Xu Le
"The Big Bang Theory," which has been chased for more than a decade, is about to have a big finale. In the past ten years, I have already turned myself over, and the four otaku in "The Big Bang Theory" seems to have never changed, bringing all kinds of joy to otaku and otaku around the world for ten years. Now in its twelfth season, "The Big Bang Theory" should also be regarded as a perfect ending. On the occasion of parting, instead of emotionally wiping tears and saying goodbye to the play, it is more fun to analyze it rationally.
The Big Bang Theory Season 1 poster
The Big Bang Theory Season 12 poster
Sitcoms seem to have an inescapable fate, that is, after designing a comedy model, the first few seasons can easily make all kinds of jokes; but after four or five seasons, the jokes that this comedy model can dig out are basically used, and the fun in the future is a bit reluctant. For example, in "3rd Rock from the Sun", four aliens with zero emotional intelligence come to Earth and use this comedy model to make jokes, and every episode of the first few seasons is hilarious, and then it slowly becomes dull. Another example is "Two and a Half Men", basically the whole thing is a man and a woman, in fact, it should have ended a long time ago, and even because the main actor and the TV station broke down and changed the starring role, Len insisted on filming for more than a dozen seasons before he gave up. In contrast, the comedy model designed by "The Big Bang Theory" at the beginning - the daily life of a science and engineering otaku with high IQ and low emotional intelligence - although it is smart enough and has enough jokes to dig up, but after twelve years, basically every laugh point in the back is within the audience's expectations, and it is unlikely that any new name will come out. It should be said that at this time, it is just right to choose the closing farewell.
Psychoanalysis, this thing I learned a little bit when I was majoring in film studies. I have never fully believed in this theory, and I dare not guarantee that I am using it 100% correctly. Freud was an absolute socialite before his death, and countless people lined up with money to beg him to solve a dream. Einstein was half-convinced of this set of things, probably because he was embarrassed to smash people's jobs, but euphemistically said that he would rather hide in the dark than let people psychoanalyze it. Another point is that the development of brain science today has in many ways surpassed Freud's theory. To make a very crude analogy, Freud is like Copernicus, and today's brain science has roughly developed into the Galileo era.
Last year, I came across a strange book, "The Culture of Mother-Killing: A History of the American Mass Mentality in the 20th Century" written by Mr. Sun Longji, and I felt that I had benefited a lot. Inspired by this book, and using the psychoanalytic theory of scales and half claws learned in the belly to do a psychoanalysis of the four otaku in "The Big Bang Theory", it is also a farewell to me as a fan. To make a little explanation, the so-called "Oedipus", "Mother Killer", "Demon Mother" and other words are all just a cultural theory, and the research objects are limited to literary and artistic works such as "The Big Bang Theory", and readers do not have to feel that these words are harsh or uncomfortable.
Case 1: Howard
Simon Herberg as Howard
The reason why Howard is put first is because this case is the most typical and the most consistent with Freud's theory of his old man. It can be said that since the advent of Freud's psychoanalytic theory, a literary and artistic image called "Demon Mother" has gradually begun to appear in Western culture. Such mothers often become shackles that prevent their children from growing into adulthood when they reach a certain age. At this stage, the relationship between mother and child is no longer that the child is inseparable from the mother, but the mother is inseparable from the child. The "demon mother" will want to feed and care for her child forever as a baby, and the child may fight to get rid of the shackles, but it may also form a strange symbiotic relationship with the mother. Hitchcock's masterpiece, The Psychopath, can be seen as a case of the symbiotic relationship between mother and child.
Big director Peter Jackson made a small-budget super disgusting film in New Zealand called "Brain Dead", in which the male protagonist's mother began to fester and mutate after contracting the virus, until she finally turned into a giant monster and wanted to swallow the male protagonist back into his stomach. The cultural roots of this film can be said to stem from the fear of being swallowed up by the mother in Western culture. This cultural root actually exists in the East, but Oriental culture has always been accustomed to creating the image of a sacred and virgin mother, and there are very few cultural images such as "demon mother". The movie "Corpses PlayIng Across the Line" can be said to be a disgusting version of the fear of being devoured by the Demon Mother, and the design of the character Howard is a funny version of this fear. One is a sitcom like "The Big Bang Theory" and the other is a heavy-taste movie like "Corpses PlayIng Across the Line", and the cultural core behind it is actually the same.
