◎Yu Xiaoyu
In current film and television works related to young people, the keyword "pain" has gradually lost its sense of existence. Movies such as
, " Welcome to Me ", "Journey Across the Moon", " Twinkle Twinkle Stars " all reject ups and downs of plots and intense emotional conflicts, and begin to follow a relaxed route and tell tender stories. story. However, films that still insist on focusing on "pain", such as "Hourglass", "August Is Young", "Ten Years of Warmth", etc., have all encountered double Waterloo in terms of business and reputation.
If you turn your attention to TV dramas, it is not difficult to find that whether they are so-called "heroine dramas", "overbearing CEO dramas", or "sweet pet dramas" and "cool dramas", the focus of the narrative is no longer set on the protagonist. In terms of "pain", it focuses on the release of emotions, even catharsis. Those film and television works that focus on showing "frustration" should be careful. If they are not careful, young audiences will complain about them as "bloody and artificial".
Could it be that young people today really just want to have a painless love and live a relaxed life? Or, as netizens said, because they have better material conditions than their parents, they have never tasted pain, so they cannot understand the meaning of suffering? Saying goodbye to "pain", is it a reflection of contemporary film and television works that keep pace with real life and the times, or is it the biggest misunderstanding of contemporary young people?
The success and failure of individual "pain"
Where is the "pain" in film and television works? Perhaps, a landmark event is still the " Little Times " series released ten years ago. Looking back, this work, which has been ridiculed and criticized by the public, is not a symbol of social changes?
We often say that today is a "big era" - the world is undergoing radical changes and the pattern is being reorganized. An era centered on "small" and "micro" daily life has arrived, and the "small" feeling of individuals begins to surpass the "big" of grand narratives. Because of this, the characters in "Little Times" are undoubtedly abstract symbols of the times: their "pain" is no longer closely related to the "big times", but returns to pure "individual" feelings.
Echoing "Tiny Times", the "youth pain" in domestic film and television works has begun to no longer be restricted by groups, but exists in a world centered on self-feeling. In "To Our Dying Youth", "Phoenix Man" Chen Xiaozheng decides to give up love and study abroad. This has nothing to do with the pursuit of ideals in the traditional sense. It is just a choice that is conducive to "personal development"; in "Du In "La La's Promotion", the white-collar workers in the workplace establish their identity as subjects through self-struggle, but this has nothing to do with professionalism and social ideals. It is just a life-and-death competition under the law of the jungle; as for "The Year in a Hurry" The abortion in "The Left Ear", the car accident in "The Left Ear", and the bloody scenes in "So You're Still Here" are the results of the extreme expansion of individual "youth pain".
But individual "pain" will sooner or later reach a dead end. The reason is simple. If the discussion on the meaning of life in "life" and "Ordinary World" will never be outdated in any era, then the overly private and personal "pain" will not resonate with most people after all. Even if the creator infinitely magnifies the original small conflicts in pursuit of dramatic effects, it will be difficult to fill the void and paleness at its core.
In the past ten years, the occasional success of individual "pain" is actually because it unintentionally broke through the personal "small world". For example, "July and Ansheng" uses a delicate tone to express a precious female emotion; another example is "Young You" uses a "cruel story of youth" to draw society's attention to the issue of school violence. But after all, the waves they created were too "small" to connect with the world and society where the audience lived, and could only be gradually lost in the sea of eras.
In this regard, when individual "pain" has nothing new to say, and when the audience is tired of the artificial "pain", creators have to find another way. Therefore, youth movies such as "Welcome to Me", "Twinkle Twinkle Star" and "I Don't Want to Be Friends with You" have adopted various fantasy settings to avoid the real "pain" in reality and provide audiences with Creating an image world that is fresher and lighter, but at the same time loses the weight of life.
From participation crisis to non-participation
However, at this point in writing, another question has not been answered: since individual "pain" is destined to have no way out, why can't current film and television works bring the "pain" of youth back to the times? What about society?
