Shenrancaijing original
author | Li Qiuhan
edited | Wei Jia
Douban score 2.1, a score that cannot be lower.
The recently popular urban emotional drama " Gentlemen of East Eight District " (hereinafter referred to as "East Eight District"), caused heated discussion among audiences due to a series of greasy and embarrassing plots. Douban score fell below the previous "Dream Chasing the Performing Arts Circle", becoming the lowest-scoring film and television work in history, and can be said to be a phenomenal bad drama of the year.
It is a work created by actor Zhang Han as the producer, screenwriter and starring, and it revolves around the lives and emotions of four urban young men. "A story that is warm, healing, funny and up-to-earth," Zhang Han introduced it on Weibo before the broadcast. However, the market reaction after the broadcast is obviously a bit different from the description.
The audience is indeed "out of the head", but they are angry. "I don't understand, but I was shocked", "I have been polished for four years, but I still have a draft when I return", "Can Douban launch a sporadic feature for it?" Social media is full of negative reviews.
complaints about the firepower point focusing on its offensive plots and lines. The plots that have been discussed are that when the heroine slips, the hero accidentally pulls the heroine's underwear belt; when the hero hugs the heroine, his hand is placed on the actor's chest; the four leading actors date foreign beauties, making fun of it as "bringing glory to the country." Some lines also made the audience feel uncomfortable, and many suggestive words such as "thin looks good, fat is good" and "I don't wear anything".
various points make the audience unable to help but "fire" with true feelings. The topics about this drama on Weibo have the words "greasy", "outrageous" and "suspended", and the number of views is mostly over 100 million.
annual bad drama "East Eight Districts", how could it be so thunderous? Where exactly does
have to be bad?
"East Eight Districts" triggered the explosive point of the public opinion field, which is that there are a lot of plots in the play that are full of sexual hints and offensive to women. For example, when the male and female protagonist climbed up to more than 20 floors and were panting, the boss was caught by the boss when he was tidying up his shirt. The other party asked, "What are you doing?" The male and female protagonist answered ambiguously, "chatting", and the boss responded, "It's quite passionate"; the male and female protagonist imitated the plot of "My Savage Girlfriend" to exchange shoes, the female protagonist said, "I have something on me that I don't wear", the male protagonist pretended to be curious, "What are you not wearing today?"...
However, this is not the whole question of this drama. The difference between
and ordinary domestic bad dramas is that it not only has routines and suspended problems that are often criticized, but also due to the lack of professional ability of the main creators, there are defects in plot setting, plot promotion, and line processing.
Previously, the tags "East Eight Districts" were the male version of "Thirty Only" and " Ode to Joy ". This type of group portrait story mainly revolves around several representative characters close to reality. Almost each one is equipped with a career line and emotional line. The framework is simple, it depends on how the creator fills the "flesh and blood".
First look at the plot settings. The series selects four protagonists, among which, the male protagonist Tong Yu, played by Zhang Han, is the general manager of autonomous driving in a company, Guo Chong, played by Du Chun, , , is a university professor, Xiang Xiaofei, played by Jingchao, , is a luxury goods salesperson, and Jason, played by Huang Youming, , is a chef. Except for Zhang Han who continues to play the role of an elite character, the other people's settings are basically ordinary people, which is in line with reality.
But specifically the extension of the four-person career line and emotional line, problems begin to arise.
Some industry insiders commented that the emotional settings of the four people are beautified by a male perspective. Engineer Tong Yu and the female CEO flirted with each other, salesmen got married to Xiaofei and the female president, chef Li Jason fell in love with his idol blogger, and dull university professor Guo Chong started a love triangle with female teachers and female students. Their dating partners are excellent, but the purpose is not to portray women, but to highlight the charm of these four men.However, just like the routine of "domineering presidents fall in love with workplace novices" in female urban dramas, beautification is not necessarily a problem, nor is it the most angering thing for the audience.
Source of lines with male gaze that often appear in the play / Douban
The bigger problem is that when using lines and scenes to spread the plot, the creator's flaws are fully exposed.
For example, in emotional promotion, idol drama routine is adopted, and the emotional entanglement between the male and female protagonists is a happy enemy + contract love model.
How can we make the two happy enemies? Contradictions need to be created. So the plot of the wrong room in the hotel, where the male and female protagonists were lying on a bed, waking up to look at the other person's height, weight, and measurements, and accidentally falling down and kissing him, and even the plot of the male protagonist accidentally untiing the female protagonist's underwear belt in public. In the eyes of the audience, these are all outrageous and even offensive content added by the main creator to the routine plot.
How to make the male and female protagonists realize a contractual love relationship? The way of handling the show is simple and crude. As the CEO of a large company, the heroine pretends to be a couple with the hero because she wants to avoid harassment and pursuit of the company's boss. This reason is really unconvincing.
