Author: Song Xiangqi Hao Xiaoyu
Speaking of sitcoms, what do you think of? Is it Sunflower Acupuncture? Or was it Liu Xing who touched his hair and said, "I want to dye this thing green"? Sitcoms have a history of more than 70 years abroad, and have given birth to classics such as "Modern Family", "Friends" and " Broke Sisters ". The history of sitcoms being introduced into China can be traced back to 1993's " I Love My Family ". In the following ten years, " The Story of Cooking Class ", "Wulin Gaiden", " Family with Children ", etc. have all appeared. It triggered a viewing boom. Recently, a variety show with the sitcom "IP Incubation" as its core "Starts!" "Situation Comedy" landed on Oriental TV . In the show, the six major crews competed in pairs. The chief advisory group, market advisory group and content advisory group will jointly determine the "Champion Drama of the Year". The winning comedy will likely receive investment and will eventually be broadcast on Dragon TV. This is the first domestic variety show focusing on "situation comedy".
As a variety show with the sitcom "IP Incubation" as the core, "Start!" Situation Comedy", an extraordinary and eye-catching appearance. IP is the abbreviation of Intelligence Property. Its original meaning is "intellectual property". Now IP has evolved into a kind of content thinking. "IP incubation" aims to cultivate brands and form a series of cultural products with a specific value core. Situation comedy is a series of TV series that revolve around specific scenes and use humor as the main style. It is a popular way of "telling stories" among the public. Variety shows with sitcom "IP incubation" as the core must pay attention to both the realm of "story" and the way the "story" is told.
The sitcom "IP Incubation" needs a good story with a realm. The essence of cultural products is to tell stories. Does a sitcom tell a cliché story or a story with a realm? This is the watershed that distinguishes IP and IP brands. IP brand is the goal pursued by "IP incubation". It is characterized by strong content, high traffic, fixed fan base, and strong monetization ability. IP brands are inseparable from good stories with a realm, and they cannot be separated from the high-level life realm of creative people. Wang Guowei said: "If you have high style, you will have famous sentences." Realm was originally a Buddhist term, but was later used to refer to the spiritual level of a work. The realm of comedy comes from the writer. The "shell" of a sitcom is comedy, while the "inside" is a philosophical reflection on life, and one must face the fundamental question of "how to live." Nowadays, while people are enjoying modern civilization, they are also facing various challenges brought by social transformation and technological development. In an era of accelerated speed and high pressure, how can we rebuild our ideal self in the midst of fragmentation? Rebuilding an ideal society? Rebuilding an ideal life? Sitcoms "lift things with ease", reconcile themselves with themselves and the world in humor and humor, live out the ordinaryness and greatness of "little people", and live out the dignity and glory of human nature. This is the highest realm pursued by sitcoms - "harmony" ". The realm of a good story must not only have the roots of human nature that are "in line with nature", but also have the ideal dimension that makes the public yearn for it. Screenwriters and directors can only trigger widespread resonance by speaking out for the people, the weak, and the times.
Some people said, "Start broadcast!" Sitcom” was “not funny enough”. The first is "disappointment". The "Xin Theater" team led by senior sitcom director Shang Jing is called "a script-killed version of Wulin Gaiden" by netizens. The unfolding of the plot is accompanied by the iconic "canned laughter" of sitcoms. However, judging from the reaction of the audience and the barrage feedback, the expected results have not yet been achieved. The second is "not natural enough". In "Family with Sisters", the father played by Fan Ming burst into tears at the photo because his daughters did not follow his own ideas; in " Northeastern Family ", the father-in-law elevated the "chicken rack" to the spirit of the Northeastern people. In order to change the son-in-law's mind, who did not want to inherit the "Chicken Shop", the crew tried to combine comedy with family warmth, but the plot was too rigid and was suspected of being "sensational". The third is "not surprising enough". The actors perform with great enthusiasm on stage, but the audience has already anticipated every twist and turn. For example, the investor's "baby son" is a pet dog, and he always dials the wrong number when making phone calls.To solve the problem of sitcoms being "not funny enough, natural enough, and unexpected enough", we need to go back to comedy creation.
Comedy is often "unreasonable and wonderful", and the beauty lies in its "unreasonable and reasonable". Comedy is about reflecting on life in the midst of comedy, standing in front of others, showing the richness of human nature and the tenacity of life, and presenting a new "way of living" in humor. If you are "eager for quick success" and go beyond questioning the essence of the phenomenon, go beyond the selection, refining, and processing of materials, and go beyond polishing comedy humor, games, entertainment and other elements, you will deviate from the path of comedy art. What touches people's hearts is the realm of good stories in classic comedies, which not only reflect the playwright's deep-rooted life experience of the times, making it down-to-earth, but also have the spiritual tension to warm real life with ideal feelings, which is high-level. All this depends on the realm of the creative person, which is reflected in the artistic conception in the work. Some scholars summarize artistic conception as artistic conception = meaning + realm = (people + things) + (time + space). It can be seen that character creation, storyline, scene layout, drama, artistry, etc. are all in the creativity of writers and directors. Story realm is the top priority of sitcoms.
"Starting!" The launch of "Sitcom" also faced some new challenges. First, the accelerated pace of urban life and the development of mobile Internet have fostered the audience’s habit of fragmented entertainment. If you can get happiness in a few minutes of short video, who would bother to spend an hour or two watching TV series? Second, the explosion of online popular culture has raised the aesthetic threshold of "making people laugh" audiences. Audiences receive a large amount of information every day and are more susceptible to aesthetic fatigue. Third, compared with emerging entertainment forms such as talk shows, sitcoms have higher requirements for scene layout and narrative logic, and the presentation of effects also requires more time and plot preparation. These questions remind us that the "IP incubation" of sitcoms must be intensively cultivated, not only to create good and state-of-the-art stories, but also to pay attention to the commercial operation of IP. Sitcom IP incubation not only involves literature and culture, but also involves communication, management, economy, etc., which is worthy of in-depth exploration. New challenges often come with new opportunities. The IPization of sitcoms in China has its own development model. We look forward to more colleagues from different perspectives to protect the IPization of sitcoms.
(The author Song Xiangqi Department School of Literature and Journalism and Communication, Central South University Associate Professor and Doctor of Philosophy, the author Hao Xiaoyu is a graduate student of the School of Literature and Journalism and Communication, Central South University)
Source: Guangming.com - Literary Review Channel
