Recently, the "double heroine drama" "Brilliant Turn" was launched.
43-year-old Qin Lan and 39-year-old Deng Jiajia, it is said that it is another "She Alliance" narrative featuring girls and help girls, both in 2023, presumably the middle women of our domestic dramas will be a little new, right?
But it's a pity that after watching a few episodes, the new atmosphere is not, and the new anger is a few more pounds.
The wife catches the adulterer and tears the scumbag to educate the mistress, and the ethical three-piece set of the screenwriter is not falling, and the dog blood is raging all the way, her sister can't help but ask, has the domestic drama completely lost the imagination space for our middle daughters?
Source: "Brilliant Turn"
What are the women busy with in domestic dramas?
In 2023, capital did not ignore the market potential of middle-aged women.
Known as "the first confinement drama in domestic entertainment", "This Life is also the First Time", the sister alliance anti-slag textbook "Brilliant Turn", 30+ female group portrait dramas "Lady's Character", "Dazzling You" and other dramas have been broadcast one after another, and the image of diverse middle-aged women is active on the screen, which should have been a good thing.
But the problem is that these so-called female group portraits and women-themed dramas, seemingly focusing on the work, childbirth, family, and marriage difficulties of middle-aged women, actually trap middle-aged women in another beautifully packaged set in the name of feminism.
Why do you say that?
Just look at what the women in domestic dramas are busy with.
One is busy giving birth.
For middle-aged women, childbirth seems to have become a life KPI that begins to enter the countdown, just like the red light suddenly glowing on Ultraman's chest, but the difference is that one is to cast the ultimate move to deal with the monster, and the other is to be treated as a monster to perform the ultimate move.
Whether married or unmarried, such middle-aged women are either having children or on their way to having children.
"Lady's Character", the heroine Yao Wei, a company executive, has been married incognito for work for many years, but she is unexpectedly pregnant during the rising stage of her career, facing the problem of choosing between career and fertility classics, her choice is - birth;
Source: "Lady's Character"
The sister-in-law of the heroine Yao Wei is busy giving birth to three children, bleeding heavily during childbirth, and is faced with the choice of protecting the uterus or protecting the adult classic, her choice is - uterus;
Source: "Lady's Character"
"This life is also the first time", a strong woman is far away, found out pregnant after divorce, career and fertility classic choice problem reappeared, her choice is - I want it.
Source: "This life is also the first time"
And another heroine in the play, Chen Lanqing, stupidly gave birth to a child under the large-scale fertility scam of "I just care about birth, and nothing else belongs to me", and after encountering a series of chicken flying dog beating plots such as placental adhesion surgery, shock, acute mastitis, postpartum depression, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflict, parenting intergenerational conflict, etc., the finale was pregnant with three children.
Source: "This life is also the first time"
The other category is busy with divorce.
The reason for divorce is not new, ten women in domestic dramas divorced, and nine husbands cheated on them.
"Splendid Turn", Sophie, a female elite in the workplace, married and child-reared, has a lot of love with her husband in the first episode, and found that her husband and the little three are in love in the second episode;
"Lady's Character", the workplace female elite An Xin, married and childless, she accompanied her husband to start from scratch, but her husband set up a family of three with others behind her back;
As for the reason for cheating, either blame the mistress for taking the initiative to seduce the stalker, or wronged the Dinker man for not having children and having a child through the belly, anyway, it is always the woman's fault.
Source: "Lady's Character"
There is also a category of middle-aged women who are busy falling in love and getting married.
Divorced middle-aged girls are obsessed with performing sparks with their brothers who have no sense of CP, such as Jiang Wenli and Ming Dao's "Love at the Corner Will Only Hurt You" "Love Around the Corner".
Source: "Corner Love"
Or busy refusing the passionate courtship of his brother 20 years younger than him, such as "Lady's Character" Liu Mintao's An Xin was madly infatuated by his boss's son Mike after divorce.
Middle-aged women who have not yet suffered from marriage are either busy reuniting with their first love for a long time, such as "The Way Home", the general plot is - break up ten years and reunite, it turns out that I love you, you love me, we get married and have children sweet.
Source: "The Way Home"
Or become an ex-girlfriend who has money, looks and a career, but does not look at men's eyes, and is busy pestering a middle-aged greasy ex who can't see a little sexual charm all day long.
For example, "The Right Way to Open Life", can you believe that the big beauty Zhu Zhu will have a shy belly and can only talk "uh, ah" Huang Bo Nian will not forget to wait for 20 years just to eat the grass?
Source: "The Right Way to Open Life"
We have every reason to suspect that the loyal dog boyfriend who only loves one person for ten years in "Homecoming" may become the superficial loving husband in "Brilliant Turn" / "Lady's Character" in just another ten years, accidentally making a "mistake that men will make", and then a hand-torn scumbag fighting for property to quickly divorce, and then the rich and idle sister can then make love with the fresh meat of the year.
Logical self-consistency, perfect closed loop.
Domestic women need to restart their lives
In these narratives, we can see that childbirth, marriage, and love are still the first themes of women's lives.
And all kinds of bells and whistles of female workplace elite settings are often just floating embellishments, like the pair of high heels on the protagonists' feet that cannot be taken off.
One by one, the glamorous strong women stepped on high heels into the office building to teach their subordinates, stepped on high heels to catch rape scumbags to persuade the junior to retreat, stepped on high heels to get pregnant in October and was delicate to give birth, and stepped on high heels and the sensible younger brother was tired and crooked...
Source: "This Life is also the First Time" 32 weeks pregnant heroine
As soon as a woman reaches 30+, it seems that there is only such a cookie-cutter and boring story left.
