At that time, Xiao Shenyang probably couldn't imagine that after more than ten years, he would bid farewell to the sketch stage because of "comedy sensationalism". /Visual China
"The core of comedy is tragedy", this sentence is not wrong, the wrong is the comedian who steals the concept. No matter how tragic the theme is, comedy must first make the audience "happy".
In 2009, Zhao Benshan's sketch "Not Bad Money" appeared on the Spring Festival Gala stage, and the male waiter Xiao Shenyang, who was wearing red and white Scottish costumes and not sunshine but had a good voice, exploded.
But in the decade since his overnight fame, he rarely appeared on the comedy stage.
What makes people associate Xiao Shenyang with comedy again is a quote about "sketch" in "I am an actor": "Sketch, I gave up." Because the research can not produce good baggage, there is no particularly good thing, not fresh. The sketches are all hilarious and sad now, I don't like it, I hope I can make the audience laugh from beginning to end. ”
Xiao Shenyang's answer to the host's "Would you think it would be better to go back to acting in a sketch" in "I am an actor" is slightly sad. /"I'm an Actor"
Subsequently, the topic of "comedy sensationalism" sparked a wave of discussion.
The tragic story, cloaked in comedy, attempts to bluntly turn the audience around, but the audience clearly doesn't buy it.
Comedians know this too.
At the beginning of the "Happy Comedian Season 6", cross-talk actors Meng Hetang and Zhou Jiuliang ridiculed, and at the end, they sensationalized "Comedian" into "Tragic Man".
In fact, the comedians themselves also hate the comedy of "sensationalism at the end". /Happy Comedians Episode 6
However, on the stage of the resurrection match, the performance of the burnt cake and Cao Heyang still fell into the cliché. The story revolves around the "heartache of the surrogate driver". The abrupt sensationalism at the end makes the audience move is not, nor is it not moved.
At this moment, people on stage and offstage should be quite helpless: when can we say goodbye to the comedy of "joy and sorrow"?
It doesn't matter if you can make you laugh,
But in the end it must make you cry
Looking at the sketches in recent years, the baggage of "funny" is not very good, but the "sensational" routine has been used more and more skillfully by various comedians, and even "old fritters" such as Pan Changjiang are not exempt from vulgarity.
On the spring evening of Liaoning In 2014, he and Yan Xuejing had a skit called "Wife Rushing Forward".
In addition to the passage that has always ridiculed Teacher Pan's height and appearance, the whole program has few baggage that makes people laugh, and the final theme depends on the expressionless sentence of the son in the video, "The son's birthday is the mother's bitter day", with Yan Xuejing's hard squeezing of tears that have not yet been squeezed out to forcibly raise.
Leaning on Teacher Pan's shoulder could not hide the embarrassment of not being able to cry. /"The Wife Rushes Forward"
If teacher Pan's work in 13 years is just "little crying and pleasure", then in 2020, Guo Yang Guo Liang's sketch "We Both" in "Happy Comedians Season Six" is simply "crying and hurting the body".
The theme of children's lack of parental companionship was originally quite tear-inducing, but because the script was too poor, the plot was full of loopholes, and the people watching it were full of question marks.
At the beginning, the little girl gives money to the two strangers, asking them to help buy tickets and help her run away from home. But as a stranger, whether you ask for money or not, the practice of taking the girl directly back to your home is really incomprehensible. In my opinion, this is no different from a human trafficker.
Back at home, because the two brothers casually said "I'm starving", the delivery man fell from the sky with his meal, without any plot.
After hurriedly sending away the takeaway brothers, one of the girlfriends appeared inexplicably, because the child called "Daddy" to her boyfriend, she began to use exaggerated body language to walk frantically on the stage, and then with misunderstanding to "buy drunk". As a boyfriend, in the face of the girlfriend's misunderstanding of himself and the breaking up, instead of grasping the explanation, he turned around and sat down with the little girl to argue that "your father will not love you" .
As long as my hair is thrown fast enough, anger can't catch up with me. /The Comedy Man Season 6
We do not discuss this almost zero desire to survive, but the stage interpretation should also be based on real life, so that the plot that is detached from life, the exaggerated acting skills of kneeling at every turn, and some non-gold passages such as "Pigs Will Fly" with children's names as harmonic stems make them, so that the whole show has no "laughing fruit" except for the embarrassment of the full screen.
But with the concept of "even if the baggage is not colorful, as long as the stage effect is good, the audience will cry", this show finally performed an embarrassing sketch out of the sky with a touching effect.
