The color tone is gray, the building is dilapidated, the girl is youthful, but the expression is melancholy, such a scene, with the background music of "can't get out, can't see through the ......", is the standard for showing "county literature" nowadays. In a short period of time, hundreds of millions of broadcasts or views on various platforms have set off a "beautiful and melancholy" literary and artistic aesthetic trend in the county.
"County literature" is popular in Xiaohongshu
While becoming a hot spot, netizens also quarreled into a pot of porridge, some people were moved, imitated, and some people fiercely criticized.
But in any case, "county literature" is a keyword that cannot be escaped from the Internet in May.
At the same time that "county literature" became a trend in Xiaohongshu and Douyin in the name of an image style, a rap MV called "Factory" also exploded on station B, with 4.164 million views and nearly 300,000 coins.
Turning to the long video platform, "Faint Fire" uses a suspenseful story to tell the "history of the disappearance of romance" that happened on the night of the millennium in the town, and "My Altay" is considered to use "love" and "poetry" to change the "county literature" shaped by stereotypes.
Is the rise of this wave of county narratives a poor imitation of past classics, or is it a "county renaissance" that has accumulated a lot? Behind the fermented Internet topic, is it a spiritual homecoming under the wave of modernization, or is it a cheap consumption hidden under compassion?
What exactly is "county literature" expressing, and what is it revealed?
The pros and cons of "county literature".
It is impossible to verify who was the first to label this kind of photographic works with a distinctive "county style" as "county literature". But what is certain is that the appearance of this label can be traced back to three or four months ago, and it is only recently that it has been noticed and discussed by the public as a trend.
In fact, if you browse the entry "county literature", you will find that many works do not mean to represent the county. Many of the works are just simple nostalgic style, as if going back in time to the eighties and nineties of the last century, returning to the county seat of my childhood hometown, strolling around the streets and touching the dogs in the neighborhood......
At first, it was just a "surprise" brought by aesthetic differences, but gradually, more and more people felt an emotional resonance in this strange and familiar picture. After all, the prosperity and fashion of a big city, or the idyllic simplicity of a small mountain village, have expressed themselves enough. And the county town stuck in between the two, in terms of literary and artistic performance, has been a silent part for a long time, and "county literature" has given an outlet for display.
As the "county seat" as a symbol is highlighted, "county literature" as a video style is gradually stylized, and it is the same as the visual image of the "county theme" film represented by Jia Zhangke and Gu Changwei: most of the buildings are dilapidated and old, and the color tone is basically oppressive gray, and the "train" and "platform" that often appear construct the metaphor of "running away", presenting the desire of young people in small towns to escape from the county; The "city wall" and "fence" symbolize people's alienation and indifference, as well as the confinement of people by the closed environment. In the end, all this was highly summarized by a sentence in Mao Buyi's song, "You can't get out, you can't see through", and it was widely spread.
Jia Zhangke's movie "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers", a typical "county town aesthetics"
But there is more than one side of the people, let alone the county seat.
As the number of followers increased, some people soon expressed their disgust with this kind of "county literature". They criticized the homogenization of the filming, and gave examples of the prosperity of their hometowns to break the stereotype of the "decay" of the county.
In the narration of these "county youth", in many counties in China, there are basically some in the material big cities, and there are basically all here; Concerts and music festivals, which were once considered exclusive to big cities, are now also repeatedly present in the cultural consumption of county people. They believe that life in the county is better and more relaxed than in the big cities. The proof is: in recent years, topics such as #Small county lying flat is really too comfortable# and other topics about the slow-paced life of the county have rushed to the hot search one after another. Including during this year's May Day, more and more tourists came to the county.
Netizens used bubble tea shops to gather to prove the prosperity of their hometown
In the eyes of these critics, this wave of popular "county literature" is a disease-free moan, and it is the "condescending" gaze and conjecture of urban people standing on the outside to the county seat.
Interestingly, there are now some "criticisms of criticism" that claim to come from small economically underdeveloped counties, and those who think the county is beautiful and relaxed, which is essentially no different from the city people who give the stereotype of the county as "old and small".
After all, China is geographically vast, and no county can represent all counties, and there are no keywords that can simply summarize the complex county appearance. From this point of view, it is accurate to define these phenomena as "county literature", literature itself is a creation with subjective colors, it is more concerned with emotional expression, and it is not interested in everything.
"Storytelling" in the aesthetics of the county
Although the person who initially created the tag of "county literature" may have just parody of "nonsense literature" and "crazy literature", in a sense, he also happened to grasp the charm of the so-called "county aesthetics": the story tension brought by its unique geographical location.
