Six years after the end of the Sohu Entertainment special article (Shanjin/text), "The Legend of Ruyi" once again set off a wave of spit carnival.
The spark started from station B and gradually burned to major social platforms, with continuous hot searches and frequent new stalks, compared with the grand occasion of complaining when this show was launched, it was even better.
Behind the fact that "The Legend of Ruyi" was complained about again, it was the audience's resistance to the excessive maintenance of fans, the outdated creation being faced, and a turn in the spirit of the times.
01 Encirclement and suppression of "The Legend of Ruyi" from beginning to end
In July last year, a UP master of the B station game named "It's okay to get stuck" made a video of restoring the scene of "The Legend of Ruyi" in the game "The Sims 4", and complained that the plot of "The Legend of Ruyi" was unreasonable.
The gears of fate turned.
Westminster Abbey, which is also the owner of the game UP, was quickly pushed by big data and stuck the video of complaining about "The Legend of Ruyi".
"I happened to watch "The Legend of Ruyi" back then, and I completely agreed with her opinion, and I was a game fan, so I paid attention to it right away. As a result, some fans of the drama were stressed, and the comments attacked her, saying that she hadn't watched the drama and said nonsense. In order to prove that she is not talking nonsense, she began to officially complain about "The Legend of Ruyi" in detail episode after episode, and countered these attacks, which was particularly exciting and attracted many people to watch. Westminster Abbey told Sohu Entertainment.
The team that complained about "The Legend of Ruyi" gradually grew. Westminster said, "She (is fine) must not be able to speak comprehensively with one mouth, and the update speed cannot keep up with the increasing demand of the audience." Later, I saw a few familiar complaints in her comment area, and everyone basically started recording videos by themselves because they found more slots when watching her videos, and they didn't vomit or feel unhappy. ”
Soon after, Westminster Abbey also joined the action of complaining about "The Legend of Ruyi".
The fan maintenance in the comment area of the "Ruyi Biography" complaining video made Westminster very incomprehensible, once in order to refute a person, he was so angry that he couldn't sleep in the middle of the night, and in a fit of anger, he replied with thousands of words, and deleted it all after calming down.
"These thousands of words are really a waste of Niu playing the piano, and others can't see it. I might as well share these thoughts with someone who can listen. So I started making my own spit videos. ”
As of press time, Westminster Abbey has made 17 episodes of "The Legend of Ruyi" from a psychoanalytic point of view, with the highest number of views of 565,000, and the number of fans has increased from more than 1,000 to 55,000.
"Fans did rise after complaining. The game I was making was unpopular, and I had more than a thousand fans. Ever since I chose to play an unpopular game, I didn't expect traffic, and I don't think it's 'good traffic' now. Westminster said.
After the vigorous complaint, it is the cooling-off period for removal.
One after another, the video of "The Legend of Ruyi" made by the UP master was taken off the shelves, and Westminster Abbey also received complaints and was removed from the shelves for three videos.
Westminster Abbey told Sohu Entertainment, "I didn't receive a complaint from the actor himself, what I received was a complaint from Beijing Zhongshi Ruide Culture Media Co., Ltd., which led to the removal of the video." The reason for the complaint is copyright. ”
ZOSE Ruide Culture is not the producer of the recorded "Ruyi Biography", but a comprehensive service provider responsible for copyright management. The videos related to "Walking with the Phoenix" and "Painting the Rivers and Lakes: Tiangang" were removed from the shelves due to copyright reasons, and they also came from their complaints.
Westminster Abbey is also worried about copyright issues, "Who wants to get involved in lawsuits." Regarding whether the use of the original drama clip in the film review is infringement, the result of my investigation is ambiguous. ”
In order to avoid the worst situation, Westminster Abbey has processed the pictures in the complaining video, not playing the original film, and constantly calling on the audience not to promote her.
"There is no profit in the first place, if Cheng becomes a defendant one day, if I am asked to pay 18 million, I can't afford to pay. The platform eats the bowl of rice of film and television, and does not give a clear regulation. It's better to make a version and tell everyone what kind of practice is infringing, otherwise this is not to let the UP owners take their lives to clear mines. ”
02 The ups and downs of word-of-mouth
Just like Ruyi's tortuous life, the experience of "The Legend of Ruyi" can be regarded as bizarre and tortuous.
At the beginning, it was a much-anticipated big project - the sequel to the titular "The Legend of Zhen Huan", the actress Zhou Xun was in charge, and the stills released in advance also showed the good aesthetics of the main creator.