In more detailed scenes, in order to promote the warming of feelings, many unreasonable plots have appeared.
For example, the male and female protagonists are about to be late to work. As the CEO who formulates company regulations, the female protagonist does not want to be late. Seeing that the elevator has not yet come down, she decided to climb the stairs in a hurry. So the two climbed more than twenty floors and smiled at each other after climbing. But according to common sense, it is obvious that it takes longer to climb more than 20 stairs to take an elevator.
Another plot is that when the protagonists started a business and opened a store, the male and female protagonists decided to deliver food by themselves, but the distance was 32 kilometers and there was a traffic jam. They couldn't get there for three or four hours after taking a taxi, so the two decided to ride a bicycle together to deliver it. Is it fast to take a taxi of 32 kilometers or to ride a bicycle with a manned person? It doesn't matter, anyway, the two of them have a rare moment of relaxed and romantic.
Specifically for the lines, the screenwriter's skills are not enough. A senior producer told Shenran that the lines are required to truly judge the quality of a screenwriter. And this is exactly the most criticized thing about "East Eight Districts".
There are two major characteristics of the lines in the play, one is to play the edge ball, and the other is to "not talk about human words".
dialogue between male characters and foreign beauties Source / Douban
In addition to the controversial "Raining Night, Cold Iron", such unknown dialogues, there are also many lines related to famous quotes and famous works in the play. For example, in episode 6, the male and female protagonists came home from get off work in the middle of the night and sighed when they saw the rising sun, "We are like travelers holding the keys. As mentioned in "Beijing Folding", the old world has been folded over, waiting for the new world to unfold." During these two or three minutes of dialogue, celebrities and works such as Ginsburg, Chekhov appeared. But the audience complained on the barrage and didn't understand a single sentence. Why is
so bad? The reason why
shows such a plot is related to the creative ability of the main creator, the aesthetic ability of and the lack of life experience.
As the producer, screenwriter and starring Zhang Han, he led the birth of this work.
wrote the script on July 1, 2017. On that day, Zhang Han posted a Weibo post with the text "Ready" (preparation), the picture is a picture and a fountain pen with words such as "Like Us" (alias of "Gentlemen in East Eighth Districts"). If we take this as the starting point, Zhang Han did do it for four or five years in "East Eight Districts".
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 In the past three years, he has talked about "East Eight District" in many public occasions.
In an interview with the media, he mentioned that the script was written by him and the screenwriter team. In the variety show, he said that after the director has finished editing, he will keep an eye on it and cut it out again.He also mentioned that for this drama, he would not miss the details of the 24-hour round-trip, watch the post-production with his own hands, and even the snowflakes would fall on his eyelashes. Judging from the cameo actors such as Liu Tao, Huang Yi, Yang Shuo, and Yang Shuo, for this drama, Zhang Han also mobilized a large number of friends in the circle.
The work moments recorded in the variety show remind that the later snowflakes should fall on the eyelashes, not on the shoulders. Source/Douban
This means that Zhang Han's creative ability and aesthetic level directly affect the presentation of the work.
In terms of creative ability, Zhang Han, as a newcomer, has obvious shortcomings from an actor to a screenwriter and producer. Taking the phenomenon of narration and flashback narratives often appearing in "East Eight Districts" as an example, senior screenwriter Lao Chen told Shenran that there is a common sense in making scripts, that you should use narration and flashbacks with caution. "It's not that it can't be used, but that you must be careful. Visual works test how to express events with pictures. When some immature creators do not know how to use pictures to express content, they will use narration, and when they are not good at laying the emotional foundation, they will use flashbacks."
Secondly, his aesthetics and cognition also have an impact on the series.
Before creating this work, Zhang Han played a large number of domineering president roles, and many domineering golden sentences appeared in and out of the play. For example, "You contracted this fish pond" and "The elevator I sent you up just now, including the 153,800 square meters Mingyuan Building you are stepping on now, all of this belongs to me, Tang Mingxuan!" In the variety show, he said sentences like "First love and me are her greatest happiness in her life."
Previously, in an interview with the media, Zhang Han mentioned that the reason why the protagonist Tong Yu is an software development engineer is because he likes Iron Man. He also said that this character he created has many shadows on him. "Fun, persistence, and tenacity" is his definition of Tong Yu's personality. The lines in the play are indeed "very Zhang Han", such as "As long as I live, I will never lose", "If you want to be my girlfriend, you have to compromise and take care of me", etc.
In this kind of so-called realistic works, this kind of domineering character who "respected me as a respect" will easily be criticized by the audience as greasy if it is not handled well. In addition, some offensive plots will cause bad reviews.
