Note: This article was originally published in Journal of Langfang Normal University (Social Sciences Edition), Issue 2, 2024, pp. 25-34. The WeChat version has omitted notes, references and other information, and the official version is subject to the original text.
Alternative countryside, textual universe and net-sense aesthetic
——Based on the investigation of the series of short videos of "Once Upon a Time in the Square".
Liu Xin, Xiang Yuxing
Abstract: The series of short videos "Once Upon a Time in the Square" by Director Xiaoce is a representative work of China's new media literature and art in recent years. The creator presents an alternative image of the northern countryside by means of "spectacle" reconstruction of daily life and "parody" of classic movies. At the narrative level, the series of short videos gradually improves the story world in the narrative process, and calls on the audience to recreate the text through parallel universes and cross-media narratives, so as to construct a text universe of "square". At the aesthetic level, the creator goes deep into the "circle", integrates online pop culture, and responds to the feedback of the barrage in a timely manner, so that a solid "network sense" aesthetic isomorphic relationship is formed between the work and the audience. The series of short videos "Once Upon a Time in the Square" has expanded the space for the reproduction of Chinese images in new media literature and art, but there is still the problem of solidification of the creative model.
Keywords: Short Video, Director Xiao Ce, Alternative Village, Text Universe, Net Aesthetics, Once Upon a Time in the Square
introduction
"Once Upon a Time in the Square" is one of the series of video works of the main "director Xiao Ce" of Station B (Bilibili) UP, and is known as the most influential magical realism series on Station B. "Director Xiao Ce" was formerly known as Zhang Ce, on February 14, 2021, Zhang Ce cooperated with Station B's "New Year's Festival" to release the first work of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series - "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts", a short video with a duration of 10 minutes and 38 seconds directly rushed to the top of the popular list of Station B on the third day of the Lunar New Year. Since then, Zhang Ce has spent a year creating the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, opening his own "Square Universe", and successfully ranking among the top 100 UP masters of Station B in 2021 with this series. "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is very mature in terms of rural landscape, character building, audio-visual art, narrative rhythm, aesthetic taste, etc., and the "network sense" and "melting stalk" that interact at all times and the "rural" and "elderly" who are difficult to speak cleverly exist in the same time and space, wandering away from people's daily life, but being captured by the camera, injecting new vitality into the short drama video.
Figure 1 Director Xiaoce's homepage of Station B
Figure 2 Director Xiao Ce's Top 100 UP Main Ceremony at Station B
1. Alternative images of rural China
As a short video of rural life, the series "Once Upon a Time in the Square" constructs an alternative image of the Chinese countryside. Since 2016, there have been "Li Ziqi", "Huanong Brothers", "Food Writer Wang Gang" and other young UP masters uploading short videos of rural life on station B. Different from the earthy curiosity of the Huanong brothers and the idyllic poetry of Li Ziqi, Zhang Ce's "Once Upon a Time in the Square" uses the "spectacle" reconstruction of daily life, collage and parody of classic movies, to create a realistic and absurd, funny and warm rural picture, creating a big goose, three guns and other images that are loved by young people, which forms a sharp contrast with the rural short videos of Station B, and also forms the unique creative style of "Once Upon a Time in the Square". However, "Once Upon a Time in the Square" does not blindly pursue spectacle and strangeness, but also permeates Zhang Ce's grassroots feelings, trying to return to the authenticity and fireworks of daily life.
Figure 3 Director Xiaoce Station B dynamically released pictures
(1) Spectacle reconstruction of rural life
As an emerging media cultural phenomenon, short videos of rural life have formed a wide range of visual entertainment spectacles through the mediated performance of scenes of rural daily life. The concept of "spectacle" was first coined by the French scholar Guy Debord in his 1967 book The Society of Spectacle, in which he argued that "in a modern society where the conditions of production are omnipresent, life itself manifests itself as a vast accumulation of landscapes." Everything that exists directly is transformed into a single appearance". On the basis of Debord, the American scholar Douglas Kellner further proposed the concept of "media spectacle", that is, "a media cultural phenomenon that embodies the basic values of contemporary society, guides individuals to adapt to modern lifestyles, and dramatizes the conflicts and solutions of contemporary society". The Yinliu Village in "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is located in Zibo, Shandong Province, and is based on the real geographical landscape of the place. The characters in the film speak with an authentic Zibo accent, and local elements such as rural characters, local customs, and rural slang construct the unique "Yinliu Village Landscape" in the audience's experience of the northern countryside through the media.
