" The Gentlemen of the East Eighth District " won the title of the most popular domestic drama this month with its unprecedented low score on Douban. Before the release of
, the drama had two gimmick promotional tags. One is Zhang Han himself, who served as the male lead, screenwriter, producer and producer in the play; the other is "the male version of " thirty only ", which is benchmarked against the female group drama that has been very popular in recent years. Since the launch of
, the Douban score of "Gentlemen in East Eight" has been fluctuating below 3 points. As of the time of publication, it was frozen at 2.2 points, and the number of scores has exceeded 70,000, with a 1-star proportion of up to 96%, successfully taking the throne of the lowest score of domestic dramas on Douban.
Let’s look at the audience’s evaluation of this drama on major social media. This is not only the worst time for men to be hacked in domestic dramas, but also made all the female audiences who are the male protagonists of " Canglan Jue " and " Star Han Qianlan " wake up and admit that there will be no "Eastern Qingcang" in real life, but there may be countless "children's words" (the role played by Zhang Han in the play).
Since we are benchmarked against "Thirty Only", this drama should have been discussed in the genre of urban male group dramas. The structure of this drama does meet the standards of this genre: several men are the protagonists, telling their friendship, love and workplace stories. But because this drama has too many complaints, it cannot endorse all such dramas. At most, it is just a typical negative case to warn creators who still want to devote themselves to this type of subject matter.
However, in the past few years when the female group dramas were very lively, male group dramas have indeed not been able to find their place in urban themes. A proposition that is still worth discussing is that in the field of variety shows, if the sister can ride the wind and waves, the brother can overcome all obstacles. Why is it that no one likes to watch the "male version of "Thirty Only"" in the category of domestic dramas?
The out-of-time urban male group portrait
"Gentlemen in East Eight" has fallen to the lowest Douban score since its launch, and is the same as the classic film "Cruising Dreams and Entertainment Circle". In recent years, although there are many bad dramas, there is a rare domestic drama like it, and there is almost no positive review. Every plot and every line are accurately stepping on the audience's "minefield".
Zhang Han, who is the male lead, producer, producer and screenwriter, has spared no effort to promote his new works in recent years. Year ago, he posted a short composition on Weibo to express his heart, saying that the script took more than three years to create and was "a rare original script in the film and television industry today." When he participated in the variety show "History of Us , who first entered the workplace", he also told his "struggle history": he started filming for 23 hours on the first day. After finishing work at 0 o'clock every day, he held a meeting to discuss the script until 5 o'clock in the morning. The drama is a domineering president, and the drama is also the degree to which employees want to appeal from the Labor Rights Protection Association.
Facts have proved that slogan-like efforts cannot make up for the shortcomings in ability. In "Gentlemen in East Eight", there are many outdated scenes of accidentally having sex in the wrong room and kissing after falling down. After the heroine fell down (yes, she fell down again), she was helped up by the hero pulling her underwear belt. She felt greasy when she was overwhelmed through the screen. In addition, the anti-human plots such as eating instant noodles in a taxi, as well as the pretentious lines that "on a rainy night, cold iron" that Guo Jingming cannot write, in short, every second is trying to challenge the aesthetics of the content of this era.
Of course, besides the details that have been complained about by major UP masters, what makes the audience even more angry is the values and narrative perspective conveyed by this drama.
screenwriter team seems to have never cared about the feelings of female audiences for a second. In the workplace, female bosses with strong work ability must be "relying on their appearance"; rich women and regular customers in luxury goods stores buy bags and gatherings in daily life; strange men appear in their beds, and they do not call the police at the first time, but are crazy...
is clearly a content that should have been abandoned by the screen story, but still appears openly at this moment. It is hard to believe that this is a drama with a broadcast time in 2022 - for domestic dramas that have been leaning towards women's perspectives for several years, this can almost be called a regression.
domestic dramas are indeed happening in gender. A rule that can be used to prove is that when gender begins to become the label for the classification of domestic drama types, the labels given as "female" often precede the corresponding male labels, such as "big female lead dramas" and "big male lead dramas", as well as "female group portraits" and "male group portraits". The emergence of the female tag of
is a kind of "correction" to the default male perspective of most domestic dramas in the past. This can also explain why "double male lead drama" was earlier than "double female lead drama", because the former also tends to satisfy female audiences' narrative model.