Howard in The Big Bang Theory is short, an adult but still lives with his mother — a weird thing in Western culture. In addition, Howard's father left the family when he was very young. It can be considered that this is also a family in which mother and child are in a symbiotic state. Howard's mother seems to be overly obese, and in the play, she never hears her voice and does not see anyone, and the content of the shouting is basically related to the topic of reproductive excretion, and every sound fills the room. For the creators, of course, this treatment is for the sake of being funny. But if you read it from another angle, you can also look at it this way at this time, and the room where Howard lives is actually the embodiment of her mother. Howard, a man, has always been in a state of being swallowed up by his mother and has returned to the womb, and his psychological age is almost zero when he is at home.
In most cases, the fixation of psychological age cannot be changed for life. Although Howard in the play has experienced the death of his wife and children and his mother, he does not seem to have broken the cocoon because of these things.
In 2014, Carol Ann Susi, who voiced Howard's mother in The Big Bang Theory, died at the age of 62.
Case two: Sheldon
Hawking and Shea Ear played by Jim Parsons
The fifth episode of "The Big Bang Theory" circulated on the Internet, which was a trial episode of the TV station before the show officially began broadcasting. In this episode, we see that the protagonists of this series are actually Leonard and Sheldon at the beginning, compared to Sheldon is not particularly prominent, far less neurotic than the later drama, and even lost his body in this episode zero.
According to the setting of the play, Sheldon's mother is a simple Christian, and such a role setting weakens the threat of matriarchy. Sheldon's own psychological age was fixed at about five years old. At least he behaved like a five-year-old boy in front of his mother, and his mother's simple rebuke would interrupt his deep-rooted pure rational thinking.
Sheldon's mother
Sex is a sign of a person's progression from infancy to adulthood. Sex here is sex in the broad sense, not OOXX in the narrow sense. The main difference between children and adults is that there is no information about sex in children, while adults do not. Of course, Freud believed that people have sexual desire from birth, and in childhood they will experience the oral period of anal desire, which is another matter. Sheldon, an otaku who has reached adulthood in terms of age, is physically unenlightened and has no sexual information on him like a child. A lot of the laughs in The Big Bang Theory come from here. After meeting Amy, Sheldon was more and more exposed to the sex thing, and while being assimilated by more and more sexual elements, Sheldon became more and more normal, and the drama "The Big Bang Theory" became less and better than before.
Despite this, the design of the character of Sheldon is still a bit inconsistent, and the more later the character is serving the laughter, rather than the laughter moving forward with the character. This is especially true of amy. At first, she is a female version of Sheldon, but then she continues to "corrode" Sheldon little by little on sexual issues, and at the same time, Amy plays the same role as Sheldon's mother in life, being a complete "mother-in-law". The unpleasantness of this character may not be mainly because she is not beautiful enough, mainly because the screenwriter did not set this character clearly, sometimes this and sometimes, completely serving to create laughter.
Case three, Leonard
Johnny Gerkkeke plays Leonard
Leonard's mother was a high-ranking intellectual, and this character setting reinforces the matriarchal threat, as opposed to Sheldon. Sheldon's problem was that he hadn't been weaned mentally, and Leonard's problem was that he was weaned too early. Leonard's mother is a real female version of Sheldon, with only rational thinking and no emotional thinking.
Leonard's mother and Sheldon
Life can probably be summed up in such a sentence, that is, "what is missing in childhood and adulthood is made up." Leonard is a poor child who has lacked love since childhood, his psychological age is probably stuck in about ten years old, and his heart is a little boy who is always eager to be cared for. Such people tend to lack self-confidence when they grow up and are accustomed to going against the grain. Of course, only such a person could possibly put up with a friend like Sheldon. Because of this, the pair of Leonard and Penny can be said to be a perfect match in terms of personality. One is weak and cowardly but good at cooperation, and the other is simple, optimistic, naïve and fearless. Although the process of the two people coming together is slightly tortuous, there is still a harmonious beauty after being together, unlike Sheldon and Amy, who always feel awkward when they are together.
Case 4: Raj
Kunau Nea plays Raj
Raj comes from an Eastern family. In terms of dealing with children, India's middle-class families are similar to China's, and parents are excessively doting and spoiling their children to the point of hindering their children's growth. Many children in this family environment stagnate psychologically by the age of fifteen, so that by the time they reach their thirties, they are still in many ways like teenagers.