In most literary and artistic works, the city and the countryside are always like two mirrors that serve as each other's references - the city represents prosperity and modernity, and the countryside indicates tranquility and backwardness. Before the rediscovery of the county, many stories will take place in the "entering the city" and "returning to the hometown", in these two almost completely opposite behaviors of entering and exiting places, entering the city is to confirm the backwardness of the countryside, and returning to the hometown is to criticize the alienation and spiritual crisis brought by the city.
Jia Zhangke's movie "The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers"
And the county seat is different. The small county town, located between the city and the countryside, is a more complex and contradictory third space. It is a transitional state between the countryside and the city - compared with the modern city, the county seat is relatively small, and the lanes and buildings are relatively crowded; However, compared with the countryside, the county town has the modernity and openness that the latter is not as good as.
It accommodates the modern spiritual entertainment introduced from the city, but also accommodates a group of people with a local temperament, placing them in the relatively fresh world of the county seat. It is like a long bottleneck, people can follow the bottleneck to get a glimpse of the outside world, as if as long as they struggle a little harder and take a difficult step forward, they can lead to the wilderness of life.
Netizens' discussion about "county literature".
This is also why, "Escape from the county" can be said to be a theme about "county" in literary and artistic works, the protagonists have been partially exposed to the civilization and concepts from the big city, they are gradually incompatible with the current county environment, want to break through the shackles, but no matter what they do, they still can't escape, cut off the connection with the county.
Gu Changwei's movie "Lichun"
In addition, the personnel composition of county towns is also more complex than that of rural and urban areas.
Fei Xiaotong mentioned in "Rural China" that the Chinese countryside is a kind of blood relationship that hardly needs to be moved. However, in the county town, in addition to the intricate blood and in-law relationships between people, more unrelated people can also know each other.
The unique interpersonal network of the county has also been formed: they are simple and kind, and they have close neighbors everywhere; It is also conservative and closed, and the family sophistication is greater than the established social rules.
This also directly leads to the fact that people in the county town always pay too much attention to the private affairs of others, after all, other people's affairs will become closer here. In a big city, an incident in the south of the city may have nothing to do with you, but in the county town, the protagonist of the incident may be the nephew of your classmate's uncle's aunt, which makes people think about it.
Jia Zhangke's film "Platform"
This is also why, when we see the dim color mix of the stereotyped background of the county town in the literary photos of the county town (it may be the counter of the commissary in memory, a station, the street that is so ordinary that it can be seen everywhere and feel inexplicably familiar, etc.), the heroine of the photo frowns slightly, tears are dotted, and looks into the distance, we feel that there must be some tears behind the owner of the photo - after all, in the field of the county seat, the stories that happen are more dramatic, malleable and imaginative.
A spiritual homecoming about the county
Many netizens also mentioned that the reason why they were touched by the photos of "County Literature" was that they inadvertently saw the sheets and toys they used in their childhood in these photos, which reminded them of the carefree childhood spent in a small county.
The photos are strange and familiar. They feel nostalgia through this Chinese dream core version of "nostalgia".
After all, in the process of urbanization in China for more than 40 years, hundreds of millions of people have migrated from the countryside and small towns to big cities, and they are not the original residents of big cities.
However, they live in the city, but they have the blood of the town in their bodies, and they are also in the gap between their hometown and the city.
Gu Changwei's movie "Lichun"
This makes the young people in the small town, when they go through the embarrassing adaptation process, they have to bear double anxiety - just like the "small town problem-solver" that has caused discussion on the Internet, educational sociology scholar Xie Ailei mentioned that the small-town problem-solver and the urban student who have entered the city experience two senses of the world, and the division of the two worlds is not completely physical, but more importantly, reflected in social life.
The difference between the city and the hometown hinders the construction and identification of their identity. In a familiar city, their feet are in the air; When I returned home, my hometown, which I should have been familiar with, had already become unfamiliar. They are adrift in the "home" of their hometown and the "home" of the city, but they are homeless.
Documentary "The Way Out"
This is also why the phrase "can't get out, can't see through" in "County Literature" has been used repeatedly - it has long been more than just a departure in the sense of space, and finally presents a sense of "rootless" drift. There can be a county seat between the city and the countryside, but between the county and the city, there is no stable state of survival. This scene of young people in small towns returning to their hometowns mixed with bitter spirits may be what we need to pay more attention to when discussing "county literature".
Discussion among netizens under the tag of "County Literature".
Text/Mao Yuchuan Editor: Li Jie
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