Interface News Reporter | Intern reporter Shen Xinyue
Interface News Editor | Xu Luqing Huang Yue
In the spring of 2023, China's underground idol industry (hereinafter referred to as "earth puppets") once entered the public eye with the northeastern Changchun puppet group BLOSSOM. Underground idols are usually idol groups that are active in smaller shows and have very limited fans and media exposure. After the pandemic, the underground idol industry experienced rapid growth: according to Weibo's "underground idol related disclosure board", from September 2022 to July 2023, the number of puppet groups in China increased from 53 to 99, almost doubling in less than a year.
Puppet performances have gradually spread to the corners of the city: once upon a time, idols could only temporarily set up a rudimentary stage at comic fairs or shopping malls, and perform with anime clubs and cosers, and from the summer of 2023, more and more puppet performances will appear in the music space of major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. In the dimly lit livehouse, idols on stage dance to Japanese anime songs, while fans in the audience repeat classic Japanese support moves, and colorful support sticks transform into light and shadow in high-speed dancing. At the special event after the performance, fans lined up to buy tens of yuan a co-signed ticket and eagerly took photos and chatted with idols.
Compared with the more well-known "nurturing idol" idol groups SNH48 and AKB48 Team SH, China's underground idol industry is still a niche among the niche: as of July 2023, most Chinese puppets have only a few hundred or thousands, or a maximum of 10,000 to 20,000 followers on Weibo. Compared with SNH48, which can earn more than 100 million yuan in a runoff and has a fixed base salary for its members, Chinese puppet groups not only cannot offer stable salaries, but some groups even require applicants to "have certain economic conditions to support rehearsal and stage expenses."
This is a career that is beyond reach for young people with stage dreams, and most idols will leave the puppet circle after a year or two of idol activities due to life pressure, life planning, etc. Without mature fan support clubs, rich secondary creations, and peripheral industries such as film and television music, underground idols are more like the "initial state" of the idol industry than the mature idol industry - only with amateur stages and simple interactive spaces, why do underground idols attract us?
01 Puppets Beyond "Watching": An Intimate Game within the Rules
To an outsider who walks into a puppet show, whether it is the idol on stage or the fans off the stage, it all seems absurd. Most people can get a lot of visual pleasure in the above-ground idol industry represented by Kpop, the stage performance is neat and professional, and the MV is well-made. In contrast, the dance of the puppets is as simple as that of a middle school student club, and the singing performances are sometimes hoarse to the point of breaking the sound, and are hardly ornamental to many. Fans of the audience wearing sweat towels and holding glow sticks in their mouths (the technical term for "wota art", derived from the Japanese word for "otaku" otaku) may even make newcomers feel a little fear, these people are completely immersed in their own world, fully engaged in the high-intensity action of the response, and do not seem to care so much about what is happening on stage.
For an expert fan, the whole puppet game has a clear "gameplay", and the performance is only part of it: you can become interested in an idol for various reasons (appearance, temperament, experience, stage style, etc.), come to the bonus to interact with her offline, and often interact with her Weibo, and idols with good professionalism will give a very "sweet" response - in the words of fans, "sweet" means that the idol can quickly remember your name, start the topic correctly, Get close together when taking photos, etc. Here, "sweet" refers to the happy, heart-racing, intimate interaction, which is the short-term goal of the puppet game, and the longer-term relationship between fans and idols is also built on it - whether it is "love" or "dream and support".
If the rules of this game are still a little obscure at the puppet performance, the "special party" that provides the opportunity for idols and fans to meet and talk after the show has clearly printed the rules on paper. Colorful posters are often posted in front of the idol seats, stating the price of each peripheral piece, the conversation time and the detailed rules of interaction that come with each group photo ticket: "After purchasing the pass, please select any member and wait in order to take a photo with the member, please give the pass to the staff for corner cutting... Group photos can specify actions, but physical contact with members that is too close or that members themselves are not willing to do is prohibited. "At the special event, the staff who are the enforcers of the rules will always stand nearby when fans interact with idols, record the chat time with their mobile phones, and observe whether the interaction is out of line.
Even so, fans are by no means in an "illusion": they know that interacting with idols is a consumer behavior that has no real return, and that idols' sweet responses are part of their job. It doesn't matter what kind of person the idol is in private, fans only care about the performance status of the idol in front of the fans - or in the words of fans, whether the "business ability" and "business status" are good. At the same time, they also know that the feelings and relationships established in the game cannot be transferred into the world of daily life outside the puppet industry, and they consciously avoid private contact with idols in daily life ("private association") or develop further relationships. For example, one fan soberly commented in the face of the post "Can you privately connect with idols": "For most people, even if it can, it is a very cost-effective thing, and it will poke the idol bubble and make it boring." ”
02 The attraction of the rules of the game: Earth puppets are utopians of intimacy
Perhaps the boundary between the game and the real world is the charm of the puppet world: clear rules make people feel safe, and games full of rules, fiction, and difficult to really hurt us often have a unique appeal in the confusion brought about by the freedom of modernity. Anthropologist David Graeber contrasts the difference between play and game, which is free and unclear in its "game," which has clear rules and spontaneously obeys the rules in his Paradox of Rules. Predictable play means removing the fear of uncertainty, as if there is a chance of success by following the rules – in this case, constraints become the security of experiencing freedom, "Games allow us to experience first-hand the situation in which this ambiguity is swept away... Games are a utopia of rules. ”
Looking at contemporary intimacy through Graeber's lens, it seems that people's attachment to "rules" can also be found. Because sex, love, and marriage are no longer structurally bound, people feel uncertain about the criteria by which they should evaluate others and according to what responsibilities and obligations to begin a relationship. The uncertainty of rules makes intimacy unstable and secure, and the line between "freedom" and "aberration" is blurred: how do we count as dating? What does a formal relationship look like? When should I talk about marriage?