This eastern parent has the same image roots as Howard's mother, and the degree of importance is different. The former is pampered, while the latter is kidnapped and controlled in the name of love. So there is an episode in which Raj lives in Howard's house and is fed by Howard's mother as a baby, and finally jumps out of the window and escapes. How to let go and let children grow up healthier, this question Chinese parents should really think about.
Raj's parents
About half of the laughs in the show "The Big Bang Theory" are actually related to sex, but the way to create laughs is exactly the opposite of sitcoms such as "Two and a Half Good Men" and "Mom". The way to create laughter in "Two and a Half Good Men" and "Need for a Good Mother" is usually to show how the male or female protagonist is debauched and how to challenge worldly norms on sexual issues, while the way "The Big Bang Theory" creates laughter is usually that sex, which should be the most instinctive thing, is actually blocked by the overly rational mind of a science and engineering otaku like Sheldon. Although the other three otaku are slightly more normal, they are also due to such and such family growth reasons, resulting in imperfect sexual and psychological development. Again, sex here refers to sex in a broad sense, such as the amount of sexual information carried by the four otaku, whether it is physical appearance or clothing, as well as speech and behavior, is extremely low. It is precisely because this thing is lower than normal people in them that laughter is generated.
The Big Bang Theory poster – "Smart is the new sexiness." ”
"I firmly believe that human civilization was created at the expense of primitive instincts." This sentence is said to have been said by Freud. Many movies often use this to create laughs, such as "Terminator" or "Transformers" movies, the robot will directly say to the male and female protagonists that you two can directly mate and so on. Because from the perspective of a robot, mating does not require anything like love at all as a disguise for civilization. This sentence is also another way of making jokes in "The Big Bang Theory", but the specific usage is different from movies like "Terminator". What is shown in this drama is not that human civilization has suppressed sexual instincts, but that the popular culture of comic books, games, science fiction movies, etc. that have been created in human civilization can make otaku so obsessed and addictive that even the most primitive sexual instincts automatically retreat. From this point of view, "The Big Bang Theory" can be said to be a derivative culture of popular culture such as games and comics. Or rather, it was The Big Bang Theory that created and exaggerated this unique otaku meme.
Group photo of the stars of "The Big Bang Theory"
If you jump out and look at it, don't forget that this is just a fictional sitcom. At a fan meeting outside the show, fans were surprised to find that none of the actors knew about Doctor Who, and the characters they played in the play were iron fans of science fiction culture. For an iron fan of science fiction culture, Doctor Who belongs to the most basic ABC.
Finally, two sentences of science in The Big Bang Theory. Not being able to understand the scientific terminology here does not affect the laughter of this play in the slightest. Looking at the tidbits, I learned that many times the screenwriter would draw a horizontal bar in the script, and then ask a scientist consultant to fill in a scientific term in this place. In addition, The Big Bang Theory can also be used as an index of science fiction pop culture. I once met a student who, because The Big Bang Theory learned that there was a science fiction drama called Star Trek, and then watched all seven hundred episodes of star trek and became a complete Trekkie (a term specifically referred to as a fan of Star Trek).
Stills from The Big Bang Theory, the one on the far right is Captain Kirk in Star Trek, William Shatner.
What kind of distance should we maintain from popular culture? This is a question that deserves our serious consideration. "The Big Bang Theory" depicts a group of otaku who are completely swallowed up by popular culture to the point of delaying their personal growth. Such a thing is actually the symptom of our time. In the past we lived in an era of lack of information, but now the opposite is true, we have to deal with and process massive amounts of information every day. "The Big Bang Theory" presents an absurd and funny version of immersion, and what we see in real life is more of a cruel reality version of the Internet addicted teenager. My daughter is five years old, and I myself have never restricted my daughter to watch TV or watch an iPad. Once in the circle of friends to post a photo of her daughter playing a game, a friend left a message asking, do you just let her play like this? I replied that no, I played with her. In my opinion, what the next generation really has to learn is not to completely isolate from things like television and games, but to learn how to live in harmony with these things, and to be able to get in and out.
Season 1
This issue is edited by Xing Tan
Recommended reading