On the evening of December 27, 4 episodes of the TV series "Fu Tu Yuan" were launched on the genuine video platform, starting the premiere mode. This TV series stars Wang Hedi , Chen Yuqi and other actors. It tells the story of the male and female protagonists' intrigues and palace battles in an imaginary historical dynasty. As a commercial drama, the conflicts in the drama are quite dense, and the story is relatively passable. However, the play's attitude on the matter of "eunuchs wielding power over the ruling and opposition parties" is ambiguous and cannot make people sympathize.
The TV series "Fu Tu Yuan" starts with a very clear content of power plots and palace battles. The old emperor is dead and the new emperor is still young. Outside there is a prince who wants to be the regent, inside there is a queen mother who wants to listen to the government behind the curtain, and there is a "big eunuch" like the male protagonist who wants the eunuch to have exclusive power. This typical Machiavellian drama was staged very clearly.
Of course, this TV series may feel that the political content alone is not interesting enough, so it needs to add more material. Therefore, in the opening part of "Fu Tu Yuan", there is a scene where the queen (the empress dowager) kills the old emperor's favorite concubine and takes the concubine's son as her own. This typical palace fighting drama is performed openly in the play. Audiences and theater critics have reached a consensus a few years ago about what palace fighting and intrigue are. It is obviously inappropriate to praise this type of TV series.
That’s not all the show is about. In "Fu Tu Yuan", in order to focus on the highlights, there are not only palace battle scenes and power plot scenes, but also court battles. Court fights are another variant of palace fights. There are also fights between various women in the ministers' mansions outside the palace. The heroine of "Fu Tu Yuan" is going to be buried, and there is a family fight between the heroine's parents. This kind of fight itself is also a typical farce, which seeks to magnify the evil of human nature for the sake of spectacle. And this kind of amplification is childish and unreal.
It is part plotting, part palace fighting, and part court fighting. The narrative features of "Fu Tu Yuan" have obviously shown a cold-blooded face. The opening plot, the scene of hanging the concubines, is also very bloody and terrifying. Such TV series, in terms of narrative tone, are more like horror and thriller TV series. However, at the beginning of the second episode, the show started to make fun again, especially making the heroine laugh. In the front, a group of concubines were killed, but in the back, they became the concubines who survived and made fun of them. This kind of thriller and comedy processing mode makes the type of drama seem nondescript.
This nondescript narrative style is not the biggest problem of the show. The biggest problem in "Fu Tu Yuan" is the ambiguous narrative of the eunuch's exclusive power. Audiences who are familiar with Chinese history all know that in our ancient dynasties, foreign relatives' interference in politics and eunuchs' exclusive power were two major scourges. It is these two scourges that caused a large number of dynasties to end their lives and the common people were miserable. Therefore, serious narrators, whether in novels or film and television dramas, have nothing good to say about the eunuch's monopoly, and they are all sarcastic and critical.
On the other hand, in "Futuyuan", the attitude towards the eunuch's monopoly is very ambiguous, and there is even a scene where the big "eunuch" wants to have a relationship with the dead emperor's concubine (this drama will be performed later). Moreover, in the face of this three-legged love affair, the narrator actually praises it and regards this love line as the main line of the narrative. Although the audience will be told later in the play that this eunuch is not a real eunuch, the fact that eunuchs have exclusive power cannot be changed. The exclusive power of eunuchs, which brought disaster to the country and the people, has become a commendable eunuch in love in "Fu Tu Yuan". Such a drama is extremely dangerous.
In the play, no matter how much hatred the male protagonist carries or how much revenge he wants to achieve, as long as he sits in the position of the great eunuch and achieves the power to rule the country, he has become a eunuch in the true sense. As long as the eunuch has the power, no matter how handsome the male protagonist is, the narrator should be responsible for history and narrate from a critical perspective, instead of making a "eunuch" into a love idol for young fans to addictively praise.Otherwise, fans will have a wrong understanding: eunuchs have exclusive power, and they can still fall in love without mountains.
The interference of foreign relatives in politics and the exclusive power of eunuchs are two major disasters in ancient Chinese history, and even one of the biggest disasters. Finding the protagonist between these two scourges and making the audience empathize and sympathize is something that no one with a shred of Chinese historical conscience can achieve. It's a pity that many of our young fans have never even finished the second grade of junior high school. They have no way of recognizing the ugliness of these relatives and eunuchs, and can only blindly follow the wrong narratives of their idols in film and television dramas.
Because of this, our popular dramas and idol dramas should be more responsible for history. Those characters that should not be beautified must not be beautified. Some fans are junior high school dropouts and do not understand Chinese history. But the creators of film and television dramas must not understand it. TV dramas like "Fu Tu Yuan" that whitewash the power of eunuchs should do more self-reflection. When joking about history, we should not joke about it to the point where there is no bottom line. (Text/ Ma Qingyun )
