"I am a child who looks up at the sky when I feel lonely, looking at the big sun, looking at the big moon, seeing the sore neck, looking at the tears in my eyes. ......”
This typical Guo Jingming-style "youth pain literature" was widely popular among teenagers at the end of the last century, and "looking up at the sky" is best added to "45 degrees" to express a kind of sad and precise growing pain.
At that time, Guo Jingming, who had just come of age, had a sense of crisis about this: "Everyone's growth is an earth-shattering thing in their hearts."
Today, Guo Jingming is 37 years old and still looks thin and small. The tone is like a woman, and the tone is like a woman. This description has been used by Han Han and also used by Wei Kunlin in 2015's "The Strongest Brain": "Talking to Guo Jingming is like arguing with a woman."
Guo Jingming was furious and scolded him.
But the embarrassing thing is that not fighting back, it seems too nestled, counterattacked, but also appears disrespectful to women.
This is Guo Jingming. In his own words, "Because I am Guo Jingming, it seems that whatever I do is wrong." ”
Times are different, and feng shui does not take turns. Guo Jingming, who sat on the mentor seat of "Actors Please Take Place", is still in the whirlpool of public opinion, and the director's angry questioning, the actor's disdain, and the audience's ridicule seem to provoke his enthusiasm and self-confidence.
Sitting with several old people in the film industry, Guo Jingming is like crossing the dimensional wall, neither should he appear here, but because of this, people expect him to sit here.
He can, as always, stand up and argue with reason, and can unceremoniously criticize the acting skills of Huang Yi and other old drama bones, and then tamper with the rating rules without authorization to give an actor with insufficient acting skills the "best" card. But when Li Chengru said that he "turned his hand over for the clouds to cover his hands for the rain" and when Chen Kaige told him that "young people should know how to listen", he could still only be dumb.
Screenshot of the variety show "Actors Please Be in Place"
Time back to a year ago, still on this show, when Chen Kaige rarely expressed a word of recognition of Guo Jingming, the thirty-something xiao Guo immediately "burst into tears" without controversy.
In the blink of an eye, it seems that he is still a child who has not grown up.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > $10, $80, and $11 million</h1>
In 1997, 14-year-old Guo Jingming received his first manuscript fee, 10 yuan from a national public publication. From this time on, this junior high school student in Zigong, Sichuan Province, began to have the idea of making money by writing.
In 2002, Guo Jingming, a 19-year-old first-year college student, went to see fireworks in Shanghai Century Park with his classmates, but the 80 yuan ticket was out of reach for him, so he stood outside the park's iron gate and looked at his neck.
After the fireworks ended, it suddenly rained heavily, and Guo Jingming ran quickly to the subway station, but the subway station was closed, and there was no money to take a taxi back, so he sat in front of the subway station for one night until the first subway returned to school at 5 o'clock the next morning.
Screenshot of Guo Jingming's interview with Lu Yu
Three years later, Guo Jingming finally had the money to buy a ticket to enter the park, but he found that "the fireworks he saw when he bought a ticket to go in were not very different from what he saw when he stood outside." Even on the way back, it was pouring rain as it had been three years ago.
At this time, his first novel "Magic City" sold nearly one million copies, generating nearly 20 million profits, but because it was the first time to publish, the ignorant Guo Jingming was bought out of the royalty income that he should have enjoyed by the publishing house, and finally got less than 25,000 yuan in his hand.
But spiritual encouragement and fame had given him enough confidence.
Guo Jingming was at the signing party of "Magic City" in his early years
In the next few years, Guo gave up his studies and rushed forward on the road of crazy writing and publishing. The next work of "Magic City", "How Much Do You Know About Flowers in Dreams", even though it was later exposed to plagiarism, excluding 200,000 compensation, also brought him millions of income.
Hu Weixuan, the editor of Sprout magazine at the time, always remembered the impression when he first met Guo Jingming, this small boy was polite and enthusiastic, shrill and whispered, completely without the arrogance, uninhibited and old spicy of Han Han, the "dark horse" of a few years ago.
