Adapted from Yishu's novel of the same name, the urban life drama "Chenghuan Ji" starring Yang Zi and Xu Kai, two popular idols, He Saifei and Wu Yanshu, two actresses, is in charge, and the cast of the old, middle and young generations is full of merit. However, after the TV series was launched, the word-of-mouth was worrisome, and the comfort was gone, and the dilemma of creating female-themed dramas exposed was even more worth pondering.
The novel "The Legend of Cheng Huan" was published in 1996, and the story focuses on the emotional bond between the good girl Mai Chenghuan and her mother, which is somewhat similar to Zhang Ailing's "The Golden Lock". It's just that Yishu is reluctant to let the heroine suffer, and Mai Chenghuan realized early in the process of talking about marriage: the mother tried her best to fight for her daughter's marriage, but it was just a change of direction to make up for the regrets of her youth. Since then, Mak Chenghuan no longer obeys his mother's orders, and the two generations of women have embarked on completely different life paths.
The TV series moves the story from Hong Kong in the last century to Shanghai today, and it is inevitable to make many changes to the plot and character relationships. But the adaptation of the TV series is not clever, and there are a lot of bloody plots that do not conform to the logic of life, for example, Mai Chenghuan's boyfriend conceals the identity of the rich second generation, her boyfriend's sister dislikes the ordinary family background of the Mai family, and her boyfriend's father's extramarital affair object is Mai Chenghuan's old classmate, etc. In terms of style, it is even more contrary to the novel, in the TV series, the two families almost flipped the table and scolded each other at the banquet to talk about marriage, and the embarrassment of the scene has never appeared in Yishu's novels, which pay attention to temperament and posture. However, what makes Yishu fans even more unacceptable is that the screenwriter transformed the heroine Mai Chenghuan into a 360-degree flawless little white flower with no dead ends according to the idol drama routine, with a bland and boring personality, losing the taste of Yishu girl.
From "The First Half of My Life", "Golden Years", "Xi Bao" to "Chenghuan Ji", and the next "Story of Roses" to be broadcast, in recent years, film and television dramas have suddenly been keen to adapt Yishu's works, because the independent female spirit of Yishu girls corresponds to the pursuit of contemporary women. However, the film and television dramas adapted from Yishu are rarely satisfactory, "The First Half of My Life" and "The Golden Years" have a Douban score of 6.4 points, and "Xibao" has a score of 3.3 points. The independent women in "The First Half of My Life" didn't see it, and the audience came to a unanimous conclusion: fire prevention, anti-theft and anti-girlfriends. The emotional line of the heroine of "The Golden Years" is chaotic, and it is better to choose a man than to fight for her career. "The Legend of Cheng Huan" actually makes people feel like they are wearing costume dramas, with many lines such as "propose", "high-ranking families", "women can only shine in the kitchen and garden", etc., which forcefully pull the audience back to feudal society.
Why is Yishu's work so difficult to adapt? Is it because she has told some unfathomable truth that screenwriters and actors can't understand? I'm afraid it's not. It's not that screenwriters and actors don't understand, but they don't dare. Not long ago, a screenwriter posted a long Weibo complaining that women's awakening is clearly a creative disaster, and the article is summarized to the effect that it is now a lightning guide for writing female screenwriters, such as: The heroine can't experience suffering, otherwise the screenwriter will be criticized by netizens for misogyny, the heroine can't pay for love, otherwise it's a love brain, and there can be no fight between women, otherwise it's a female competition...... Wait a minute.
Perhaps, there is no absolute contradiction between the screenwriter's dilemma and women's awakening, but the creative dilemma of women's dramas is time to be broken. Nowadays, the heroines in TV series are becoming more and more shriveled, not to mention the grayscale of human nature, and there are few flaws left. The back of Yishu girl's independent introspection is to love herself without scruples, and this grayscale can only be reserved for the supporting actresses in the TV series. Because no screenwriter dares to write an unbeautiful heroine, even if there is, those female stars with fans and traffic dare not act.