All of this may start with Wang Shuo’s movies in the 1980s. In 1988, four movies adapted from Wang Shuo's novels, "The Stubborn Lord", "Half Fire, Half Seawater", "Reincarnation" and "Big Breath", were released at the same time. The literary and film circles even named the year "The Year of Wang Shuo". ". Mi Jiashan once said frankly that the reason for choosing to remake "The Stubborn Master" is that Wang Shuo's works "are very popular among young people, especially college students and educated youth."
Why did young people back then have a soft spot for Wang Shuo? Because the arrival of the market economy is dismantling the traditional social structure. Wang Shuo's "stubborn masters" are actually the final terminators of the past era. Their cynicism and pretentiousness are nothing but bluffs. Fundamentally speaking, they are just the successors of the era. "The superfluous".
This is the crisis of participation. Society has entered a stage of diversified development, but this does not mean that young people's life choices have increased. Settlements such as Wang Shuo's "Three T Company" create a situation of alienation between young people and society. In these private spaces, young people talk or play cards, which is essentially a purposeless "consumption" of life.
This participatory crisis reached its peak in "Snail House" 20 years later. If farmers, migrant workers and laid-off workers have always been considered the main narrative objects of bottom-class literature, then in "Snail House", the coverage of the "bottom class" has obviously expanded: the seaweed in the play is a graduate of a prestigious university living in a big city . Only in a highly materialistic imagination can "Song Siming" and "Haizao" be blurred into a community with the same goal. In fact, Song Siming has always regarded Seaweed as a living "sleepwalking doll." This host-object relationship full of differences and hierarchies proves that some young people who were originally regarded as a vigorous force in society have no longer been able to find their "position" in society.
What’s more worth mentioning is that Wang Shuo’s movies and novels may seem joking, but they are sad at the deepest level. He is obsessed with "seeking truth" in his heart. In Wang Shuo's own words, "The thing he loves to hear most is probably when others say he is 'real'." In other words, although the "stubborn masters" are free from society, Wang Shuo still wants to use A certain kind of idealistic "truth" to counter the "falseness" of consumer society.
However, the new order has become more and more clear today, and it has built its own set of "successful" discourse systems. Globalization and marketization do not require or welcome "recalcitrant" rebellion and resistance.
Therefore, from "The Naughty Lord" to "Dwelling" and then to "Tiny Times", it reflects that the participatory crisis of some young people has become more and more intense, and their "pain" has begun to become more and more personal. Perhaps this is exactly what the consumer society The inevitable result of the continuous atomization movement is the inevitable result of the irresistible wave of the times. The final result of this participatory crisis may be the "crispy young man" Wu Di in " stop and go " - he chooses not to "participate" anymore, and therefore does not care about the helplessness and helplessness in daily life. All kinds of setbacks on the road of life.
Use "deconstruction" to redefine your own life
Of course, not all young people choose to escape or avoid in the face of participatory crises. Among the confused generation of young people, some are using deconstruction to express their dissatisfaction and try to redefine their own lives.
was the first to embark on this path, which was Han Han's movie that met us ten years ago.From "The End of Time" to "Riding the Wind and Waves", from " Speeding Life " to " Four Seas ", there is a high degree of consistency in terms of language, plot and structure: what the protagonist pursues will always lead to the opposite result. , the fate in the dark deliberately manipulates events, arousing the protagonist's empty hope, and then shakes this hope and frustrates it.
Han Han has indeed touched on the common emotional deconstruction of a generation. Rather than saying what Han Han wants to express through the movie, it is better to say that what he wants to tell the audience is: nothing is certain. This is why the apparent meaning of speakers in Han Han's movies is always different from the hidden meaning - isn't "speaking irony" a way of expressing dissatisfaction?