When the delivery man appeared with the police and grabbed the two brothers, in order to increase the tear-jerking atmosphere, the stage lights suddenly dimmed, and the sad music sounded, and the little girl told her own experience with a slight cry, so that the audience had an unspeakable violation.
And the story does not end here, a forced happy ending is the key to the work can be "negative and positive".
The lights came on, the girl's father hurried to come, and the first step was not to see the child's safety but to come up with a text message to prove that the two brothers were not kidnappers. In order to set off the atmosphere, the stage effect was once again full, and the father and daughter hugged each other and cried bitterly. Subsequently, the curtain slowly fell, saying "Do not let the company of parents become a child's luxury".
At this point, this "touching and profound" skit officially ended.
Not to mention the quality of the paragraph, from acting to the stage, only three big words are written "Give!" I! cry! ”。
Are you crying? I cried anyway. /The Comedy Man Season 6
What was originally a stage technique that was the icing on the cake has now become a rescue tool to fill the loopholes in the story and forcibly set off the atmosphere.
The audience laughs or not the creator is not responsible, only to make them cry.
If you want me to cry, logic has to make sense first
Poplar Shulin also once ridiculed the format of "Happy Comedians": "The works that can win the championship must be sensational, why did not win the championship in the previous seasons, because sensationalism cannot be won." ”
If the quality of the work itself is worrying, and it is necessary to forcibly stir up emotions, it will easily become a stage disaster in the end.
CCTV's new comedy variety show "Gold Medal Comedy Class" this year has a skit - "Forget Him", which is one of the few sensational skits on the stage.
According to the routine of the work about the elderly with Alzheimer's disease, there will definitely be tear-jerking plots. From the appearance of the old man, the bullet screen began to flash "please don't be happy and sad", "it is a sensational sketch" and other complaints. It can be seen that the audience has reached the level of "wolf coming" for such skits.
In fact, compared with other sensational works, the content logic of this story is still complete, and the promotion of the sensational atmosphere in the end will not be embarrassing.
It's just that the "comedy ceiling" Chen Peisi is still not satisfied with this, giving the evaluation of "only focusing on results, no process".
A story without a process, no matter how beautiful the ending, is broken. /"Gold Medal Comedy Class"
The entire work revolves around a sick old man, and the audience can already anticipate the subsequent plot development and sensational ending as soon as the opening scene is opened. There are no details throughout the process, only the results and emotions are expressed back and forth. The audience who predicts the outcome cannot quickly enter the story, the script logic is not strong, the actors work hard, and the follow-up sensational effect will not be good.
Then again, comedy doesn't inherently exclude sensationalism. Jia Ling's "Hello, Li Huanying" has won a super high box office of 5 billion this year, and before it appeared on the big screen, the film's prototype sketch was widely acclaimed.
Unlike movies, the sketch stage needs to explain the relationship and plot of the characters in a very short period of time.
Whether it is the first five minutes, the main characters and character relationships are clearly explained, or during the development of the plot, Zhang Jiang's legs and the tofu vendors are buried in the burden of the story, which has both laughter and does not make the audience feel abrupt.
After completing the preliminary plot preparation, it was not until Jia Ling recalled her mother's monologue that the sensational atmosphere was gradually set off. She is not rigidly paired with lights and music to memorize lines, but integrates herself into her mother's past life, giving people a sense of time and space interlacing. This implicit way of expression not only does not make the stage monotonous, but also sets off the atmosphere.
Only when the actors themselves are first integrated into the story can they capture the hearts of the audience. /Comedy Story
Yue Yunpeng commented in the background: "It is not catching you, it is slowly scratching your heart." "Emotional development is in your own hands, and you will only taste sadness at the end."
In such a work, the audience can cry without forcibly pressing the head.
Who says the core of comedy is tragedy
The end must be to cry
Ever since Chen Peisi said, "The core of comedy is tragedy," comedians have found perfect reasons for their works not to be funny.
This sentence itself is correct, just like the previous popular program "Tan Talks About Traffic".
When an illegal electric vehicle driver faced a police officer who corrected his illegal behavior, the first thing he did was not to admit his mistake, but to say nonsensically, "I am on Tang Xiaohong's construction site." This sentence is similar to the "my father is Li Gang" at that time. Although it later became an Internet buzzword in 2009, behind it was the fluke psychology of many violators when facing the police.