"Once Upon a Time in the Square" reconstructs the scenes of daily life in the countryside in a "spectacle-oriented". The story of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is set in the Black Swan Square in Yinliu Village, where a group of village aunts compete for the right to use the square dance site, and a series of intrigue and interesting farces occur. Zhang Ce's camera captures the familiar scene of an aunt vying for turf with young people for square dancing, as an urban outsider who re-examines Yinliu Village from a comparative perspective, looking for similarities between Chinese rural culture and gangster culture. In 2018, when Zhang Ce returned to his hometown to celebrate the full moon for his son, he saw relatives, neighbors and aunts who came to help cook with a kitchen knife in their hands, and the impactful picture left a deep impression on him, which he later applied to the creation of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. When the major dance companies are at a stalemate in the negotiation meeting, the aunts of the aerobics dance troupe in the distance slowly walk slowly with kitchen knives and rolling pins, and the background music plays "Battle Without Honor Or Humanity" by Budai Yintai, making the scene similar to the movie "Kill Bill" The strong intertextuality is generated, and the audience can instantly think of the scene when Ishii Yuren and his party appear in Aobaya, and the battle for turf between square dance troupes is interpreted as a division of power between yakuza heroes, creating a murderous feeling for the audience.
Figure 4 The dance in the square is not a dance, but a human sophistication, and a screenshot of the video "Two Tigers".
The "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, the most popular "League of Women Avengers", has created a "country punk" landscape full of absurdity, black humor and violent aesthetics on the basis of spectacle. "Punk" originally refers to a genre of rock music that was born in England in the 70s of the 20th century, and now refers to dystopian spirit, anarchism and rebellion against mainstream values. "The League of Women Avengers" takes the criminal phenomenon of child abduction and trafficking in poor areas as the background, combines the two concepts of "village" and "punk", and closely revolves around these two mutually exclusive elements, using conflicting and dislocated visual concepts to construct the visual contrast, including the pistol under the seat of the tricycle, the green grenade hanging on the tree, the shotgun hidden in the firewood, etc., and the barrage has ridiculed the "simple folk customs of the willow village". A strong sense of dislocation is formed between the powerful arms and explosives equipment and the decaying rural living environment, and the terrifying identity of a professional killer and the image of an ordinary uncle and aunt. The integration of advanced and backward broadens the boundaries of the imagination of short videos of rural life, and the spectacle reconstruction of daily life and the construction of rural punk landscapes transcend the audience's image layer expectation vision, and the audience's cognitive experience of the countryside becomes unfamiliar, resulting in a sense of surprise and freshness.
Figure 5 Director Xiaoce Station B dynamically released pictures
(2) Entertaining deconstruction of elite culture
The promotion of popular content and the parody of elite culture and classic culture in short videos are an entertaining deconstruction under the Internet communication medium. Canadian scholar Linda Hutcheon points out that parody in the postmodern context is the repetition of differences, and that "the double vocalization or heterogeneity of parody is not only a means of affirming differences, but it also paradoxically provides a collective, common textual model of discourse, which emphasizes the contextualization of differences rather than denying or downplaying them." The "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is full of parodies of classic Hollywood movies and Hong Kong movies. Zhang Ce is not only good at using "Once Upon a Time in the Square" to make funny and comical imitations of the original film text, but also dismantling the content he parodies, and then integrating it into his own script creation in a unique banter way.
For example, "It's Not a Dance in the Square, It's Human Feelings, and 'Two Tigers'" deals with the turf competition of square dance troupes, which parodies the narrative framework of gangster negotiations in the movie Black Gold. When Liu Da Ge said Liang Jiahui's classic line of "After I finish speaking, who is in favor and who is against", he turned his head and slapped Cao Ling who objected, which not only paid tribute to the famous scenes of the movie, but also made the plot reach a climax. "The Founding of the Sect" parodies the main plot of the movie "Master", and the long shot at the end of the film overlaps with the classic shot of "The Grandmaster" in terms of sensory. The structure of the character relationship in "Flying Away from Life" imitates "Initial D", the ending and concept are similar to "Flying Life", and the fragment of pouring wine in the middle is taken from "Kung Fu". "If You Want to Wear a Crown, You Must Bear Its Weight" pays tribute to Wong Kar-wai's line monologue and the style of frame extraction and slow-speed shooting. The classic scenes of Hollywood and Hong Kong movies have been reinterpreted by rural grandpas and aunts, resulting in a comical aesthetic effect and a sense of novelty and drama that has been defamiliarized. The use of amateur actors further strengthens this sense of absurdity, allowing the audience to always watch in a state of "distancing".
Figure 6 The dance in the square is not a dance, but a human sophistication, and a screenshot of the video "Two Tigers".
Figure 7 Screenshot of the video "Flying Afterlife".
The difference between the imitated background text and the newly created text challenges and restricts the audience to a certain extent, that is, the complicity effect. Linda Hutchen has noted: "The pleasure of parody does not come particularly from humor, but from the degree to which the reader engages in intertextuality between complicity and alienation." "The creative advantage of skillfully placing the classic clips of the film in the Chinese rural environment, and then imagining and re-creating, is not only reflected in the storytelling and public acceptance of the classic clips of the film itself, but also in the sense of substitution caused by the scenes of daily rural life presented in the video, so that the audience's imagination and memory can participate in it, form resonance, and enhance the audience's subjective participation. The audience will follow the creators to deconstruct the original grand meaning and elite attributes of the film, construct a new story full of drama, and be willing to identify with the new spiritual core in this absurd scene. If the film carries the grand, sublime, and eternal elements of elite culture, then when the characters and plots in it are replaced by the daily and grassroots text space referred to in the Chinese countryside, the boundaries between the elite and the public, the sacred and the entertaining, are blurred, and the aesthetic taste of the flat, pluralistic and secular nature of postmodern society is presented.
