October 3, 2022 issue | Total issue 3013
"This web drama reproduces the familiar scenes from youth memory one by one, creating a group of flesh-and-blood, smart and amiable young people in small towns, for the tired of involution and growing anxiety The audience opens the mental decompression valve..."
Not long ago, Xinhua News Agency spoke highly of "When You Were Young", which attracted more and more audiences to notice this small but beautiful youth campus drama. After watching
, many fans of "When You Were Young" sighed, "I haven't watched such a sincere group drama for a long time!" "It's funny and healing, like the seaside town version of " please answer 1988"" ......
Unexpectedly, among such a group of teenagers in a small seaside town, many viewers who have been away from campus for many years have recovered their lost fragments of youth.
In the development cycle of domestic youth dramas, a new round of genre fusion is replacing the previous nostalgic youth narrative with campus as the key word.
But "When You Were Young", which is about to end, has found a new and unique path for campus youth dramas at this point in time. The main creator of
sinks the camera to a high school in a coastal town, focusing on five teenagers with very different personalities. When the topic of love and growth is placed in a clearer time and space coordinate, those childish and boring high school life seems to come alive in memory.
The five sons of Ma Tang Town, the utopia of friendship and love
is true, restored, warm, and down-to-earth. It is a high-frequency word in the praise of "When You Were Young".
"The Five Sons of Matang Town" is a small group that has existed on every middle school campus. The five people gathered together the most representative characters in the class: Vicious Tongue Xue Shen Cheng Hai, Natural Stupid Xue Ran Xiao Ran, straightforward physical girl Xiang Nan, taciturn school Cao Rui Ge and Gua Tian Bai Xiao Sheng A Tao.
The five sons who have grown up together since childhood have constant little quarrels and lingering feelings. They always remind audiences who have been away from campus for many years that I once had such a pure friendship.
For example, five sons burnt the utility room by mistake and were ordered to read under the national flag, but they were punished together with their best friends. No matter how embarrassing they made, they would not feel embarrassed. Another example was the surprise of Xiaoran's birthday party that turned into a shock, and the cake was not allowed. Instead of ice cream, but with your best friend by your side, chocolate can also taste the taste of birthday cake.
The fetters are getting deeper and deeper in the sense of common weal and ceremonies. The feelings of the five sons in Matang Town started from geography, and they continued because of their tolerance and concern for each other. Their quarrelsome friendship is the relationship people yearn for most in their student days.
In urban dramas, women's friendships often appear as complex faces of friendship mixed with comparisons, fragile and fragile. In contrast, 's "When You Were Young" played a youthful effect, sketching a pure, warm and idealistic female friendship.
From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, women often gain intimacy by exchanging emotions and feelings. Sixteen is the most sensitive age. In the semi-enclosed space of the classroom, subtle emotional friction can easily lead to cracks in the relationship. But the only two female companions of the five sons, Xiaoran and Xiangnan, do not have the fragile and easy-to-break friendship of ordinary girls, which is somewhat related to Xiangnan's boyish character.
"How do you buy drinks with others?" "Why didn't you wait for me after school?" These thoughts probably stayed in Xiang Nan's mind for only three seconds. Although her nerves are like south, it is she who proposes to plan a surprise party for Xiaoran; when Xiaoran is troubled by rumors, she is also the one who takes the initiative to play the ugly to save Xiaoran.
The ideal friendship is to go both ways, and Xiaoran is the same for Xiang Nan. She does not miss the time to eat during her studies. The process of
Wen Jing and Xiao Ran's deep fate is also eye-catching.
Shen Wenjing, as a transfer student who has known Cheng Hai for a long time, has an identityShe is Xiaoran's "rival in love", but Wen Jing did not destroy Chenghai and Xiaoran's friendship according to the usual dramatic logic, but instead became Xiaoran's "mother fan": support in class business, caring in private, can be said to be in the eyes and heart It's all you.
The approach of Wen Jing and Xiao Ran, which begins with the "spiritual magnetic field", is the true portrayal of the acquaintance of many adolescent girls. The emotional portrayal of the three girls also contributed to breaking the stereotype of plastic sisters. Depicting the relationship between girls does not need to rely on the configuration of dog-blooded "rivals" and "wingmen". The girls' acquaintance and getting along have a wide enough narrative space in themselves.
Compared with the warm expression of friendship in the play, the love line of "When You Were Young" is much more hazy.
There is a dark tide of love in adolescence, but when the words come to the mouth, they always become unable to be frank and relative. In "When You Were Young", the throbbing of youth is based on the long-term love of the eye, and the two-way secret love of childhood sweethearts.
The line of Chenghai and Xiaoran is rarely unfolded from a male perspective, so we see how a cynical boy with a poisonous tongue hides his thoughts and is cautious when facing the girl he likes.
Chenghai is similar to the "Gou Huan" in "Reply 1988". On the surface, he is stubborn and disgusted with Xiaoran, but in private, he will work part-time while sick to make money in order to help her buy concert tickets. After finding her lost album, he will secretly Put it on the shelf in the video hall and wait for her to discover it for herself. On the other side of
, chasing Rui Ge to the south was also very hard, and the little sun never melted this slow-moving ice cube handsome guy.
