In today's society, people are gradually aware of a phenomenon - middle-aged actresses frequently use double ponytail hairstyles and exaggerated girly outfits in order to "rejuvenate" on the screen.
This brings a strong sense of visual weirdness to the audience and sparks heated discussions. However, the focus in the public eye is always more likely to focus on women's "freshness", and many people ignore the same problem of middle-aged male stars pretending to be tender.
A closer look can find that in film and television works, there are many actors over the age of 40 who appear in youth campus dramas to play high school students, and appear in costume dramas to play juvenile heroes.
They wear wigs with bangs and hairstyles that they want to hide the wrinkles on their faces. However, this immature appearance has a serious sense of disconnect with the vicissitudes of acting inside, which cannot arouse the audience's substitution of youth, and can only cause a crying and laughing response.
Labels such as "100-year-old school grass" and "older teenagers" quickly emerged and became a fresh laughing stock in the film and television industry. Visually tired viewers began to reflect on the absurdity of this fashion of dressing up.
Youth can only be remembered in memory, and it is difficult to regain it by relying on external transformation. Should middle-aged male stars also face up to the growth of age and accept the inevitability of aging, instead of forcing the reversal of appearance? This has become a question worth considering.
Recently, in the broadcast of several new dramas, embarrassing scenes of some middle-aged male actors playing young roles have been frequently staged, which has become the object of ridicule from the audience. One of the most typical examples is the 52-year-old Hai Day.
In the TV series "Wishing You Ten Thousand Lights", he played a young man in his early 20s, Lin Tiancheng, who had to wear a wig with thick bangs to hide his white sideburns.
However, when the camera zooms in, the audience can still easily see that the wrinkles on his face are already deep. The young man who should be full of vitality suddenly became a "young old man", which made people cry and laugh.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. A group of middle-aged actors such as Ah Chen, Li Chen, and Zhang Luyi also forcibly played the role of teenagers who were seriously inconsistent with their actual age in different dramas one after another, and the results were all embarrassing.
Many of them are no longer the little students they used to be, and the portrayal of their facial features is no longer baby-faced. But for the sake of the script, they still gave up their image, stabbed their scalps, and put on immature wigs, hoping that this thin layer of "camouflage" could hide the traces of time.
However, the audience's eyes are bright, and they can see their "little tricks" to some extent. For a time, remarks such as "mid-life crisis" and "unable to face aging" flooded the Internet.
Should these middle-aged male stars reflect on their choices? Is their insistence on youth out of obsession or helplessness? Is there an unintentional mistake in the industry hidden behind it? This has become a topic of continuous public concern.
When we see a middle-aged actor in his fifties appearing in a topical youth drama playing a high school student, or playing a teenage boy in a costume drama, our first reaction may be surprise or ridicule.
But there are some questions worth thinking about.
From a commercial point of view, youth campus dramas or costume juvenile hero dramas are more likely to attract the attention of young audiences, which may be part of the director's consideration for arranging middle-aged male stars to play teenagers.
From the perspective of the actors personally, they may be lucky when they are facing the bottleneck of their middle-aged careers, hoping to attract attention again by associating the theme of youth. After facing the reality of getting older, they also have a certain resistance in their hearts, and they are unwilling to easily give up their niche position.
In addition, for cost reasons, the director and the investor also hope to avoid frequent changes of actors to present characters of different ages, and insist that one actor complete the entire character creation.
From a psychological point of view, this is related to the "midlife crisis" when people are facing aging. Faced with the double pressure of career and appearance, the middle-aged actor had a certain anxiety and resistance, so he accepted the role of playing a teenager with the last fantasy of youth, hoping to continue his career through this method of reverse growth.
Of course, the reasons behind it are intricate and not exhaustive. However, the underlying motivation of this kind of pretending to be tender is worth paying attention to and thinking about. We should give these middle-aged actors a certain understanding, because they are also products of the general environment of this industry.
The practice of middle-aged male stars pretending to be teenagers will have a negative impact to a certain extent.
The first is the destruction of the audience's visual experience. When a wrinkled middle-aged man appears in a topical youth drama, it is difficult for the audience to achieve the experience of substitution, but they feel strongly disobedient, which undoubtedly damages the pleasure of watching the movie.
Second, it conveys a misplaced set of values that mislead the public into thinking that middle-aged people can pretend to be teenagers as they please, and youth can be replicated by relying on external dressing.
This is contrary to the natural law of the development of life.
Moreover, it takes away from opportunities that could otherwise be used to develop new people. Some roles that could have given hot-blooded young people a stage to display their talents were "preempted" by middle-aged male stars.
Of course, we must also be aware that these middle-aged "little fresh meat" are actually under tremendous mental pressure, because this kind of practice of going against the laws of life may be humorous to others, but it is also a kind of torture for themselves.
To sum up, this kind of pretending to be tender is not only bad for the audience and newcomers, but also a loss for the actors themselves. We need to make a shift in our thinking and production philosophy so that middle-aged male stars can show their talents in more ways than relying solely on the theme of youth.
In the face of the phenomenon of middle-aged male stars pretending to be teenagers, we need to seek positive changes from many aspects.
First of all, the actors themselves must face up to the growth of age, carefully choose roles according to actual conditions, and do not take risks to pretend to be teenagers, which will not only fail to achieve results, but will also bear huge mental pressure.
At the same time, the director should also reconsider the audience's feelings, and can use more actors of the same age as the lead actor to present the different stages of the character's growth. If the plot requires one actor to complete the entire role, you might as well use more small actors with similar looks as stand-ins.
In addition, when the screenwriter creates the script, he can also present the character's juvenile experience through flashbacks and other techniques, without forcing a middle-aged actor to complete all the stages.
Finally, the audience should also look at the artist from a broader perspective, not overly attack a certain inappropriate role choice, and give the artist room to grow.
Only when all aspects can constantly adjust the concept can the problem of dressing up be alleviated. It is important to form a new consensus so that middle-aged actors have more ways to play, rather than just hovering on the repetitive memories of youth.
When an actor enters middle age, and then wants to play a teenager and girl through external dressing and hairstyle, this approach actually does not work.
The essence of youth cannot be replicated through outward makeovers such as wigs, concealers, etc. Even if the immaturity of the face is disguised, the maturity and stability in the eyes and demeanor cannot be changed.
The audience's eyes will not be confused by this thin layer of appearance, which is counterproductive, and will feel a strong sense of disobedience.
A person's youth is as gorgeous as summer flowers but fleeting, which can only be recalled and reminiscent in memory, and cannot be regained through external clothing. If middle-aged people continue to stay in the pursuit of youth, they are not only unfriendly to the audience, but also show that they cannot escape from their own age.
Maturity is also a kind of beauty, even if an actor is old, as long as he is not old at heart, he can still attract the audience through rich emotional expression. If a middle-aged person with an old mind pretends to be a teenager, it will make people laugh even more.
Therefore, middle-aged actors should not pursue the "rejuvenation" of appearance rashly, but should learn to discover the unique beauty of each stage of life. Only by accepting one's age can one perform a work that truly resonates.
This requires the maturity and wisdom of the actor's heart.