(3) Civilian expression of artistic creation
Zhang Ce was born in the countryside of Liaocheng, Shandong Province, and his childhood experience in the countryside constructed Zhang Ce's "folk identity" and "grassroots complex", which enabled him to pay attention to the life world of the bottom from a civilian perspective when creating the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. Zhang Ce didn't like the kind of pastoral that Li Ziqi presented, thinking that it was unreal. There is a unique beauty in the countryside in his eyes, full of stories, but the stories are weathered by the years. During the filming of "The Old Man Has Something to Rely on", it was originally envisaged that the lens language of Ergou returning to the countryside from the city was the superposition of the dirt road from the asphalt road to the countryside, but there was no such road at the scene, so it was temporarily changed to an old lady picking up bottles in the garbage sorting bin, and the three guns peeing on the side. Zhang Ce explained that this is related to his grassroots background: "Whatever village fate has arranged for me, I will work in it and create in its soil." "Digital media has changed the situation of elite artistic hegemony, opened up the literary and artistic discourse to the public, and established the civilian perspective of the subject. Zhang Ce integrates his unique feelings and experiences of life into Once Upon a Time in the Square, and his civilian perspective is mainly reflected in the true portrayal of grassroots and small people, as well as the expression of folk feelings.
Figure 8 Screenshot of the video "Something to Rely on for the Elderly".
First of all, the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series focuses on the survival of marginalized groups in rural China, and portrays the little characters with distinct personalities, laughing and scolding--Liu Da'e, the godmother of the square, the flamboyant "tea soldier" Sancannon, the scheming Cao Ling, who is-for-tat with Liu Da'e, and Liu Da'e's loyal follower Dong Erhua...... Take Liu Da Ge as an example, Liu Da Ge is the most important and proudest character in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. Liu Da'e is famous for her role as "ruthless", but she has a kind heart under her tough appearance, she does not hesitate to take risks to administer justice for Cao Ling's daughter Meimei, and she never gives in to the pressure of the former director Song Daring. The character of the big goose conveys the gangster's morality and the spirit of not admitting defeat, no matter how hard and difficult the life is, she has to live strongly. When Zhang Ce creates the personality of these characters, he is based on the excavation of the real character of the actors, and he uses civilian emotions and civilian perspectives to pay attention to the joys, sorrows and sorrows of the little people around him, and places them in a dramatic situation to highlight the character characteristics of the characters. These amateur actors from the folk glow with the brilliance of "higher than life" in Xiao Ce's images. When talking about the plot of Wang Sanpao's purchase of wine in "The League of Women Avengers", Zhang Ce said: "Little people are the same in any era, and everyone has Ah Q in their hearts. "The little people embody the reality of everyday life, making the reader fall back from the country-punk imagination of bullets and intrigue to the fireworks of real life.
Secondly, "Once Upon a Time in the Square" looks at the emotions and living conditions of the characters at the bottom, and under the black humor is the real life dilemma faced by every ordinary person, showing Zhang Ce's submerged bottom consciousness and folk feelings. In "The Old Man Has Something to Rely on", Zhang Ce focuses on the left-behind elderly in the countryside and tells the story of a middle-aged man who works in the city and returns to his hometown to mourn. The story is based on real events, reflecting the current situation of the elderly left behind in rural areas and young people working outside the country, as well as the sense of isolation between the elderly and the young. "Infernal Square" starts from the perspective of Dong Erhua, telling the story of how rural women awaken and resist under the mockery of the world. Her husband was idle, her children were indifferent to her, she ate noodles for twenty yuan for half a month, and in the face of the misery of life, Erhua finally broke down and cried while eating noodles. The explosive emotional catharsis made many viewers see the epitome of the women around them in Erhua, and had a strong emotional resonance. The sharing of digital media, the popularization of art creators, and the popularization of audiences have enabled disadvantaged groups in society to gain more opportunities for artistic expression and acceptance, and the voices that truly belong to the people and the bottom can be transmitted.
Figure 9 Director Xiao Ce's "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is a short video of rural life, constructing an alternative image of China's countryside.
2. The deconstruction and reconstruction of the textual universe
Each work in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is related in detail, and the two seemingly independent and closed-loop stories actually take place under the same time line, complementing each other and jointly constructing a "square universe". From the earliest "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (MCU) to the "IP Universe" represented by "Tang Tan Universe" and "Fengshen Universe" in China, "Universe Development" has become a creative strategy widely favored by film and television practitioners. "Universe" can be regarded as a hypertext, and Zhang Ce understands and completes the construction of the story world of "Square Universe" from the text level, and creates multiple stories for the same or different characters in the context of this unified world view. The development of an alternative universe is essentially a connection of multiple different but interrelated paratexts, and the text space appears blank and uncertain, further calling the audience to collectively interpret and recreate the text. By opening social media accounts for virtual characters to connect the virtual and the real, the narrative space can be expanded, so that the vitality of the "Square Universe" can be continued for a long time.
