Koreans who don't like to get married are crazy about falling in love
Koreans who don't like to get married are crazy about falling in love. Don't say it, you really let them knock something out.
I thought that the love series was about to fail, after all, all kinds of love dramas are becoming more and more stylized, and the audience has long been tired, and even the third season of the leading product "Transfer Love" has entered a period of creative burnout, it should be impossible to roll, right? !
Who knows, Li Zhenshu PD, who ran away from "Transfer Love", took "Love Brothers and Sisters" to kill a horse pistol. Recently, this Korean amateur love reality show exploded as soon as it was broadcast, and four pairs of brothers and sisters loved shuffle under the same roof.
▲《Brother and Sister》
But the urine of the high-set love series is also slowly emerging, especially after the fifth pair of catfish brothers and sisters joined, the perception is a bit high and low.
Objectively speaking, "Love Brothers and Sisters" is indeed the biggest dark horse of Han Zong this year. Li Zhenshu used a trick to replace "ex" for "siblings", and the pattern of the entire love reality show is completely different.
It's not uncommon for friends and family to appear in the show, but their appearance is usually in the studio of the second scene, existing as an observer's perspective. And "Brothers and Sisters in Love" directly pulled their siblings to the first scene of the reality show, which is very wonderful.
Standing from an omniscient perspective, looking at the siblings in reality pretending to be confused, the performance is not familiar, and it is quite cute. The process of deducing who are the real brothers and sisters is quite suspenseful.
▲《Brother and Sister》
If you imagine meeting the brothers and sisters who grew up together since childhood and have "experienced", pee and fart at the blind date scene, and at the moment they are showing their charm in front of the opposite sex, and your various "outfits" are all in the eyes of the other party, have you already started to pick your toes on the ground?
The first three episodes of the program are very warm, and the four pairs of brothers and sisters selected by the program team have deep emotional ties:
The first pair of Jae-hyung and Se-seung siblings, born in a middle-class family, have lively and cheerful personalities. My sister dislikes her brother and makes up for him. She "gritted her teeth" and praised her brother for looking like Kong Liu, eager and funny.
▲《Brother and Sister》
Another pair of siblings, Long Yu and Zhu Yan, grew up in a single-parent family, with an age difference of ten years, which is quite a bit of "brother as father". When he sees his sister expressing interest in others, his brother will smile like an old father, but when others approach his sister, he will immediately "raise the alarm" and observe from the side.
▲《Brother and Sister》
The two pairs of sisters and brothers are also very interesting, and the younger brothers are all "sister control". Jeong-sub felt that his sister Yoon-ha was the most beautiful in the audience, and when he knew that his sister had become a 0-vote girl, his face was green and he was super angry. Yunhe is not only completely possessive of his younger brother, but also assists his younger brother's love line.
▲《Brother and Sister》
Chu Ya and Zhexian sisters and brothers have a cold temperament, and the misfortune of the original family makes the sisters and brothers strong and close. may be because of the lack of love since childhood, Zhexian's enthusiasm for his future brother-in-law seems to be more than finding a partner for himself, and the "brother-in-law hunter" is himself.
▲《Brother and Sister》
The first few episodes give people a novel viewing experience, we are obviously watching the love drama, but what touches us more is family affection. Compared with the heartbeat between the opposite sex, the deep sibling love seems to be better.
The emotional expression in "Love Brothers and Sisters" is much more positive and generous than other love dramas. Probably because people will have more courage to pursue love when they are standing next to their loved ones. Whether love succeeds or not, there will always be someone in this room who cares about themselves.
▲《Brother and Sister》
No wonder some people say that "Brothers and Sisters in Love" is the variety show version of "Please Answer 1988", and the warmth of family affection is indeed more healing than love. While watching the interaction between these siblings, I frequently thought of Lee Yijun and Lee Yichun in one of Shin Won-ho's masterpieces, "The Life of a Witty Doctor". The best CP in the world is really a brother and sister who can't blow away from a ten-level typhoon.