So we often hear such complaints:
Won't domestic dramas be filmed if they are derailed?
Won't domestic dramas be filmed if they are divorced from falling in love?
Won't domestic dramas be filmed if they are spawned?
The core problem reflected by these criticisms is that in the narrative of Chinese women in our domestic dramas, the living space, social space, and spiritual space visible to women are still too narrow.
Our imagination of middle-aged women's lives is still too barren.
When the middle women of domestic dramas are still busy entangled in the question of whether to talk about it, which one to talk about, whether to give birth or not, and how many to give birth, the middle women of Korean dramas have taken the audience to live a dormant life for 18 years, just to personally punish the dark revenge life of the evil people on campus.
"Dark Glory" allows us to see the story of how a low-level woman who was bullied regained the initiative in life in a world with clear classes.
The same is a revenge drama, Wen Dongen's life exists for revenge, but what we see is far more than revenge.
School bullying close to the real thing, desperate social class solidification, touching women redeeming each other...
In addition to the refreshing feeling, there is more realistic discussion and extension.
The Japanese drama "Restart Life" shows a completely different narrative of Chinese women -
There can be no marriage problems, no fertility troubles, no love entanglements in women's lives, but only a precious female friendship and a shared life experience with women.
The heroine Asami, a 33-year-old ordinary employee, died in a car accident after a party with her girlfriends, but was told when she was reincarnated that she was not virtuous enough and would become an anteater in the afterlife.
Asami is unwilling, and in order to be reincarnated as an adult, she chooses to be reborn to accumulate Yinde.
Unlike ordinary rebirth dramas, "Restart Life" abandons the mainstream counterattack setting that makes the protagonist rape and rich.
Asami's rebirth is still an ordinary person.
In addition to different careers, I still grew up with the same group of friends, talked about the same people, said the same things, or the same university, and even fell in love with the same man for a short time.
Source: "Restart Life"
It was not until the fourth life, Asami met Shinsato, who was also constantly reborn, that she learned that her girlfriends would die in a plane crash, and that the schoolboy Mari, who was originally high and unapproachable in their eyes, was also a member of their group of girlfriends, and the reason why Masato was repeatedly reborn and became a pilot was to prevent the crash.
So Asami finally gave up the hard-won opportunity to reincarnate as an adult, and chose to be reborn for the last time and become a pilot with Shinsato to save her friends.
Source: Douban
"Restart Life" allows us to see that women 30+, can not be strong women, can not get married or fall in love, girls help girls do not have to be achieved by retaliating against scumbags to teach juniors, simple female friendships can also be very moving, even if it is just a few girls huddled together to talk nonsense, together into pigeons staying on telephone poles, can make people see tears.
Female 30+, black hole reality
Some people may say that "Restart Life" creates a "vacuum ideal life" for East Asian women, which is too utopian and too distant compared to reality.
So let's go back to reality and see what 30+ ordinary women are up to?
Maybe busy with all kinds of shit work, working overtime until midnight every day, no time to make up, not in the mood to date, the circle of small love can only rely on blind dates, the blind date market is either a second marriage or an old man, and the handsome and sunny brother can only be seen on TV.
Source: Sina Weibo
Maybe just ended an unpleasant relationship, there are no tens of millions of property to divide, see the first love that has not been seen for ten years usually only feel greasy and doubt their aesthetics back then, the probability of reviving the old love is much lower than the probability of remembering the old love of a beagle dog that has not been seen in the neighbor's house for ten years.
Maybe you have just experienced layoffs and are busy looking for a job, whether it is unmarried and childless, married without children or married and childbearing, you have to face the same question repeatedly during the interview - are you married? Have a baby?
Source: Sina Weibo
Of course, the truth is that no 30+ female state is dominant.
The unmarried are worried that you will get married, the married are worried that you will have children and take maternity leave, the married and childbearing are worried that you will have a second child, give birth to a third child, and worry that you will not have the energy to work after giving birth to three children...
Not to mention that many positions require age limits of under 30 and 35.
At the same time, we also have to face the guidance and advice of various vested interests.
Source: Sina Weibo
Childbirth, marriage, and love are of course the real problems faced by 30+ women, and we cannot say that domestic dramas do not write the reality of women.
After all, if you open a drama at will, you can catch several hot women's issues such as difficult childbirth, postpartum depression, women's rights protection in the workplace, third-party intervention, domestic violence, sibling love, etc., but the question is, have our creators really got rid of outdated views and faced the current trend of femininity?
There is a dialogue in "This Life is also the First Time", and her sister is impressed:
When the heroine was doing postpartum care far away, she asked the pregnant woman who was traveling with her, why did she give birth?
Mother 1 said that the eldest gave birth without thinking clearly, and the second took the initiative to give birth, because it was too happy to bring children.
Mom 2 said that when you are old and sick, you must be intubated and signed, and someone must take care of it.
When it was Lu Yuan's turn, her answer was, "I never seem to have thought about not having sex."
Source: Douban
This answer just points out the essence of the women's dilemma in the current domestic drama - childbirth, marriage, and love are all women's dilemmas, but they only trap women.
In a woman's life, there is no option not to have children, no option not to marry, no option not to fall in love.
The premise of all dilemmas is based first and foremost on the acquiescence and support of this setting.
So we watched the pompous and powerful female elites choose to keep their fathers and sons, or give up the opportunity to promote and choose to have children, and almost chose two children and three children because of the role of giving birth, which is a free choice for women,
Or is it the continuation of the myth of motherhood and the compromise of women under moral kidnapping in the name of love?
The answer to this question, I think we are all very clear.