Help, domestic drama audiences also love to watch and catch the mistress

The juniors in domestic dramas can simply circle the earth when connected.

Open the popular playlist of the video platform, here "Riding the Wind 2023" gathers the two leading actors in "The Temptation to Go Home", as a well-known vicious junior, Li Caihua has debuted for more than 20 years, and it seems that only a classic role of "Ellie" who steals "Pinru" pajamas is left. Over there, "Ordinary Road" seems to be a rookie in the workplace bravely breaking into the legal and political world, but in fact, the plot highlight is a bloody drama of a girlfriend turning into a stepmother.

12 years have passed, and domestic dramas have become Ellie's "Hailan House". In the past few years when female audiences have called for the rejection of "female competition", although the results have been achieved, they cannot shake the pivotal position of the mistress in domestic dramas.

Now the third party in domestic dramas has evolved into a universal bridge to create conflicts. The "standard of Korean dramas" such as car accident terriers and amnesia terriers that have been popular in the past have gradually evolved in works known as realism because they are too bloody and suspended. The third party was retained, and even became the master key to strengthen the conflict and advance the plot.

Almost every popular drama is inseparable from the figure of the mistress. There is the suspense drama "Long Season", Director Feng's new work "Echo", and the workplace drama "Ordinary Road". Curious friends can search for recently broadcast domestic dramas in combination with the keyword "mistress/cheating", and eight out of ten can search for many manuscripts (and 90% of the mistresses are women).

Of course, for the time being, there is no mistress character that can surpass the popularity of "Lin Youyou", by the way, the female group drama "Thirty Only" that gave birth to "Lin Youyou" is one of the biggest labels "independent women" - have not torn the mistress by hand, don't want to become an independent woman recognized by domestic drama screenwriters.

Lin has it

Women's growth is inseparable from catching mistress, and love stories are even more inseparable from catching mistress. One-on-one "pure love stories" seem to have become the general trend of public opinion, but most of them still stay in the vacuum of sweet pet idol dramas. But whenever it involves urban dramas that land a little, the promotion of the emotional line is inseparable from the "help" of a third party. The love drama of domestic dramas is already inseparable from the third party who intervenes in the emotional relationship of others.

Is it the domestic drama audience who loves to watch it, or the screenwriters can't think of other ways to write about the breakdown of intimate relationships except for a third party?

Without "Lin Youyou" as wall-breakers, couples in domestic dramas will never understand the true meaning of marriage crisis.

Of course, although the character type has endured, the image presented has still changed a lot.

In the domestic dramas at the turn of the century, there have been many classic third-party characters, in "Beijinger in New York", Wang Ji played by the Chinese restaurant proprietress A Chun is beautiful, hardworking, intelligent and courageous, and now looks almost a model of "30+ independent women"; In "Coming and Going", the male protagonist Kang Weiye can't stand the arranged marriage, and the amorous third party Lin Zhu makes him find the feeling of "free love".

A Chun (left) Lin Zhu (right)

These film and television works have spent some effort to present the "siege" characteristics of marriage, and extramarital affairs are shrouded in a layer of romance. It is difficult to say whether it was influenced by the Taiwanese romance represented by Qiong Yao, and the "theory of love first" was almost the consensus of film and television works of that era. After all, "all you lost was a leg, but what Ziling lost was her love!" ”

The common denominator of the third parties in early domestic dramas is that they are charming, completely subordinate to men's fantasies about perfect lovers in terms of personality, and present metaphors of cinnabar moles and white moonlight everywhere.

In these works, most of the original wives are boring and angry, while the third parties are always younger, brighter, more interesting, and each has its own charm, such a sharp contrast provides rationality for the cheating drama, and the "positive presentation" of the third party also allows them to avoid falling into such a fierce moral judgment today.

Now, of course, it seems that the rhetoric is full of simple male perspectives: the male is the viewing subject, the mistress is the gaze object, and the boring wife is a simulation of the painful reality.

It seems to be the restoration, purification and expansion of the married male world, coupled with romantic sexual fantasies, and then into the television, a shot of stimulant for male viewers who are in the midst of a midlife crisis.

However, such romantic extramarital affairs stories do not appear on the big screen now.