Figure 10 Movie posters related to the Universe of the Gods
(1) Text space: the structure of the story world
Whether it is a "cinematic universe" or an "IP universe", it can be regarded as a "storyworld" at the level of narratology. The concept of a "story world" was first proposed by narrator David Herman, that is, "a story world is a mental model of someone and others, at a certain time, in a certain place, for a certain reason, and in a certain way in the world". The world of the story is not the real world in which the creator and interpreter live, but the model world evoked by the text and projected in the inner mind of the interpreter. The "Shadow Willow Village" in "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is a psychological model of the story world evoked by a series of short video works. Mark J.P. Wolf proposed that the three most basic elements of a story world are: Maps, Timelines, and Genealogies.
The "map", that is, the space where things can exist and develop. According to Wolff, the map is the most important element, and the map, as the basic image of the story world, provides the basic structure of the worldview. The success of "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts" led Zhang Ce to begin to develop his "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series in a planned way, which was always produced by the same production team, maintaining a unified audiovisual and narrative style, providing an interrelated textual basis that enabled the series of films to be established in the same "universe". In terms of the structure of the world view, although the continuous exploration and improvement of the world view in "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is also completed in the narrative process of the series, in the second video released in the series, "What Dances in the Square Is Not Dance, It Is Human Feelings, and "Two Tigers"", has already provided the audience with the core rules of world operation, that is, under the dualistic structure formed by the 857 Dance Troupe headed by Liu Da Goose and the Disco Dance Troupe headed by Cao Ling, Dong Erhua's Latin Dance Company, Waltz Dance Company, Gymnastics and dance troupes and others compete for the land rights of Black Swan Square.
Figure 11 The dance in the square is not a dance, but a human sophistication, and a screenshot of the video "Two Tigers".
"Time", or timeline, refers to the duration or span of an event. Timelines can connect the backstory to the current events of the story, helping viewers fill in the gaps. In addition, timelines allow simultaneous actions, stories, or other causal relationships to be referenced to each other to provide context for events. "Once Upon a Time in the Square" embodies a kind of longitudinal extension of thinking in the dimension of time, and the "Square Universe" concept opened up by it has a history and a future setting, including how Liu Da'e sat in the position of the head of the black swan field, and what happened before this? In the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, the story is no longer a closed loop, but an open story with a past and a future, which is also the basis for Zhang Ce to develop the prequel "Infernal Square" in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. This kind of narrative, which is not limited by frameworks and revolves only around the core worldview, presents the characteristics of neo-baroque narrative aesthetics of seriality and polycentrism.
Figure 12 Director Xiao Ce's dynamic release of pictures at Station B
A "character lineage" can also be seen as one or more characters who inhabit this world and the relationships between them. When building their own universes, most film and television works often adopt the creative strategy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the DC Cinematic Universe, that is, to launch multiple single-player films first, and then establish the cinematic universe through "intertextuality". In the early days, "Once Upon a Time in the Square" connected the characters with each other through the portrayal of the group portraits of the characters, giving them room for the development of the story within a larger background framework. Therefore, for the audience of "Once Upon a Time in the Square", the relationship between the world view and the characters is familiar.
(2) Text Summoning: The Development of Parallel Universes
In his essay "The Convocation Structure of Text", the German receptive aesthete Wolfgang Isserr pointed out that literary texts constantly evoke readers' reading expectations based on existing perspectives, but to arouse them in order to break it and enable readers to gain new horizons. In this way, the reader is evoked to fill in the gaps, connect the gaps, and renew the textual structure of the view, which is the so-called textual summoning structure. Zhang Ce intends to develop Once Upon a Time in the Square as a "parallel universe" and form a textual summoning mechanism. On the one hand, the integrity of the worldview architecture and the potential long-term continuity brought about by the vertical derivation in the temporal dimension is one of the prerequisites for the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series to be able to develop its story world into a universe. On the other hand, linear continuity also creates a limitation. In the continuous text, the map, the timeline, and the relationships between the characters have been formed, and the future development of the characters and the plot must maintain the original setting and character of the characters. This not only limits the creator's space for storytelling, but also increases the requirements of the work for the audience's "knowledge reserve". The setting of parallel universes can break this linear continuity, leaving a lot of uncertainty and structural gaps in the text, calling on readers to participate in the re-creation of the meaning of the text.
A parallel universe is one or more separate universes that exist under the same timeline as the main universe, and the main events of the story world basically take place in the main universe, and when Zhang Ce wants to make some changes, he will place it in the parallel universe. For example, in the main universe, Cao Ling is the deputy director of Black Swan Square, Dong Erhua is Liu Daye's follower, and in "Flying for the Rest of My Life", the two have become competitors in the national tricycle competition, "Sister Gao Qiaoling" and "Zhong Li". Parallel universes break the traditional notion of linear continuity in time, but instead of completely subverting continuity, they aim to develop new possibilities of continuity for the same character, usually reflected in the continuation of the character's personality and qualities. In "The Godwoman", Liu Daye agrees to Cao Ling's request to administer justice for her daughter Meimei, and she uses means other than the law to judge the wicked, and the plot is more sensitive and easy to cause controversy. And the character's official account "This is Liu Daye" said in the comment area that Liu Daye in the video has been punished for picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and the next update will be Liu Daye in the parallel world.
