Author: Li Jing
The 14-episode short drama "This Life is also the First Time" (hereinafter referred to as "This Life") focuses on the experience and growth of new mothers who give birth for the first time in the process of "confinement", further enriching the creative territory of "her theme". The overall creative idea of this play can be summarized as high concept, strong plot and realistic care, which also constitutes a triple perspective for us to read and understand the play, so that we can observe how the play presents this scarce theme to the public, and what creative pros and cons are hidden.
Topic-driven conflict with "tell a good story"
From the first perspective, "This Life" embodies the creative idea of "high concept". The so-called "high concept" means that the completion of the entire play is based on the "topic" as the fundamental motivation, and the audience who have or may have such experiences is easily attracted to its topic. Under the general topic of new mothers, it is further subdivided into sub-topics such as physical pain, scientific parenting, maternal anxiety, postpartum depression, and balancing family and career, which are specifically undertaken by many characters and plots in three story units (1993, 2008, and 2022). The stories of new mothers during childbirth and confinement are almost rolled and even assembled by one "topic" after another.
This is the common creative idea of the current "she theme", which is in line with the communication law of the social media era. Generally speaking, before and during the broadcast of the play, it is highly dependent on the fermentation and discussion of topics on social media to bring a larger area of retweets and attention, so that it is possible to create a hit. "Weibo chasing dramas", "Douyin chasing dramas" and "cutting chasing dramas" are not new things, and the phenomenon of attracting audiences to follow dramas because of a topic/golden sentence "out of the circle" is also common. It can be seen that the degree of topic discussion is closely related to the market performance of the play. "This Life" focuses on the "fertility" card, known as "the first confinement drama in domestic entertainment", which is absolutely eye-catching in terms of topic.
It is worth noting that "This Life" tells the story of becoming a parent "for the first time", and for the audience, the learning experience of new parents in the play has a certain popular science function. It is not only the intellectual science popularization of production and nurturing, but also consciously plays the role of conceptual enlightenment. For example, in the play, borrowing the mouth of Chen Lanqing (played by Tang Yixin), the protagonist of the 2008 unit, he emphasized that the relationship between parents comes first, and only if the parents are good, the children will be good; Borrowing the mouth of the owner of the 2022 unit, Highway Yuan (played by Wang Ziwen), he said, "I really hope that every girl who has watched our drama, they have become mothers after thinking, but they still have the freedom to choose not to sacrifice!" No wonder in the barrage, the most common comment is to praise "the three views of the road far away".
Precise positioning, harvesting traffic, and facilitating popular science concepts and knowledge points are all topic-driven advantages. But fundamentally, topic-driven forces conflict with the principle of "tell a story well." Of course, some topic dramas can attract the audience in a short and smooth way, but if a drama becomes a "topic collection", the plot begins to crawl under the "topic hegemony", and the audience is easy to perceive the hot search tags implanted in it, which will cause boredom. "This Life" still pays more attention to character shaping and plot rationality on the whole, but in order to show women's independence, some settings are either blunt or didactic. How to strike a balance between topic and story remains to be explored.
The topic space and routine constraints supported by the group portrait drama
The second perspective, "strong plot", specifically refers to the fact that "This Life" carefully designed three temporal and spatial clues in 1993, 2008 and 2022 to show the fertility challenges experienced by women in different generations, and integrate the stories of the three units through many details, making the drama conflict rich and diverse and unexpected——
The 1993 unit tells the story of Dai Sijin (Myolie Wu) who was forced to go to the sea to do business and become a female entrepreneur during the confinement period because her husband was suspected of cheating and owed foreign debts. This unit inserts elements such as infidelity and entrepreneurship, showing the possibility of women getting out of the traditional family model;
In 2008, the unit wrote the story of a young couple Chen Lanqing and Cheng Cheng (Allen) who were torn between their mother-in-law and their mother, and struggled to raise their baby in a family dispute. The two fell into depression one after another, and then grew up under the power of love. Based on her personal experience, Chen Lanqing wrote a story about the confinement club online. This unit is close to the traditional family drama model, indirectly inserting costume and science fiction elements, showing the transitional state that women must go through in the process of growing up;
The single mother Lu Yuanfang portrayed by the unit in 2022 is Dai Sijin's daughter, she is the most positive character in the whole play, and also represents the "latest stage" of women's growth, and has a clear understanding and initiative to choose to become a mother. Her first time as a producer struggled to balance career and parenting, and her first TV series was based on Chen Lanqing's story. More workplace drama elements are added to the narrative of this unit, focusing on creating an image of independent women who are free and free.