In order to let "How Much Do You Know About Flowers in Your Dreams" be published, Guo Jingming repeatedly wrote to Hu Weixuan when he was at school, saying that he would send her Sichuan bacon and bite a "Wei Wei Sister".
Illustration in the book "How Many Flowers Fall in Dreams"
At this time, he was full of a few words written on his body: Don't deceive the young and poor.
He has always remembered the exclusion and indifference that the city of Shanghai had brought to him, and his mother came to see him, because he could not take the subway and was "whispered" by the staff; to participate in the activities of his own work "Magic City", he was also laughed at because he was not dressed in a foreign style.
The 23-year-old Guo classmate has an extremely high degree of sensitivity and vulnerability, and the slightest blow and ridicule from the outside world is like an axe, splitting his inner desire and inferiority.
One summer in 2004, Guo Jingming established the "Island" studio, and at the same time established Shanghai Keai Culture Communication Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 1 million, and Guo Jingming also appeared in the top 100 of China's Forbes celebrity list for the first time.
On this day, Guo Jingming was just 21 years old, and in the golden age of his life, he still had a lot of extravagant hopes: he wanted to eat, wanted to sleep, wanted to make a lot of money, the more the better.
Photos that Guo Jingming posted on his blog in his early years
In 2007, Guo Jingming was listed on the List of China's Rich Writers with a royalty income of 11 million yuan, only 10 years after receiving his first fee in 1997.
This year, Guo Jingming was 24 years old, the same age as Zhang Ailing when she shined in the Shanghai literary scene.
In the 1940s, Zhang Ailing did not shy away from expressing her desire for fame in "Whispers": "I want to be more prominent than Lin Yutang, wear the most chic clothes, travel the world, and have my own house in Shanghai." ”
History proves that what Zhang Ailing failed to achieve, Guo Jingming achieved.
He was more beautiful than Lin Yutang, the New York Times in the United States named him "China's most successful writer", the "success" here, is absolutely secular, according to years of media reports, Guo Jingming owned six suites in Shanghai, and the literary master Grandma Zhang Ailing, in his later years in the New York solitary house died lonely and desolate.
Guo Jingming Weibo photo
Therefore, in the eyes of many later critics, the path of Guo Jingming, a young man in the town, had a certain era of neglect and partiality.
Born in the mountains of southern Sichuan, Guo Jingming did not have the wildness and stubbornness of Han Han, a "Haipai" teenager who was at the same time as him, he was fed up with the light and boring town life, and he was bent on "east", desperate to stop until he reached his goal.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > stand tall enough and look up at the sky</h1>
At the end of 1988, the writer Feng Jicai went to the National Art Museum of China to participate in the opening ceremony of the first Chinese Modern Art Exhibition, watched a circle of "absurd" exhibitions, and returned to his home in Tianjin for Chinese New Year's Eve meal, he could not help but sigh to his wife: "I think everything is changing." ”
The veteran of the literary world, who is about to turn more than half a hundred years old, can't say what is changing, but he feels that he seems to be getting more and more "feeling that he can't grasp life and can't find his own readers." ”
In the 1980s, China was an era of change, chaos and the interweaving of the old and the new, and the rise of the Internet had a strong impact on a generation of young people who did not know how to deal with such an era of information explosion, but also enjoyed the convenience and freedom brought about by this great change. Instead of pursuing a convergent lifestyle like their parents, they began to pursue themselves, using pop music, long hair, jeans, rock and modern poetry to cover up their inner madness and emptiness.
To some extent, "urban literature" is absent in the field of contemporary literary creation in China. The "urban wind" set off by Guo Jingming is not right, pure and impure, and it is still among the best-sellers by this wind of the times.
Even in 2012, when it was of great significance to Chinese literature, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature for Chinese for the first time, and guo Jingming's "Little Times 3.0: The Golden Age" still ranked first in the best-selling lists of stores in major cities.
This also constitutes Guo Jingming's most conceited misunderstanding: to regard "sales" as the greatest affirmation of a writer.
Guo Jingming, who "does anything is to make money", the first thing he does after becoming famous is also "showing off his wealth".
He frantically displays his luxuries on social platforms, fighting back against the consumer world that has hit him with an almost neurotic, vengeful desire.
