author | Pengpeng editor | Fan Zhihui
Yao Chen met the audience with rock dream.
A week ago, a web drama called " Rock Crazy Flower " was launched on iQiyi . The rock theme and the hot female theme filled the audience with anticipation and rushed directly to iQI Art soared to the top of the list. At present, "Rock and Roll" has released a complete twelve episodes of the plot.
Up to now, this drama has a score of 7.4 on Douban, and more than 14,000 people have rated it, but the polarized comments are on the top of each other. Those who scored five stars said that the heroine created by Yao Chen had a "sense of not caring about everything", which was eye-catching; those who scored one point said it was "extremely embarrassing", which was simply "disgraceful to the rock spirit."
is a rare domestic drama from the perspective of female rock musicians, what is the problem with "Rock and Roll"?
Success is also rock, failure is also rock
"Rock and Roll" is obviously a rare theme in domestic dramas.
Peng Lai (played by Yao Chen) is a middle-aged lead singer of the band. When he was young, he formed a smashing all-girls rock band - Crazy Flowers. When her daughter Bai Tian ( Zhuang Duffy ) went to the United States to develop at the age of 6, but the development was not smooth and unsatisfactory, and she was reduced to making a living as a nurse. After the unexpected death of her ex-husband, she had to return to China to face her grown-up daughter and a group of old friends who had pursued her rock and roll dream with him. After
returned to China, Peng Lai discovered that her daughter had also become a musician, but she blocked it in every possible way, and the conflict and friction between mother and daughter began. In the "fighting" with his daughter, Peng Lai finally reconciled with his daughter and regained his rock and roll dream.
puts the storytelling perspective on a woman, which is actually not uncommon in the domestic drama market these years. Only in Yao Chen's works are " is good ", " send me to Qingyun ", etc. The reason why "Rock and Roll" is special is that it chooses to create a "rock musician", which not only makes A brand new career orientation has entered the screen, and around this character, the mother, daughter and other identities in the story have also become different.
On the one hand, as a mother, a Penglai-style mother is not a Chinese-style mother. She wears smoky makeup and fishnet socks, and her relationship with her daughter is also an equal "fight of wits". In the film, her daughter is falsely pregnant in order to drop out of school to form a band. She not only helps her daughter drop out of school successfully, but also supports her daughter to give birth to the child.
On the other hand, as a daughter, the day-daughter is also under the status of a musician and starts to constantly offend her mother's authority. She would push her mother into the river and give her sleeping pills. In addition to Penglai, the role of the grandmother is also "ruthless". She can take a wine bottle in the bar and smash it directly on the head of the boss who bullied her daughter.
There's no question that the unconventional, offensive, and unusual handling of the mother-daughter relationship in female characters pushes the boundaries of female roles. Compared with other characters played by Yao Chen, Su Mingyu in "Everything Is Good" is a strong woman who takes care of a difficult family, and Sheng Nan in "Send Me to the Clouds" is a self-awareness and self-exploration. women. In the conventional wisdom that female characters emphasize too much consideration and exploration, the female characters shown in "Rock and Roll" all have a clear understanding of themselves, and take a "disdainful and calm" attitude towards everything. Character portraits such as
are mostly American dramas. For many viewers of mainland dramas, the characters in the drama have no prototypes in real life, but the identity of rock musicians makes everything convincing and credible. .
However, rock's achievement of female characters is in fact exploiting the stereotype of rock by mainstream Chinese audiences. For many fans who have watched the show, the interpretation of the rock band in the story obviously lacks a "sincerity".
In the film, there is a scene of a live performance by the band Crazy Flowers. In order to show the enthusiasm of music fans, the camera swept across the audience, and there were light signs with the words "Penglai" and "Crazy Flowers" in the crowd. Anyone who has some knowledge of rock music culture knows that, The light sign has only entered the rock performance scene in recent years. This is obviously not suitable in the context of the late 1990s and early 2000s of the wild flower fire.
also lacks "sincerity" and superficial character modeling. In
's play, Peng Lai's musician friend Da Cui ( Chang Yuan ) is middle-aged, and still insists on wearing a leather jacket, with medium-parted long hair, supplemented by the identity of the owner of the string shop, which is quite funny . Although the explanation given in the play is to keep the evidence that he has lived, he has rarely mentioned the unwillingness and persistence behind the middle-aged musicians. host".
At the same time, in the film, Peng Lai emphasizes his guitar skills that "play with your feet better than you (in the daytime)", but do not show the plot of her skills and performance throughout the film. For the music fans who come here, it is inevitable to feel disappointed.
So, rock is an achievement and a disappointment to the plot.
The characters are distorted, the rock suspension
TV series wants to gain the audience's approval, and the shaping of the characters is the first.
