Humor has become an inseparable and important narrative of "The Bad Obsession Cleaner". In the play, life and death seem to have become a trivial thing that can be ridiculed and complained about, and has a unique sense of romance. The rhythm of the plot swings back and forth between warmth and funny, like a random spill of ink, seemingly jumping, but not sliding to any extreme. More importantly, it increases the narrative's sense of security, confronts and dissolves death, and looks very comfortable and relaxed, making the audience feel like they are napping with the protagonists in a corner shop on a summer afternoon.
Author: Liang Xiang
Editor: Blue Two
Format: Wang Wei
The heating up of "Bad Obsession Cleaner" is like a small accident.
The Taiwan dramas that have come out of the circle in recent years are either gorgeous lineups, or very powerful realistic themes and suspense themes, and the plot, production, and cast of this drama are actually not very luxurious and eye-catching. But it still evokes a burst of joy in small circles, and continues to reach farther places with the fermentation of word of mouth, like a word-of-mouth secret.
Becoming a dark horse may be related to the strange fantasy theme of this show, which can jump out of the framework of reality and bring its own dramatic tension. For a considerable period of time, Taiwan dramas have grasped this spectacle code, played with genre elements such as monster souls, time and space travel, and parallel universes, and created a series of works with good reputation and ratings such as "The Marriage of the Other Side", "Psychic Girl", "The Magician on the Bridge" and even the phenomenal "Want to See You". And "Bad Obsession Cleaner" itself has a sense of déjà vu of dreaming back to "Pawnshop No. 8", echoing the time and space of "Soul Ferry" in the mainland many years ago, and writing to draw the strange and brilliant Chinese strange talk.
With the increase of similar themes, the freshness of the theme will naturally decline, but "Bad Obsession Cleaner" bucks the trend and writes a beautiful answer sheet with a psychic pen lightly. Its story does not have great joy and tragedy, no great understanding, and even the fantasy quality itself is not biased towards extreme curiosity, but is full of absurd humor. The protagonists fight monsters and drive away evil spirits, fight and make trouble, and grow up at the same time, full of gentleness and security.
It is a "not too hard" drama, perhaps, it is precisely this relaxation that moves the audience, making it a pre-booked annual masterpiece in the hearts of many drama fans.
Pen and ink: a humorous narrative of fantasy themes
The world prefers fantasy and fantasy and describes the otherworldly state with imagination, but the human flavor in the Chi monster drama is always greater than the ghost flavor. The story is told by people, listened to by people, watched by people, after all, it still resonates with people, all the strange lights, and finally reaches a certain weakness in the heart, creating fantasy and sustenance that are difficult to reach in reality for the audience, using ghosts and causes and effects to interpret the cycle of lust, and telling the supernatural as the world. The "No. 8 Pawnshop" that caught fire that year borrowed this emotion, allowing a pawnshop to exchange success and consummation in the secular sense, and letting a drama dispel the sharp questioning of rugged reality.
"The Bad Obsession Cleaner" loses this somewhat heavy sense of allegory and presents lightness and freshness.
Looking at the plot alone, it is not complicated.
The word "bad" has a double meaning: it is both a definition of the nature of "obsession" and a delineation of the protagonist's personality. The male protagonist, Pu Yiyong, is a bad high school student, only 17 years old and underage. This unruly boy with troubled studies and bohemian inherits his grandfather's calligraphy talent from generation to generation, until after a car accident, he suddenly turned on his spiritual vision and could see strange spirits that ordinary people could not perceive. Those incarnations of obsession came to see them one after another, repeating the phrase, "Help me."
These obsessions are generated by strong emotions such as longing, sadness or regret in the human heart, and after projecting something around them, they turn into human form. The solution is the words and souls written by Pu Yiyong with pen and ink. "Pu", as an ancient surname, originally originated from the descendants of Emperor Shun in early China, and in a sense, it can also be regarded as a descendant of God; "One" is the foundation, the beginning, and the simplest starting point; "Forever" is the end of the rush, representing all strokes, which can contain 10,000 characters. All things in a lifetime, ancient and modern, Pu Yiyong himself is the embodiment of the power of pen and ink. Every time he was entrusted by the monster, Pu Yiyong and his team of friends set out to find the truth and clarify the beginning and end until the appeal was reached and solved with pen and ink Chinese characters. One stroke at a time, entanglement has since detached.
Although it has the déjà vu of the Japanese manga "Natsume Friend Account", "Bad Obsession Cleaner" is a very clever combination of fantasy genre and traditional calligraphy, highlighting the characteristics of local national style in the same genre. When evaluating Grandpa Pu Yiyong, the sentence of the characters in the play, "Every word he writes can see his heart, which is not only mourning for the dead, but also comforting the living", has also become the underlying structure of the script.
In the mode where the unit story drives the main line, the familiar recipe is added with novel spices: stitching up the resurrected corpse, but trapped in the gods in the river; The nameless body used in anatomy class, the tattoos on the body will also turn into beautiful women to find their names; What makes the audience shout "outrageous" is that even the logo pattern painted on the sidewalk can turn into a human form to find the lost child... The brain hole is so big, and it does not believe in the horse's reins, which gives the play a texture similar to a cold humorous comic.
In the second story, the tattoo behind the nameless corpse is obsessed with transforming into a spirit, and every time it appears, it will appear in front of Pu Yiyong and others as a lady standing under a huge peach tree, dressed in a gorgeous costume and falling colorfully. It was stunning for the first time, but after appearing many times, Pu Yiyong was a little impatient, and directly complained about the female spirit, "The room is so small and there are so many people, can you put away your potted plants first?" Otherwise I'll cut it for you" - the four-panel comic-like dialogue is enduring.