The setting of the parallel universe does not affect the main universe storyline, but establishes multiple story lines, and through the intertextuality between multiple story lines, the parallel universe and the main universe intersect. For example, in "Flying for the Rest of My Life", there was a plot where the driver "Feitian Lao Li" was unable to participate because the key was stolen, and in "Old Guys", there is a bridge between Sancang and Feitian Lao Li about another electric three-wheel racing competition; in "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts", the forgetfulness of Sanpao seems to be insignificant, but in "Old Guys", it is presented again, which seems to imply that the audience Sanpao's brain suffers from some kind of disease; Ergou is the head of the ghost step dance school, and in "Late Night Hot Pot", Ergou, who runs a hot pot restaurant, became a divorced chef who likes to dance ghost step dance, and the three children were awarded to the woman. When setting up these intersections, Zhang Ce also uses images that have appeared in previous works to create the feeling that the world line is closed. These unacknowledged dark lines of the story connect the entire "square universe", creating a kind of uncertainty and blankness in the meaning of the text, and forming a structural mechanism that summons the audience to interpret. The audience deconstructed the "Square Universe" to a certain extent in the plot analysis in the barrage message and comment area, and filled in a lot of details and personality expression of the setting based on the existing experience, such as the discovery of scene details, the imagination of the characters' psychology, the explanation of the plot logic, etc., and actively filled and reorganized the gaps in the main universe story line.
Figure 13 Screenshot of the video "Flying Afterlife".
Figure 14 Screenshot of the video "Something to Rely on for the Elderly".
(3) Narrative extension: the connection of virtual reality
In order to improve the "Square Universe", Zhang Ce opened a personal social account for the actors of "Once Upon a Time in the Square" at Station B. Starting from the protagonist Liu Daye, the characters in the film such as Sanpao, Erhua, and Cao Ling have announced that they will settle in Station B, and their account names are also consistent with the names of the characters played in the film. Canadian scholar Philip Gothier argues that "people (the virtual world) and interactors (the real world) exist simultaneously on social media (connection points)." In this context, the connection point of social media reshapes the relationship between the virtual and the real, and the space in which this relationship unfolds. "Social media brings avatars into the real world of their audience and creates new ways for them to communicate with them. These accounts run by the cosplayers themselves will communicate and interact with the audience in the comment area of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series of videos from time to time, and the aunts and uncles will also update the accounts with short videos of farm life such as singing and cooking, so that followers can not only follow the narrative development of the virtual world in which the characters live, but also learn more about the simple and real real life of these characters.
Figure 15 Screenshot of Liu Da'e's account at Station B
Once Upon a Time in the Square uses these accounts to further expand the narrative of the story world in which the virtual characters live, and to achieve a new interaction between the audience and the story world in the form of "matryoshka dolls", allowing the audience to participate more deeply in the virtual world. Viewers will find that the video content they post is sometimes linked to the plot of the feature film Once Upon a Time in the Square. In the first episode of "Infernal Square", which was updated on November 12, 2021, Aunt Hot Mouth witnessed the scene of the quarrel between Shun's son-in-law and Hua Qiang's mother, and took a video with her mobile phone while "persuading", and uploaded it to Aunt Hot Mouth's Station B account "Sun Shangxiang and Li Meili" the next day, and "Infernal Square", which was updated on November 21 In the second episode, because Hua Qiang injured Shunzi's son-in-law in a dispute, Shunzi wanted to go to court to sue Hua Qiang, Liu Da Gee persuaded Shunzi to go private, and took out his mobile phone to tell Shunzi that tens of thousands of people on station B had seen the cause and effect of this incident (see Figure 1 on the next page). Liu Da'e's mobile phone is playing the "persuasion" video posted by Aunt Hot Mouth on the account of Station B (see Figure 2 on the next page). This interactive form, which was jokingly called "matryoshka" by netizens at Station B, not only fills the gap in the online narrative of the story of "Infernal Square", but also breaks the "fourth wall", allowing the audience to feel fictional and become part of the virtual world where the characters are located, enhancing the dramatic and comedic effect of the work.
Figure 16 Screenshot of the video of "Infernal Plaza 02".
Figure 17 Screenshot of the video of "Infernal Square 02".
