【Hot Spot Observation】
Author:Liu Yang (Teacher, School of Humanities, Communication University of China)
Every New Year slot, comedies always get a good box office.
Every TV station, comedy variety show is always the "golden key" to ensure ratings.
Every year at the Spring Festival Gala, skits that can bring "laugh points" are always one of the most popular programs.
With the light-hearted, humorous, sharp and interesting literary and artistic content becoming the just need of the current society, comedy culture has begun to penetrate into all aspects of literary and artistic creation, and it also reflects the aesthetic fashion of the era that is changing.
Poster for the comedy movie Half a Comedy. Profile picture
Poster of the comedy movie "The Richest Man in Xihong". Profile picture
Poster for the comedy movie "Hello, Lee Huan-young". Profile picture
Comedy culture spilled over from literature and art to other fields, and was absorbed by social public discourse
The upgrading and iteration of media technology even determines the way people perceive and affect the change of aesthetic fashion.
Today, media convergence is moving in the direction of "all things are mediums". The pursuit of popularity, banter, and comedy is a distinctive feature of popular culture. With the support of media technology, after mass culture gains a larger stage and a greater voice, the entertainment elements in mass culture will penetrate into the information field at an unprecedented speed, and the atmosphere of pan-entertainment in the whole society will become more and more intense, which in turn will promote the production and dissemination of comedy content.
One manifestation of the growing power and influence of comedy is that comedic expression has begun to spill from literary and artistic creation to other fields. For example, the criminal law course opened by Luo Xiang, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, has attracted a large number of fans with a humorous teaching style and has been rated as the "highest popularity of 2020"; self-media such as "Mixed Knowledge" have long used comics to interpret the professional knowledge and basic principles of economics, physics, medicine, history, philosophy and other fields, and almost every explanation can have more than 100,000 clicks, and there are both ordinary users and professional scholars among readers.
Compared to stereotypical preaching, people clearly prefer light-hearted, joyful content. When the elite culture, which has always shown a serious face, begins to be presented in a humorous form, it not only brings people a sense of freshness, but also means that the elite culture has stepped out of the "ivory tower" with the help of comedic expression and has gone to the general public, reflecting the advent of the era of "information equality" and "knowledge universalization".
Comedic expression makes all kinds of information easy to disseminate and easy to remember, narrows the distance with the audience, and is gradually absorbed by social public discourse. For example, the titles and writing of the current new media platforms have generally consciously distinguished themselves from the traditional newspaper and periodical language style, and the language style of new media copywriting of many government agencies has become more and more grounded. For example, during the release of the movie "The Wandering Earth", the electronic screens of traffic instructions in many cities have been replaced with the line "Thousands of roads, safety first" in the film as a safety prompt. Not long ago, when promoting the vaccination of the new crown vaccine, some humorous slogans with a "sense of network" also appeared on the propaganda banners in many places, and even slogans such as "Let's vaccinate together, seedlings and seedlings together" have also appeared on the national media platform. These comedic slogans not only reflect the change in the propaganda thinking of government departments, but also reflect the progress of government governance methods - communicating with the masses in a flexible rather than coercive way to achieve the purpose of convincing the masses.
Gags contain Chinese wisdom, humor and catharsis to vent emotional stress
Behind any popular fashion is inseparable from the nourishment of the social environment and the promotion of the cultural psychology of the times, and comedy culture is no exception.
The cultural products and art forms that have been in the mainstream since ancient times are often drama-like or even tragic, with a sense of sublime in the sense of Kant's aesthetics. However, the inclusive and diverse Chinese culture has also left ample room for the survival and development of the relaxed and even spicy and ironic comedy culture, and it can be said that chinese traditional culture does not lack comedy genes.
From the Middle Ages, along with the development of social economy and the formation of the citizen class, from the hook bar waslet to the bookstore garden, comedy or works and products with comedy elements have always been the darlings of the cultural consumption market, and the mainstream culture has always shown a considerable degree of tolerance and even appreciation for comedy and comedy culture. The world of home and country and chai rice oil and salt are not contradictory, and the indoctrination of Gaotai and gags are mutually tolerant, which is the wisdom of Chinese culture.
In addition to the comedy gene in traditional culture, comedy has become popular in contemporary Chinese society, and it is also related to the current people's desire to alleviate stress and relieve their mood through comedy. Economic development and social prosperity have made the contemporary aesthetic psychology more positive in dealing with emotions such as loneliness, confusion and anxiety.