Westminster Abbey was also one of the audiences looking forward to "The Legend of Ruyi", "I was the first audience, and the lineup was quite attractive. As an ordinary audience, there are filters for these dramas, and I think it must be a good drama and stable. ”
During the long time that "The Legend of Ruyi" was waiting for satellite TV, "Yanxi Raiders" was the first to be broadcast online and became a summer hit drama. At that time, there were still many viewers who regretted that "The Legend of Ruyi" was born at the wrong time.
Until "The Legend of Ruyi" was officially broadcast, word-of-mouth quickly fell into controversy.
In the first few episodes, Zhou Xun played Qingying, Ruyi in her teenage years. The actor's obviously inconsistent state of the character's age and the makeup that was not recognized by the audience made this big drama that was supposed to "Concubine Xi return to the palace" get the treatment of "Ganlu Temple".
Westminster Abbey still remembers the feeling after watching the first episode of "The Legend of Ruyi", "It is an extremely complicated bad, a kind of confusion, confusion, and disappointment...... Twisted together complex emotions, an experience that will last a lifetime. ”
(Photo courtesy of Westminster Abbey)
After that, the controversy and scolding surrounding "The Legend of Ruyi" also did not conform to history, inappropriate propaganda language, and so on.
It wasn't until the end of the series that the reviews of "The Legend of Ruyi" gradually improved, and the Douban score also rose from 6.5 to 7.5 points.
Compared with Zhen Huan and Wei Yingluo, Ruyi is actually a loser in Gong Dou, and "The Biography of Ruyi" is a work that writes books and talks for losers.
In the interview, director Wang Jun believes that Ruyi has completed a spiritual counterattack, "She rejected the Forbidden City in the end." Before she died, she destroyed all the things related to the Forbidden City and the emperor. She is a free soul, and what she wants is the liberation of her own heart. She was truly free, and she used death to be free. ”
This extremely tragic idea, or in the words of the director, "more advanced", "more literary", and "more aesthetic" expression, is the reason why many audiences liked "The Legend of Ruyi" later.
Supporters believe that Ruyi has completed the "exodus of the queen" and achieved "spiritual freedom", and "The Legend of Ruyi" has broken the routine of palace fighting dramas and subverted the power logic of becoming a king and defeating a king.
In the second year after the broadcast, "The Legend of Ruyi" was taken off the shelves, and the audience no longer had a channel to watch genuine dramas. If it is no longer repeatedly mentioned and watched, then "The Legend of Ruyi" will probably be recorded like this - it was highly anticipated before the broadcast, it was deeply controversial during the broadcast, and the word-of-mouth rebounded after the broadcast.
Everyone knows what happened next.
In the past few years when the long-tail effect has been paid more and more attention, many old dramas have been watched repeatedly, and many new audiences have also been obtained, such as "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "Do You Know If You Should Be Green, Fat, Red and Thin", "Langya Bang", "New Three Kingdoms" and so on.
Who would have thought that "The Legend of Ruyi" would achieve the "long tail effect" in such a funny and absurd way.
03 The unbroken and unstanding of "The Legend of Ruyi".
Looking at it six years later, it is not unreasonable for the word-of-mouth of "The Legend of Ruyi" to overturn again.
In the behind-the-scenes documentary of the series, the director hopes that the audience will watch "The Legend of Ruyi" as an art film. But in practice, "The Legend of Ruyi" did not break too many inherent routines of palace fighting dramas, nor did it stand up to a new model.
Even if it chooses the so-called palace dou loser as the protagonist, the story in "The Legend of Ruyi" is still the same, framed in that side of the palace wall. Whoever is pregnant, who has fallen out of favor, who has bought off whose palace maids and eunuchs, who wants to bring down whom, who has framed whose child, but these things.
Most of the harem group portraits portrayed in "The Legend of Ruyi" are also face-painted and stereotypical tool characters.
For example, Hailan, who is the protagonist, was timid and cowardly in the early stage, trying to stay away from the harem but has been suppressed and bullied by people with intentions. On the day of the pouring rain, she was punished by the queen to kneel again, lamented the unfairness of fate, turned black, and turned gorgeously to become a tool person who rode the wind and waves for Ruyi.
There is a lack of profile of the complexity of the characters, and even the blackening process is the same, and 101 such characters may appear in 100 film and television works.