Another elder sister riding an electric car with a huge broken bed had her first reaction after being stopped was to nervously protect her bed and did not realize her violation. For her, this bed was the only place to sleep at night. But if it's not for life, who wants to pick up a broken bed?
The phrase "always find a place to sleep at night" is a way to work hard in the world. /Tan on Traffic
The balloon brother who was stopped and pulled the police officer to sing "Two Butterflies" crampedly, probably just wanted to use his singing to ease the tension and avoid punishment, after all, it was difficult to make a living.
Everyone is very ordinary, and the funny passages come from these ordinary people. Because the emotion is rich and close enough to life, the audience will feel funny, and temporarily ignore the tragic color.
In fact, based on real life, there are not a few works full of tragedy. In 1990, the family planning policy had just been implemented, so there was the emergence of Song Dandan and Huang Hong's "Supernatural Guerrilla", which satirized the work of favoring sons over women and violating the policy at that time, which seems to have a different meaning today.
In that era, Huang Hong and Song Dandan, who were farmers, were born in order to have a son, living a life far away from home and hiding in Tibet. Rural women with little culture enshrined the words in the newspapers as a holy message, "Times are different, men and women are the same", hoping to persuade their husbands to end such a hard life. However, the husband, who is deeply influenced by traditional culture, stubbornly believes that "having a son is the top priority, and equality between men and women is really not possible."
From Huang Hong's expression and body movements, it is not difficult to see his stubbornness. /SuperNatural Guerrilla
But the most poignant and funniest baggage is reflected in their children, "Hainan Island, Turpan, Shaolin Temple, Beidaihe", these names echo Huang Hong's sentence "Walk together to be born all the way, walk a station to give birth to a family". In order to avoid inspection, he took these young daughters almost all over the country. If it is impossible not to feel sorry for the child, the couple did have the idea of going home and living a good life, but in the end, when they faced the "LittleFoot Detective Team", the end they chose to continue to escape was also unexpected and reasonable.
Dreams are dreams after all, and in the face of reality, they will still subconsciously choose to escape. /SuperNatural Guerrilla
Such works not only reflect the background of the times at that time and the main contradictions of the works, but also allow the audience to reflect on the phenomenon of irony in a relaxed atmosphere, which is the essence of language works.
Even when I look back thirty years later, I still wonder if the girls who have been running around at a young age are now healthy and happy, or whether they are busy with their "brother" like in the movie "My Sister".
Works similar to "Super Life Guerrilla" are not in the minority, and there will be tragic elements in the works of comedy masters such as Stephen Chow and Chaplin.
Yin Tianqiu, who has been running the dragon suit in "The King of Comedy", was scolded bloodied for "refusing to die" when discussing the inner activities of "dead people" with the director who likes to turn his head. But when he was ridiculed as a "dead dragon set", he corrected: In fact, I am an actor. The same is true of Liu Piaopiao, who will instantly put away her smile when she is casually said to be a dancer, and ask more sincerely, "Who do you say is a dancer?"
The story of Yin Tianqiu and Liu Piaopiao is also the story of many people in reality. /The King of Comedy
In the play, they are all tragic characters, who are often scolded, but they are still willing to laugh at life, have dreams, and strive to love themselves and like people. The audience will laugh at their interpretations and will be touched by the way they try to live.
Although these works are full of tragic elements, in the end they are still resolving and confronting contradictions and satirical phenomena in a humorous way, and then ending with laughter, even if it is a sad ending, it will not be blunt and sensational.
Language programs do not rely on language to attract audiences and express themes, do they rely on "kneeling" and "embarrassing crying"?
No one says that comedy cannot be tragic, but what is "tragic" is not comedy itself. If the comedy has to cry out at the end, then I might as well go straight to the tragedy and cry from the beginning to the end.
Old Zhao once said: "Music is the biggest theme of comedy." ”
How many comedians now remember that "music" is the theme? /"I and the Spring Festival Gala Nineteen Years"
Therefore, even if the core of comedy is tragic, the audience must be happy first.
At the Spring Festival Gala in 2008, after performing "Torchbearer", Zhao Benshan cried backstage: "This script is too weak." When this work gives you discomfort and feels that you are educating people, it is the most tiring. ”
If the current comedians will still cry in the background like Lao Zhao because the script is not good, then the works of "happy heads and sad endings" will probably not be deeply hated.
Old Zhao does not cry, we miss you. /"I and the Spring Festival Gala Nineteen Years"
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Sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism, such a comedy sketch, the audience does not buy it. Zheng Yutou, 2019
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