Nine years ago, Shan Junhao and Ye Tianyu's "The Prince Becomes a Frog" became popular all over the country, and the idol drama at that time paid attention to a "civilian girl who saves a rich son with love".
Nine years later, "The Queen of Tears" began to stage the commoner prince Warm Princess. The down-and-out party has become the heroine, but it seems that the powerful party has also become the heroine.
Sexual transformation, this kind of "coolness" setting that often appears in film and television dramas, is often regarded as an expression of equality.
But in fact, writing about a man who does laundry and cooks complains about his misery is more of a sarcasm than "empathy". Because there is no screenwriter in the world who can make up a perfect sex world.
Therefore, most of the so-called men under sexual conversion have only tasted the most shallow part of the situation of women, just like the white son-in-law of "The Queen of Tears". And the deeper structural suffering can never be reversed.
Nor can it be imagined by them.
01
chased "Queen of Tears" for Kim so-hyun and Kim Ji-won's face, and I feel quite emotional when I chase it now. The screenwriter who has written fantasy love themes such as "Star You" and "Legend of the Blue Sea" has experienced what has produced such a cold plot. It's better to start with the most controversial setting in the play - sex transfer. The fate of the male and female protagonists was born in a chic "acquaintance in a small time" - the male protagonist Baek Hyun-woo played by Kim so-hyun is a part-time worker of the Queen's Group, and Hong Hae-in also happens to be an undercover intern in the family business. Under a series of serendipitous strategies and self-strategies, the two successfully became lovers.
As for the specific details of love, the drama directly omitted it. In short, the prince Baek Hyun-woo, who mistakenly thought that he had met Cinderella, was finally abducted by the queen's helicopter.
Like all fairy tales, the queen gave the gray boy a happy promise of "never crying", and let him "willingly" step into the besieged city of marriage. And then what? The fairy tale ends, and the horror story begins. The story after the sentence "The two have lived happily ever after" is the "detail" of "Queen of Tears". The screenwriter spent a lot of ink to portray the misery of Baek Hyun-woo after marriage, being made difficult by his boss's wife in every way at work, and meeting all the requirements of his wife's family in life.
Even including the requirement from the mother's surname.
And then there's the essential skill – cooking on a constant stream. The scene in the kitchen was indeed full of drama, with the sons-in-law of the Queen's group dancing between pots and pans, and their mouths kept making resentful voices. What "I studied chemistry at Harvard, now I can only use it to see if the food is cooked or not";
"My mother doesn't know how she will feel when she sees me stringing a string of meat in ten seconds", and "don't mention how precious my son is at home".
In this kind of daily life, even the noble professor has to borrow wine late at night to kill his sorrows, feeling that he "shouldn't be so cute" at the beginning.
The plot is presented with a comedic effect, as if it is to vent a bad breath for women, but the controversy also arises from this - will it be too child's play to present the suffering of women in such a relaxed and funny atmosphere. After the banter and refreshment, is the deeper predicament of women obscured? If you just look at the above paragraphs, it is indeed a bit bit. Among other things, crude sexual portrayals can easily create the perception that economic issues are completely equivalent to gender issues. In other words, as long as you are as rich as Hong Hairen, you can eliminate the damage and turn around. But the reality is far from that simple. The recently windy "Falling Judgment" is a great example of this. Even though Sandra, the heroine of the movie, is the one who holds the financial power in the family, it even makes people feel that the gender situation is completely reversed in this wooden house. But when her husband died, all this became an excellent reason to judge Sandra. Her intellect, her calmness, her outstanding expressiveness and ability to work, even her sexuality, her private life. Everything that does not conform to the "feminine quality" in the perception of male confines has become the focus of this trial that talks about everything except facts. In that wonderful dispute scene, on the surface, it seems that the husband is complaining that his labor is not taken seriously, and the wife is asking him to pretend to be a victim less.
Actually, the husband had already secretly recorded everything. He was confident that he would get himself involved in the dispute. Whether it's writing or blaming Sandra for suicide, he knows all too well how the world will sympathize with him. The structure didn't hurt him in the slightest, so he spoke clearly, so he was justified. will not complain about her husband's "absence from home" at most, as housewives have done for thousands of years, and then this instinctive anger will be quickly dissolved with the social culture of "men should be like this", and will be reduced to a sigh that cannot be landed in the air. The history of women has always been one of this unresolved sigh after sigh. Men did not sigh, their successes flaunted, their losses loud and clear. The greatest charm of patriarchy lies in this, it can provide the lowest status of men, and provide a superior cultural foundation for women. And this is the underlying logic that really cares about women's sexual transformation - the superficial transformation should be for the more entrenched "inability to transfer" at the bottom. Barbie has actually said this part very thoroughly. Any one-to-one substitution of sexual rotation is actually equivalent to no rotation. Barbie Land and Ken Land are on the same path.