In Westminster Abbey's view, only the heroine in "The Legend of Ruyi" is a character worthy of analysis, "This is a dream world established for Ruyi, except for her own 'person', the positive and negative are all tools to satisfy her, and they do not have independent and complete behavioral logic." Although Wei Xinwan does have a shining point and is also very pitiful, she is essentially a tool person who pushes the plot, she was labeled as a villain, forcibly reduced her intelligence, and did some abnormal operations that hurt others and herself, so she was quite speechless. ”
As for the image of Ruyi, the "spiritual rebel" that the creators want to stand, it has also fallen into a situation where logic is inconsistent.
Before her death, her aunt told her not to forget the glory of the Ulanala clan, and the documentary also admitted that Ruyi had the family responsibility to become the queen.
But in the play, Ruyi barely exerted too much subjective initiative to become the queen, and she really couldn't see the pressure of the family.
He also said that the core point of Ruyi's life is "once in a lifetime", the emperor who really loves her childhood sweetheart, and sincerely believes that the emperor loves her.
But there are not too many details of the two people knowing each other and falling in love with each other when they were young, and the question is "The wall immediately looks at each other from afar, and when you see Zhijun, you will break your bowels", which is really hard to believe that their love is stronger than Jin.
In the behind-the-scenes documentary, the creators said that what they wanted to talk about was "the siege of the marriage of the imperial couple", "exploring the possibilities of human nature", and "the indictment of the feudal imperial marriage".
Zhou Xun said: "In this story, Ruyi is cold again and again, in fact, I think it is a process of love, which will slowly disappear." ”
Using the death of love and the tragedy of marriage as a footnote to the relationship between the emperor and the concubine may have gone astray from the beginning.
The most worthwhile reason why a harem woman under the feudal system is going to tragedy is probably not the loss of love, but the structural and institutional tragedy. What's more, Zhen Huan's mother has long said that the emperor and the concubine are not ordinary couples, and there are also monarchs and ministers.
As for Ruyi's "spiritual rebellion" with her hair cut off at the end, there are women who finally left the harem to pursue freedom in "Golden Branch Desire", and "The Legend of Zhen Huan" also has Shen Meizhuang and Ye Lanyi who are unwilling to participate in the harem.
04 Interpretation of the new era of old dramas
In six years, "The Legend of Ruyi" has fallen from a partial overturn to a large-scale overturn. But similar to the stories of the new era and new interpretation, there is not only "The Legend of Ruyi".
As early as a few years ago, the audience completed the reinterpretation of "Huanzhu Gege", and the most important sign is the reversal of Concubine Ling's image.
When I was a child, I watched "Huanzhu Gege", and I only felt that Concubine Ling, who helped the protagonist group everywhere, was really gentle and kind, but now, it is quite popular to say that "the seemingly kind Concubine Ling is actually full of scheming", "Xiaoyanzi and Ziwei are both concubines and knives to deal with the queen." ”
An Lingrong in "The Legend of Zhen Huan" completed the transformation from "villain" to "I am An Lingrong".
Many years after the end of the series, An Lingrong, who has low self-esteem, sensitivity and internal friction, has become the object of self-projection of migrant workers, with no background, not valued, conscientious, and crawling.
Similar to An Lingrong, Wei Yanwan in "The Legend of Ruyi" has changed from a "villain boss" to a "real heroine".
In the play, she is the villain who has harmed countless people and is not worthy of being saved. However, contemporary young audiences have seen her humble background, the tragic past of being bullied, her ambition to climb up, and her bold and decisive character.
Wei Yinwan, who has a bad background but is motivated, is welcomed, while Ruyi, who has a lot and believes in love but looks down on Wei Yinwan, was abandoned by the audience.
From this turning point, we may also get a glimpse of the changes in the spirit of the times.
In the Qiong Yao period, the protagonists were all kind-hearted Cinderellas, and most of the supporting characters were uneasy and kind-hearted rich girls. At that time, the audience believed in fairy tales that as long as you struggle, you will eventually counterattack, and believed that as long as the pure person is self-purifying, honest and kind, the river god will give you a golden axe. This is largely in line with the social environment of the time, where the audience has not yet become rich, but there are opportunities everywhere.
More than 20 years have passed, as film critic Mao Jian said, domestic film and television dramas have become a place where "appearance is distributed according to status and property, and morality and future are distributed according to appearance".
The protagonist has become rich, but the supporting characters are people from humble and vicious backgrounds. The audience no longer believes in fairy tales that can break out on their own, looking for a life they won't have in Shuangwen, and seeing themselves in "An Lingrong".
For the audience, this is "every drama can only accompany you for a while". For creators, this may also be a warning that it is more important to transcend the times than to cater to the times.