Interface News Reporter | Pan Wenjie
Interface News Editor | Yellow Moon
Wang Ma, the new top in the short drama industry. This role comes from the short drama account "Seven Orangutans" produced by "Reborn I am a nanny in the short drama of the boss", in which Wang Ma is set to be a nanny in the Gu family, and every day she watches the domineering president Gu Zong and He Nana, the two infatuated men and women, "go crazy". The account has gained more than 3 million followers on the whole network within a month.
"Let me ask you again, have you ever loved me?" "Don't you just want to be my Gu Jingchen's woman!" "Find me, I can't find me and let all of you be buried together!" In addition to the domineering president and heroine, there is also a vicious female partner who poisons the heroine at any time in the play, and Bai Yueguang, who suddenly returned to the boss's side, everyone has their own classic lines and stories, and in the eyes of Wang Ma, this group of people are "crazy". In this regard, many netizens left messages saying, "In the past, I substituted the heroine: so cool and romantic; now I substitute the nanny: I am so crazy and speechless", "Sure enough, I can only substitute the perspective of the protagonist, and the perspective of the worker, they all go to Karma".
01 How does the subversive hegemony type happen
The parody and criticism of the boss short drama actually stems from the maturity of the type of boss, and comes from the audience's familiarity and familiarity with the images of the domineering president, Cinderella heroine, vicious female supporting role, Bai Yueguang and so on.
Don Quixote, the first anti-routine novel in the history of literature, is also built on the basis of genre maturity. As Fan Ye, head of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Peking University, said, "Don Quixote buries all chivalric novels", and the author Cervantes said that his task is to "bury or sweep away the poison of chivalric novels, so that everyone can fully understand its poison", so this novel is full of parody, criticism, and subversion of chivalric novels and plots. Fan Ye pointed out, "If you want to play a meme, the premise is that you want to know what the meme is like in the first place; if you want to parody a text, you must first know, read, and be familiar with the text before you can talk about parody, subversion." ”
Li Wei, a professor at the School of Literature of Nanjing Normal University, saw in the article "From Genre to "Post-Genreization": On the New Changes in China's Online Literary Creation in Recent Years (2018-2022)" that from around 2003, China's online literature has entered a period of vigorous genre development. According to Li Wei's research, in 2003, the starting point Chinese network established a payment system, and in 2004, Shanda Group acquired it, and due to the influence of commercial operation, "typology" gradually became the key word of online literature. By around 2008, genre had become the main trend in online literary creation. A specific genre has a specific reading expectation and a relatively fixed readership, and the stylized writing of genre novels enables online literature to be reproduced through large-scale reproduction of routines.
Shao Yanjun, a professor at the Department of Chinese at Peking University, also pointed out that genre is not preset by anyone, but the accumulation of "good-looking" literary experience over the years, and novels that can successfully mobilize these literary experiences must be "good-looking" and "easy to sell": "According to these routines, a mediocre writer can also produce 'big road goods', and no matter how individual the author is, he cannot break these routines at will, otherwise he will violate the contract with readers." ”
In recent years, however, readers may not have appreciated the novelty of this stylized writing. Li Wei saw that "the development speed of online literature genres has slowed down, the reading data of major online literature genres such as fantasy and female frequency have declined significantly, and the follow-up creation of many types of writers is a little weak." Shao Yanjun mentioned the danger of this situation, "There are both peers pressing and seniors pressing the top." Fans are not easy to serve, senior fans are expert-level, they know all kinds of bridges well, and they are like a few treasures of the works of their predecessors, unless you can add another layer to the 'dangerous building' erected by your predecessors, otherwise, who will worship you as a 'god'?"
Readers' dissatisfaction with the type of boss will erupt in 2022. "Gentlemen of the East Eighth District", written and starred by Zhang Han, caused ridicule because the male protagonist was greasy and disrespectful to women, and then, Zhang Han's reality show love variety show "Dear Online" was also excavated by netizens, the plot includes Zhang Han feeding cakes, Zhang Han sending kisses, and the final ending is that Zhang Han fell in love with me with sincere tears. Zhang Han has always been a professional overbearing president, and some of the overlord images he played have been popular with many female audiences, and he has also had many famous sayings, "I really hate the boring self-esteem of you grassroots class, is it my fault that you are rich and handsome?" ("Let's Watch Meteor Shower" 2009) "I want everyone to know that this fish pond is contracted by you." (Here Comes Shanshan, 2014)
Haven't these clips been enjoyed by readers in the past? Yet, over time, people seem to have become desensitized to similar routines. The development of feminism in recent years has also made readers and viewers aware that the story of the domineering president hides capital and power in the appearance of the pursuit of true love. In women's romantic love imagination, the end point is that the two achieve equality in love, and power and capital are only means to express love, while some male characters who hold the script of "overlord" give up the emotion itself, indulge in the setting of their own capital and power, and even further strengthen the male privilege under the patriarchy. All of this makes the boss setting itself an object of ridicule.