Since both parties struggle as independent contract individuals in a contract with vague terms that can end at any time, it seems that the safest way to do with themselves is not to invest too much in emotions and prepare for the breakup at any time, which leads to what the sociologist Iros calls "the end of love": we are defensive everywhere and seem to have lost the ability to fully devote ourselves to love. As a result, the intimate relationship of contemporary people has become like other market relations, people evaluate the merits of a contract by measuring each other's indicators (appearance, character, taste, class), and can freely make choices to enter or exit a relationship.
Correspondingly, the puppet industry seems to have constructed a simulation of contemporary intimacy through the rules of the game: a market contract with abundant options, clear terms, clear standards, and exit without burden. At present, the scale of domestic underground idols, which has reached more than 90 teams and hundreds of members, provides ample choice capacity, and fans who are consumers can not only choose the object of interaction at will, but also make multiple choices without burden; Secondly, performances and bonuses provide a specific time and space for interaction, and tickets for tens of yuan a piece and group photo tickets with dialogue time provide a lower entry threshold for interaction. If the intimacy in reality often involves the entanglement of sex, emotion, and marriage, the relationship between fans and earth puppets under the constraints of the rules of the game is more like an eternal date - the clause that they cannot meet each other in private, cannot have excessive intimate contact and other clauses exclude the option of sex and marriage, and the rest is only each sweet interaction, and the establishment of long-term romantic feelings on it.
Puppet games can only provide intimate experiences and fantasies, not the intimacy of authenticity. On the one hand, you can only enjoy this experience if you truly participate in the game and treat the response as an expression of the idol's sincerity; On the other hand, fans also recognize that this intimacy has a strong performance nature, otherwise they risk believing the game and investing too much.
"Be serious, but not really too serious" makes fans strictly check their emotions at all times to confirm whether they still have a safe "game mentality": In the comment area of puppet-related posts, you can often see fans ridiculing themselves for "gachi again" (from the Japanese "がち", originally meaning "serious") to express the bitterness of taking the relationship with idols too seriously and feeling emotionally attached to idols. A comment under the Weibo contribution of the "underground idol related disclosure board" illustrates the contradictory nature of the relationship between the puppet and the fan: "Always remember that the bonus is also part of the idol performance, and if you really become friends with the little idol, it means that you may not want to be friends with her, so the more you want to be friends with her, the less you want to be friends with her." ”
Epilogue: The dangers and injustices of a "rule-based utopia."
The emotional simulation game created by the puppet world is not fair, the "utopia of rules" is based on unfair social rules, and the way to reduce this uncertainty is precisely by limiting women's subjectivity and making women once again the main emotional labor providers in intimate relationships. As a professional job, idols always feel obliged to learn how to chat and interact to give fans a positive and pleasant experience, "sweet" is the professional quality of idols, even if many times fans deviate and speak unpleasantly, idols do not have the right to respond equally.
In the contract between the puppet and the fan, only the fan is a pure player, free to choose and be protected in it. Although it is often the "collapse" incident caused by idols breaking the rules of the game that attract attention, in the vast majority of cases, idols do not have the initiative to end their relationship with fans. On the contrary, the end of the relationship often comes from the change in the fan's life, such as falling in love, getting married, or leaving the idol's city in reality - or it may just be that the fan's interest disappears and chooses to leave, which is also a legal contract termination clause recognized by both parties from the beginning.
From the beginning to the end of this intimate game, the partial deprivation of the subjectivity of the idol has always been the premise of the charm of the puppet game. But as one retired puppet said in an interview, idol work with little pay and endless emotional labor for many people, "the real happy time is only a few tens of minutes on stage, and the rest of the time is endless torture." ”
Reference materials:
Why Not Love, by Eva Ilos, translated by Weng Shangjun, Lianjing, 2021-12
The Paradox of Rules, by David Graeber, translated by Ni Qianqian, CITIC Publishing Group, 2023-4
"Idol Disqualification", by Suzu Usami, translated by Chihaya, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2022-7
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, The MIT Press, 2004
"Interview with underground idol producer Beichen: There are eternal gods everywhere, so I also made one with my own hands", BIE Others, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/46cKtcCK3_NztjnqOhuIbw,2023-5
"Part-time" underground idol "Less than 50 days, the female doctor decided to leave the group 丨 Talk to another life", in-depth training camp, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/dqfSF_mVdgreKlkCPbjfVA,2023-4