In 2009, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the Notice on Strengthening the Management of Internet Audiovisual Program Content, which clearly stipulates that episodes related to extramarital affairs and polyamorous relationships should be cut and deleted in a timely manner. Later, it gradually evolved into a "hidden rule" circulating on the Internet: the protagonist should not be too careful, and the mistress cannot have happiness.

But this does not mean that the third party disappears in domestic dramas, and the third parties who "cannot have happiness" have completely become tools to promote the development of the plot after losing their independent personality and charm.

And because of the advent of the streaming media era, the consumer group of dramas has gradually shifted to female users, and the "third party" has thus changed from a provocate of male hormones to a shortcut key for women's cool articles.

The third party who has been most "out of the circle" in the public opinion field in recent years is Ling Ling in "My First Half of Life" and Lin Youyou in "Thirty Only", and the actors Wu Yue and Zhang Yue who played these two roles have endured overwhelming criticism from netizens during the broadcast period, and were almost scolded to close the comment area, which is enough to show the depth of the audience's entry into the play.

On Weibo, there were also netizens who launched a vote of "who hates Ling Ling and Lin Youyou more", with more than 100,000 participants, and Lin Youyou achieved an overwhelming "victory" with 90,000 votes. Perhaps the essential reason why Lin Youyou is so annoying is that the first or even the only purpose for which she was portrayed is - the screenwriter is reluctant to add even a little positive character setting to her.

Lin Youyou is the embodiment of the third party being Facebooked and instrumentalized to the extreme, not only has no personal charm to speak of, but even the means of "seducing men" are very clumsy.

Of course, Ling Ling's way of interfering in the marriage of Chen Junsheng and Luo Zijun does not seem to be new now, basically one trick to eat all over the sky, first to overcome rigidity with softness, and then to advance by retreat. The line is also a condensed essence version of "green tea quotes" that has been popular on the Internet for a while, "I don't blame you, I have to like you." ”

Wu Yue discussed with Jin Xing on "The Venus Show" why Ling Ling is so annoying, and Jin Xing's point of view can probably be summarized as: compared to the bright "mistress" type that women imagine in their imagination, women like Ling Ling, who can be seen everywhere in life and are not aggressive in appearance, will make them more insecure.

Therefore, perhaps in order to make it easier for female audiences to substitute the "original match", easily provoke their anger, and then have several hot search terms that can trigger discussion, now the original match in domestic dramas and the third-party charm index are completely reversed compared with the past, and they don't bother at all on the shaping of third-party characters.

In "Thirty Only", Lin You has no life of her own, no career worth fighting for a lifetime, and no friends, she is like an AI that has been set up with a factory program, and her only goal is to get Xu Fengshan's love at all costs, even whether this man is really worth her such effort, it is difficult to see the clue from the plot.

It is also because of this that no one can have any pity for her like the original empathetic seaweed, and she projects the hatred of almost all female audiences. When watching the drama, everyone will unconsciously substitute the role of Gu Jia, Lin You has been labeled as "green tea", which is extremely unfriendly to women, and Gu Jia slapped Lin Youyou's bridge, which was made into slices and played repeatedly on the short video platform, becoming the highlight moment of the whole drama.

Of course, in this kind of plot that assumes women as the main audience, the "green tea" and "scumbag" are all puppets that are acted by the screenwriter on the switch. It seems that women's repressed pain and desire can only be satisfied by narrative modes such as "playing junior". As long as the junior is torn apart, the conflict between women's self-worth and family roles disappears, and the second line of Ren Du is also opened, and he is suddenly freed from the unequal gender relations in marriage and society and leaps to an independent woman.

Another interesting phenomenon is that in domestic dramas, "junior" has gradually become a term exclusive to women. Not only are male third-party characters less numerous, but they are also generally not subject to the same negative publicity as female third-party characters.

"My First Half of Life" Ling Ling

This may have something to do with the gender ratio of the audience, with women more inclined to substitute themselves into the female roles of the play. Like the female third party in the previous era, the appearance of a male third party may be a secret fantasy satisfaction for women, the "rescuer" who suddenly comes in a failed marriage, and the female third party is an outright "enemy".

Although the viewing subject of the "third party" narrative mode has changed from satisfying male fantasies to satisfying female fantasies compared to the previous era, this cannot be called an improvement.

On the one hand, the subtext of the "female competition" narrative is still to highlight how "sought-after" men are in the love market. Women will fall into endless competition for male attractiveness, while "stabbing the same sex" and objectifying themselves to amplify those traits that can attract men, even if they eventually win, it is also a victory defined by men.

