Sohu Entertainment Special Article (Fat Department/Text)
More and more "all-female" families appear in domestic dramas.
From the beginning of the year "If Running Is My Life" revolves around two pairs of mothers and daughters, to the love-hate relationship between the all-female family in "Fireworks Family", and then to "Cherish the Flowers" in which men are matched and all women are trying to survive and engage in careers, with the family as the unit, the female narrative has entered a new model.
As a pillar genre in the field of national dramas, especially on the TV side, family dramas have always been the most popular among traditional audiences, and now, the wind of "women +" is blowing in the field of family dramas, blooming this unique flower.
Is it a new "trick" played by national dramas, or a good medicine to solve the female theme?
It seems that it is okay to have no man in the family?
In fact, the narrative center of family dramas for many years has always been women.
Whether it is "Double-sided Tape" and "The Beautiful Times of Daughter-in-law", which talked about the problem of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the early years, or "Home of the Heart" and "Good Things Come in Pairs", which show the current situation of women in recent years, the main characters are all from a female perspective. This is determined by the portrait composition of the TV audience.
Most of the male characters in family dramas show some kind of entanglement, whether it is the slightly incompetent husband in "The Years of Burning Passion" and "Parents' Love", or the entanglement between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in "Double-sided Tape" and "Home of the Heart", or the big boy who works hard to become a husband, it is difficult to become the key to solving women's problems.
In the recent "all-female family drama", women have actually replaced male roles to a certain extent.
In "Fireworks", Qiao Xianyun, as the head of the whole family, set the rule that the whole family must go home at the Chinese New Year's Eve; and under the family relationship of the three daughters, the old lady also plays the role of the middle turnover, hoping that each daughter can live a good life behind herself, and this strong woman actually becomes the "patriarchy" of the family.
The so-called "all-female" lies in the fact that the men in this drama are more instrumental, relying on the women of the family to work hard to deal with the problem, and the man directly becomes the problem itself.
In "Cherish the Flowers", the whole drama added more family scenes on the basis of the original work, and under the catastrophe of the exile of the men of the whole family, a woman withstood the pressure of survival. Among them, Hua Zhi, as the core, has really opened up financial resources for the whole family, but there is also no lack of shine in other women.
Solving the crisis is inseparable from the old lady, when Hua Zhi has not been able to give a solution to the problem, she stabilized her position with a big family upbringing, this scene is very impressive;
In terms of gender analysis, the two old ladies and Hua Zhi, etc., play a role close to "patriarchy" or "male power" to a certain extent, but from the perspective of the story, all women avoid some possible thunder points.
"This involves a creative concept called 'theatrical tasks', the narrative function that each character has to complete. For example, in family dramas, middle-aged men and young women face different dramatic tasks, for example, the former is the savior, while the latter is often the initiator or inducement of conflicts, which is determined by traditional social relations. Producer Tongtong introduced to Fox Factory Entertainment Observation.
But in fact, in the current society, this division of labor is not fixed, including in some recent family dramas, the father has actually become the mother's foil and background board. In terms of creation, the plot of the side characters is omitted, and the theme of the heroine is more prominent, which is also a way to take advantage of it. ”
In other words, family dramas are just a shell. When the focus of family dramas is changed from the conflict of concepts between generations and how to bridge the contradiction with "love", it is replaced by "women +" focusing on the fate of women and emphasizing the core of self-choice and struggle, this change in the division of labor of characters can be said to be a matter of course.
What's more, this is inseparable from the objective requirements of the market.
New "tricks"
How should the story of women's dramas be filmed, domestic dramas have gone through a long period of model exploration.
The most common is of course a female group drama, where the stories of multiple female friends or colleagues unfold separately, and there will be intersections, and they will support each other to get out of the world of women.
After 2020, there will be group dramas with good reputation such as "Twenty Don't Confuse", "Thirty Only", "Love is Delicious" and so on, but the problem with this model is also obvious, the relationship between different story lines is relatively loose and the tension is not concentrated;
In the past two years, the homogenization of similar stories has become more and more serious, and it has become more and more difficult for female dramas to break the circle. One of the major difficulties lies in how to organize the different threads of the female group portrait story to form a tense and complete story.
Family dramas seem to be an effective answer.
