem that the main theme will face and solve later.

Scholar Tao Qingmei mentioned the concept of "new mainstream" in the article "Reconstruction of Historical View: From "Main Theme" to "New Mainstream"", in which the dramas represented by "The Age of Awakening" and "Mountains and Seas" should be called "new mainstream" than "main theme". Because different from the previous rigid requirements for theme and style of the main theme supremacy, the "new mainstream" drama has a stronger initiative in constructing historical understanding, no longer statically repeating how history came about, but facing the practical problems of contemporary youth, and starting more from the growth experience of contemporary youth.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

Therefore, the touching of the collective and idealistic yearning in "The Age of Awakening" is actually based on the powerlessness of individualism that young people have felt in the process of marketization development in recent years. The poverty alleviation of "Mountains and Seas" is also based on the individual's pessimism that the status quo is difficult to change, and intends to call for strong external intervention to realize the promise of "getting rich first and getting rich later".

In "Crazy", it answers this question as much as possible with the changes of Gao Qiqiang and the poor and warm and hopeful details of the beginning of the new century.

Interestingly, for many young viewers, their personal historical memories are likely to coincide with the story development of "Crazy", and also coincide with the first three decades of the main theme and our impressions of popular culture in the past three eras.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

At the beginning of 2000, the experience of poverty but warm human society, and communication technology innovation represented by PHS, brought about by modernization into the daily life of the family is close to reality. Around 2010, the new appearance of prefecture-level cities due to the development of resort cultural tourism projects and real estate is close to the real thing, on this basis, due to the growth of consumption levels, the fashionable and slightly pompous outfits of big brothers and sisters-in-law are also close to reality. Around 2020, the "fruitful results" of the anti-corruption and anti-gang crime operation are close to real.

The new clothes of the main theme: "Crazy" answered, and avoided

So how did the 2021 Discipline Inspection Commission's attack on Jinghai City, investigate and deal with local officials' corruption, unfair distribution, Mager shroud, and bending the law for personal gain? "Crazy" gives several answers, which have been written, which is undoubtedly due to the lust of a very small number of people and the bottom line that cannot be kept at critical moments. The question left for the audience to think about is, can the peace of mind after the death of the ideal really be at ease? What does justice actually mean when it comes twenty years late? Why can't Meng Dehai be a black party?

For the "new mainstream" side of Crazy, these questions are important and unimportant. Because in any case, the background of the "main theme" side of the series will not change much due to the change in the ending, and the important thing is that it still creates an opportunity for young people to relive the consensus - the era of gold panning everywhere is suspicious, class leaps and modern urban experiences need to hesitate, and in the face of the future, we must first be patient, do not have to be carried away by the idealistic blood of youth, injustice will eventually be solved, in the future.

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