The use of social media by virtual characters liberates the story world from a specific time and space, and enables them to enter the real world at will, realizing the reverse penetration of the story world into the real world. Long before the birth of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, Zhang Ce had already registered a Station B account for his company "Dream Star He", which is currently mostly used to release some filming highlights of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. In the plot of "Phoenix, Nirvana!", in order to help high school classmate Lihua realize her music dream, Ergou sent the video of Lihua singing to his brother-in-law Xiao Ce, who is engaged in the directing industry, Xiao Ce named the video "This person, the fire!", and posted it on the account of his company "Dream Star He", the video "exploded" on station B overnight, and Lihua also received an invitation from a well-known musician. After the release of "Phoenix, Nirvana!" , the "Dream Star He" account in the real world also updated this video synchronously, and reproduced the settings in the plot one by one, including the title, comments, and even the B station account of Mr. Tengger himself also appeared in the comment area, leaving the same comments as in the video, and the virtual story world became a part of the real world. This immersive communication method realizes the reality of the virtual space and extends the narrative space of the story world.
Figure 18 Screenshot of Dream Star and "This Man, This Man!!" video
3. The occurrence and solidification of aesthetic isomorphism of network sense
The most prominent feature of network aesthetics is "network sense", which is a new aesthetic mechanism that includes network thinking and expression: "network sense refers to the cultural characteristics and aesthetic style of the Internet that are displayed when a work of art is produced, disseminated and accepted in cyberspace, or a general term for the psychological state and emotional atmosphere of netizens when they accept a work of art, which reflects the aesthetic taste of netizens...... The sense of network not only refers to the scientific and technological aesthetic characteristics of computer network technology, but also to the mass aesthetic characteristics of consumer society, and more importantly, to the social characteristics of dissolving elite consciousness and filling the gap. It can be said that the key to new media literature and art is to find the network sense aesthetics that are compatible with the aesthetic acceptance of netizens, and the "network sense" cannot be simply equated with the aesthetic carnival of pure pursuit of traffic, spoofs or curiosity, but must be maintained by the creators and critics of new media literature and art.
Zhang Ce draws on the aesthetic appeal of "net sense" to complete the expectation of the implied readers of "Once Upon a Time in the Square", so that "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is closer to the circle aesthetic in terms of material selection, style, and meaning, so that the cohesion between the audience and the work is continuously enhanced, forming a solid "network sense" aesthetic isomorphic relationship. Although the establishment of this isomorphic relationship has won the market for the Square series, the homogenization of content and techniques will inevitably exhaust the audience's patience and produce aesthetic fatigue. In terms of duration, "Once Upon a Time in the Square" far exceeds ordinary short videos, but its creative core still follows the thinking of short videos, which constitutes the limitations of Zhang Ce's works and the creative dilemma he faces.
(1) Aesthetic stratification and breaking the circle
Digital media not only provides creators with abundant aesthetic resources, but also creates a new aesthetic way of "network sense". Short video creators' expectations of public reputation, which can then be translated into financial benefits, require them to constantly bridge the gap between themselves and the mixed mass circles, and the phenomenon of audience stratification of short videos is becoming more and more obvious. Zhang Ce is known as the first director of Station B, and in his short video career, he has successively created two "explosive" IPs that have successfully "broken the circle" in "Zhu Yi's Boring Life" and "Once Upon a Time in the Square". At present, the account "Director Xiaoce" has 3.388 million fans on the B station platform, and the number of views of a single episode of "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is stable at more than one million. Zhang Ce's success is not accidental, at the beginning of his creation, he integrated the aesthetic intention of the acceptance of circle culture into the creation of "Once Upon a Time in the Square", and took rural life as the starting point to create a new short video creation mode: one is to draw on the aesthetic appeal of "network sense" to create works closer to the circle, and the other is to complete the aesthetic extension of the circle from the outside to the inside of the circle, so as to achieve the need to "break the circle".
When creating "Once Upon a Time in the Square", Zhang Ce fully considered the aesthetic type, scope, and continuously changing needs of the user circle. In terms of the choice of platform, Zhang Ce took Station B as the main development platform of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. First of all, the user group of station B is represented by Generation Z, which is younger as a whole, and they advocate more diverse cultural attributes, and their acceptance and tolerance of culture are also higher. Station B itself is not a "short video" platform, the core circle of "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is the short video lovers of rural life at Station B, and the basic literacy of short video creation, such as the parody of movie elements and the grasp of popular Internet stalks, enables the work to sink to a wider circle of users on the whole platform; Secondly, Station B is a barrage website, and the barrage itself has the attributes of the second creation, so that users can output opinions on the platform, "bury stalks" and "play stalks". For example, "Black Goose Power", "Anti-Goose Revenge", "You Don't Even Want to Call Me Sister Goose", etc., the audience spontaneously deconstructed and reconstructed the video content, and the content is more in line with the aesthetics of the circle with the participation of the audience.
