In 2022, some of the program content of this year's CCTV Spring Festival Gala will be leaked on the Internet, which will set off heated discussions on Google, Zhihu and Weibo. The "truth" is that when the relevant departments of the Spring Festival Gala were preparing for the New Year's Gala, they arranged for some actors and staff to audition for the program.
A few audition videos recorded by actors were accidentally leaked in the rehearsal group.
When these "breaking news" revelations began to circulate on social networks, netizens who were looking forward to chasing the New Year's flavor were stunned. They found that whether it was a sketch, a cross talk, or even a song and dance, the creativity and content of this year's Spring Festival Gala were all "cookie-cutter" routines.
Especially the "new" cross talk of Yue Yunpeng and Sun Yue, which was first disclosed by those Internet big Vs, made netizens in the comment area laugh directly.
The "early exposure" of these materials has indeed destroyed the "freshness" that the Spring Festival Gala should have to some extent. However, the bigger problem is that this year's Spring Festival Gala, which is supposed to be an auspicious year of the dragon, has such "old" and "sizePolicy" creative ideas.
This time, the "outflow" of the program has made everyone see the dilemma and limitations of the current Spring Festival Gala creation, and it urgently needs to cause fundamental reflection at the decision-making level.
Only in this way can we truly rekindle the spark of hope for the 2023 Spring Festival, a much-anticipated literary and artistic feast.
This time, the Spring Festival Gala program was "released" in advance, which is enough to prove that the decision-making level's ideas in creation are still stagnant. They use a large number of Internet buzzwords in the "repeater" to make up for the lack of innovation in the content of the Spring Festival Gala.
Take the sketch as an example, as many as three entries are linked to Internet hot words, from "My Hajimi" to "Princess Please Get in the Car", and then to "Dinosaurs Against Wolves". One of the most ironic is that an actor who is set as an "otaku" character will actually perform a pet husky and chant its name in a sketch.
This rigid way of using it fully exposes the serious ideological inertia of the creative team, and they don't even realize that netizens have long been tired of seeing these life-like buzzwords, and then they are mechanically repeated on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, which will only backfire.
Even the post-090s generation began to recall the works of Zhao Benshan and Chen Peisi, which has to be said to be a shame for the entire creative industry. What we need is not simple copy and paste, but original content full of warmth and feelings.
This truth must be understood by the decision-makers of the Spring Festival Gala.
Language programs, especially comedy works presented in the form of sketches and cross talk, were originally the highlight and essence of the Spring Festival Gala. Since a long time ago, this type of show has taken on the responsibility of entertaining the audience, and it has indeed fulfilled it extremely well.
Whether it is Chen Peisi or Zhao Benshan, their popular jokes are still familiar to this day.
However, in the past 10 years, there has been an obvious "fission" in the language programs of the Spring Festival Gala. The quality of the show plummeted to outrageous proportions. This year, Yue Yunpeng and Sun Yue were still invited to perform cross talk, which can't help but remind people of their "worrying" self-defeating performance in the last Spring Festival Gala.
If it was a mistake, then this year I'm afraid I'm just touching myself.
The creative team's choice of repeatedly jumping sideways and retreating if not advancing fully exposes the fact that the language programs of the Spring Festival Gala are on the verge of complete collapse. It has lost its most basic enlightenment and interest, and it is also accelerating the audience's centrifugation.
If it can't be transformed in time, I'm afraid its end is not far away.
If language programs are entering a trough, then the Spring Festival Gala programs in the small category are already in a slump. Huaguo, which originally belonged to comedy and drama, has completely changed its flavor in the Spring Festival Gala in recent years.
Last year's "First Sight Photo Studio" was an example of a rout that made all viewers who watched the video shudder and stunned. It's simply a work that only appears in a parallel world, and the characters in it are incoherent, and the lines are purely wild horses.
The most desperate thing is that the director of this year's Spring Festival Gala is still this Yu Lei. It's like stabbing the devastated body of the Spring Festival Gala again.
If you blindly try to use so-called "whimsy" to attract the audience's attention, the result is often counterproductive. What we need is not to play tricks, but to acupuncture the evils; Not to create a gimmick, but to add temperature.
Those popular sketches in the past have entered history under the guidance of such creative guidelines.
In stark contrast to the decadence of today's Spring Festival Gala, that belongs to the glorious period of the Spring Festival Gala in the 90s of the 20th century. In those years, whether it was Zhao Lirong, Guo Da, or Zhao Benshan, they dedicated all their energy and creative passion to the stage of the Spring Festival Gala.
Their sketches, songs, and cross talk are all so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Whether it's the playfulness of the language or the design of the plot, it's just right. Take Zhao Benshan's "Selling Abduction" as an example, a seemingly simple old man, but he hides a very deep city.
This method of portraying dramatic characters is still admirable today.
For another example, the classics that Guo Da and Zhao Lirong collaborated on, whether it was "palace jade liquor" or "I'm actually very busy", became the joint code that people in that era especially liked to say.
This level of brand creation must be beyond the reach of the current Spring Festival Gala program producers.
When we are reminiscing about the glory of the Spring Festival Gala, what we should not miss is Zhao Benshan's wise words - the most important thing in the Spring Festival Gala program is to make the audience happy, and it cannot be preached.
This sentence is like a hammer, hitting the fatal flaw of the current Spring Festival Gala production.
Behind the more and more rigid routines and more and more empty happy endings, these phenomena are all illustrating a fact: the creators have lost the original Positivity, and they even mistakenly believe that the quality of the Spring Festival Gala can be improved by preaching and forcibly instilling the so-called "positive energy".
Mr. Zhao's aphorism just punctures this childish illusion. Now the decision-makers urgently need to introspect, put down their burdens, and re-find the original intention and passion of making the Spring Festival Gala.
Only by listening to the people's opinions and conforming to the people's will can the quality and ratings of the program be able to climb again.
We look forward to the Spring Festival Gala being reborn and waiting for that moment to come.
Although the road ahead is bleak, we still have the last hope for the Spring Festival Gala. Because in fact, the answer to the problem is there-as long as the main creators are aware of the problem, get rid of the routine, and re-explore the joy of creation, then the improvement of the overall level of the Spring Festival Gala is just around the corner.
What's more, this year is a rare Year of the Dragon. On this day, people are in a good mood, hoping that the festive atmosphere of the new year will get rid of all sorrows.
This beautiful vision will surely become a reality. Because the essential power of literary and artistic creation comes from the people and serves the people. The Spring Festival Gala has always been an important part of the Chinese Spring Festival, and its mission is to bring joy to the Chinese people, not negative.
This time the chickens and dogs jumped, it may be an opportunity for the decision-makers of the Spring Festival Gala to wake up and start again.