"Deconstruction" is one of the main creative lines of film and television works in the past ten years. Behind the "cosmic sociology" of "The Three-Body Problem" is Liu Cixin's doubts about the world hidden in the text; behind the appeal of popular "shuang dramas" such as "Celebrating More Than Years" is their satire of various rigid orders. ; " Charlotte's troubles " "The annual meeting cannot be stopped!" Behind the rise of comedy movies such as "The Movie" are self-deprecating ways of showing the irrationality of various modern social phenomena. In other words, young people are pursuing them not only because of the sensory enjoyment they get, but also because it is a subtle way to express their inner "pain".
However, the so-called deconstruction is, after all, the aesthetics of people being separated from history, reality and society. It is the forced "escape" after having no way out. Simple deconstruction is weak. Many times, creators transform the real-life confusion and life contradictions of contemporary young people into light jokes and wisecracks.
There are often "golden sentences" in Han Han's movies such as "I have heard a lot of truths since I was a child, but I still can't live a good life", "Children love to distinguish right from wrong, adults only look at the pros and cons", "If you like it, you will be unbridled, but if you love, you will be restrained". ". But these words, which may seem "reasonable" at first glance, actually have nothing to do with worldview and values.
Similarly, whether it is "Shuang Drama" adapted from Internet literature such as "Celebrating More Than Years", or comedy movies by Shen Teng, Dapeng and others, they show various contradictions in real life and depict the difficulties of various characters. , It is often easy to move forward and retreat when it is at a loss, but as soon as it switches to a "reasonable" scene, it immediately becomes empty, abstract and boring.
For example, "Celebrating More Than Years" cannot really point out how a grassroots youth can change his destiny by relying on his own struggle; "Keeping You Safe" cannot really answer "whether being a good person can lead to a safe life"; "The Annual Meeting Can't Stop" ! "Nor can it really point out a new way out for working people in the dilemma of involution.
In the final analysis, due to the alienation caused by "detachment from reality", the vitality of "deconstruction" is ultimately limited. After exhausting its own energy, it cannot truly relieve the "pain" of contemporary young people's reality.
Truly recognize reality and respond to reality
At the end of the novel "Life", Lu Yao arranged for Gao Jialin to "rekindle two sparks in a pair of eyes that had lost their luster" under the teachings of Master Deshun, and also prepared for the last scene. Zhang deliberately added a parentheses - not the ending. If Lu Yao's status in the literary world is still controversial, then Gao Jialin's appearance undoubtedly means the arrival of a new era - from now on, each of us will be more or less "Gao Jialin". Many years later, this novel, which is not very "literary", is still at the top of the borrowing lists of many university libraries. There is only one reason - it has indeed entered the era and history we live in.
Compared with "Gao Jialin" who is remembered by generations of young people, whether it is the increasingly narrow individual "pain" or the "deconstruction" that attempts to escape reality, they all pale in the end. Therefore, the most critical question for current film and television creation is whether there is enough power to respond to this big era.
If Gao Jialin's return to Gaojiacun is just a detour, and his destination is to "go to a distant place" after all, then an unfolding future will also come to us step by step.The works of a group of young Northeastern writers have been or are being adapted to the big screen one by one. While they are re-understanding their parents, they are also criticizing the rational, indifferent and calculating market personality shaped by the consumer society. The reason why "The Long Season" resonates is that it gives dignity to "Wang Xiang" and breaks through the jungle law of social Darwinism. This is undoubtedly a re-understanding of past history and touches the lives of young people today. "pain points".
Similarly, another hit drama with a different style, "Flowers", essentially responded to a profound proposition of the times: the "lovers" represented by Abao are a review of elitism centered on the individual. His success in business is no longer the focus of the video narrative. The liberating of young people from "rational people" with "self-interest" as the core is what really touches people's hearts in the play.
These sparks may still be too weak, but no matter what, today's young people will eventually either return to history or search from reality to discover where their "pain" comes from and how to face it. In this regard, what creators need to do is not to name their works "realism", but to truly understand and respond to reality.