The positioning of the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is also more accurate when receiving advertising and promoting and linking with celebrities, which fits its own style attributes. One of the major features of "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is square dance, and the most commonly used soundtrack for square dance is the music of Phoenix Legend, so in "Phoenix, Nirvana!" and "Who Doesn't Have a Star Friend!", it has been linked with Phoenix Legend twice, which further highlights its own characteristics. Almost every video in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series has a business order, but not every product feature is consistent with the style of the video itself. Zhang Ce did not choose to implant it directly, but digested the differences between product features and video styles well, and maintained the consistent tone of the video. As a promotion of the game CFHD, "League of Women's Avengers" combines the film culture belonging to the elite circle and the shooting game belonging to the youth circle with the Chinese rural uncle and aunt through montage editing skills, becoming the most successful "circle-breaking" phenomenal work in the series, with more than 10 million views. The whole short film of "Late Night Hot Pot" can even be seen as a creative advertisement for the "Wanghawthorn" drink, Liu Dage will order a bottle of "Wanghawthorn" every time he goes to the hot pot restaurant, if someone wants to ask Sister Goose to do something, as long as the person leaves, she agrees to drink the bottle of "Wanghawthorn" on the table. "Wangshan hawthorn" is Liu Da'e's special offering, and it is a symbol of Liu Da'e's power and status. Zhang Ce not only advertised, but also made up a story for "Wangshan Hawthorn" and gave it imagery.
Figure 19 Screenshot of the video "Who Doesn't Have a Celebrity Friend!"
(2) The occurrence of aesthetic isomorphism of network sense
The reason why the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series was able to quickly seize the short video market and quickly establish fan adhesion is that its advantages focus on the so-called Internet thinking, the control of "memes", "current affairs hot spots" and "commercial elements". Zhang Ce, who was in college, would shoot a short film with his friends in the micro-film club every week, and play it on the projector on the way to school, and then observe where the students who stopped to watch the film would laugh, "You have to remember where they laughed, and this is the initial formation of the network sense." Zhang Ce emphasized that the most important thing in creation is the story, and more importantly, how the "Yinliu Village" in "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is a virtual world, and how to establish an isomorphic relationship with the real-world network culture and gain momentum from it. Among them, the direct isomorphism at the content level is the endogenous driving force that promotes the continuous operation of the story world, and the indirect isomorphism at the reception level is the exogenous driving force that keeps the story world always needed by the audience.
Figure 20 Screenshot of the video "Director Xiao Ce: I wonder every month, are others praising me?".
At the content level, Zhang Ce is good at capturing hot online events, pop culture elements and online popular memes, extracting character archetypes from his own observations, and then extending stories that can resonate with the audience. For example, in "giegie, you teach me square dance, your wife won't beat you!", the short film immediately caught the most popular "giegie" stalk at station B at that time, and "The Godwife" combined the two Internet hotspots of "Huaqiang Buys Melon" and "Sexual Assault Incident". Another example is "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts", which tells the story of four rural aunts playing mahjong during the Spring Festival while comparing each other's children's recent situation. The aunts used the "Versailles" literary tone that was popular on the Internet at that time to launch two rounds of comparison, realizing the second-level reversal of the plot. In the first round of competition, the children went from having a successful career, having money and leisure, to becoming an astronaut, and finally becoming Ultraman, and the plot direction gradually became nonsensical, making the audience give up the requirement for the seriousness of the script. When the next round of comparison began, popular online content such as "Dragon King", "Resident Evil" and "Three-Body Civilization" appeared one after another, further enhancing the comedy effect of the short film. After laying out enough dense laughs, the short film quickly sublimates the theme of the story. The aunt's children are all unable to go home for reunion because of the epidemic, some of them are company directors, some are overseas students, and some are medical staff and police officers who stick to the front line of the anti-epidemic, which has a strong resonance among audiences in similar situations.
Figure 21 Director Xiao Ce's dynamic release of pictures at Station B
On the receptive level, aesthetic expectations react on the work itself. The success of "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts" made Zhang Ce realize that this narrative style is deeply loved by the audience, and he drew on the aesthetic appeal of "network sense", and took the screenwriting habits and picture language of "Seven Aunts and Eight Aunts" as a reference, and successively created two works, "Mother Robs the Gift" and "Who Doesn't Have a Star Friend!", and "Mahjong Game" has become a fixed form in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series. Zhang Ce pays special attention to the feedback of the barrage at station B, and he uses the interactive nature of the barrage such as high immediacy, synchronicity, and can be repeatedly edited to collect and recreate the audience's feedback in a timely manner. For example, Wang Sanpao's mouth fetish "De'er" was first conceived by Zhang Ce, and from the perspective of the effect, it can properly portray the character characteristics of "Three Cannons", and the audience's response in the barrage and comment area is very good, and even directly replace this mouth fetish with the onomatopoeia symbol "der", Zhang Ce will deliberately implant videos in his future creations and become the label of Wang Sanpao's character. Another example is the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, which often appears "When the three cannons want to ask the goose for more money, as long as they move out of the third uncle as an excuse, the big goose will not refuse", this plot first appeared in "The Rest of the Flying Life", the three cannons secretly took an extra piece of tofu and was found by the big goose, and lied that it was given to the third uncle before escaping the catastrophe, and was turned into a homophonic stalk "exchanging uncles for salaries", and when such plots appeared later, it became a tacit stalk between Zhang Ce and the audience.
Figure 22 Screenshot of the video "The League of Women Avengers".