▲ "The Life of a Witty Doctor"
This is Li Zhenshu's brilliance, she places different aspects of a person's intimate relationship and family relationship in the same field, which not only broadens the dimension of observing love, but also makes the "people" in the reality show more three-dimensional and richer.
Some people criticize that such a love complex is building a utopia. To tell the truth, entering a period of low desire, the reality is cruel, and the hearts of people are lonely, and the producer wants to provide an expectation of interpersonal relationships to soothe people's trauma and vulnerability, isn't it a beautiful original intention?
▲《Brother and Sister》
The real problem with this love drama is not the intention. With the development of reality shows, the production team's process framework and setting perspectives have gradually made female audiences bow their heads.
First of all, the family line is good, but the love line is lackluster. Just because boys are good people in a family relationship doesn't mean they're naturally good lovers in an intimate relationship.
Single-handedly out of the family line, the first male is a cheerful living treasure, the second male is a crazy demon who protects his sister, the third male and his sister depend on each other, and the fourth male is the father and sister, they are all pure, careful, and responsible under the backdrop of their respective sisters or younger sisters. However, when it comes to the dating session, the audience will see that they are all "ordinary men".
▲《Brother and Sister》
The program team's heavy brushwork on the family line also makes the love line seem bland. Especially when the fifth pair of siblings Yoon-jae and Ji-won joined, their mother worked hard for her children all her life, and after paying the last tuition fee, she finally breathed a sigh of relief, but found out that she had cancer. Compared with such family affection, the love with a freshness period of three weeks is too light.
▲《Brother and Sister》
Besides, the love link of the show itself is very weak. If the portrayal of the family line is remarkable, then the setting of the love line is basically the same as other love lines, there is no freshness in the repeated dating, the sparks between the characters are lacking, and the guests in the observation room talk a lot and have a male perspective.
The lack of female perspective is the biggest failure of this love show. After the female fifth joined, the show began to frantically promote love, and siblings became tool people. Moreover, in the process of selecting people, only boys are allowed to choose, and girls can only be selected, which is a bit ugly. The girls who are not selected have almost no shots.
The boys had a private dinner, and the program team secretly arranged for them to meet with the female five one by one, which not only made the female fifth in an embarrassing situation among the girls, but also the traces of the script were more obvious. The girls have nothing to do in the cabin, and the dating is boring and passive, which makes the show look and feel slip.
▲《Brother and Sister》
Obviously, the five female guests are all very attractive women - Se Seung is cute, Chu Ya is intellectual, Joo Yeon is interesting, Yun Ha is smart, and Ji Won is rational, which seems to be a filter used to set off the male guests at this time. We don't want to see the male league judging the girls over there. When the male May Day appeared, the PUA sister looked ugly and wore heavy makeup, and many people gave up here, and the dream bubble was completely punctured by the indecent and misogynistic of the male guests.
I appreciate Li Zhenshu's purpose of taking Lian Zong as a framework for observing human nature, "Love Brothers and Sisters" has new angles and new characters, but it is obviously far from enough in terms of the balance of gender perspectives.
To tell the truth, the evolution speed of Korean love drama can be described as astonishing, from "We Are Married" in which the artist "imagines marriage" to "Heart Signal", which is in amateur matching, it took 10 years, but from marriage to divorce, from pure love to "just sleeping relationship", from restaurant dating to pantry ambiguity, from ex to brother and sister, it is only three or four years.
▲ The Poohs in the Korean version of "We Are Married".
The concept of marriage and love among young Koreans is changing, and Korean love dramas can only explore in all directions. I still remember that in 2018, "Heart Signal 2" exploded, and the score once rushed to 9.1, but after the last episode was broadcast, it fell to 8.1.
▲《Heart Single 2》
At that time, there was still a market for sadomasochistic pure love, and people were moved by fate and love, and they were really heartbroken by the ending that their hearts were not matched by their skills. The fourth male Kim Hyun-woo looks like a big boy like Zhang Zhiming, but the reality is that he didn't choose Yu Chunjiao, who has a more tacit understanding with him. Compared with the first female Wu Yingzhu, the second female Lin Xuanzhu is obviously obedient to the easy mode.