Before that, when viewers understand domestic dramas, they rarely put their gender tendencies into thinking. For example, the classic trilogy of directors Zhao Baogang "Struggle", " Men's Gang " and " Beijing Youth " now seem to be the structure of male group dramas, but at that time few people were discussing how many female psychological expressions were sacrificed in these stories that were dominated by male perspectives.
Domestic dramas will always only connect with the current reality. The way the audience understands the content is also related to the background of the times and the overall social trend. Just like the romance drama lover who was obsessed with He Shuhuan at that time, now he has recognized his "scumbag" nature, the people who were looking forward to the "heartbroken utopia" in "Struggle" can now perceive that whether it is the "Milai" who is from a superior family background, outstanding appearance but loves the male protagonist to death, or the "Yang Xiaoyun" and "Yaoyao" who fall in love with the same man, they are just a dramatic presentation of male fantasy.
"Struggle"
When the series is divided according to the gender perspective, female audiences, who are recognized as the main force in the play, have the right to choose. Female characters who appeared in domestic dramas in the past with stereotypes also have the opportunity to become complex and full - this is one of the reasons why the big heroine drama and the subsequent double heroine drama/female group dramas are popular. Female audiences hope to see more stories related to them on the screen.
Although the female group dramas that have been broadcast have their own problems, they are either too suspended and unearthed, or they still cannot get rid of the "Prince Charming" routine in some aspects, the stories of focusing on all kinds of urban women still have their value, such as starting to present friendships that no longer oppose men but can truly support each other, and working women who no longer exist as vases or weak white flowers.
Therefore, the establishment and development of the concept of female group dramas include popular works such as " Ode to Joy " and "Thirty Only" as pathfinders, as well as suitable public opinion environment and era background.
The main force of watching urban dramas has always been women, which is a rule that has existed since the age of soap opera. User portraits also prove this. The 2021 Detawen white paper shows that the proportion of female prosperity in urban dramas has reached 66.7%, which is twice that of male users.
Since most of the audience and protagonists of urban dramas are women, the male characters in them all exist as psychological projections of women. But it is obvious that in his 40s, he is still struggling to star in the high school student. In " Chasing Love Family ", he plays the "giant baby" of his parents. He said, "I divorced me just because I am greedy for fun" executives Jin Dong ... These male protagonists in the drama cannot satisfy any imagination of female audiences.
In addition, with the emergence of a large number of Internet events that advocate gender equality and oppose gender discrimination and gender violence in the public opinion field, the public opinion environment and female group dramas have formed a clever "intertextual": all realistic topics that are concerned by contemporary women are nutrients for female group drama creation.
The corresponding male group dramas do not have these soils. If urban female group portraits are one of the most consistent with the current drama market content rules and audience preferences, then urban male group portraits exist in the "market blind spot" - men do not choose urban dramas, while women do not choose male group portraits. Perhaps, the formula of urban + male + group portrait is a false proposition.
Please put men in the jungle
Why is the same storytelling? Is the adaptability of men in domestic dramas to urban life so low? If you want to answer this question, you may still have to return to the creative logic of female group dramas.
The urban drama with several women as the protagonists is the "cultivator" of all stories. In terms of character setting, multiple heroines mean that they can make more audiences feel immersive. Each person's independent career and love line, as well as the friendship between the protagonists, has sufficient room for play. Compared with a single protagonist and a single thread urban drama, there is more advantage in the shaping of drama conflict and the exciting degree of the story.
Of course, the premise that all these stories can be established is that women have always been considered better at emotional expression. They are willing to share their daily stories, tell their friends about their emotional dilemmas, and are also more sensitive when understanding feelings and dealing with intimate relationships.
And the emotional expression of men on the screen, similar to the ones they are disciplined in society, is restrained and not easily exposed. This can be seen from "Gentlemen in East Eighth Districts". Every time four friends who have been together since college, they just watch football games, play games and drink. At most, they can show off what kind of girls they have recently been to.