A truly practical feminism can only happen through a Barbie Land (awakened) woman heading to a truly patriarchal world. And those who simply put their foothold on making "men and women miserable", such as menstruation, parenting, serving tea and water, etc., are all a scam aimed at women's pleasure. This sexual shift is imaginary (like a man never having to have children), and ultimately leads to the goal of "men to be considerate of women" rather than gender equality. It neither touches on the foundations of patriarchy, nor does it show the deeper and more complex plight of women. So, back to The Queen of Tears. When the plot plot plot gradually unfolds. Is it just a cool drama, or does it have another meaning?
02
Since it is better to give a judgment formula, it is better to apply it directly. Zooming out the focal length, is "The Queen of Tears" a completely rough confrontation between men and women? The answer is no. The patriarchal background is actually hidden in many corners of the play. The most conspicuous thing is that the family business, known as the "Queen's Group", is still at the helm of the "grandfather".
This big man, who was blinded by the lard of the housekeeper next to him, relied on his own foolishness to make a large family suspicious of each other, and his wife was separated. The only one who is sober-minded is the aunt of the "crazy woman".
With this setting alone, I don't want to see "Queen of Tears" as third-rate. This aunt's life is like the endless cycle of being oppressed by patriarchy, resisting, and resisting ineffectively. encountered non-people in several marriages, and staged Nala running away (violent version) several times. And the right to leave the husband can't get out of the paternal power. She misses the warm time of her childhood and family, misses the sincere family affection, and has a keen insight into a series of tragedies in her family because of the arrival of this housekeeper.
But his father was so stupid and confident that he was powerless to shake it, so he could only go crazy.
Crazy to the end, even he was going to be kicked out of the house. On the other hand, Hong Hairen naturally does not go normally in such a hegemonic family atmosphere. The aunt is asking for it from the outside, and she is castrating from the inside. After witnessing a series of cold-blooded battles between her uncles in a race for fame, she understands that the only way to survive this massacre is blood. So simply shape yourself into an iceberg, and exchange it for a rare recognition with an unkind money-making machine attitude. When he was seriously ill, he didn't dare to tell his family, for fear that he would be "completely out".
Even if she is so capable of working that she almost wants to step into a trillion club, she still has to compete with her younger brother, who can't learn how to ride a bicycle. Even though Grandpa looked at this stupid grandson and disliked it, he still gave him the opportunity to keep on the track.
I can't think of any reason other than being born a man. There is also the white son-in-law who seems to be the most bleak. The relationship with Hairen seems to be a sexual transfer at first glance, but on closer inspection, it is just an only daughter in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai recruiting a son-in-law. What's the difference? Compared with the real power, the setting of the door-to-door son-in-law is mostly a large-scale boys help boys in reality. It mostly occurs in the home of an only daughter in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, because I feel that "after all, someone has to help take care of my family property". And the only daughter is not considered. The father still has to have a son, it doesn't matter if he is biological or not, the next generation born is biological. And grandchildren are required to take their mother's surname, rather than their grandfather's surname.
In Hong Hairen's family, although he has a younger brother, he is useless because he can't afford to support him. Coupled with the reluctance to admit Hairen, he had to recruit a son-in-law. Even though this white son-in-law has a thousand grievances, if he compares it with a real little daughter-in-law, he can be called a blessing in the blessings. After all, whose daughter-in-law is a full-time daughter-in-law, not only can she keep her job opportunities, but she can even rise to prominence with the support of her family and go straight to the "director". And the grandfather and father-in-law never hesitated to praise this "white son-in-law" for his work ability.
is also conscientious to earn money for the family, Hong Hairen, in the endless cycle of "can't hear his father's affirmation - more crazy to meet his father's needs". Behind the princess turning into a frog, the prince is still the prince. It's distressing, but it's a good setting. Because it can make people who feel that the world is equal just because there are some "high-status" women around them realize what makes the strong/crazy women who cause you pain. And the answer to this question is what really touches on the plight of women. Put it in the play - what makes Hong Hairen a cold noodle working machine whose life goal is to enter the 1 trillion club, the 2 trillion club, and the 345678 trillion club? Answer: Her grandfather, her uncle, and her brother. The men in her life. Of course, she has to be ruthless, just like in real life, the most poisonous thing is always a woman's heart. And the truth behind this is actually that if a woman wants to achieve a high position in the patriarchal world, she will most likely be more than her father. In order to gain male recognition, she needs to give up her femininity.