On the other hand, the emergence of a male third party is not only the satisfaction of female fantasies, but also the suppression of female desires to some extent. The women on the screen cannot live as freely as the male characters who embraced the left and right in the past (such as Lu Tao in "Struggle"). The appearance of Zhong Xiaoyang in "Thirty Only" is set after Zhong Xiaoqin's divorce, even so, Chen Yu, who woke up after the divorce, was once whitewashed, and the wavering Zhong Xiaoqin became a "scumbag".

"Thirty Only" Zhong Xiaoqin

What is even more confusing is that in the presentation of domestic dramas, why are women who are more likely to feel crisis in marriage?

The trigger for "American divorce" is mostly the contradiction between women in marriage in realizing personal value and serving the family, more typically "Blue Valentine" and "Marriage Story", the breakdown of the marriage relationship is because women have more goals in life, and the family can not provide any help for them, and love is also consumed in quarrels again and again.

Falling into domestic dramas, the more common plot depicting an unhappy marriage has become "sweet marriage - tired - appearance of a third party - redemption". Even if love has long disappeared and marriage has long been rifted, the most important plot promotion task must still be handed over to a third party to complete.

In such a narrative mode, no matter how powerful, independent and introspective women in marriage are in the play, and no matter how ordinary their partners are, they will devote a large part of their precious lives to suspecting whether their husbands are cheating, as well as catching rapes and fighting mistresses.

Ran Dongdong, a female criminal police officer played by Song Jia in "Echo", obviously has a successful career and kills decisively at work, but she is still a "worried wife" in marriage, and she has to solve the case at the police station, and she has to collect evidence of her husband's cheating when she goes home; Qin Lan in "Brilliant Turn", even if she has jumped to an independent female professional in urban dramas, still has to contribute to the scene of "textbook-style tearing up juniors" to the public opinion field.

Even leaving aside gender issues, where it is difficult to get accurate answers and positions, today's trend of "instrumentalization of the junior" deserves a good look.

Returning to the issue of cheating, the prerequisite for cheating must be that there is a problem with the original marriage relationship, rather than lazily creating a third party who falls from the sky and intervenes in a solid relationship out of thin air.

And even if the "extramarital affair" that is not accepted by moral rules, it is still a kind of emotion, at least a two-way attraction that occurs between two people, even if now "the mistress cannot have happiness", but since you want to write about a third party, you cannot ignore respect for this emotion (respect does not mean approval). Even in "My First Half of Life", the reason for Chen Junsheng and Ling Ling's extramarital affair is explained in detail, Chen Junsheng is attracted to Ling Ling's gentleness, and Ling Ling wants to find a suitable father for her son.

But in "Thirty Only", Lin Youyou's plot of dying and living for Xu Fengshan is simply inexplicable, and the fact that there is an almighty wife as smart and capable as Gu Jia at home is enough to levitate in itself, and there are young female college students outside who love him a few times - when the third party becomes a target character that does not need to be defended and no one cares about in domestic dramas, the coherence of the plot disappears.

"Thirty Only" Gu Jia

At the same time, there is also a deeper thinking about the third party. In "Worm House", Seaweed covets the worry-free life that Song Siming provides her, and her values are turbulent, and Song Siming, as the mayor's secretary, uses her power to gain the upper hand in the relationship. These discussions prove that extramarital affairs themselves also involve many aspects of power structures, social issues, and so on, not just tools for "spilling dog blood".

There is no intention to beautify derailment, but ignoring the social background, complex human nature and feelings to talk about cheating is itself a lazy behavior. "In the Mood for Love" and "Sweet Honey" are classic not because they appropriated the plot of a third party, but because they extended human swings, complex intimacy, and different aspects of love extended from extramarital affairs.

What's more, not all women take the same sex around them as imaginary enemies, and not all marriage relationships break down because of the deliberate seduction of a third party.

At the end of the movie "Marriage Story", Nicole runs over to help her ex-husband Charlie tie her loose shoelaces. Despite the hysterical quarrels that love deteriorates over time and the dislocation of the pace of life, marriage is still not a simple relationship with a single answer, and the emotions between people are not love, hate, right and wrong, but a complex subject.

It would be a pity if these complexities were eventually reduced to inexplicable cheating plots in domestic dramas and moral trials against third parties.