In "Rock and Roll", many audiences' recognition of Penglai's role is rooted in the recognition of the characteristics of rock and roll, crazy, rebellious, paranoid, self-destructive, and has a deviant "coolness". But if rock music is regarded as a spiritual or cultural, the role of Penglai is untenable.
"Rock and Roll" puts a lot of ink on the conflict brought about by rock and roll. The conflict between rock musician and mother role, the conflict between rock dream and normal life, the conflict between rock culture and secular success, the shaping of the inner world of the characters is not enough. In the end, the rock musicians become one thousand people, and the story is black and white. .
Does this represent the rock culture of the 90s? The answer is obviously no. "Rock and Roll" transforms the spiritual core of rock music into rebellious, niche and alternative. In order to get out of the way different from domestic dramas, it exerted too much force, and accidentally slipped into the perception of "three wrong views".
For example, Peng Lai has been abroad for many years. Although he has left a house and bought gifts for his daughter, he has not fulfilled his responsibilities as a mother. He has a lot of space to show her getting drunk with an old friend, but he does not describe the inner world of the characters. Rebel beat her mother, changed the lock cylinder, threw her luggage, and gave her sleeping pills, which caused her to be admitted to the hospital for gastric lavage. Putting rock's rebel culture into a state of moral corruption, testing the law, and unwilling to delve into the cultural roots behind rock's rebellion, like water without a source.
From this perspective, "Rock and Roll" also has a common problem in domestic workplace dramas over the years - suspension. Just like the poor people in domestic dramas live on the flat floor in the center of Shanghai and fall in love under the guise of various elite professions, the plot's shaping of professions is always imaginary and lacks at least a sense of reality.
is like the bad guy FM Master Wang's comment on Weibo : "In the past few days, my friends in the industry are talking about "Rock and Roll", basically saying that it is not real enough." However, practitioners are not aware of this kind of "Suspension" Chang Huai is open-minded, "After I read it, I cherish these "unreal" parts. Because this is just part of the perspective of outsiders looking at this industry, and this part of the perspective is worthy of reference in the industry."
This part of the perspective is positive It is the stereotype of rock and roll by the outside world, and the collage of rock elements is not equal to rock itself.
shoots rock well and sings rock well
put it in the current domestic drama, "Rock and Roll" is already a qualified work, but it is not perfect. On the one hand,
boldly breaks through the boundaries of female characters and injects new connotations and spiritual characteristics into women; on the other hand, the part of rock music always has "shape" but no "god", falling into the stereotype. If rock music is used as a tool to shape characters, the show is a success; if rock music is used as a theme, "Rock and Roll" is a failure. How does
shoot rock-themed, or even music-themed film and television works? The core element is to "sing rock well".
's musical performance of "Rock and Roll" has obvious bright spots. It boldly enabled young musicians such as , Dou Jiayuan, , Lang Band, Landfill Band, Muppets and other young musicians to createAnd singing, this new sound power is obviously eye-catching. At the same time, the show also invited veteran bands such as joyside and brain-turbulent band to sit in the town. The musicians also played guest roles in the play, which increased the interest in perception.
But obviously these music can't shape a complete Chinese rock look. As a music film, it is inevitable to look layman.
As early as the beginning of the millennium, the rock movie " Beijing Music and Road " was released. This movie has a score of 7.2 on Douban, which is better than 80% of music films. In terms of the expressiveness of the soundtrack of the movie, this movie is obviously much better. The movie chose Ziyue Band to take the lead. In addition to Ziyue Band's "Magic", "The Depths of Light" and other rock music works that fit the image of the protagonist, the movie also made many excellent original soundtracks that fit the plot, such as " Before Memories, After Forgetting", "Beijing Music and Road", etc., boldly used folk music such as erhu . In the end, the soundtrack album received a 9.2 rating on Douban.
In fact, in recent years, there are no shortage of rock movies in China that can reach the passing line.
For example, Zheng Jun 's rock-themed animation " Rock Tibetan Mastiff ", Dapeng 's "Sewing Machine Band", the lack of expressiveness of the music itself is the main reason for the audience to give bad reviews. Just like the evaluation of "Rock Tibetan Mastiff" by Xinhua Daily, "The cry and passion of rock and roll are gone. The theme song is a popular song, just like expecting a fierce warrior to come out, and finally a girl with small feet comes out." And "The Sewing Machine Band", whether it is the cameo appearance of various musicians, or the ensemble "No Hesitation" at the end of the film, is to fill the lack of music with feelings.
, whether it is "Rock Tibetan Mastiff", "Sewing Machine Band" or "Rock and Roll Crazy Flowers", obviously lacks in music performance, but has found a new audience outside the characteristics of rock. Whether they're children, comedy lovers, or women, rock fans don't necessarily pay. Therefore,
said that in addition to reasonable plots and character creation, good rock works should also return to the music itself.