This humor has also become an inseparable and important narrative of "The Bad Obsession Cleaner", giving the heavy issue of death a new gesture of remembrance: it is not the conventional moderation of the deceased who has passed away and reconciles with the past, but the positive and cynical attitude of vindicating the name of the deceased. In the play, life and death seem to have become a trivial thing that can be ridiculed and complained about, and has a unique sense of romance. In order to fit this humor, the protagonist's personality setting is intertwined, and the rhythm of the plot also swings back and forth between warmth and funny, like a random spilled pen and ink, seemingly jumping, but not sliding to any extreme. More importantly, it increases the narrative's sense of security, confronts and dissolves death, and looks very comfortable and relaxed, making the audience feel like they are napping with the protagonists in a corner shop on a summer afternoon.
This pleasant laziness is perhaps the strongest sketch that links the audience's heart.
Paper inkstone: a picture bearing that blends types
If you want to complete the detachment ceremony, it is not enough to have pen and ink, you also need to grind the inkstone and use paper to support the heart.
In the play, together with Pu Yiyong, who holds a pen and ink, to resolve his obsession is Cao Guangyan and Chen Nanying, the other two members of the team. Inkstone is inkstone, which also has the meaning of classmates' love; 楮 is a synonym for paper, and at the same time, paper is one and the same, which also coincides with Chen Kaiying's police identity - the police maintain the right path in the Yang world and eliminate the Yin Cao soul. Yin and yang, balanced one, "Bad Obsession Cleaner" seems not very serious, but in fact has extremely delicate achievements in the integration of Chinese culture.
And the existence of the two characters of Cao Guangyan and Chen Nanying is to a certain extent like paper ink, framing and maintaining Pu Yiyong's wanton pen and ink, and at the same time adding multiple types of integration to the play itself.
Pu Yiyong and Cao Guangyan "fought and killed each other" when they were students, which is a disagreement between the school bully and the student bully. After becoming adults, the two became neighbors by mistake, forming dependence in the Chi Wei commission again and again, and the interaction between the two had the sense of déjà vu of a Taiwanese idol drama, so that after the series was broadcast, fans praised the couple's sense of CP was too strong, and the two actors even agreed that as long as the show ranked first on the list, they would complete a princess hug.
Chen Kaiying joined the team with the workplace line and emotional line, this seemingly ignorant and nonsensical little police flower who has a clear purpose and is bent on changing jobs to take over major criminal cases, has distinct characteristics under the actor's Japanese comic style interpretation, as the actor himself said, "to complain and play the fool back and forth to interact with other characters to drive the plot". The emotional elements that come with female characters are not obtrusive or conspicuous in the play, seemingly a foil but the finishing touch.
Three characters with different functions, and the three-person squad stands together, turning into a youth narrative of teenagers' growth.
The perspective is raised, and the integration of fantasy, comedy, suspense, youth, family, police and bandits may not be so fresh. In the face of an audience group with increasingly mixed tastes over the years, such a combination of play seems to be a bit clever, but for "Bad Obsession Cleaner", just a few ordinary cards are played very beautifully. The genre integration expands the immature and simple story template of the play itself, and the addition of emotions makes the funny and sensational not jump away, and the natural separation between sadness and joy allows the audience not to stay too long between crying and laughing, and the emotions will not get out of control, firmly holding the audience's own heart, seemingly giving up the initiative, but capturing the audience with their own.
As the saying goes, nothing is important except death. In different cultures, death is mostly heavy and needs to be dissolved in different ways. The classic Japanese movie "The Undertaker" sincerely treats life, respects death, and has Japanese restraint and elegance in the texture. The American animation "Coco" paints a fairy tale for the country of the dead, giving positivity and emotion in sentimentality. Our native films such as "See You in Heaven" and "Tell Them That I Went by White Crane" poetize death and consume the sorrow of death itself; "Life Events" focuses on the funeral industry and takes the down-to-earth tragicomedy route of China; "Sanyue Has a New Job" tells the story of a young girl working in a funeral home, filled with the influence of many life and death stories, with a strong color of life... Although the types are different, it can be seen that their respective main creators are very hard when facing the issue of death: they hope to make the plot brilliant, so that the audience is not so afraid of death, and they are close to their hearts, feel life, and tell people to live actively.
From this point of view, "The Bad Obsession Cleaner" seems to lie down a little flat, and instead moves towards another homely narrative scene: although it is strange, there is no need to delve into its surface core; Although there is reasoning, there is no need to dig deep logic; Even if it involves some intentions and social issues, it is not deliberately elevated, not particularly heavy or exaggerated; Even if the main mission has not yet been completed, in the face of the constantly coming commissions, the protagonist group can still drink a cup of tea, eat some snacks, lazily plan the itinerary while fighting with each other, and shout helplessly to those elves: "Do you regard my place as a check-in holy place, keep coming!" ”
In the pursuit of information and strong immersion, the relaxation of "Bad Obsession Cleaner" seems a little out of place, in the face of a large number of genre integration, since it is impossible to do it all, simply let it all go free and point to it.
Perhaps, always wanting to find a big story is also a bad obsession.
Audiences love "The Bad Obsession Cleaner", perhaps because of its light attitude when telling small stories carelessly. Don't care too much, don't care about loss, don't care about death, let people face the day more lightly, more open-minded.
THE END