Heavy wood
When Tencent Video's "Creation Camp 2021" and iQiyi's "Youth with You 3" were launched at the same time, it indicated that they would become regulars on Weibo's hot search list. We may not be unfamiliar with talent shows, from the "Happy Girl" opened by Hunan Satellite TV to the present, the draft is still an important way for many men and women with dreams of entering the entertainment industry. And with the development of market and consumption diversification, many different aesthetic and consumer groups have been formed, and people's demand for idols and stars of different types, styles and images seems to be increasing day by day. In addition, the potential benefits of promoting and cultivating fresh faces have also allowed many commercial and star brokerage companies to see the commercial benefits and spare no effort to participate in the creation of new stars. But what's more important — unlike "first-generation entertainment talent shows" like "SuperGirl" — is the talent show that appears in various online videos today, and its purpose seems to have shifted from selecting new people who can be launched to attracting audiences throughout the draft process.
This is not to say that the draft no longer selects new people (all talent shows will eventually launch selected individuals or groups), but that the business value, entertainment potential and attraction of the audience and the degree to which it is invited to participate in the draft process itself have become more in-depth and important than ever. The entertainment industry is not only about creating new idols, but also about allowing audiences to accompany and participate in the creation of this new idol along the way. Different from the former as the initiative, now with the rise of the era of mass consumption, the audience, fans and rice circle participants have become an important driver and force for idol creation. Of course, even so, the power of capital and commerce still plays a pivotal role in this.
Creation Camp 2021
One. From "Idol" to "Idol"
If we compare SuperGirl in 2009 with Camp 101 in 2018, there is a stark difference between the former and the new generation of idol singers, while the latter selects a new generation of idols. Li Yuchun , the singer who came out of "Super Girl" - is the mentor of "Youth with You 3", and her words may give us a lot of inspiration while talking about the differences between singers, actors and idols:
"I don't think 'idols' are a profession. To be a singer or an actress, it is first of all a profession of her own, because what she shows in this profession - whether it is talent or her skill, or her charm - is liked by some audience, so she becomes the 'idol' of some people, and this 'idol' is given to her by others, not as an 'idol'. ”
The traditional "idol" is liked by others because of his professional ability, which is a title; the "idol" selected at the moment is no longer a title, but a profession, that is, "'idol' is not a profession" but "being an 'idol'" is the job of these draft players. Behind one of these seemingly subtle changes is a new twist in the relationship between the contemporary entertainment industry and mass consumption. Jenkins, an American scholar of entertainment and fan culture, found in his "Text Poachers" that the power brought about by the current growth of fan spending power directly affects the relationship between them in the traditional entertainment industry and consumption, that is, from the once passive consumer to the active and powerful creative consumer, they began to affect the content production of the entertainment industry, the image of idols and stars, and even the content of their work. Jenkins called him a "text poacher."
Whether in "Creation Camp 2021" or "Youth with You 3", the entire talent show has paid an incomparable attention to audience participation, and all of this may not be unfamiliar if we have a little understanding of the current rice circle or entertainment circle. Nowadays, a large part of the operation of an idol needs to be done by us as fans or consumers, such as various brushing lists, brushing traffic or endorsing activities and brands, participating in works or programs. These originally loose and individualized supports are now being systematized with the mature development and operation of such fan groups or support groups. The operating group formed around an idol, in addition to its own team and company, there are also groups of fans, and there is also tension between the two, such as interaction, contradiction and conflict. The tension of the fan group itself will also lead to a double-edged sword, which can bring benefits and traffic to its idols at the same time, but also become an uncontrollable force to eat up idols. These phenomena have emerged in the domestic entertainment industry in recent years.
It is precisely because "idol" has changed from a title that expresses love or worship to a profession today, that is, "love beans", which has led to the degree to which the latter relies on audiences, fans and consumers. Jay Chou may lose the title of "idol" for some people because of his behavior or image, but it has little impact on him, because he participated in the entertainment industry through his own status as a singer. However, many idols or love beans at present may be completely "pasted" because some of their remarks or behaviors do not meet the requirements of fans, and lose the qualification of "being an idol", and thus lose their careers.
That's why we see the pressure that those who love beans who are working through the draft or doing the job of idols are under scrutiny from fans and audiences. This is not only for the individual Love Bean, but also directly affects the entire business interests behind it, such as brand endorsements, programs and works, and even the company itself. And because of this, we will see more clearly the constraints and requirements of the profession of "idol/love bean", as well as the competition and struggle between the forces that manipulate it.
If "being an idol" is so difficult, why are so many young and handsome men and women participating in the draft? In the media interview link in "Youth With You 3", some media asked the young draft contestants, is the threshold for making love beans very low? In a way, it is. In "Creation Camp 2021", we can not only see the young players of major professional star companies, but also many actors, Internet celebrities, school bullies, e-sports players, milk tea shop assistants and even haunted house workers. When they came to the stage with the songs and dances they had trained in two or three months, their cramped and limited performances were unobstructed. But as the founder of the creation camp, Serenity, said, the "most handsome haunted house NPC" has a charming face, and the temperament of a mouth is gone, but it is also possible that there are fans who like this kind of love beans.
