"Humble City" fictionalizes the most chaotic city in Southeast Asian countries - "Kanguo". In this empty place, the police and bandits have a nest, and the collusion between officials and businessmen has given the gangster ecology of gang fighting have living space. In the hyper-real space, creators can boldly play to touch some taboo topics in real society, such as drugs, violence, pornography, etc., to satisfy the audience's voyeurism in the unknown world.
"Humble City" not only fictionalizes a city, but also constructs several important scenes with characteristics that real space does not have. For example, Sipa Prison on an isolated island on the sea and exclusive "holiday villas" in prisons. The prison experience of the isolated island connects the audience, and the audience and the characters in the play experience a kind of immersive "isolation", and the "vacation villa" is like a paradise that stimulates the audience's desire for freedom.
The creation of the "hyper-real" world in the online "cool drama" not only reproduces the reality of life, but also creates the space of human imagination. The audience follows the characters in the play to travel through time and space that are both real and illusory, satisfying the audience's desire for reality, and at the same time, they can escape reality and enter the fantasy imagination to indulge themselves.
The superreality in Baudrillard's concept is not to abandon the real, but to transcend the super-real, such as the substitution of the detail truth with the overall reality. In the reality theme network "cool drama", it is reflected in the real spatial details and has the characteristics of intercepting the original ecological real space, but on the whole, it is indeed a carnivalized virtual social space that satisfies the audience's emotional imagination.
For example, in the realistic "cool drama" "I Am Yu Huanshui", whether it is Yu Huanshui's work location, home environment, elevator room entering and exiting the house, or living spaces such as supermarkets, streets, schools, these surrounding scenes, and the audience's living environment is no different, making the audience feel real. From the beginning, Yu Huanshui was often reprimanded by leaders, ridiculed and ridiculed by apprentices, watched by colleagues as jokes, called bosses in the office, and exposed short apprentices, and the counterattack at work occurred in Yu Huanshui's workspace-Hongqiang Cable Company. Yu Huanshui went from not being respected by his wife's brother and being humiliated in public to carrying a car to his wife's home to educate his wife's younger brother, a process that took place in the family space of his wife's Gan Hong's mother's house; In the renovated neighbor's house, a series of stories in the face of unreasonable neighbors, from promises to "fighting violence with violence", from being despised by the boss in the smoke hotel to smashing the store after learning that he bought fake wine, all happened in Yu Huanshui's living space.
The "Internet" cool drama produces details in a way that reproduces real space, which resonates with the audience for the survival dilemma of the characters. However, Yu Huanshui's reversal of fate comes from one chance after another and misunderstanding, so the story as a whole does not have authenticity, that is, there are real details to build a false social living space, that is, a simulated space. The fake story in the real space satisfies the audience's spiritual triumph and catharsis of resentment about the real dilemma.
In "Golden Eyes", from the advertising on the pillar to the cracks on the door number, a very real "work of art" - Pan Homestead is "reproduced". In this imitation space, the myth of the protagonist Zhuang Rui "getting rich overnight in Panjiayuan" is interpreted. Zhuang Rui's fortune story began with picking up the ugly Sanhe Liu Gourd, and then "Huiyan" identified the high-imitation Yuan Qinghua and the low-key purple clay pot all in the scene of the "Panjiayuan Antique Market".
Secondly, the "reproduction" of the ancient tomb in the play, the story of the protagonist discovering hidden mechanisms, getting out of danger, and excavating the "golden pupil" in the ancient tomb, gives rationality to the characters and plots operating in the scene space. The protagonist Zhuang Rui's "overnight riches" in Panjiayuan, and the "heroic rescue beauty" in the ancient tomb show the audience that wealth and status can be idealized in Panjiayuan, which to a certain extent alleviates the audience's realistic anxiety and provides the audience with comfort.
Online "cool dramas" with realistic themes express real life, so they can directly use the real space at the moment. The "unrealistic" stories that occur in the "real" space constructed in the play allow the frustration caused by the setbacks or other injuries encountered by the public in real life to be freely vented in the "real world" on the screen for emotional compensation.
The plot needs to revolve around the characters, and the characters drive the plot. This chapter divides the character shaping in online "cool dramas" into three aspects: round positive characters, flat negative characters, and diversified character group portraits. This explores how the "cool drama" such as the dreamy super-powered protagonist, the little character who counterattackes, the anti-routine character image, and the villain image under binary opposition cater to the aesthetic needs of contemporary audiences and meet the consumption psychology of the public.
The main characters are the backbone of the story, the most vivid existence in the story world, and at the same time the object of the audience's desire. In order to let the audience have a sense of substitution and migrate the "cool feeling" to the audience as much as possible, the online "cool drama" adopts the "round character" shaping method proposed by Foster in the shaping of the main characters.
Round characters have obvious multi-faceted, psychological activities are also more complex, so they are more similar to people in real life, and the reality of the characters is easy to make the audience empathize and empathize with the drama mentality. Secondly, the relatively three-dimensional and complex "round characters" are also conducive to creating reversals and surprises, increasing the layering of the story.
In the shaping mode of "round" characters, the positive characters in the online "cool drama" have the characteristics of "super power", "anti-routine" and "dick" counterattack.
In order to punish evil and promote good, fight enemies, and realize dreams, the creators will set the protagonist a certain ability different from ordinary people, can do things that ordinary people cannot do, and realize those impossible dreams in real life for the audience. For example, the "golden pupil" owned by the male protagonist Zhuang Rui in "Golden Pupil", Wang Lu, who has been gifted since childhood in "Once Upon a Spirit Sword Mountain", and Fan Xian who has modern thinking in "Qing Yu Nian". Such "superpower" protagonist characters allow the audience to stitch together their personal desires and collective imagination in the process of watching, constructing a fantasy subject position, realizing the control of career, wealth, and feelings that many audiences cannot achieve in real life, and satisfying the "daydreams" of many people. Online "cool drama" is to process the desires, dreams and feelings of the audience into the characters of the "cool drama", and sell the audience's desires and dreams.
