Stills from "Daughters in Love" (Season 4).
From January 1 this year, the cooling-off period for divorce was officially implemented. The latest data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs shows that in the first half of this year, the number of divorces nationwide decreased by 50%. At any time, divorce is almost always a social topic of national concern.
In 2021, Mango TV launched the variety show "Goodbye Lover". No one expected that this marriage documentary observation reality show about divorce was on fire, and many people said that they had been chasing it for several months. Different from the sweet cards and CP cards played by the previous emotional observation variety shows, "Goodbye Lover" allows people to see the more real, helpless and even gray side of the relationship. As a result, the film and television market ushered in the first year of domestic marriage documentary variety shows.
For viewers who have been in love or married, the emotional dilemma in "Goodbye Lover" resonates. In fact, as many people as they feel the beauty of love, how many people suffer from it. Through the perspective of "negative" cases, "Goodbye Lover" makes people more aware that the needs between us and the other half are misplaced, our self-insistence is exhausting for the other half, and our nagging and silence are hurtful.
It can be said that the biggest value of this show is to let people intuitively face what is called "transposition" and see how what we do is interpreted in the minds of the other half. And in life, we can't enjoy this luxury.
Interestingly, the "mourning" in it is accidentally transformed into positive energy, which is not empty, ethereal, and not acted out, but the most real.
Stills from "Goodbye Lover".
Emotional observation programs appear in a bunch
Since the second half of 2018, emotional observation variety shows have emerged in an endless stream, and the themes involve all stages of marriage and love. The love variety market is already in a saturated state, but "Goodbye Lover" focuses on divorce for the first time, becoming a clear stream in the emotional observation variety show, and opening up new fields for domestic variety shows.
In an interview with "Your Circle", Tu Han, the general director of "Goodbye Lover", said that in the early stage of the creation of the program, in order to select the guests who are sincere to the greatest extent, the director team disbanded the casting team, personally went to the battle, and selected the guests. At first, it was to find relatives and friends, and later to find stars, not only to collect from the whole society, but also to the Civil Affairs Bureau for field investigation.
Whenever people are asked "do you have any problems in your marriage" and "would you like to show it on the show", the program team will suffer from incomprehension and exclusion. Among the people who signed up for the show, there are only a few couples who can express themselves sincerely and without mannerisms. After all the difficulties, "Goodbye Lover" chose three pairs of guests with real emotions, real dilemmas, and real expressions.
In addition to the control of casting and the presentation of details, "Goodbye Lover" does not pay attention to "human design". Rather than reinforcing the inherent impressions and labels of the characters, the show wants to listen to the real voices of the two sexes in marriage.
Some Douban users commented: "The biggest beneficiary of this variety show is the audience, and it is recommended that every man and woman who is troubled by love come to see." ”
According to statistics, this year, there are more than 20 observation reality shows have been launched, of which emotional observation programs occupy half of the country.
To a large extent, the objects of marriage and love observation in the 2021 emotional observation programs are more diversified and lifelike, in addition to the emotional observation programs for ordinary people, "Like You and Me Too" (season 3), "Let's Fall in Love" (season 3), "Heartbeat Signal" (season 4), and Hunan Satellite TV's social variety show "Suddenly Heartbeat".
The uniqueness of the latter is that most of the female guests in the show are divorced, and there is no shortage of single mothers, in the process of finding new feelings, they talk about topics related to divorce, which has aroused the attention of all walks of life.
In addition, Mango TV's "Daughters in Love" (season 4) has also made innovative breakthroughs in guest settings and program content. In addition to joining peers to observe the love journey of daughters and dates and enriching the observation dimension, "Daughters in Love" (season 4) also innovatively joins the assembly interaction between daughters, and strives to present the collision of contemporary young people's love concepts and emotional intergenerational communication from a more diversified and comprehensive perspective, leading modern youth to establish a positive and correct concept of love and attach importance to intergenerational communication in the family.
Observers of the anxiety of the times
The epidemic of the times, "anxiety", has also become the focus of emotional observation programs. As China's first curative observation program focusing on sleep anxiety, "Sleepless Bed" helps insomniacs alleviate psychological stress and improve various troubles caused by psychological problems. Youku documentary follow-up variety show "Under the Same Roof" focuses on shared living and tries to put forward the concept of "shared life".
The program focuses on the life and social fields of young people at present, exposes the survival anxiety under social competition, records the lives of 6 ordinary guests under the same roof in 105 days, and 6 observers, including Li Shi, conduct "follow-up" observations of ordinary guests.
Niu Guangxia, a professor at Shandong Academy of Arts, believes that since the 21st century, China's economy in the transition period has continued to prosper, while bringing broad development space to individuals, marriage and love difficulties have also become a common phenomenon, and the words of the times such as older youth, leftover men, leftover women, unmarried people, marriage squeeze, and fancy marriage urging reflect this realistic dilemma from different angles.
This is related to the rising cost of marriage and love, the fast pace of work, the lack of leisure time caused by the pressure of life, and the narrow social circle.
On the other hand, young people no longer stick to the original marriage and love model, they pursue ideal love and attach importance to the quality of marriage, which has also indirectly led to the phenomenon of low marriage rate and high divorce rate in China. As the main body of contemporary young marriage and love, most of the post-80s, post-90s, post-00s are only children, deeply affected by the growth environment and the original family, some people are accustomed to self-centered, do not know how to accept and love others, do not know how to communicate with the opposite sex and get along well, lack of consciousness of consciously assuming family responsibilities.
As a result of this inability to get along with the opposite sex, young people are extremely eager to receive an "education of love." According to the results of a questionnaire survey launched for college students nationwide in 2020, 88.23% of college students supported the opening of love courses in colleges.
Recently, Wuhan University's "love psychology" course exploded, the classroom could not be crowded, students listened to lectures outside the classroom window, and some people brought their own benches and turned over the window to enter the classroom.
Liang Yongan, an associate professor in the Department of Chinese at Fudan University, believes that the private sphere about the emotional part has been mostly obscured in the past, but it is closely related to everyone.
From marriage and dating to documentary observation, emotional variety shows are constantly changing and upgrading. Love, marriage, emotion has always been a magic weapon to resonate with the audience, in 1998, the "Rose Covenant" opened the domestic marriage and love program, and in 2010, "Do Not Disturb" became one of the phenomenon-level variety shows. No matter how the emotional variety show changes and upgrades, it has always been a popular type in the variety show market.
In 2021, we have seen in-depth attempts and experienced the sweetness of "breaking taboos". Human feelings are profound and complex, and once the emotional observation variety show faces this fact, it is bound to present the most vivid and touching appearance of emotions, which is exactly the spiritual comfort that the audience of this era needs.