Mishima Yukio once said that the state of youth is always "longing" and "not getting". All the heartbeats of
Ma Tang Wuzi can be traced in the company and support day after day. But the ambiguity always ends abruptly before the cellophane will be pierced. This is also the charm of youth! Because there is a better future, regrets have the opportunity to be fulfilled.
Happiness and sourness are intertwined, the true context of family love
Like love, family love is also an important nourishment for nurturing adolescence. Family members are not only the confidence for teenagers to fight against life, but also the source of anxiety.
"When You Were Young" is not shy about the presentation of intergenerational conflicts: Chen Hao was beaten on the arm by his parents because of his declining grades; Xiang Nan protested loudly every time, but his father never learned to knock on the door when he entered the bedroom; Cheng Hai's mother Every time I see Cheng Hai's laziness and slack, I will scold "Why can't you learn to learn to smile"...
is too much, has a vague sense of boundaries, and can't say enough "other people's children", these Chinese parents will make mistakes Mistakes permeate the fireworks routine of Wuzi in Ma Tang Town. The restoration of details invisibly enhances the sense of substitution, and also allows the audience to see the shadow of their parents.
Five sons have their own "unfortunate". However, the play does not blindly magnify the anxiety of parent-child conflict, but instead uses a comedy way to dissolve the tension of the conflict.
Xiang Nan always felt that his father wanted to peep at his privacy when he entered the house without knocking on the door, but in fact, the drunk father just came to deliver his unfinished appetizers; Cheng Hai was dissatisfied with everyone's partial smile, and was so angry that he stuck his chopsticks in the rice When she saw Chenghai's mother, she shouted angrily, "This is for your mother."
visualizes intergenerational conflicts as ironic family routines, stemming from the director's delicate capture of youthful life.
presents in this way the anxiety of avoiding the conflict of reality, and also implements the warm and healing memory of the play.
Watching Chenghai's mother teach Chenghai a lesson while silently preparing cold medicine for her son, we will inevitably think of the hard-mouthed and soft-hearted mother at home. We quarreled with her repeatedly over trivial matters and reconciled. Her habitual care can always close the huge gap between the parent-child relationship.
"When You Were Young" focuses on the healing of family affection,But it does not shy away from the profound issues brought about by the family of origin.
The five sons of Ma Tang are not all complete families, and the traces of family love and regret left on them are obvious and deep.
When her father passed away at an early age, Xiaoran, who came to Matang Town with her mother, was the most precocious. In addition to her studies, she also worried about her gullible mother who couldn't cook. Without the enthusiastic guidance of Chenghai and everyone, it would be difficult for the introverted woman to get rid of loneliness and anxiety on her own.
When we were teenagers, the absence of death education made it difficult for us to face the sudden departure of our loved ones. Grandma is the closest family member of left-behind child Ah Tao. The sudden death of grandma made Ah Tao realize that the real goodbye will not leave a goodbye. Without the guidance and guidance of his friends, Ah Tao would not have gotten rid of this shadow so quickly. Friendship fills the vacancy of family affection, which is Ah Tao's luck in misfortune.
returns to "pure", the essence of new youth dramas
When the post-90s become the last generation of groups with collective memory, with the differentiation of mainstream aesthetics, youth dramas are gradually differentiated into "urban sweet pets", "family ethics" and "magic reality", etc. Multiple subtypes.
However, when the boundaries of the story are broadened, it also gradually loses its universality.
"When You Were Young" did not choose to add to young people. This drama has a good reputation, precisely because it has returned to pure youthful realism.
's film and television works are mirrors that look into themselves. The joy of watching a nostalgic drama is that any clothing or landmark that is closely related to the era can trigger our memory journey. The video store, ice skating rink, and even the pink leopard-print suit that Xiaoran was forced to wear in "When You Were Young" are typical elements of the post-millennium. The restoration of the details of the times in
's plays not only stops at the setting and props, but also deeply integrates the popular culture of the era and the life of Ma Tang Wuzi. For example,
laughed and lost the tape of Chen Hao's "Jay" at the beginning, and even skipped class to find it. Only those who have experienced the era of Jay Chou can understand the meaning and irreplaceability of this first album.
Xiangnan sang "Pray for Buddha" in class while half asleep, and the uncensored version of "Titanic" that the five sons secretly watched together are all classic content that was popular in youth memory. The way they are crazy about it has cross-generational contagion.
Harvard University Professor Boym explained in "The Future of Nostalgia" the reasons for the popularity of period dramas with strong memories: "In an era of accelerated rhythm of life and historical change, nostalgia will inevitably lead to a certain This is the reappearance of , a defense mechanism."
The audience can't find the antidote for life in reality, and they will look forward to going back through images and memories to find their own maverick.
Unfortunately, today's youth dramas are more and more reluctant to simply tell the story of campus life. Many creators want to benchmark "Reply 1988", but when the script landed, they didn't have the courage to approach the old days.
In any case, the topic of sea, friends and unspoken love will always be the motif of Chinese youth. "When You Were Young" proves that there is no need to cater to the trend to expand the type, and it is not necessary to blend in with the anxiety of the new era. There is also a way out for the nostalgic healing of youth dramas. A good grasp of the proportions of the group portraits, and the line drawing style of campus daily life can also bring out new ideas.
【Text/Kwai Chung】