The mainstream genre of online literature continues to decline, showing a trend of "de-typing" such as "anti-routine" and element fusion, and the domineering president is no exception. The decline of Ba Zongwen has even led to the decline of some platforms - Li Wei saw that the Red Sleeve Tianxiang website once took advantage of the incubation of "Ba Zongwen", and now it is also declining with the decline of "Ba Zongwen".
In recent years, the popular "hot styles" often ignore the routine, or deliberately "anti-routine" and seek "variants". Li Wei said, "Breaking the genre routine has become the 'mystery' of online literature to re-summon the emotional community in recent years." In this way, the defamiliarization stimulus brought by variants and anti-routines makes the genre regain some vitality.
Anti-routine works keep appearing. I am a doctor in the boss drama, I am a special assistant in the boss short drama, I am a housekeeper in the boss text, and I am a passer-by in the campus text...... The sober NPC complains about the protagonist who is obsessed with love, and the anti-routine has gradually become a new routine.
02 Why is it so funny to change your perspective?
Why is it that in the overbearing president drama, we watch the love between the boss and the heroine with relish, but once switched to the perspective of nanny, doctor, special assistant, housekeeper, etc., this kind of love seems so funny and ridiculous?
"Within a minute, I want all her information", "I haven't seen the young master smile like this for a long time", "Young master, the lady is kneeling outside in the rain", "If you can't cure it, you have to treat me! Otherwise, everyone will have to bury her!" These lines are inseparable from the characters and events in the main play, which are used to show the deep love of the boss. Coldness and domineering is a manifestation of a high degree of self-sufficiency and self-control, and it is the label and privilege of the "strong" among atomized individuals. The boss is evil and ruthless to everyone, and he does things by unscrupulous means, but he reveals his inner vulnerability to the heroine, so women get a strong sense of self-affirmation in the story of the boss.
The individuals portrayed in the drama are special, and it reveals a living combination of emotions and events. When watching the main drama, the audience is well aware of this logic, and keeps a close eye on the fate of CP and the progress of the story at the same time, so our sympathy will gradually increase with the development of the plot. Unlike dramas, comedy focuses on portraying genres, that is, only looking at the surface, not the hearts of the characters. If we go deep into the personality, into the cause and effect, and combine the external effect with the deeply rooted internal cause, we will damage the ridiculousness of the external effect and make the ridiculous unridiculous.
In the book "Laughter: On Funny", the French philosopher Henri Bergson said that the basic condition for being funny is the social incompatibility of the characters and the immovable emotions of the audience, and the most important condition is the mechanical effect. "Funny appeals to pure intelligence, laughter and emotion are incompatible. No matter how slight the shortcomings you portray, if you arouse my sympathy, horror, or pity, I cannot laugh at it. ”
The difference between comedy and drama is that in order to prevent us from taking seriously, acting seriously, and making us laugh, comedy uses such a method - Bergson summarized the formula as follows: comedy does not direct our attention to various behaviors, but to various postures, which include posture, movement, and speech. The difference between the two is that the action has a purpose, at least consciously, whereas the posture is spontaneous and unconscious.
"If you exclude from people what sensitizes us, what stirs up our emotions, then the rest can be funny," Bergson sees. In fact, all personalities are funny, and if this kind of personality is something that is pre-made in a person, it is a mechanical thing that can automatically run once the body is wound. No matter how Wang Ma complains, no matter how old-fashioned or embarrassing the plot seems, the boss and the heroine can stage their grievance drama at any time: "You don't love me!" "You don't love me!"
Bergson says that many of the funny scenes can be summed up in a simple type: "a character who is obsessed with his own ideas, no matter how much you try to stop him, always returns to his original ideas! The stubborn mind does not adjust its mind according to things, but wants things to be subordinated to its ideas. ”
That is, once a person is ossified into a certain type of personality, it will have a comedic effect. Therefore, what can be parodied is not only the boss, but all fixed personalities. Therefore, being a supporting role classmate in "Meteor Garden" and an ordinary palace maid in "Huanzhu Gege" can make the characters in the original work show the mechanical and automatic part, and the more natural this funny reason is, the greater the funny effect.
In the Korean drama "A Day of Accidental Discovery", the supporting character who is used as the background board in the Mary Sue campus text awakens and immediately has a bystander's perspective - the whole purpose of the supporting character's existence is just to hand the heroine a tissue and a drink. The supporting characters fell down, just to let the male and female protagonists hold hands, which showed the stiffness of the original supporting characters' actions, and with the increasing number of awakened and self-aware supporting characters, the main story of the male and female protagonists also seemed more and more mechanical and bloody in their eyes. There is a poem in the play: "Before I call its name, it is merely a gesture, and when I call its name, it comes to me and becomes a flower," which means that when we look at the supporting characters with sympathy, the supporting characters will also have their own will, and on the contrary, when we withdraw from the emotions of the main characters, they are "just a gesture".
Resources:
Young translator Fan Ye talks about Don Quixote: Reading is the epitaph of a reader
Shao Yanjun: "Networking" and "Classicality" of Internet Literature
Gu Li: "Can't Help Capitalism: Understanding the "Domineering President"
Li Wei: From Genre to "Post-Genreization": On the New Changes in Chinese Online Literary Creation in Recent Years (2018-2022)