"The Queen of News" and the feminist dividend conspiracy

Author | Song Wanxin

Edit | Pan Xinyi

Cover source | Official stills

#NewsQueen ##TVB新剧新闻女王#

TVB turned over?

In 1997, TVB's first forensic workplace drama "Forensic Record" was broadcast. In the play, Nie Baoyan, a female forensic doctor played by Chen Huishan, always wears a black suit, and while showing her ID to the police, she pulls up the cordon and leans over to enter the crime scene for an autopsy.

The workplace image of a woman who works calmly in front of corpses every day has brought a lot of impact to the audience during the millennium, and at the same time, in the era of the initial rise of women's consciousness, "Nie Baoyan" has become the enlightenment of many post-80s and 90s women in the workplace.

In the 90s, TVB produced a large number of professional dramas, in which independent and self-reliant female characters ran through, they fell in love but were not attached, and competed with men on an equal footing in the workplace, breaking many stereotypes of women.

However, TVB's stamina is weak, and more than 20 years later, "Forensic Record" is still one of the top ten TVB dramas in the ratings. TVB's share price has fallen from a high of HK$39 in 2013 to only HK$3. The audience's attention to TVB remained in the nineties along with its peak.

Until the recent "News Queen", the "Sister Man" with neat short hair in the play brought long-lost traffic to TVB, and the actor Charmaine Sheh almost reproduced the grand occasion of the whole people chasing "Nie Baoyan" in the 90s.

The second part of "Forensic Record" was broadcast in early 1999, when TVB's share price quadrupled from HK$8 to HK$24. Comparatively, "News Queen" is a hit, but the secondary market has not reacted much.

In the short term, since the launch of "News Queen" in mid-November, TVB's stock price has fallen instead of rising for a month. Even, half a month after the show was broadcast, TVB announced that it would lay off more than 300 employees, accounting for 8% of the total number of employees at the end of June, and in the first half of the year, TVB has significantly reduced 255 employees.

TVB's crisis in the past ten years is difficult to solve with a hit drama. Since 2018, TVB has lost money for 5 consecutive years, with a loss of more than HK $2.2 billion, and has not turned around as of June 30 this year.

Including "News Queen", cooperation with Youku is one of TVB's self-help methods. In March this year, TVB and Youku further deepened their cooperation, and the two sides signed an agreement showing that TVB will provide Youku with about 700 million yuan worth of co-produced dramas, simultaneous dramas and stock dramas in the next two years.

"News Queen" is the return of director Zhong Shujia after nearly 20 years, and he has been developing in the mainland for many years and lives in Shunyi, Beijing. He said that the whole world is different from the past, and the taste of Hong Kong should also change.

More active cooperation with the mainland is the main strategy of TVB after the new management. In March this year, Xu Tao, chairman and non-executive director of TVB Group, was officially re-appointed as the executive chairman, responsible for leading and supervising the management and development of the company.

On the one hand, TVB began to reach cooperation with Taobao Live, and carried out the first live broadcast on Taobao APP in March this year, and on the other hand, it actively went north to penetrate the mainland market, and successively reached cooperation with Youku and Tencent Video.

TVB once had a golden decade. Stretching the timeline, we can see that between 2002 and 2013, TVB entered a period of rapid development, with revenue increasing from HK$3.16 billion to HK$5.69 billion, but 2013 was its watershed, and since then, revenue has begun to decline, and the stock price has also turned down.

This node coincides with the rise of video websites and the maturity of the mobile Internet, and TVB's loneliness is a typical story trend of "abandoned by the times".

The most direct impact of declining revenue and losses on platforms that produce content is to reduce content costs, which in turn are directly linked to content quality. In an industry where there is no such thing as "low investment, high return", excessive cost control means that it is difficult to obtain market content.

Therefore, in the context of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, TVB, like all video platforms, how to improve the probability of a hit in a few opportunities for trial and error has become the most important topic.

On the one hand, in terms of mode, co-production can help TVB produce content closer to the mainland market, and on the other hand, in terms of content, when the audience's patience is getting less and less, the content is more likely to be accepted by direct and tight rhythm.

"News Queen" was born in this context, and it has some cool drama on it, which inevitably makes people feel that "it is a Hong Kong drama, but it is not so Hong Kong".

Since its release, the Douban score of the show has dropped from 8.2 points to 7.8 points, and more and more calm voices have commented: Compared with the workplace dramas at the peak of TVB, "News Queen" is more like a cool drama that caters to the feminist sentiment of the mainland.

