◎When the water is full, it overflows
CCTV variety show "Gold Medal Comedy Class" recently announced the list of mentors: Chen Peisi, Yingda and Guo Degang. The criteria for the column group to select a mentor are unknown, but careful analysis shows that the comedies of the three people are based on the life of the grassroots, telling the stories of small people and reflecting the living conditions of small people. But they each represent the three different paths and comedic spirit of China's "comedy" development since the reform and opening up, and from their comedy trends, we can see the flow of Chinese comedy culture and comedy spirit.
Chen Peisi
In "literati" comedies, the "little people" laugh with tears
Compared with the later sketches of Zhao Benshan, Pan Changjiang and others, the classic sketches that Chen Peisi once performed on the Spring Festival evening of CCTV are essentially drama. Each sketch is based on the structural framework of the beginning, process, climax and epilogue, following the contradiction law of traditional drama, and the jokes are in the unfolding of dramatic conflicts, through the performance of typical characters who conform to the prescribed situation and specific plot to complete the shaping of comedic characters.
Young people who eat noodles, small actors who play frozen in summer in winter, vendors who illegally sell lamb kebabs, and "two fools" who play Wang Ye, Chen Peisi can win laughter, and the storyline design is indispensable to his superb acting skills. Between him and the audience, there is the wall of theatrical theory. The existence of the wall makes the distance between the audience and the stage form, so that the audience can appreciate the interweaving of rationality and sensibility.
Chen Peisi's comedy is a traditional literati way of creating. If you can't fully understand Chen Peisi's comedy by only looking at the sketches, then looking back at the films he participated in, such as "Xizhao Street", "Father and Son", "Second Son Opens a Shop", "Silly Manager", "Kyoto Ball Man" and so on, especially his representative work "Erzi Series", you will find that Chen Peisi's comedy mainly presents the contradiction and conflict between the changing era and the fate of small people at the bottom of society.
The characters played by Chen Peisi, especially "Father and Son" and "Silly Manager", often make the audience shed tears after laughing, thinking about the situation of these characters, and even compassion. The 1980s was a period of great transformation in Chinese society, which inevitably brought about a change in people's understanding of life, and naturally also impacted people's moral and ethical views, and many people looked embarrassed in the face of sudden changes.
It should be said that Chen Peisi's performance is to restore reality and be close to life, but he is subordinate to the literati perspective of the choreographer. For artists of Chen Peisi's generation, making the audience laugh is the foundation, and making the audience think is the mission.
Indah
In the comedy of the city, the wisdom of the common people is carried forward
At the end of the 1980s, a new trend of comedy emerged. Starting from the movie "Naughty Lord", to the TV series "The Story of the Editorial Department" and "I Love My Home", the climax was formed, and the movie "Party A and Party B" pushed this comedy to the peak. With the end of "Idle Centaur Sister" and "Northeast Family", this comedy trend is gradually out of people's sight.
These comedies have a common feature: anti-elite and anti-authority from the perspective of small people; allude to and satirize social reality through small people. The creators themselves are cultural people, but they draw nourishment from the wisdom of ordinary people's lives and "common culture", and absorb the essence of traditional Chinese art.
This trend of comedy is closely related to the fact that after the deepening of reform and opening up, people have paid more and more attention to their own strength, attached importance to individual freedom, and attached importance to the expression of ordinary people. Wang Shuo is the beginning, and Liang Zuo and Yingda are the promoters. When I think of Indah today, the first thing that comes to mind is a sitcom. But sitcoms are nothing more than a figurative form, and the most important thing is the cultural spirit behind the work.
In these sitcoms, the creators use a lot of traditional Chinese rap art, such as the technique of shaking three times and shaking, eating vomiting and other cross-talk shaking baggage, while making people laugh through a large number of golden sentences and surreal exaggerated performances. The reason why these golden sentences and exaggerated performances are both funny and reasonable is that the settings of the characters in the play are "facial", which is precisely a performance possibility provided by traditional opera art, in fact, "first there is a character, then there is a character". Like the old man Fu Ming in "I Love My Home", as soon as he appeared, he told the audience the identity and personality of this person - a bureaucratic "variant". This is equivalent to cao cao in Peking Opera, as soon as he appears, you know whether he is loyal or adulterous - the hook is a white face, representing a traitor.
First there is character, which is the greatest understanding and refinement of life; then there is a character, which is to visualize the understanding and refinement with the means that the audience can receive and identify with, which is a "spiraling" restoration. Whether it is refined or restored, it is the result of wisdom and thinking, which comes from the cultural and life accumulation of the creator.
It can be said that Indah's comedy, whether it is satire or praise, embodies wisdom. And this wisdom is embodied in a kind of kind "teasing" in the form of comedy: the dialectical transformation of "wisdom" and "foolishness", such as the seemingly stupid old man Fu Ming and the seemingly shrewd old Hu; the seemingly shrewd Sister Ma and the seemingly stupid Wang Yuanchao.
Guo Degang
"I" is the civilian, returning to the "past" of the sensual laughter
If Chen Peisi represents the thinking laughter of "I look at the commoners", and Yingda represents the wisdom laughter of "I learn the commoners", then Guo Degang represents the sensory laughter of "I am the civilian".
Unlike Chen Peisi and Yingda, Guo Degang was born in an ordinary family, and has been wandering the rivers and lakes, suffering from wind and rain. The cross-talk art he is engaged in is a thorough traditional folk art, and the performance is a market cross-talk, and the distance between him and the audience is the smallest of the three. As a result, he understands the needs of the audience to the greatest extent, coupled with his proficiency in traditional cross-talk techniques, so that he fully "live" these techniques to please the audience and interact with the audience.
If Chen Peisi's comedy and the audience are "walled", and Yingda comedy is trying to "break the wall", then there is "no wall" between Guo Degang and the audience, which is precisely the characteristic of traditional rap art. Of course, in specific performances, what form this "wallless" is presented in, whether it is benign or destructive, depends on the long-term influence and guidance of the actors on the audience.
Guo Degang's performance of traditional cross-talk in this "wallless" state is the biggest difference between him and some cross-talk actors in the past for a long time, and it is also his biggest advantage. Today's young people, in addition to work and study, may need more relaxation and entertainment, emotional belonging, rather than thinking, nor the recognition of other people's handouts, and even due to the pressure of survival, let this relaxed entertainment and emotional belonging go to extremes and hysteria, and their requirements for comedy become simple laughter, a complete emotional venting. And Guo Degang and Deyun She bring to the audience a feeling of "teasing" with friends and having a funny party together. This is exactly the same as the cross-talk effect of the Beijing Tianqiao and Tianjin Sanwudi: temporarily paralyzed.
However, when cross-talk immerses the audience in ethical groans, when cross-talk makes the audience satisfied with various "wind and moon" jokes, another kind of comedic spirit in traditional cross-talk is weakened or even disappeared - presenting social reality from the perspective of the bottom society, showing and criticizing social life. At the same time, when cross-talk only relies on the performance skills inherited to attract the audience and make the audience laugh, the wisdom spirit behind traditional cross-talk will also be diluted or even ignored, and it will go to the opposite path - anti-intellectual. Obviously, at this level, Guo Degang, who is saddled with various fames brought by crosstalk, has a lot to do.
Zhu Qingsheng, an art theorist, said in the article "Art, is what makes you an independent person" that inheriting tradition is not to rigidly inherit old forms and old spiritual models, but to creatively transform and create contemporary times. This is more or less what all the artists who make a living from "tradition" today need to encourage. Comedy, too.
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Source: Beijing Youth Daily