Broadcast to the super-point finale, "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" received a hot search of #crazy drama#, and many viewers who chased the drama poured bitter water on social platforms. From Douban's opening score of 7.5 plummeted to the current 6.9, the contrast between "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" is very large.
Putting aside the gossip and actor controversy outside the play, only talking about the plot itself, there are too many regrettable developments. When the broadcast first started, the shaping of highway types and character group portraits was discussed as the highlight of domestic dramas, but as the plot progressed, the highway narrative came to an abrupt end, and the group portraits of the characters often gave way to the emotional line of the male and female protagonists, so that many viewers said, "As soon as the emotional line is reached, I will be persuaded to retreat." ”
I don't have to criticize "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", judging from this year's drama market, this is obviously not just a problem with this drama.
Looking at this year's list of high-reputation dramas, most of them are very weak emotional lines, such as "The Three-Body Problem", "The Long Season", "Hurricane" and so on. Even if you put aside these popular products that break the circle, compared to "Lotus Building", "I Have a Friend", etc., which focus on young audiences, the emotional line will not dominate, whether it is content portrayal or publicity and marketing, the keywords are martial arts, comedy, etc.
For a while, the "love drama in XX skin" seems to be getting farther and farther away from us.
But domestic dramas have two worlds. From the point of view of popularity and commercial return, love scenes are still the mainstay. According to the Yunhe report, among the new domestic dramas in Q3 this year, the number of love themes accounted for 37%, an increase of 12.5% year-on-year, and the proportion of effective playback of feature films reached 56.9%, an increase of 12.6% year-on-year, which is the first among all themes, and the cost performance can be seen.
Source: Yunhe Data Report
As a result, a strange phenomenon of domestic dramas has emerged - a group of audiences began to be dissatisfied with the emotional line dragging mud and water in domestic dramas, and only by hiding or shrinking the emotional line can there be more possibilities to gain a good reputation; Love has become a Chu River Han realm, with heat on one side and word of mouth on the other, and the creator seems to have to be psychologically prepared to choose one of the two.
It seems that this is not the case: love is an eternal topic, the most special and dramatic emotion of human society, and as one of the most enduring categories in the history of domestic dramas, dramas around "love" have strong vitality in different eras. Is it that the current audience really doesn't believe that there is good love, or is good love still on the way to being created?
"Aesthetic fatigue" of love
The reason why "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" can become an excellent sample for observing the public's attitude towards the emotional line of the drama is because it is not a "bad drama" in the first place, but the positioning will seem a little twisted.
If the positioning is an idol drama, then what is established for the audience is a clear expectation that "love dramas account for the majority", and most of the users who come to watch the drama also have a clear demand for this, even if the "sugar moment" is designed relatively deliberately, it can also gain the word-of-mouth protection of "I am a local dog and I love to watch".
But if the positioning is martial arts, road adventures, group portraits, etc., then when the audience finds that these labels need to make way for long and deliberate "sugar moments" after watching the drama, it will naturally produce a sense of deception that does not meet expectations.
The UP master of station B innovatively put forward the concept of "semi-puppet drama", which is used to describe the state of "Yinian Guan Mountain" "wanting to be a puppet and not wanting to be a puppet", which is not exquisite.
The essence of "wanting to be a couple and not wanting to be a couple" is actually to hope that it will have the popularity advantage brought by idol dramas, and also hope to make a texture other than idol dramas to ensure word-of-mouth at the same time.
Objectively speaking, the efforts made by "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" in these two directions have still received some results. In the part of "I don't want to be even", the martial arts scenes are clean and neat, and they no longer use slow motion to solve the problem of bad fighting like the previous domestic martial arts dramas. The portrayal of group portrait characters is not only like traditional idol dramas, but also the setting and character arc of Yang Ying, Li Tongguang and other characters are relatively rare heterochromatic in domestic dramas.
In the part of "Imaginary Couple", both the male and female protagonists have used actors who have quite a lot of traffic. Although the role of Ning Yuanzhou is not satisfactory in terms of reputation, it does bring a lot of popularity. According to Aiman's data, since the launch of "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" on November 28, Ning Yuanzhou has been in the top two in the daily popularity ranking of characters in the drama, of which 11 days ranked first and 8 days ranked second.
Aiman data: On December 17, the popularity of the characters in the drama was ranked
It's a pity that the combination of "wanting to be a couple" and "not wanting to be a couple" still has a gap that has not been kneaded well after all. The setting of the two protagonists is "double strong", not only strong martial arts, but also the common experience of being in charge of intelligence agencies for many years, so that they are also independent, sober and mature in character. But when it comes to emotional dramas, there is always the phenomenon of "forcibly reducing intelligence", completely putting aside the original personality characteristics of the two characters, and repeatedly entangled in eating vinegar for some trivial things or saying something heavy and light.