(3) The solidification of the creative thinking mode
Although the establishment of the aesthetic isomorphic relationship of network sense quickly won the market for the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, it also became Zhang Ce's creative dilemma. On January 6, 2022, the "Director Xiao Ce" account of Station B updated a video, "Xiao Ce Talks to Jia Zhangke: Everyone who holds a mobile phone can be a director", Zhang Ce in front of the camera explained his traffic thinking in a conversation with Jia Zhangke, a well-known domestic director. Zhang Ce admitted that he is a creator who grew up in the era of traffic, and the popularity of "Zhu Yi's Boring Life" in 2019 made him feel the feeling of being hit by the wave of traffic for the first time. He knows exactly what his audience wants, where they will laugh, and what kind of barrage will be in which episode after the video is released. He flexibly used the rules of survival in the short video world to release eye-catching titles, and even when he talked to Jia Zhangke, he had already thought about the title of this interview short film - "Will the movie be kicked out of the stage of history by short videos", and the cover is Zhang Ce holding his mobile phone like a gun, aiming at Jia Zhangke.
Figure 23 Screenshot of the video "Xiao Ce Talks to Jia Zhangke: Everyone with a mobile phone can be a director".
The solidification of thinking and the templateization of creation brought about by the aesthetic isomorphism of network sense will inevitably lead to the aesthetic fatigue of the audience. The script of each episode of "Once Upon a Time in the Square" is usually only about 2,000 words, and Zhang Ce relies more on the emergence of creative inspiration or ideas extracted from life in his creation. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin points out that cinematic montage gives the viewer a "schockwirkung" effect: "It is difficult for the viewer to think about the picture of the film, and when he wants to think about it, the screen breaks." "Once Upon a Time in the Square" already belongs to the category of medium video in terms of duration, but Zhang Ce still follows the shooting mode of short videos and pursues the highest efficiency brought by "short". He tends to use fast-changing cuts to bring about the integration of dopamine in a short period of time, leaving the viewer in a thrilling experience that has no time to think. At this stage, although this creative mode has quickly won the market for the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, it is difficult to maintain its lasting charm.
Zhang Ce is also soberly aware that his current creative mode cannot be long-term, such as the Shaw Brothers camera movement in "The Alliance of Women Avengers", the plot of the three guns driving a tricycle in "Flying for the Rest of My Life", and Zeng Yi's car chase in "Phoenix Nirvana...... These most wonderful scenes are just parodies of classic movies. The one-to-one reproduction of the plot of the classic movie and the lack of originality are the dissatisfaction of "Once Upon a Time in the Square". As a prequel to the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, the "Infernal Square" series has ended, and the title of the last episode is "Evil does not prevail over good, goodbye to the rivers and lakes", at the end of the video, Liu Da Ge reminisced about the past in a quiet and peaceful time. "Once Upon a Time in the Square" can be regarded as another attempt made by Zhang Ce on the basis of "Once Upon a Time in the Square", but the strong "net sense" aesthetic isomorphic relationship between "Once Upon a Time in the Square" and the audience has caused the audience's expectation to gradually solidify, so the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series is generally not as high as "Once Upon a Time in the Square" in terms of acceptance. Compared with the happiness of the original feature film brought by a large number of collages and parodies in the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series, "Infernal Square" is more about simply telling a story, and the plot advancement mostly relies on character dialogues, showing a transformation in narrative style through deliberate exaggeration. But whether it is the imitation of Wong Kar-wai's style in "If You Want to Wear the Crown, You Must Bear Its Weight!" or the original script of "The Old Man Depends on You" and "The White Head Doesn't Grow Old Together", or the "Infernal Square" series's attempt at serial dramas, it all shows that Zhang Ce is seeking a new video model.
Figure 24 Screenshot of the video "Evil does not prevail over good, goodbye to the rivers and lakes!".
epilogue
Under the overall trend of continuous development of new media art, short video, as an irresistible trend, has influenced the contemporary aesthetic sense. Whether it is a spectacle reconstruction of rural life, or a collage and parody of existing movie plots, the "Once Upon a Time in the Square" series of videos may seem unprofessional, but in fact it is a grasp of the aesthetic intuition of "network sense", and the reason why it can succeed is inseparable from Zhang Ce's personal aesthetic quality and his pursuit of making feature-length films. At a time when popular culture is dominant, can Zhang Ce's pursuit of the film dream keep "Once Upon a Time in the Square" from falling into the trap of "abandoning elegance and following the vulgar"? At present, Zhang Ce still has a long way to go from "Once Upon a Time in the Square" to a big movie.
About the Author
Liu Xin is an associate professor and master's supervisor at the School of Humanities and the Institute of Literary and Art Criticism at Hangzhou Normal University, focusing on critical theory and new media literature and art.
Editor|Sun Jiaqi
Proofreading|Zhang Jiyuan
Audit | Jin Jiuhong, Nie Yi
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Table of Contents:
Journal of Langfang Normal University (Social Sciences Edition) | Table of Contents and Abstract of Article No. 2, 2024