Some people attribute the problem of the series to the actors' cross-border. In fact, such cross-borders were very common in the film and television industry before. For example, , Ziyi, , Chen Jianbin, , etc. have made movies, but they have not caused such controversy. , Stephen Chow, , was just an actor at the beginning, but later transformed into self-direction and self-acting.
In the final analysis, whether creators who have absolute control over the project have sufficient professional and aesthetic abilities is the key to determining the performance of a drama.
In a report introducing his experience in creating "East Eight Districts", Zhang Han said, "Actors are not trying to compete for talent or skills in the end, but knowledge, insight and experience. Being an actor requires time to accumulate." Obviously, content creation is also the same. Will there be another bad drama in
?
In the final analysis, "East Eight Districts" was scolded, one because the plot was suspended, and the other because it was offensive to women. Will there be the next drama like this in the industry? The answer may not be optimistic.
On the one hand, the suspended script is still being produced, which is determined by the professional ability of the creator. The industry is of varying quality, and a large number of creators are too far from the lives of ordinary people.
A senior screenwriter told Shenran that "creation requires life experience." Many creators have never been to school after graduating from college, and can only rely on "blind thinking" to write scripts. "For example, the plot of 'unlocking the underwear belt' in this drama is criticized. The purpose of the creator is to create unpleasantness between the male and female protagonists and become an enemy. In fact, there are many ways to cause unpleasantness in real life, but the creator has no life experience to support him and can only imagine the plot, so such a shocking plot appears."
creators lack life experience and will splice and assemble the plots they have seen in film and television works again, "Maybe the characters and professions are different, the plots are different, but the content is a transfer of flowers and trees. This is also the reason why urban dramas are serious in the current situation," he said.
On the other hand, the creators' cognition is also uneven.
It is worth noting that most urban emotional dramas that have been developed from the male perspective in recent years have also been evaluated as greasy and suspended. For example, "Welcome" starring Huang Xuan , the male protagonist of the profession is a security guard, and the female protagonist who is crazy about pursuing beautiful and rich. The way of pursuit is WeChat bombing and stalking, approaching each other's family without consent, directly contacting each other, etc., and the audience complains that there is no sense of boundaries.
Douban score 3.4, and the male starring Jin Dong , starring Jin Dong . The urban drama " If Times Can Turn Back " is similar. In order to survive the midlife crisis, three frustrated middle-aged men in the play made a fuss and made an unreasonable plot. There were also many men staring at the plot setting.
They all caused complaints when they were popular. The reason for this phenomenon is related to the creator's cognition. The context of the era of
has changed.
In the drama market with female audiences as the main body, the cognition of such works is still in the past, and the content is not in line with the times.
Even the previous popular drama is now available In terms of this, it may also be criticized for having male imagination. For example, in "Struggle" 20 years ago, the male protagonist Lu Tao was ignored by the rich daughter Milai, and there was also a rich father airborne. More than ten years ago, Chen Sicheng played the second generation of rich people in " Beijing Love Story " written, directed and acted by himself, and successfully caught up with the goddess. However, the money-worshiping girl played by Yang Mi was abandoned and ended up with the infertility .
Nowadays, people's cognition has changed, but on the creative side, some creators still stopped moving forward. Works like
"East Eight Districts" were criticized for having male gaze, and some people also called it Qu, believes that in the female emotional drama "little puppy" and "little wolf dog" setting and the plot of "the domineering president only serves me" also have female gaze.
screenwriter Liu Qing, who focuses on female issues, told Shenran that the so-called "gaze perspective" itself is not worthy of advocacy, and no matter men or women, it should not be a consumer product. "If several women are content to say how they talk about several men at the same time, how can they control people with justice, they will not be accepted."
In her opinion, the problem with works like "East Eight Districts" is that "watch women as the trophy of male competition", "women are not objects of admiration, but objectified prizes, so there is a saying that 'sucking foreign beauties to win glory for the country'."
She mentioned that the audience is disgusted with this, not just "feminist rights". "The foundation of modern consciousness is the self, who am I, what I pursue, what I want to do," Liu Qing said. At present, the reason why many film and television works are so twisted in the plot about women is "because many creators themselves have not solved this problem. Perhaps it is influenced by their educational background and life experience. They lack imagination of independent women and how a woman realizes her self-worth."
is in line with the current era and filming film and television works that respect women does not mean that every work must put the role of women in an important position, but rather narrative on the basis of respecting women. "East Eight Districts" obviously did not do it.
The professional ability and cognition of creators cannot be improved, and such works that have been criticized will not disappear.
*The title picture is from "Gentlemen in East Eighth District". At the request of the interviewees, except for Liu Qing, the rest are pseudonyms.
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