▲ "Transfer Love 2"
The cause and effect of this season is like a love warning motto: use skills, and you will only like to mention "big pig's trotters". Many years later, it was revealed that the second female and the fourth male broke up after a few months of dating.
Most of the viewers who have been baptized by "Heart Signal 2" have become desensitized to Lianzong. They no longer use their feelings to knock CP, and young people in reality don't seem to believe in love so much. Observational amateur love for comprehensive, and then entered the era of "high concept".
"Transfer Love" introduces a novel concept to gather several pairs of exes, while reminiscing about the lost love, while looking for new love, some people will never forget, and some people have already turned the page.
In the second season, the relationship between the ex is more complicated, and "eight years of sadomasochism into Haeun" is the most popular topic. The producer is not afraid of complex emotional relationships, but is willing to provide more perspectives in Lianzong to explore the deep problems in intimate relationships.
▲ "Transfer Love 2"
The next step after falling in love often points to marriage and childbearing, but what is the truth of marriage? "We Are Divorced" for the first time allows divorced couples to live together for three days and two nights again, and tells you bloodily how marriage died and how love disappeared.
▲ "We Are Divorced"
As we all know, Koreans don't want to get married anymore. In 2022, the proportion of single households in South Korea rose to a record high of 33.4% (according to Statistics Korea that year), while only 17.6% of South Koreans believe that marriage is necessary (according to the Korea Social Indicators 2022).
It is even popular among young people to hold "non-marital" and use a single wedding to declare that they are not married. For men, the reason for not getting married is mainly due to excessive material pressure. But for women, widespread gender injustice is the main reason for not marrying.
▲ Korean single wedding, source network
Times have changed. In a country that used to be rich in pure love dramas, young people now don't even want to see pure love variety shows. Koreans who are not married began to do slimy and wet love dramas, and they were crazy and tentative at the scale level.
"Exchanging Couples" invites couples who are experiencing emotional twists and turns to meet new people in the show, and then decide whether to break up, which is actually a "couple reset" that breaks through ethics. "Love in the Company" focuses on office romance, elevators, stairwells, conference rooms, ...... It seems that ambiguity is breeding in every corner.
▲《In-house information》
"Single is Hell" and "Garden of Eden" are like scale competitions, both of which are love dramas banished from a desert island, with the main guests being hot and the guests flirting with each other, and the sexual tension wandering on the edge of the "Eighteen Forbiddens". "Just Sleeping Relationship" claims to be in line with the Korean MZ generation's concept of love - "sleep first and then decide whether to date", to put it bluntly, it is "whether the cannon friend can turn positive".
▲ "Single is Hell"
I can only say that Korean TV producers really love to love comprehensives, and at different levels, they have shown depth, breadth and scale.
From sadistic pure love to fast love, Korean Lian Zong always seems to pay more attention to the wrestling between the sexes than to love itself.
The setting of the vast majority of love dramas is to put men and women in a closed environment and established links, and maximize the charm of the sexes in the form of a Shura field. Under such a framework, the love of herbivores can also make the audience uneasy, and the carnivorous sky and thunder will show a stronger sexual tension.
▲ "Single is Hell"
Koreans, who are unmarried and infertile, have begun to quit love. If there is no ambiguity between men and women, it will not arouse their interest and rekindle their enthusiasm at all.
In today's extremely involuted love variety, I would like to see variety show producers seriously and equally discuss love itself, not just on the form of love and the war between the sexes. I want to see a more sincere and abundant picture of love beyond the flow of the love line.
Why can the "Please Answer" series and the "Wit" series become god-level Korean dramas? Because people are no longer satisfied with consuming a single love story, friendship, family affection, and love are intertwined with each other, and the life appearance is more 3D and more charming.
Love is a word that is broader than intimacy. If Lianzong can knock out of the new world, the era of low desire will not prevent me from knocking CP.
Contents: Ah Qi
Editor: Felicia
Typesetting: Yang Panpan
Title image: "Brothers and Sisters in Love"