According to Zhong Shujia, "News Queen" has clearly positioned itself as a "female group portrait" drama from the beginning of its creation. "It wants everyone to see how women work hard in the workplace and stand firm in their own way, focusing on the face and choices of women in the new era, and breaking the image of women in the conventional and traditional social concepts. ”

In this regard, the creative team knows very well that the audience of this drama is "independent women", and it is natural to cater to feminist sentiments, which is not wrong, but the degree of control has become very critical in the current sensitive public opinion environment.

Judging from the news revealed by Zhong Shujia, "Big Heroine Cool Drama" is already a key theme for TVB. He mentioned that after this workplace drama in the news industry, the next big heroine professional cool drama "Black Moonlight" cooperated by TVB and Youku has started filming, but this time, Gong Douxiang has become revenge.

This is also in line with the popularity of mainland film and television dramas. A senior screenwriter told 36Kr that the requirements of mainland film and television companies for works are that they must have "composite types", such as workplace + palace fight, workplace + revenge, which is easier to have a market.

The positioning of "Queen of News" has achieved immediate results. According to the broadcast data, the proportion of female viewers of this drama accounts for seventy percent, and the typical user portrait of Youku Hong Kong Theater in the past was dominated by men.

Put on the skin of feminism

Since about 2018, the topic of women's equal rights has continued to rise. "Feminism" has become the mainstream sentiment on the Internet, like a dark line dormant in the surging capital. From variety shows, film and television dramas, to consumer brands, they have made a big fuss about the topic of women's rights and started women's businesses.

"Send Me to Qingyun", released in 2019, was the first mainland theatrical film labeled as a "feminist movie", and in 2020, the first season of the variety show "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", which focused on middle-aged female artists, was broadcast, pushing this business to a small climax.

This year, the issue of women in theatrical films has reached a peak. Films such as "Disappearing Her", "Parrot Killing", "Yoko's Confusion", "Saving the Suspect" and other films all focus on women, or establish the image of a big heroine, or pay attention to the male persecution of women.

At first, these works gained a lot of attention and traffic because they presented perspectives that were rare in the past, and even drove the stock prices of listed companies. In 2020, from the launch of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" to the end, the share price of Mango Supermedia soared by nearly 40%, with a market value of 130 billion yuan. This year's popular movie "Disappearing Her" drove the share price of the producer Alibaba Pictures to a new high in two months.

However, in the process of the high popularity of women's rights topics and their repeated dismantling and reuse, the audience's understanding and sensitivity to the topic have also changed dramatically.

"The Queen of News" is an example of this. Many people compare "The Queen of News" with the mainland drama "Love as the Camp", which is also based on the journalist industry, and think that the plot of the former "not falling in love, only engaging in career" completes the latter.

From the perspective of professional dramas, compared with mainland dramas that always make professional dramas into love dramas, "News Queen" does focus on the plot in the workplace, but whether it is a real, professional and in-depth show of the daily work of the news industry remains to be discussed.

Some viewers pointed out that there are many unprofessional things in the content of the series, such as "the reporter arrived at the scene of the crime before the police and the fire brigade", "the strike threatens the boss dozens of seconds before the broadcast", etc., which are suspected of being "too catchy" and "unreal".

Zhou Lulu, an assistant professor in the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong, said in an interview with Caixin that the plot of the play mainly focuses on intrigue and intrigue, which is quite different from the real Hong Kong news industry.

Another question raised by the plot of catching horses is whether "News Queen" has gone to another extreme of women's rights in order to show the image of a "strong woman"?

A psychology expert pointed out on social platforms that the extreme way of showing the plot of "News Queen" is essentially the same as that of "Camp with Love", "Is it true that devaluing emotions, vicious competition, and objectifying oneself is the best look of 'career criticism'? This is the logic of thinking and behavior that only narcissists and giant babies have: in the process of pursuing a career, only to plunder resources, fame and interests to the maximum, and to regard oneself as a superior 'tool' rather than an independent and dignified 'person'." ”

"News Queen" blindly pursues the oppressive workplace image of the "big heroine", but ignores the authenticity of being a "person", making the role suspended.

Looking further, the struggle of the female characters in the play is not based on self-realization, but in an environment that advocates power and capital, and is pushed by social Darwinism.

An audience member criticized that pretending to be a cool drama in the workplace of the big heroine in the early stage is actually a patriarchal romance film after watching it. "Why do you want to arrange a male mentor for a strong woman to save her halfway?"

