May 22, 2023 | Issue 3243
When the blockbuster fairy drama "Canglan Tips" was broadcast last year, the slogan of fans was "Primary school students may feel naïve, but adults think it's just right!" And now the audience who watched "Protecting the Heart" basically have to hit the slogan on the public screen, ""Protecting the Heart" - a fairy tale drama more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies."
The audience's preferences seem to have changed along with the popular trend of fairy tale dramas.
If only a few years ago, the audience would have spit along with Shiro "pink delicate, how old are you now", and now, the army of "naïve just right" has occupied major social platforms. This phenomenon is especially evident in fairy tale dramas.
More and more fairy tale dramas let the audience feel the long-lost sense of youth, bringing the energy of happiness, blood and middle two. The audience not only sips sugar in the sweet and sadistic plot, but also evokes the yearning for love in "ideal love that can inspire the bright side of human nature".
If a generation has a generation of fairy dramas, then the "naïve just right" fairy dramas represented by "Canglan Tips" and "Heart Protection" are undoubtedly more in line with the aesthetics of Generation Z in terms of painting style, character and core. They meet the needs of today's young people for "passionate value", which is clearly different from the previous "abstinence funeral" fairy.
Character downgrade
Before "Flower Thousand Bones", the main line of the fairy tale drama was the growth of teenagers in the background of group portraits. Li Xiaoyao and Sedum came from the bottom, and Baili Tusu was selected with his own anger.
Since "Flower Thousand Bones", the protagonist of the fairy tale drama has become a woman, and the narrative of juvenile growth has been replaced by the narrative of the heroine of Mary Sue. At the same time, the identity of the protagonist jumped into a god, and the sadomasochistic love of teachers and students began to began, which made the audience want to stop.
"Three Lives and Three Lives and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" continues this character and narrative, but on the sadomasochistic love of the female emperor of Qingqiu (played by Yang Mi) and the prince of the Nine Heavens Yehua (played by Zhao Youting), the setting of "life and life" is added.
Since then, fairy dramas have fallen into the cycle of "master-apprentice love + three lives and three lives", such as later dramas such as "Ancient Jue Dust" and "Heavy Purple" without exception, the difference is nothing more than that the immortals are more inflationary, only the true gods and gods above the six realms are worthy of talking about cultivation love, ordinary immortals are coveted and trespassive.
The point where "Liuli" is a bit anti-routine is that although its protagonist is also the son of the Heavenly Emperor and the reincarnation of the Celestial God of War, this drama officially plays the emotional mode of female A and male O. The god of war is a woman, first of all, it makes people's eyes shine, and secondly, the heroine's unstoppable sense of strength and the male protagonist's broken sense of "vomiting blood when he doesn't agree with a word" can be regarded as having some novelty.
But a drama can not save the audience's aesthetic fatigue of fairy dramas that have nothing to do except indulge in love, especially as the fairy setting becomes more and more top-notch, the drama conflict is getting smaller and smaller, the protagonist's obstacles are nothing more than anger, spiritual power has not been opened, to experience love calamity, the fairy world scenes are the same, plain and cold, so, the audience who wrote "unbelief" on their faces refused to enter the play.
Until "Canglan Tips" appeared, the audience began to "believe" again. Especially Gen Z audiences are extremely incomparably engaged.
"Canglan Tips" first focuses the camera on the villain male protagonist, and it is a middle duo such as "Love and Love, the strongest in the Three Realms". Dongfang Qingcang (played by Wang Hedi) always calls himself "Honza", and only needs to tilt his head to launch an attack, and when he enters the combat state, he comes with an anime-like BGM. The heroine is a childish and delicate, confused little orchid (played by Yu Shuxin), who believes in love and peace. Such two people, to love each other, resistance can be imagined.
The protagonist of "Heart Protection" is even more downgraded. The male protagonist Tianyao (played by Hou Minghao) is a thousand-year-old spirit dragon dismembered by his predecessor, who deceived the female protagonist to help him find his body. The heroine Yan Hui (played by Zhou Ye) is a fairy cultivator girl with a natural cripple in her heart, growing up in hunger and cold, salting fish every day but acting for righteousness.
To some extent, both of them are "disabled", and plot advancement is the logic of ordinary people walking in rivers and lakes, which is very "human" and modern. And the casting of these two dramas is not a top celebrity actor, they are all young faces that fit the characters.
Youthful love, lonely and "unconvinced"
The struggle between free will and fatalism is something that fairy tales repeatedly talk about.
The identity of Zhao Linger (played by Liu Yifei) as a descendant of Nuwa in "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" doomed her to be martyred. Li Xiaoyao (played by Hu Ge) has resisted and failed, and can only succumb to a powerful fate, leaving BE with an uneasy ending. The heroine of "Flower Thousand Bones" is a lone star, from the moral confinement, Master Bai Zihua (played by Huo Jianhua) cannot fall in love with his apprentice, and from the fatalism of identity, he cannot indulge in small love and must help the world.