This kind of perfect conformity with the stereotypical description of the saying "people become fools when they encounter love" just happened to meet this year's netizens' ardent crusade against the "love brain", and it was a bit of a feeling of "hitting the muzzle".
However, when it came to the supporting roles, the emotional drama was instantly much refreshed. For example, the greedy joy between Yu Thirteen and the first moon, the unspeakable between Yang Ying and Yuan Lu, and Li Tongguang's longing for Ren Xin for many years are all very recognizable or in line with the emotional status quo of contemporary people.
In the thirteenth and early moon
Such a trend is not uncommon in domestic dramas this year. If you must give this year's domestic drama market a name of "XX first year", "the first year of supporting roles on the table" should be the best.
Poison Eyes has analyzed in a previous article ("Supporting Roles on the Table, the Protagonist's Eyes Are Red?") that since the beginning of this year, the phenomenon of "supporting roles on the table" has become more and more common, and Yan Press, CP and group portraits have become three sets of fixed templates. Among them, the supporting roles that are served through CP often have a certain sense of taboo, and there will be a certain moral hazard if they are directly appropriated into the emotional line of the protagonist, such as the "pseudo-orthopedic" CP of Meng Yanchen and Xu Qin in "Fireworks in My World". In "Yi Nian Guan Mountain", the same is true of the emotional line between Li Tongguang and Ren Xin, which is based on the "master-apprentice relationship".
Li Tongguang confessed to Ren Xin
On the other hand, the supporting characters in traditional idol dramas are still taking the old road of "matching literature". The second male and second female fall in love, and the third male and female third fall in love, which is a very common phenomenon in the series, but the reason why "matching literature" has become a hot word this year is because in "Love as the Camp", there are five reporters and five bosses together. The number is not the original sin, the original sin is that most of the time of the series is spent on the emotional line of the male and female protagonists, and there is little care for the supporting characters, but they are forcibly arranged in pairs near the end, which makes it difficult for the audience to accept.
Therefore, under the "aesthetic fatigue" of some audiences for love scenes, both the protagonist and the supporting roles are facing the dilemma that the love template is too old. The relatively innovative love template is still in the stage of testing the water on the supporting role, and it is unknown whether it can be used on the protagonist to become the next work out of the circle.
It's not that you don't want love, you just don't want "bad love"
The audience is "aesthetically tired" of love, is there something wrong with love itself?
This is of course one of the important external reasons, according to a 2021 survey by Chinese University cited by Netease Digital Reading, more than forty percent of college students have no intention of falling in love.
From "love brain" to "sex brain", the active discussion of various labels in the Internet field is also reshaping the audience's view of love. It is normal for film and television content to come with a two-to-three-year project cycle, and it is normal to be in a backward state on the timeline.
The discussion of "love brain" has been around for a long time, especially this year. At the end of last year, he was still using "Wang Baochuan digging wild vegetables" ten years ago as a classic negative teaching material, and this year he can find words to chew on in the hit drama "News Queen": "Find a man to marry" can be used to scold people.
And "Sexual Brain" is a more fashionable discussion, in October this year, CCTV even used a cartoon to send #Can some sweet pet dramas not be too sexually Brain# to the hot search.
To a large extent, there is interaction between the conceptual shaping of domestic dramas and the audience. Shen Yifei, a teacher at the School of Sociology of Fudan University, once mentioned in a video discussing "Sexual Brain", "I think it may be that we are influenced by the current film and television dramas, in which you will find that you will fall in love with the teacher when you go to school, you will fall in love with the boss when you go to work, you will fall in love with the instructor when you are in military training, and you will fall in love with the doctor when you see a doctor......
Further, "In these dramas, the so-called teacher-student relationship, labor-employment relationship, doctor-patient relationship, etc., any relationship must be given way to the relationship of a couple, and the first consideration is whether you can become a couple, and the person who cannot be a couple is no longer important, and it does not appear in your life." ”
So when watching the drama, whenever a male character and a female character have a certain interaction, there is always a barrage of "I feel like you two have something" floats by. This is not only a manifestation of "sexual brain", but also the result of substituting the thinking of domestic drama screenwriters after the increase in the number of dramas - even if nothing happens to such two people in real life, but in domestic dramas, the screenwriter will most likely really make the two "have something".
Stills from "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" (source: Douban)
This is also why, drama critic Mao Jian once commented that in domestic dramas, love and reality have long parted ways. All people can see is the old and homogeneous love template, "It's always the same male protagonist riding the same horse and meeting the same her on the same street...... Then in the same bed, the same person got drunk and said the same line: I like you, from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to today, from the bed banquet to the wall, the only criterion for judging the love of men and women is whether they are drunk and say that they love you, love you, love you, and die to death. ”
But even if the love template is so old, the moment of complete "de-love" is far from coming for this market.