Because "being an idol" is first and foremost "doing", that is, running a pleasing face is almost the basic criterion that is not said but always very important in all drafts. And "doing" often requires almost no superb singing and dancing ability. Whether it is "Youth with You 3" or "Creation Camp 2021", they ultimately hope that the selected love beans can make their debut in a group, so they also emphasize their role in the group and the level of strength. But for individual idols, the needs are not so much. The ability to sing and dance juggling is to add bricks and tiles to "being an idol", but in fact, it is not a necessary skill for love beans. This is also very different from the original Japanese model that pioneered the entertainment industry.
Zando
Two. The star-making of the entertainment industry
There are many international students in Creation Camp 2021, most of whom are from Japan, in addition to Thailand and Europe and the United States. When the Japanese players took the stage to perform their talents and skills, the jokes in the barrage were "international friends to support the teaching" or "we are going to finish our internal entertainment". When we watched the talent shows of the students who were in a hurry within a few months, and then watched the performances of young students from Japan and Thailand (two young Thai students not only learned Chinese well in two or three months, but also sang and danced very impressively), we had to sigh. In addition to the individual abilities of the individual trainees, this difference is actually closely related to the improvement of the entire entertainment industry behind them and its mode of operation.
Several Japanese students (such as Zando, Rikumaru and Haneda Shobu - Amu) who performed well in Creation Camp 2021 have solid singing and dancing skills on the one hand, such as Zando and Ritsumaru, who have learned to dance since childhood, while Amu is an early artist at Janis Studio. During the mentor's test session, he was praised for singing and dancing with a song "Monica", and the audience who knew a little about Janis in the bullet screen also saw at a glance that Amu's dance model (the so-called "J family dance steps") came from the famous Japanese star-making company.
Janis & Associates is an artist agency founded by Kitagawa in 1975, and after its establishment, the art and idol groups it cultivated and launched dominated almost the Japanese entertainment scene in the late 20th century, and its influence is still active today. The performing arts stars we know, such as Takuya Kimura, Tomohisa Yamashita, Hideaki Takizawa, Kazuya Ninomiya and Jun Matsumoto, are all from his own umbrella. With the fame of Janis artists throughout East Asia, Janis's model of cultivating artists and idols has gradually been learned and imitated by neighboring countries, of which the most important is its "draft model".
There are hundreds of young "raw materials" under the banner of Janis, but only a few people can debut after thousands of years of training. Most of the children who joined the club (Janis once had a girl training, but later only trained male idols and groups) are carefully selected beautiful teenagers, about thirteen or fourteen years old, after several rounds of interviews and passing, they begin a long and rigorous training, in which singing, dancing, acting, hosting, writing lyrics, composing and even the basic martial arts skills such as air flips and fighting and high-altitude stunts during live stage performances will become the content of the training. Therefore, after such four or five years of training and packaging, the formed teenagers often make their debuts in groups, and achieve the perfect combination of "idol + strength".
Janis' current staff member, Yuji Maeda, once pointed out in an interview that Japanese entertainment is currently moving towards the 3.0 era. In his view, the 1.0 era is the era of television, where artists appear through television platforms to attract audiences. It was in this era that Janis's idol group became the storm, dominating a large part of Japanese entertainment, and directly affecting the entertainment mode of neighboring South Korea (such as the trainee training system), China's Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, and then entered the Chinese mainland, becoming an important factor affecting the contemporary entertainment industry model in China.
In Maeda's view, the ratio of idols to fans in the 1.0 era may be 1:1 million. And this is why Janis has a very peculiar rule, that is, the idol is the image of "only can be viewed from a distance" (the English idol not only means idol, but also means "worship" and "illusion"). If you know a little about the way Janis manages artists, you know that Janis does not allow his artists to open personal online accounts or interact privately with fans. All interactions take place through the Janis website. This model has only loosened slightly until now, but the changes have been limited.
To some extent, Janis's star-making industry has many characteristics of the Japanese creation industry, that is, to pursue a balance between idol strength and image, rather than wanting its stars to be just "idols". This is also related to the characteristics of the television era, where the audience's way to understand the idol is very limited, and the talent performance ability of the idol is the most intuitive form of expression. However, with entertainment entering the 2.0 era of online media, the trend that everyone may become a "star" leads to a large area of fans to divert and form different circles, along with the enhancement of Internet interactivity, but also makes the idols who were once "only able to look at from a distance" have to step off the altar and begin to enter the Internet and the increasingly diversified entertainment market.
In this case, Janis's set of star-making methods and management methods that have been cultivated for four or five years gradually began to show deficiencies and decline, and a certain fast-food idol consumption generated by the accelerating mobility of the entertainment industry also began to lead to the elimination of the "idol + strength" model. It is also in this context that we may be able to better understand the problems of the current Chinese mainland entertainment industry and the limitations of the idols created by them.