Compared with the serious or decadent posture, the witty humor and witty jokes in comedy can not only effectively express attitudes, but also skillfully resolve contradictions and promote effective communication between people. On the network platform, such as papi sauce and other Internet celebrity bloggers to produce spit short videos are very popular, such videos on communication barriers, conceptual differences and other common contradictions and confusion in work life, take exaggeration, transposition, positive and negative way to express views, humor is not lack of irony, in the help of the audience to vent emotions, release pressure at the same time, will also guide the audience to reflect on their own problems, so as to help individuals complete their own psychological adjustment.
In the past, readers who were accustomed to reading books and newspapers and those who loved to chase soap operas were two groups that were significantly different, but now those who have been cut off by the media are gathering towards the Internet, and the cultural atmosphere that prefers lightness and ridicule is rapidly spreading outward from the youth network culture circle. The 2020 Douyin user portrait report shows that the proportion of users over the age of 41 has reached 19%. Many of the "memes" in online pop culture are no longer just topics that young people are keen on, but are also well known to middle-aged and elderly groups. Whether it is said that the "net generation" has entered the middle-aged and elderly, or that the thinking and aesthetics of the middle-aged and elderly people are approaching the "net generation", a basic fact is that the two groups that once had huge differences in aesthetics now have a common aesthetic space. With a common aesthetic space, it is also possible to establish a consensus on values. From this perspective, comedy culture has built a bridge for different age groups to build a consensus on values.
Comedies that adhere to value positions and emotional temperatures have vitality
Today's comedy culture reflects the positive and youthful mental outlook of the whole society, but also mixed with some negative factors. For example, in order to earn traffic and eyeballs, individuals have comedicized themes that are not suitable for jokes; many content producers blindly cater to the interests of a few people who like "shuangwen", "shuang drama" and "stimulation", and give up the social responsibility and artistic pursuit of literary and artistic works.
No pop culture should compromise public values or violate moral codes. When comedy culture becomes a crude spoof, it brings not pleasure and relaxation, but vulgarity, vulgarity, vulgarity. Clever comedy is not a farce or a scandal. As the 19th-century British writer Meredith said, the real test of comedy is whether it can elicit meaningful laughter. Therefore, good comedy works can have a positive interaction with social and cultural construction, and at the same time bring people entertainment, they can also bring people aesthetic enjoyment.
Throughout the history of comedy, comedies that are only aimed at simple amusement, even if they can trigger happy carnivals, their vitality is short-lived. Only works that adhere to the value stance and emotional temperature can withstand the double test of the market and time, and have sustained vitality, which is the case with Chinese and Western classic comedies. Shakespeare embedded dense puns in the humorous dialogue of the comedy "The Merchant of Venice" to express appreciation for wisdom and justice; the laughable lines and plots in Wang Shifu's "West Chamber" all point to the determination of young men and women to pursue beautiful love in an era of involuntary marriage. Contemporary phenomenal film and television dramas with comedic elements also continue this quality. In the TV series "Journey to the West" directed by Yang Jie, there are many jokes caused by personality differences and misunderstandings among the four masters and apprentices on the way to learn the scriptures, but there are intriguing ironies in the jokes, and they highlight the spirit of not fearing difficulties and being positive and optimistic under the support of ideals and beliefs. The movies that created box office miracles, "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" and "Hello, Li Huanying", all have a strong comedic style, and the most moving main line of the film is great family affection. The laugh point design of these film and television dramas is closely related to the character and story situation, which naturally arises with the development of the plot, and is by no means piled up for the so-called "comedic effect", and it does not force funny and destroy the atmosphere at the critical moment of the audience and the host's public feelings, and the proportions are quite accurate. It can be seen that exploring the expression of the times, individualization and style on the basis of advocating positive values, conforming to the logic of life, conforming to the plot characters, and grasping the scale of baggage is the common feature of excellent comedy works at home and abroad in ancient and modern times, and it is also the basic principle that all comedy creations should follow.
In the contemporary cultural environment, in addition to entertainment, comedy has become an important means of value output, knowledge transmission, exchange and dialogue. Society needs more high-quality comedies. In the future creation, the majority of creators should pay attention to the inherent meaning and aesthetic tendency of comedy, avoid fragmentation, entertainment, and superficiality of works; let comedy works infiltrate the temperature of human nature, carry humanistic care, express thinking about reality in laughter, and complete the enlightenment of the mind.
Guangming Daily ( 2021-06-02 13 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily