Strictly speaking, most of the participating repertoires of the 21st China Shanghai International Arts Festival that are being held belong to the "niche culture"-relative to film and television audiences, gamers, park visitors, and collectors, stage plays The audience that can be covered can be described as a "niche".
The number of screens in China is already number one in the world. Nowadays, a movie is shown nationwide. Assuming that it is shown only one day on 66,000 screens across the country, and three shows a day, with 50 audiences per show, then the audience of the film will also be 9.9 million. Therefore, the film that encounters Waterloo also has a box office of millions of dollars. Twenty years ago, even if an online game did not charge players a penny, as long as there were 3,000 online players in a month, they could feed a game development team through the network fee paid to China Telecom. Last year, Shanghai Disneyland had 12 million passengers. Based on the average price of 400 yuan per person, the annual ticket revenue was 4.8 billion yuan, which is equivalent to the box office of "Wandering Earth" or the total box office of Chinese movies in the National Day file this year.
Among the most commercialized musicals in stage performances, Broadway has so far performed "The Phantom of the Opera" at the Majestic Theatre in New York. This evergreen play, performed from January 26, 1988 to March 31 this year, lasted 11,358 days and 12,975 shows. Based on an average of 800 spectators and a ticket price of 100 US dollars, after 31 years of performances, the total The box office was US$1.038 billion, which is approximately equal to RMB 6.747 billion.
has been on the most profitable Broadway stage in New York, USA for 31 years, which is 1.9 billion yuan more than the total box office of China’s national holiday this year. Shanghai Disneyland can only sell tickets at current prices for one and a half years. The 31-year total box office of "The Phantom of the Opera"...
The term "popular culture" is said to first appeared in the works of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Gasset in the 1930s. The distinction between "mass" and "niche" stems from the highly developed market economy after the rise of the Industrial Revolution and even the result of capital's profit. The industrial revolution made a large number of products available for copying-the English word for copy is "Copy", which is the transliteration of film "copy". The invention of film has drawn a dividing line in the cultural and entertainment industry. Anything that can be copied in large quantities through film into a film copy (now digital U-Key) is increasingly controlled by capital to popularize culture and even popular entertainment; it cannot improve the perception through shooting. Because the live performances on stage will greatly weaken the sense of the scene after being copied into discs, they will still remain in the niche cultural field.
Therefore, the form of popular culture is obvious: film and television, games, theme parks, cultural and creative collection; the form of niche culture is also obvious: live performance on stage. The audience population of the former is often thousands of times that of the latter. The latter’s requirements for artistic attainments are often thousands of times higher than that of the former—just taking theatrical performances as an example, a two-hour performance in one go, and cannot rely on technical means to pause or restart. Therefore, a celebrity sought after by the public may not necessarily win respect in the industry; an artist who wins respect in the industry may not necessarily have public popularity. This can explain why Zheng Yunlong is still not popular in the musical stage for 10 years, but he has become popular in TV variety shows, but he is more willing to hone his acting skills from the musical stage to the theater stage-public popularity is often related to art Achievements are inversely proportional, especially when online fans can “make stars” irrationally.
This is the fundamental reason why the China Shanghai International Arts Festival is beneficial to the spiritual life of this city-mass entertainment stars make money and flow to promote economic development; niche culture leads the trend of thought, guides us to introspect, tap our own potential, and realize Self-worth and realize the care for people. "Romeo and Mom" by the Carmel Theater in Israel, performed at the Majestic Theater a few days ago, teased the popular variety show around the world. A 17-year-old boy participated in the audition and became the only candidate for the role of Romeo, which gave his mother who had just learned that her cancer had relapsed to fight for life. Unexpectedly, in order to obtain funding from the local Ministry of Culture, the variety show eventually made another default candidate become Romeo... and everyone around her mother cooperated with her son's "lie" to make her live better for the rest of her life...this The first stage of the play, the attendance rate was only 30%. But Israel’s Carmel Theater participated in another drama "Requiem" in Modern Drama Valley in May this year, but it was hard to find a ticket. The audience knows "Requiem", but they don't know its source. "Carmel" is the best theater group in Israel. If not for China Shanghai International Art Festival, "Carmel" will not come easily. Jews are the best merchants.
China Shanghai International Arts Festival also showed us the rare Mozart opera "Girl Pretending to be a Gardener" (see the picture below left) performed at the La Scala Opera House in Italy-the first opera written by Mozart at the age of 18. Farce is far less wise than his last opera "The Magic Flute", and therefore far less common than "The Magic Flute". However, this helps us better understand Mozart's growth trajectory. This "niche among the niche" choice has opened the public's horizons. As for opera repertoires such as Peking Opera "Datang Royal Concubine", while retaining the stylization of singing, it also strives for a wider audience with innovative and aesthetic styles. In addition,
, the original "Art Sky" benefiting the people at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival, allows more theater performances to appear on urban lawns and community stages in the form of square performances, and get close to the audience at low prices or even for free. The "Art Education" section focuses on the appearance of art in urban public spaces. While popularizing art, it allows more people to participate in art creation. The student performance troupe is essentially a measure to support future audiences, and it also attracts the enthusiastic participation of students studying in Shanghai... Therefore, niche culture can also become a popular festival. (Zhu Guang)