He also wrote this description in his novels with middle school students as the main audience: my refrigerator contained "countless Häagen-Dazs", with a value ranging from dozens to thousands of cups, but I did not use these cups to drink water, preferring to drink canned drinks directly...
This ostentation of wealth quickly drew public disgust, and Dou Wentao unceremoniously pointed out in "Sonorous Threesome" that the outside world labeled Guo Jingming: disregard for society, worship of gold, and superficial values.
Guo Jingming will respond, but will not shy away. In an interview with Lu Yu, he responded as seriously as he read a novel: "I am crazy to buy all kinds of luxury goods, with happy hate. ”
The word "fast" plus the word "meaning" has a bit of literary flavor, just like his style, and the same as his speech on many things.
However, here in Guo Jingming, the word "fast" is still the kernel. Fame should be fast, fortune should be fast, and books should be published faster, he is like a bullet speeding on the road of life, casually penetrating wherever, in short, the sooner the better.
For example, Wang Shuo, who was born a generation earlier than Guo Jingming, did not shy away from the purpose of writing to make money in the era when commodities were in full swing: "I intended to write novels, and indeed I wanted to make a little money in a bright and upright way. ”
The sleek and straightforward Beijing boy keenly captures that pure literature is becoming increasingly marginalized, that artistic and pop functions are beginning to diverge, and that the role of books as commodities becomes more prominent, "won't sell, isn't anything." ”
Guo Jingming at the scene of the film conference
How to sell? By what to sell? Popular culture, led by TV dramas, is ushering in a golden period.
When the decline of the paper publishing industry gradually emerged, Guo Jingming saw the opportunity and decisively sold the copyright of his works and changed his path to the film and television circle.
At this time, Guo Jingming already had multiple identities: writer, businessman, director, and shareholder of a listed company. These identities seem to have put a heavy insurance lock on Guo Jingming, who has always been insecure, the publishing industry can make movies when it is not good, the movie box office Waterloo, and you can also transfer shares to continue to be the boss. Guo Jingming, a young man in the town, already has a business empire of his own.
But obviously, the circle of playing film and television entertainment is much more cruel than the literary circle where Wen Ru came and went.
The Douban score of the "Little Times" series of movies directed by Guo Jingming is lower than 5 points
Three "Small Times" have allowed Guo Jingming to earn enough box office and insults, but he never seems to be afraid of being consumed and talked about, no matter where these topics ultimately take him, whether it is insults or traffic.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">
"You can dislike Guo Jingming, but you have to allow people who like him to exist."
</h1>
There is a saying that Guo Jingming's tens of millions of fans are mostly "small town girls", that is, young girls living in third-tier cities and below with a relatively low level of education. Those relatively weak groups of women who have no social status and right to speak have been satisfied with fantasies to varying degrees in his vain and exaggerated and flowery words.
But the other groups corresponding to it, but all the edges of literature and art, are almost eager to draw a line with Guo Jingming.
People regard Guo Jingming as a myth and also as a joke. In the eyes of many so-called serious literary critics, it seems that a cultural person can only be truly respected in this noisy and noisy world, such as the late writer Hu Bo, who hides in a corner, remains widowed and desireless.
Including Huang Yongyu, an old chinese painter who could not fight with Guo Jingming's eight rods, Guo once took a photo with Huang, and then couldn't wait to put the photo into the blog, with the caption: Huang Yongyu is his "year-old friend". Later, the reporter of the good thing ran to ask Mr. Huang Lao, and got a dismissive reply: "I don't like him (Guo Jingming), I don't like him at all!" ”
Guo Jingming and the painter Huang Yongyu
All kinds of "social death" have never stopped surrounding Guo Jingming, and this time, he has another label on him: vassal style and elegance.
Guo Jingming can laugh it off as always, using a less decent metaphor - like Xiao Qiang can't die.
Over the years, he gradually acquired his own fans, his own works and companies, and this shrewd cultural businessman became richer and more tired day by day at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Finally, in October 2016, the last stop of box office Waterloo's "Traces" returned to the Shanghai roadshow, and Guo Jingming choked up and shouted: "Is it because my name is Guo Jingming, so what I do is wrong?" Is it only when I die that you will not curse the Traces? ”
This sentence is seen as a pretentious nonsense, but in fact it is also like a signal of admitting mistakes and begging for forgiveness: I am Guo Jingming, and I have done wrong.