Society’s stereotype of men determines that men cannot express their feelings as freely as women, or communicate emotions with friends. In " Twenty-Five-Don't Be Confused 2", which has a Douban score of 8.2, "Stone" will leave letters and restored university dormitories to others before studying abroad; in " I'm good in a foreign land, ", three girls will sleep in the same bed to talk about the emotional confusion they encounter, and " Love is delicious " also has similar scenes. These plots that seem natural in female relationships seem to be difficult to reasonably occur to men.
In male group portraits, not only is the relationship between the protagonists difficult to establish, but everyone's independent storyline is also tightly bound by the city. Let’s talk about love first. The standards for men’s mate selection as understood at the social level seem more single than women, which determines that the “perfect partner” in their brains must be stereotyped, either a willful young girl or a gentle and virtuous housewife.
Let’s look at the family again. Most of the men in urban dramas have only two positions in the family. One is the traditional "pillar" type. For example, almost all men in " World " including Zhou Bingkun, need to make money to support their families and shoulder the heavy responsibility of the entire family. The other is the "master husband" type that has become popular in recent years. The representative role is Huang Lei in "Little Joy".
Compared with female characters who use emotions as clues to extend to various fields, the establishment of male characters in domestic dramas mostly relies on a clear goal and a path of success, which mostly appear in the workplace. In addition, it is difficult to find an emotional anchor that can make the audience empathize with .
Since the social distance between men in real life is relatively far, the more convenient way to tell stories is to put it in a field that naturally produces strong relationships. Therefore, the scene that is most suitable for male group portraits is not in the city, but in the workplace.
Almost all successful male group portrait works have outstanding career settings.The most typical ones are " Soldier Assault ", which "there is no female character in the whole drama", and most military dramas; " Police Honor ", which has received a lot of praise this year, except for "Xia Jie" played by Bai Lu, who is almost all male. With a police profession as a supporter, the characters will be more full. Competitive themes like " Crossfire " are relatively in line with the narrative model of "success path" and are also relatively in line with the male group portrait.
In addition, the types of dramas that are more popular among men in the traditional sense of power struggle, history, spy warfare, and other dramas can naturally accommodate male stories. However, works such as "No War in Peking" and "The Wind Rises in Longxi" that mainly use male characters are still very different from the narrative pattern of male group portraits that the market understands today. They can only be regarded as "male-oriented" works, otherwise "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin" can be called "male group portrait dramas".
There is another special scene that can accommodate male group portraits, that is, "campus". It seems that before entering the workplace, men have more abundant emotions, more passionate stories, and purer friendships. " The Brother Sleeping on My Bed" and " The Sky of the Wind Dog Boy " show one truth, that is, men in domestic dramas may not be teenagers until death, at least when they enter the workplace, the greasy index begins to double.
20 When "her theme" began to flourish in domestic dramas, screenwriter Yu Fei posted on Weibo to mention the lack of urban male group portrait dramas: "I have watched many social topic dramas from the perspective of women. I think the power accumulated by public opinion is enough. It is time to create a three good men who are endlessly tortured by their ideals, careers, marriages, and families and have nowhere to express them. Finally, they are full of vitality. The process of the sunny boy who came on the skateboard became a bald belly who was plagued by depression and released all his energy in the road rage every day. "
But now it seems that at least the creators of domestic dramas still failed to find the fit between the city and the male group portraits. They couldn't let go of the success fantasy in their minds, and were ashamed to show the real "midlife crisis" on the screen, which eventually evolved into a pile of pseudo-crisis stories that were scratched through the shoe.
Take a step back and see, if female group photo drama serves women's needs for self-expression, then, what is the significance of male group photo drama? What kind of urban male group portrait can be called an "excellent work"? These questions have not been answered yet.
Before thinking clearly about "why, how to do, and what is good", it may not be a bad thing for male characters to exist only as embellishments in urban dramas. After all, these days, even the "I want me to think" Huang Xiaoming has begun to be willing to be a green leaf in the double heroine drama.