A more vivid example is that after being repeatedly criticized for "falling in love in the clothes of the workplace" for many years, there have also been workplace dramas like "Ordinary Glory" and "Ideal City" that do not fall in love, and the Douban score can be pulled to a decent score of 7.5, but the popularity has gone down again, and in Yunhe's annual list, these two dramas have not entered the top 20.
"Ordinary Glory" and "Ideal City" (Source: Douban)
The disappointment and fear of real love need to be compensated for on virtual products to a certain extent, so the audience's accusation of the domestic drama "love brain" and "sex brain" is not that they are no longer interested in love scenes, but that they need more love scenes that go out of the routine to become interested.
How to write a good love scene?
In the past, the relatively relaxed market environment gave romantic dramas a lower threshold for creation, and also gave romantic drama creators room to maintain path dependence. But time has passed, and if you don't write love scenes well, you can't keep up with the pace of the market.
Once, the concept of "sweet pet drama" became the outlet of the film and television market. According to Yien data, from 2018 to 2020, the number of sweet pet dramas continued to increase, reaching a peak of 95 in 2020.
2020 "The Rumored Chen Qianqian" (Source: Douban)
Sweet pet dramas have a relatively low threshold for both creation and production.
In terms of plot, historical dramas need to constantly study historical facts, workplace dramas need a lot of visits and investigations, and realistic dramas even need philosophical speculation on social changes, but sweet pet dramas only need to think about what sweet scenes and settings there are.
In terms of production, because appearance accounts for a large part of the drama viewing experience, the actors' acting skills are discounted, and there are some flaws in costumes, photography, etc., which were also regarded as harmless at the time.
But starting from 2021, with the platform reducing costs and increasing efficiency, a large number of waist sweet pet drama projects have been canceled, and the application scenarios of love scenes can only be more concentrated in head dramas. Under such a market situation, it is difficult for love scenes to shrink into a small corner of the focus to avoid public judgment, and perfunctory and rough creations will be even more difficult to pass.
2021 "The Royal Gift" (Source: Douban)
Therefore, this requires creators not to adopt an attitude of avoidance and resistance and shrink into other safe zones at a time when writing love scenes is more stressful, but to try to write a better love that is more in line with the current audience's concept.
In the same survey mentioned above, the main reason why young people want to fall in love is "they want to find a partner to help each other and make progress together", which is significantly higher than other reasons.
Source: NetEase Digital Reading
This is very much in line with the expression core of the few remaining high-reputation romantic dramas this year, that is, to harvest personal growth in the process of falling in love.
This theme has been presented in several relatively high-scoring "romantic dramas" this year. In "Love Only", Song Sanchuan, an athlete of "Feather Transfer Network", gained the self-confidence that he lacked since childhood, and Liang Youan, who transformed from the president's special assistant to the club, rediscovered his personal pursuit; in "Going to a Windy Place", Xie Zhiyao and Xu Hongdou experienced although their careers were not rising step by step, but mutual redemption and self-reconciliation were also another aspect of "growth"; In "Apocalypse", two masters of "pretending" learned to sincerely face each other's vulnerability and exhaustion for the first time in love.
Stills from "Love Only" and "Going to a Windy Place" (Source: Douban)
did not delay real life because of love, but achieved the effect of "common progress", which may not be enough sugar in the yardstick of sweet pet dramas in the past, but in today's audience aesthetics, it may be the correct answer.
And the coat wrapped in the emotional core, in addition to a variety of professions, there is more room for imagination. For example, "Ancient Acacia", which plays tricks in the structure of the play, is also a model of fighting big with small things.
This type of innovation may still seem a little unavoidable, but think outside the box, such as "I Want to See You", "The Beginning" and even "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" in previous years, adding some high-concept settings to the description of love. Although this sub-genre is still not mainstream in the drama market, the different permutations and combinations of time and space can bring different chemical reactions to love, and this is precisely a love template that cannot be experienced in real life.
"I Want to See You", "The Beginning", "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star"
(Source: Douban)
Even in the part of "taboo", there must be more attempts to step out of the boundary, which is more conducive to the diversification of love samples in domestic dramas in the future, and even brings more positive interaction to the shaping of social love concepts. For example, "I Know I Love You", which has not yet been broadcast, is adapted from the Korean drama "Spring Night", in the original setting, the male and female protagonists are the two cheating parties, and the male protagonist is the "little three". Compared with some domestic dramas that are still insisting on "double clean", this can be described as "far ahead of the mental state".
Of course, there is no strict template for a really good play. As Mao Jian said, "Romance can't have a format." Romance must be created, not caused. "But before romance is created, please believe that it has the ability to unify popularity and word of mouth, and it is worthy of domestic drama creators to get rid of the path dependence of the past and climb up from the bottom of the chain of contempt.