The pursuit of feminist gimmicks, but the backlash of public opinion, is a common problem of many film and television variety. In 2020, "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" made a breakthrough in targeting middle-aged female artists over 30 years old, which was supposed to express the state of women not being bound by age and appearance, but the program after the broadcast also caused a series of dissatisfaction.

Interface Culture reported that "Riding the Wind and Waves" is still using the competition system and evaluation system requirements of the young girl group to evaluate the sisters. More importantly, although "Sister Lang" let the audience see many talented sisters, the show itself did not go deep into the core of women's issues, did not correct the prejudice against "middle-aged women", but let it develop.

It is worth noting that after Mango TV tasted the sweetness of feminist traffic on the first season of "Sister Lang", it also tried to develop more "female variety shows", but obviously utilitarian thinking is not always successful. In 2021, "Listen to Sister", which focuses on "women's self-expression", will be launched and will be scored a low score of 4.1 on Douban.

Transmitted to the secondary market, after the share price of Mango Supermedia hit a high of 92 yuan in 2021, it fluctuated all the way to around 27 yuan.

Differentiation of emotions and differentiation of consumption

Whether it is a film and television drama or a variety show, it is a cultural product, and it is essentially an accomplice and accomplice of the consumer society. This means that when we discuss feminist film and television dramas, it is inevitable to consider the impact of a whole set of industrial systems on women's rights issues.

Among the domestic cinema films this year, commercial genre films similar to "Disappearing Her" have sprung up, which are more popular in the market than past comedy films, and the realistic theme of "suspense + women" has become the mainstream in the market.

In this process, the profit-seeking nature of commercial films interacts with the growing feminist sentiment, and based on the context of consumption, "feminism" has become a business.

This has had both positive and negative implications. On the one hand, women are no longer simply seen as a homogeneous whole, and under the feminist trend, due to emotional differentiation, the direction of pleasing women has become more subdivided, which to some extent has promoted all parties in society to pay more attention to the existence of women as independent individuals.

But on the other hand, regardless of variety shows, film and television dramas, or brand advertising, while they disseminate feminist content, they inevitably limit the benign understanding and discussion of the core of feminism because of the nature of their consumption.

It's not that there haven't been truly convincing feminist brands or content in the past. Since 2015, SK-II has launched the "Rewrite Destiny" brand campaign, and in the past nine years, every short commercial video released by SK-II has always resonated with each other and won many elite female consumers.

In 2016, SK-II's "She Finally Went to the Blind Date Corner" commercial attracted hundreds of public accounts to retweet the spectacular screen, and was recognized by the Cannes Glass Lion and Bronze Lion.

After SK-II, many consumer brands have begun to strengthen their awareness of gender equality. For example, some brands consciously use models of different body types and skin colors in their advertisements to counter the criteria for judging women's bodies by being thin as beautiful.

But Zhou Peiqin, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Nanjing University, points out that this feminist-based marketing strategy may also be aimed at maximizing profits rather than gender equality. "Using feminism for marketing, if it is combined with consumerism, it gives you the illusion that you can empower yourself through continuous consumption, and in fact you fall into the trap of capital. ”

A person in charge of advertising a dairy brand told 36Kr that the brand's naming and sponsorship of feminist variety shows, traffic and its conversion are the most important assessment indicators, and as for the brand's support for feminism and attracting feminist groups, it is not the original intention of sponsorship.

From this point of view, the emergence of women's rights in the context of consumption means the beginning of a kind of "agenda setting".

The Paper has pointed out that although the prevalence of consumerism has promoted the promotion of feminist ideas to a certain extent, it is also accelerating the pace of its business operations and harvesting profits, including the appropriation and exploitation of feminist discourse.

These make people gradually realize that the development of women's rights issues is deeply restricted in a speech space where capital occupies a greater right to speak, is not open and free enough, lacks good communication, and advocates more of the law of the jungle. ”

Including "The Queen of News", filming "women in power" is a common perspective to please the feminist community. But we need to be vigilant, this kind of image filters out feminism in other parts of the spectrum, women who do not hold power, women who do not have low spending power, women who are not in the workplace, etc., so that women's real powerlessness and weakness are not belittled, which should be the most important topic of feminism.

Still, back to TVB and its self-help, "News Queen" may have done the best. At the earliest, TVB blew the wind of feminism to the mainland, but now it has to catch up with the trend of women's rights in the mainland, which may be the most helpless footnote of the change of an era.