Tongtong pointed out: "The biggest problem with group dramas is whether these women can be combined into a whole to form a main task, and family dramas will become a very suitable set, which can basically cover the group portraits of the three generations of women of the old, middle and young generations, depicting their conceptual differences and different circumstances, and there is a lot of room for women's narratives." ”
At the same time, the emergence of "all-female family dramas" also alludes to the objective requirements of current screenwriters.
The company where screenwriter Dean works is biased towards reality dramas, and there are currently several requirements for their creation: "One is not to have a male gaze, the second is not to have stereotypical prejudices, and the third is to pay attention to the gender balance of important characters, including too many unlikable female characters in a play...... Therefore, the 'all-female' family drama will indeed be more 'harmonious'. ”
These requirements avoid some minefields in the context of the Internet, and at present, how to avoid the lightning points and improve the cool points is already a compulsory course.
In fact, the female theme itself has its own minefield.
"We will be more careful about the positioning of women's dramas, because it is easy to cause some scrutiny, such as whether you have a male gaze, whether you have a disguised Mary Sue, etc., in fact, it is easy to overturn. I had a drama with a similar theme in the summer of the year before last, and I would specifically ask the media watching the film not to promote that we are a female drama, which is quite helpless. Tongtong said.
But women's topics are still the traffic that the industry can't let go. This kind of content is easy to form word-of-mouth communication, such as last year's "Good Things Come in Pairs", "News Queen" and "All the Way to the Sun" in the early stage of broadcasting, etc., even if the market is diversified, women still account for the majority of mainstream audiences.
"There are more female roles, which is not a kind of 'flattery'. But this is a certain kind of creative inertia, in the past, when men had the right to dominate consumption, there would be a large number of male gazes in movies, which also gave birth to the film theory of feminism, and now that the market environment has changed, it is normal to 'please' female audiences. Dean said with a smile.
Controversy is inevitable, and the hottest group topic on Douban of "Fireworks People" is "Is "Fireworks People" suspected of smearing men?"
Family dramas that let men go away inevitably have stiffness when "deleting", and several male characters in "Fireworks People" can be called explosive, which also brought out some controversial episodes, which gradually caused a decline in TV data, and word of mouth did not eat much female dividends in the end.
However, as a narrative "trick" in the current environment, "all-female family drama" does have its value, and it cannot be ruled out that there will be more reproduction of female-themed dramas in the future.
"Female +" is in full swing
In recent years, there is actually no shortage of group portraits of "women helping each other", and it shows homogeneity, because the problems encountered and the situations of the characters are always similar, such as husband cheating, occupational discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace, stereotypical prejudice and obstacles, etc. It's not that similar problems don't exist, but when the screenwriter sits in the studio and copies hot searches, these stories really lack vitality.
The role of "Women+" is actually to lead the story to a more familiar narrative scene in the industry, and to introduce new elements of women's narrative in the creative comfort zone. That's how family dramas are.
The mutual assistance of women presented in "Cherish the Flowers" has become the key word-of-mouth point of the play, hedging the controversy caused by the male protagonist's style in the early stage. The controversy of the play also includes the fact that the original party believes that it has increased the adaptation of family dramas and reduced the coolness brought by the hostess's ability to design. This is obviously a trade-off of the main creative team.
The deletion of men in family dramas is also an attempt in the "female +" force, and it is also an inevitable self-adjustment and trick to continue to do women's dramas in the current public opinion environment.
As pointed out above, the head female drama has its own audience base. Film and television platforms and companies are naturally reluctant to give up the market of women's dramas, and in the film lists released by various companies since last year, we can still see the continued weakness in the female field.
One of the key narrative points of the recently aired "Chenghuan Ji" also focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter, and "Rose Story", which is also adapted from Yishu's novel, is one of the most anticipated women's dramas this year. In addition, there are several sequels to previous popular IPs, such as "Thirty Only 2", "Fearless 2", etc.
In the field of "female +" integration, family dramas include "Six Sisters" and "Little Reunion", which are about sisterhood, all of which have a good lineup; realistic themes also include "180-day restart plan" directed by Li Mo and about his daughter going home to accompany her to give birth; there are also biographical dramas "Girls' School in the Mountains", costume drama "Hidden Niang" and so on are ready to go.
But the question is ready-made, whether the screenwriters can write real female images, not just fabrications based on common emotions, is the key to shaping the characters and promoting the series to break the circle. What the audience is tired of is not only the homogenization of the subject matter, but also the "fake" that frequently disappoints.
How far this wave of women's dramas can go, you might as well wait and see.