In the last episode, the characters of the three units are gathered together, "Three Moms One Play", condensing the experience of women in different eras. It can be seen that in terms of plot design, the elements and styles called by this drama are extremely diverse, and strive to reflect different aspects of women's experience. Shaping female group portraits is also a common form of current "her theme", such as "Ode to Joy", "Thirty Only", "Twenty Not Confused", "North and South", "Menghualu" and so on. Group drama can be expanded as much as possible in a limited space to support the topic space, but how to say new ideas under the routine of group portrait drama has become more and more difficult.
In this sense, "This Life" has a certain breakthrough, that is, not only female group portraits, but also male group portraits. At the end of each episode, there is a monologue of the characters in the "talk room" of the confinement club. This setting makes the topic of "fertility" three-dimensional and more public. In particular, the male characters in each unit are portrayed in detail, touching on the important topic of "how to be a good father". However, in view of the fact that this drama is popular with many women, how to allow more male audiences to watch this kind of theme and think through the play constitutes another topic that needs to be explored urgently.
Constantly approaching real details and overall distortion
The third perspective, "realist care". This Life clearly echoes the needs of the moment, focusing on fertility topics that were previously neglected or considered more into the family/private sphere. This means that the "she subject" begins to dig deeper and more detailed into everyday life and women's experience. The screenwriter and three leading actors of this play are all women, and all three leading actors have become mothers in real life, which lays the foundation for showing real female experiences. For example, the display of fertility pain is very realistic, which makes the audience feel very substitutionary. In the behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, it can be learned that some of the plots come from the screenwriter's personal experience, and the precise performance of the details of the three leading actors with babies also directly enhances the realism of the play. In addition, the props, sets, and lines are also very intentional, which better restores the atmosphere of the times.
The pursuit of realism is worthy of recognition, which is also the initial result of domestic dramas getting rid of suspension in recent years. But there is still a paradox here, that is, quantitative change does not always cause qualitative change, and increasing real details often does not change the distortion of the entire show. Specific to "This Life", the problems faced by the three women have been perfectly solved: Dai Sijin successfully went to the sea and had a perfect parent-child relationship with her daughter, without being affected by a single-parent family at all; Chen Lanqing and Cheng Lingling not only got out of depression, but also are about to welcome three children, and their creations will be changed into TV series; Lu Yuanfang is almost a perfect character, with ultra-stable emotions and superpowers in the workplace, and all the crises encountered have been resolved. The problems caused by women's fertility have been solved imaginatively, not to mention that this script focuses on women above the middle class.
The creator's concern may be that the naked, continuous display of pain is bound to create a sense of depression and scare away viewers who are already tired in life. Therefore, the "light comedy" element is becoming more and more generalized in the current creation. "Light comedy" seems to be a universal regulating valve, adapted to various themes, when emotional pressure may be transmitted to the audience, add some comedy plots to reconcile. In "This Life", the addition of comedian Allen is key, and his acting style to a certain extent dispels the discomfort that may result from the topic of depression and the shortness of parents. The addition of elements such as science fiction and ancient costumes has embodied Chen Lanqing's brain hole and enriched the visual experience, all of which make pain easy to accept until it deforms and disappears. And is this result at odds with the "realist care" as the starting point of creation?
How should the future creation of "her theme" further show the real situation of women? Does warm, humor-oriented realism obscure real pain? How should the routine of group drama be upgraded and broken? These are the questions that "This Life" inspires us to continue to think about. Fertility themes, or other women's works, only when they are of sufficient quality can they attract a larger audience and truly become an important part of public culture.
(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Marxist Literature and Art Theory, China Academy of Arts)
Source: Wen Wei Po