It did get something, at least I didn't have to wash my hands and make soup in marriage. But Hong Hairen's small promotion of family status is not so much a woman's success as a patriarchal concession. "There is no woman who can have such a prominent position without embracing core patriarchal values. After all, it is much safer to have a place for a woman who endures and accepts the logic of patriarchy than to question the foundations of patriarchy. And at this moment, I look back at the root cause of Bai Zizi's pain - I feel that Hong Hairen is cold-faced and ruthless, ruthless, mean and selfish. As the manifestation of Hairen's character, there is no problem. The question is, is it Hong Hairen who caused all this, or the fathers of the Queen's Group?
03
It is also under the setting of "partial sex but no change" that "Queen of Tears" gave birth to an extremely wonderful stroke - Baek Hyun Woo, (probably) the first male protagonist in the history of idol dramas who eagerly hopes for the heroine to die. Because it was too painful to get along with the heroine of the iceberg, and he was forced to divorce due to the power of the queen's family, the white son-in-law became ill and became ill, when he learned that Hong Hairen was terminally ill and died soon. He was so excited that he almost burst out laughing.
Many people don't accept this setting and feel that it makes people "really can't go down", but to be honest, after the above total, I don't think of "Queen of Tears" as an idol drama for a long time. Its brushstrokes are extremely cold, more like a sugar-coated realist work. That's why "The Fallen Judgment" next door can be referenced everywhere with it. Dai Jinhua once made a comment in that farce, and it also applies to the passage where the white son-in-law wants Hairen to die - the movie allows us to see what happens when we put men in our place for thousands of years.
What happens? They will want to die, or they will want each other to die. This answer is important, not because it shows the weakness of men, but because it may imply that we should be weak as a normal person. I don't criticize this idea itself, because in a sense, it is the answer that belongs to a real "person". Therefore, it can only be expressed through men, after all, they are the only ones who are truly regarded as "people" in social life. What about women? Because they have been placed in the second sex for a long time, they have evolved "inhuman" solutions early. is like Manuela, the woman who experienced the accidental death of her son, the transgender ex-husband and AIDS infection in "All About My Mother". She has evolved a super tolerance in the world, and she has taken all the hardships into her pocket, and she is still moving forward steadily. Another example is Phyllis in "Mrs. America", who longs to enter the patriarchal world in the midst of all the injustices around her, so she has evolved a 360-degree self-PUA ability without dead ends, in order to self-consistently identify with patriarchal values.
Another example is all the women who are passionate about female competition. It's just that the history of oppression is too long, long enough for them to grow into a cunning prey, and can easily deal with low-level hunters. So much so that they forget the fact that they are still prey. But you see, the two male protagonists don't have these "synopsis", they are born as human beings. They had suffered all this inhumanity with a sound personality, so their reaction was very different, simple and straightforward - to destroy my suffering, or to destroy the person who caused my suffering. Then again, the Tao is inhumane treatment, and after a closer look, the core incident of "the so-called Hong Hae-in causing serious psychological damage to Baek Hyun-woo" is nothing more than this: the couple accidentally lost their child, and Hong Hae-in ordered the baby room to be emptied because he was "upset to watch".
That's it, that's it. It's hard not to let out a sneer. Weak as a white son-in-law, he didn't even bother to understand the way his wife expressed her pain, so he defined him as "ruthless". If it is placed in other idol dramas, Hong Hairen is just a typical "tsundere boss", with a poisonous mouth and a soft heart, seeing her husband give her sneakers, although the first sentence is "Why should I wear cheap goods", but as long as Bai Xianyu says one more sentence "Because those expensive ones are uncomfortable, I want you to wear them comfortably", she changed it the next day, and refused to take it off when she saw the customer.
And at this step, Bai Xianyu before his wife's illness was reluctant to go more. I can't empathize with this fragility, probably because the idol dramas I watched since I was a child were Jiang Zhishu and Yuan Xiangqin. It is a narrative of countless narratives that use the heroine's hot face to influence the cold ass of the boss. To be honest, I don't know how to judge the difference. Because no matter how loudly I sing the praises of women's resilience in the face of adversity, I sincerely appreciate the forbearance and wisdom behind all kinds of ways to survive. But it will still be stung by the "fragility" of those men. While they benefit extensively, they are repelled to a limited extent, and in the end, it is the women who bear the pain, and it is the women who soothe their vulnerability. The man who falls, the man who cries bitterly, the man who is depressed, the lonely man who is "too cold in the heights", is like a ridiculous and sad truth. It's always reminding me: "It turns out that a normal person shouldn't be able to bear this?"