"Cool dramas" usually set up a single protagonist, allowing the audience to devote themselves to him and cheer for the victory of the righteous side he represents. This logic is also manifested in the appearance of the protagonist, the so-called "appearance is justice". The protagonists who are implemented in the play are justice, often have a high-value and vigorous protagonist aura. Such as Ning Que, who is played by Chen Feiyu in "Will Night", with exquisite facial features and bright teeth.
The cold and arrogant played by Yi Yangqianxi in "Chang'an Twelve Hours", Li Bi who is a young and old, Wang Lu, who is sometimes handsome and cute and sometimes domineering and affectionate, played by Xu Kai in "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain", and Jiang Yi, who is kind, just, affectionate and single-minded, and Jiang Yi, who is sometimes delicate and cute, and sometimes cold and handsome, played by Zhang Xincheng in "Radiance" and "The Day It Became You". With Chen Feiyu, Yi Yangqianxi, Xu Kai, Zhang Xincheng represented by "small fresh meat" as a star symbol, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the beautiful male consumption, to a large extent to satisfy the audience's visual pleasure. Secondly, when watching the "cool drama", the audience imagines themselves as the protagonist or other characters, and substitutes them into the illusory scenes created by the "male color" to achieve the satisfaction of their own desires.
The "male color" of the protagonist of "cool drama" is mostly stars, and in the interaction between the consumer market and commercial capital, stars begin to have specific symbolic symbolic meanings. That is, the consumption of celebrities, the consumption is the desire, ideal, value and other meanings contained in their identity.
As Baudrillard puts it in The Consumer Society, in this golden age surrounded by things, the essence of man combined with human rights and happiness formed a "fossil of the principle of formal reason," which is to "seek his own happiness without hesitation" and "favor those things that satisfy him."
The "things" here are precisely the spiritual needs projected on those "superpower" protagonists. If the protagonist of "superpower" is the audience's idealized self, then ordinary, imperfect little people and even "dicks" are real selves. Online "cool drama" always focuses on individuals who are difficult to correspond to the "success science" in real society, and it is a kind of spiritual victory French projection of individuals in the environment of rapid expansion and solidification of class differences.
Through the shaping of small characters or low-level characters, online "cool drama" combines the authenticity of real characters with the idealization of art, so that the audience can empathize and empathize, and realize the identification of the characters. For example, Yu Huanshui, the "middle-aged dick" in "I Am Yu Huanshui", he loves to lie, greedy for small profits, cowardly and cowardly, and getting by is his rule of survival.
But as the plot develops, Yu Huanshui no longer swallows his anger, and even becomes brave and resourceful, and those who bully him and look down on him are defeated by him, and he also gains long-lost respect and social status. Yu Huanshui's transformation from cowardice to bravery, from incompetence to superpower, aroused the empathy and resonance of the audience, because from Yu Huanshui, the audience seemed to see themselves.
Identity is a certain psychological projection of the subject to the object of desire, and mirror identity allows people to immerse themselves in the illusion of "real" and self-appreciation. In the process of watching online "cool dramas", the audience will identify with the character image similar to the self in front of the screen, use the screen as a mirror, and construct a virtual self within the screen.
In this case, the audience can be the hero who counterattacked from the low-status son-in-law in "Son-in-law" to save the country, the male protagonist who advanced from grassroots to national entrepreneur in "Radiance", or the life winner who evolved from a bland pawnshop clerk to a god in the antique circle in "Golden Eyes".
Consumer behavior is the identification of one's own identity and self-meaning. The counterattack of the characters in the online "cool drama" allows the audience to find spiritual sustenance, find an ideal self-image and obtain their own satisfaction, so as to make up for the lack of the real self.
An important reason why online "cool dramas" can stand out in the current market environment and attract consumers' "eyeballs" is that it is different from the previous anti-routine character design. The positiveness of the protagonist, in addition to the traditional goodness and justice, is no longer the traditional blind patience and "silly white sweetness". A dialogue in the protagonist of "Yanxi Raiders": "I, Wei Yingluo, am naturally hot-tempered, not easy to mess with, if anyone is crooked, I have a way to deal with him." ”
Let the vivid image of the "black lotus" emerge; The core characters in "Qing Yu Nian", Fan Xian, and Ning Yi in "Sister-in-law" both have selfish and vengeful character personalities, not blindly selfless and tolerant. They dare to think and do, dare to do, use the opponent's design and frame-up, and are also good at using the weakness of human nature to counter the other party, putting them in a moral or life death. Such a "revenge must be rewarded" character made the audience's eyes shine.
The anti-routine character of "cool drama" is also reflected in the stereotypical label. The heroine Wang Wu in "Once Upon a Time There Was a Spirit Sword Mountain" is beautiful in appearance but unruly in temperament. As the fifth elder of the Spirit Sword Sect, she was neither kind nor friendly, nor did she have the image of a famous elder; The role setting of the female second Leng Yue in "Imperial Gift" breaks the image of the vicious female partner in previous film and television dramas, and as a powerful and independent heroine, she appears next to the protagonist as a protector.
Using clear logic and breaking away from traditional cognition to create such a unconventional and non-stereotypical character is more in line with the aesthetic needs of the current audience. The popularity of the anti-routine character proves that the audience likes and identifies with this kind of character with a sense of justice, personality and rebellious spirit, and also reflects the audience's demand for this kind of persona, behavior pattern and values.