Audiences who desire a deep emotional connection naturally like to watch sadomasochism, but it can be found that even in a big heroine fairy drama like "Flower Thousand Bones", it is still the male protagonist who saves the life. The male protagonist chooses between righteousness and one, sacrificing the female protagonist to complete his own epic, and finally the female protagonist blackens. Such a trade-off full of be, the audience has watched it countless times, even in the later fairy dramas, there is no life, only immortals.
At the same time, the core conflict of the strong sense of confrontation against the sky and changing fate has disappeared, and more is the class crushing of the low-level immortals by the high-ranking immortals who dominate everything for personal personal affection to satisfy the "Muqiang" psychology of some audiences. The fairy drama "There are immortals and no heroes", the three views have gradually gone off-track, and the love destined by the immortals has become a "superiority tool" to suppress others.
"Canglan Recipe" is a combination of gods and demons, but it has sentient beings in its eyes.
This drama revived the values of "love and peace" in the fairy tale drama, and made the audience believe in simple things again, such as friendship and love. It patiently portrays the youthful feeling of the male and female protagonists germinating in love, it is not a master-apprentice cultivation system, nor is it a hereditary immortal destined to unite, but two lonely and disobedient people walking together.
Little Orchid was born with no one to care, the master disappeared, and Dongfang Qingcang gave her a rich companionship. If a goddess loves the world, why can't she love one? She was not convinced. In order to obtain the strongest ability, Dongfang Qingcang loves and kills his father, the world is always dark and lonely, and the little orchid that allows him to have color and successfully domesticate him has to be sacrificed, and he wants to "change his life against the sky" for her.
It can be said that the temperament of "Canglan Recipe" is a combination of Chinese and Western. The "father-in-law" of the Eastern Qingcang has a very Western classical temperament; Little Orchid's A-side sweet girl and B-side are "earth mother" settings, which can contain and purify everything. Their emotional model has the irrigated wood-stone front alliance of "Dream of Red Mansions" and the domestication of "The Little Prince", which is very in line with the Z generation who grew up in "omnivorous" culture.
The protagonist of "Heart Protection" is also boyish. The male and female protagonists are both low-level and "disabled" at the beginning, they just want to become complete and preach the equality of shemales. Many viewers saw Inuyasha's shadow on the "disabled dragon" Tianyao. Yasha, a half-demon inu, wants to become a complete youkai through the Jade of the Four Souls, and falls in love with Kikyo while fighting for the Jade of the Four Souls and wants to become a human, but is sealed.
Tianyao is pure by nature, and after falling in love with Suying (played by Yang Rong) and unfortunately being dismembered, the main task is to find his entire body, while Yan Hui is a low-level social animal who is good at fighting grievances and bent on "curing heart disease". They are all very free-willed people, not involuntarily "love for love's sake" at the beginning, but gradually confirmed their intentions after adventuring together.
Funny Play Narrative: Generation Z loves the sense of gameplay
Finally, it is worth mentioning that in recent years, fairy tale dramas have shown a strong sense of play.
What is Play, simply put, is that the player plays the role of the game and follows certain rules and takes risks to advance the plot. The game narrative in the fairy tale drama is presented clearly and specifically in the love interaction between the male and female protagonists again and again.
The funny game narrative of Canglan has many paragraphs. In the first stage, Dongfang Qingcang had to bind to Little Orchid because of the concentric spell, to listen to all her broken thoughts, to connect her with rootless water, to burn a hundred flower soup for her, to maintain Little Orchid, and to empathize with Little Orchid. In the second stage, the two exchanged bodies and had to cosage each other, and a delicate version of Oriental Qingcang and a cold-faced little orchid appeared. In the third stage, the two took their partners to open the copy of the mortal game, and Dongfang Yuanwai and Little Orchid pretended to be husband and wife, every part was full of laughter, and the real love was seen in the comedy.
The game of "Heart Protection" has more interaction with the network sense, and the first stage of play of the male and female protagonists is to accidentally bump into a kiss in a small village. The second stage entered Yongzhou, which was very unfriendly to demons, and the "demon dragon" Tianyao could only become a servant of Yanhui and "send lucky koi" to fool through. With the launch of Bai Xiaosheng (played by Wang Yilun), the game between the two has come to the third stage of "CP Fan Forced Love".
Moreover, the lines of this drama are very modern and terrier, almost deconstructing and reconstructing popular Internet phrases, "Love Feng", "Green Bokini", "Apricot Blossom Rain", "Business Park, Give Young People a Little Chance" and other highly tasteful lines are everywhere, full of fun.
"To write love, you can't just write love." "Canglan Tips" and "Heart Protection" are funny storylines full of play, focusing on a "drama fake love true", interesting and affectionate. The core of the sense of youth, the skin of the game narrative, it can be said that these two dramas are a good interpretation of the "childish just right" viewing experience.
【Text/Flying Fish】