The domestic trainee system is influenced by Japan and South Korea, such as a large number of idol stars who currently occupy the top position in the domestic entertainment industry have been trained in Korean trainee companies. But both Japan's Janis and South Korea's trainee system have had to shorten the training process for their artists with the development of the current accelerating entertainment and consumer markets, but even so, some basic abilities can still be guaranteed. On the one hand, there are hundreds of brokerage companies involved in the trainee market, but the other problem is that in addition to some large brokerage companies can carry out relevant professional training, some companies are often difficult to take the old road of traditional training, so most of them are "semi-finished products" pushed into the market in the hope of quickly absorbing gold, resulting in uneven quality and eventually making a fuss.
However, the capital market has found new business opportunities in this, that is, the talent show itself is an important way to harvest traffic and obtain revenue. Therefore, in recent years, domestic talent shows have emerged in an endless stream, but in the end they are all the same, and the idols who are lucky enough to debut have not yet fully enjoyed the attention they have just received, and the emergence of new talent shows and newcomers has attracted new attention from the audience... In this way, the capital market eventually fished for it, thus falling into a vicious circle.
This situation may not only exist in China, but also in places such as Japan and South Korea, where the rebirth of the "idol" commodity is being metabolized much faster than in the past due to the acceleration of diversified entertainment and consumer markets. But even so, becoming an idol and becoming a love bean is still the ideal of many young people. In "Creation Camp 2021", two trainees from Thailand, they were originally actors, but because there is no trainee training company in Thailand, they hope to come to China to become love beans through the draft. In the present moment – as Maeda Yuji called the Entertainment 3.0 era – the demand for artists' diverse identities has forced them to develop more diverse abilities in order to gain the love of fans and audiences in different circles, thereby increasing their influence and traffic.
Even though we have a series of criticisms or grievances about love beans or idols, it is undeniable that this profession – in the current entertainment industry – is indeed the easiest to become famous overnight. Many idols may suffer for many years, and finally turn over completely because of chance or luck to get an opportunity - and according to recent observations, the best way for male idols to become popular overnight or quickly get traffic is to star in big IP works, or topical works with a strong female audience. This "shortcut" has occurred frequently in Recent Years in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, as well as Chinese mainland and Taiwan, and it seems that only The Beauty Works are most likely to cross borders, and often the trend of popularity throughout East Asia has emerged. For an artist or idol, this may be a very high-return investment. Although it is difficult for the mainland to release the works due to the external environment, the resulting dramas can still win the popularity of idol stars. Such high-paying stories may have always been one of the most fascinating myths in the entertainment industry, and many young people are attracted to it.
"Youth has you 3"
Three. Afterword
In 2002, Japanese entertainer Yasushi Akimoto served as the chief producer and founded a large girl idol group, AKB48. This group is special not only because of its large numbers, but also because the position of each member of the group in all public events is determined entirely by the number of votes and money invested by its fans for their love. If the consumption of fans is high, their idols may stand in the C position, otherwise they can only be on the margins.
AKB48 shows us the naked commerciality of the profession of idol in this straightforward way.
"Idols" are part of the now thriving world of goods, trained, packaged, and displayed with a complete set of business procedures. When He Jiong answered the question of junior high school students chasing stars, he mentioned the transcendent appeal of idols, that is, fans can use idols as goals or motivate them to pursue their dreams. But the idols of today have long since faded the "divine power" that may have remained, and have become "false gods" in this world of complete secularism and commercialization. In "Strange Tales", Xiong Hao compares them to the "style gods" in the Japanese yin-yang teacher culture, they are subject to their masters, although they have boundless mana, they are never those free "gods". This is not something they can decide for themselves, but a problem that they will inevitably encounter when they choose to enter the industry.
In "Creation Camp 2021", mentor Liu Yiyun emphasized that the boy band finally selected can have solid singing and dancing skills. This has to do with her own training in South Korea, where she has embraced a model of trainees who originated in Japan and have developed considerably. South Korea also seems to be the first entertainment industry to emphasize internationalization, that is, to expand the development of idol groups by recruiting members from other countries, in contrast, Janis has always been based on Japan (to become a member of Janis Official Website, you must have a Japanese address of residence), which has limited its subsequent development. Creation Camp 2021 set aside 3 of the last 11 people in the group to international members, seemingly to increase its internationalization (and whether it can be developed in other countries is another matter).
In addition, in these talent shows, we also found the emergence of aesthetic diversity, both men and women can appear in a different image from the traditional mainstream. Behind this is the rise of female audiences and the resulting female consciousness, and entertainment and the market are also keen to receive this information and do what they like, although it may lead to a new cookie-cutter (although the draft has always emphasized the uniqueness of the individual), but it is also a subtle transformation and reconstruction of the traditional gender temperament and image.
When we talk about "idols," behind this limited individual or phenomenon, there are complex factors far beyond our imagination. And these factors are entangled with each other, or merge, or conflict, or collide to produce something new or completely limit it and wither, are all one of the possibilities. Trying to understand and hoping to sort out the changes and new possibilities, rather than killing with a stick, is the direction we want to work towards.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia
Proofreader: Shi Gong