Poster for the movie "Traces"
After this, Guo Jingming temporarily "retired to the jianghu" and reduced dynamic updates. Until 2019, he posted a selfie on Weibo, cut his hair short, and his iconic yellow hair was dyed back dark. But netizens have not forgotten the sneer, comparing Guo Jingming in the photo to a frightened squirrel, and a medical beauty brand even tweeted: It is recommended that this man who is "afraid of aging" do a hyaluronic acid lip augmentation.
But Guo Jingming has already cultivated a kind of accurate correctness in the whirlpool of public opinion, and those who are not accustomed to Guo Jingming really dislike it is precisely his precise words.
He always seems to try to use abstract rhetoric to steal concepts on occasions where things should be done and strictly follow the rules, and to disguise the essence of sophistry with the appearance of philosophical speculation.
Moreover, the staying power and lethality of "Guo's Explicit Words" are much broader than those of the "Huang (Xiaoming)'s Famous Sayings", and no matter what dissatisfaction guo Jingming has, he will be dismissed by a certain "Explicit Statement" he spits out.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the mirage of "magic city" has been exhausted, can Guo still eat? </h1>
On November 3, 2020, Chen Jiayong, the first prize winner of the first national new concept essay contest in 1999, posted an article declaring that after sixteen years of "ups and downs" in the business world, he would "return to writing" and "disenchant" the group of "bosses".
The Peking University graduate author and Guo Jingming have a certain degree of similar trajectory: born as a literary teenager, crazy writing books, publishing, throwing themselves into the world of adaptation, and then becoming a business boss. After more than twenty years, I can't help but sigh: "If after walking for a while, I can rest my feet a little and never forget the self I was when I first started, how good it would be." ”
I don't know if Guo Jingming, who has been working hard, has heard this sigh, and I don't know if he suddenly wants to stop one day, take a good look at where he has gone, and look back at his ups and downs and "growth".
Guo Jingming's early signing party photos
For today's Guo Jingming, the most ugly voice may have passed, in the past two years, he re-emerged as a "mentor", still an exporter of views with his own heat, and still can bring a wave of public opinion as soon as he opens his mouth.
Guo Jingming has no new works, and he is no longer a teenager, after several conflicts with the director and actors, people are almost surprised and taunted to find out - Guo Jingming is still the same Guo Jingming, still familiar with the recipe and taste, or a laugh point and hot maker.
The "laugh" of the "laugh" here is still a laugh of ridicule.
As always, he will argue with high-pitched arguments for his own opinions, but the audience will not buy it. In appearance, he has not changed much, has not been blessed in middle age, has not become "greasy", on the contrary, the audience has captured at a glance that he is cloaked in a confident shell, which is studded with a little pity and sadness.
After so many years, Guo Dao, Guo Zong, Guo Dong, almost everything, he has flowed through countless voices and insults guo Jingming, tough, confident appearance, but still afraid of not being believed, afraid of being ignored.
Suddenly, it reminds people of a sentence that often appears in TV dramas: "I have everything, but my heart is still a little empty." ”
In August this year, the topic of "Gu Li (the heroine of "Little Times") birthday" set off a wave of forwarding on the whole network on the same day, which deeply confirmed that the literary enlightenment of the post-90s youth period still occupies a place in the hearts of countless people after the change of the times, and we are more and more willing to look at and accept it.
Stills from the movie "Little Times 2: The Aoki Era"
You can't deny that Guo Jingming and the brands he created have become an era that cannot be erased.
Perhaps, he will occasionally dream back to the time when he won the first scenery in Shanghai twenty years ago, shaking the mud that had been contaminated in the ups and downs of the past few years, and sinking his heart to seriously think: What is the difference between the 80 yuan fireworks and the fireworks outside the iron railing?
Author | South Wind Window reporter Xiao Yao
Edit | Huang Jingfang
Typography | SHAN