In the Korean drama "The Forced Landing of Love" starring Xuan Bin and Sun Yizhen, he tried to make a strong wave of Korean "famous dishes" fried chicken. By contrast, the fried chicken fever at this time has become a yellow flower tomorrow. However, even though the fried chicken has passed, the "You from the Stars" aired seven years ago seems to be an inflection point for the Korean drama to reverse the decline. Afterwards, phenomenal dramas have continuously appeared, showing strong productivity and creativity force.
What is the reason for such a breakthrough in Korean dramas? Any successful experience? Is such a popular Korean drama perfect, without limitation?
Korean drama breakthrough:
Theme expansion + plot complexification + comedy elements
The production system of Korean dramas and Korea ’s strong support and development of the cultural industry are extremely important external conditions and guarantees for its success. The Korean drama ’s own breakthroughs and constant explorations are that it can produce explosive TV dramas every year. The essential reason.
The expansion of themes is the most conspicuous change in Korean dramas seeking breakthroughs. All along, we have a stereotype on the theme of Korean dramas, thinking that it has only two themes, one is a mother-in-law drama, and the other is a love drama. This stereotype reflects to some extent two important themes of Korean dramas, namely family / social ethics dramas and idol dramas. Korean dramas can be divided into two types according to the length of the space. One is a long TV series, mostly soap operas. We are familiar with "watched and watched", "Miss Mermaid", "funny family", etc .; the other It is a short TV series, that is, the number of episodes is usually around 20 episodes. The TV series is relatively well-made, the card is relatively big, and the story conflict and drama are also strong. The short TV dramas in the early stage of Korean dramas are mainly concentrated on idol dramas, such as "Winter Love Song", "Blue Life and Death Love", "Romantic House", "Sorry, I Love You" and so on. The theme of the theme, and formed the international trend and tone of Korean drama.
With the development of the domestic and foreign markets of Korean dramas, the contents of its themes have gradually changed. This change has not changed much in long-form TV series, mainly in short-form TV series. In terms of the type of theme, these TV dramas are different from industry dramas, workplace dramas, inspirational dramas, thrillers, historical dramas, suspense dramas, fantasy dramas, Zhizhi dramas, and elderly dramas. They all have excellent performances, and idol dramas are no longer Is the only one. Even idol dramas have gone out of the way that early TV dramas suspend society and life and only express emotions, placing the plots in a more diverse situation and combining them with other sub-type dramas, thereby enriching their narrative and plot complexity.
Taking the most prestigious short drama idol drama as an example, the narrative clues of early idol dramas generally have three main lines: male and female main emotional lines, male and female one, male one female two emotional lines are two vice Line, three emotional lines are intertwined to connect the entire TV series. Today's idol dramas, while retaining the same basic three narrative clues, have added many other clues to the drama to make the plot complicated. For example, "Forcing the Fall of Love", in addition to following the previous principles, there is also a male revenge line, a female protagonist's career line, etc. In the core of the idol drama, elements of suspense, revenge and ethical drama are added, with subtypes. The way is intertwined with it, so that the plot is not only limited to emotions, but also serves the development and sublimation of emotions. It not only meets the internal requirements of idol dramas, but also expands the audience's viewing experience. It can be described as the best of both worlds.
The use of comedy elements is another breakthrough for Korean dramas to seek their own narrative breakthrough and style change. Short story Korean dramas have greatly expanded the theme and content, and the narrative style has also undergone a major change. That is, no matter what type of TV drama, comedy elements are constantly introduced, thus changing the previous idol drama to cause Impression of tragedy and misery. The elements of these comedies are mostly completed by the supporting characters in the play, thereby adding entertainment to the TV series. For example, the clerk in "Druna Hotel", the chemistry teacher in "Black Dog", etc. There are also easy-going effects through the protagonist's "selling cuteness" and funny, such as the interaction of the two male characters in "Ghosts", the "illness" of the male characters in "The Incarnation of Jealousy", and the female characters in "The Weightlifting Fairy Jin Fuzhu" "Stupid", "Tucao" among the protagonists in "Witty Doctor Life", and even some dramas are full of warm and humorous details, such as "Please answer 1988". The use of elements of comedy is actually the best embodiment of the change in the style of Korean drama creation.
Limitations of Korean dramas:
The pattern is not big + out of reality + late in the end
However, although Korean dramas have made a lot of breakthroughs, compared with TV dramas in Britain, the United States, Japan, and China, they have their own unique characteristics, but also have a lot of limitations.
Confined to geographic space and historical culture, the pattern of Korean dramas—whether it is scene scheduling, character movement, or the depth of the plot, is generally small. Most Korean dramas are modern themes, and occasionally historical themes, the number of characters, the excavation of history and the depth of stories are dwarfed by the relative television of China and other countries. For example, "Da Changjin" and "Benevolence Concubine", which are also historical subjects, compared with China's "Zhen Huan", "Kangxi Dynasty" and "Wu Zetian", etc., in terms of production, setting, character appearance and even Taohua Road, etc. , Are far from comparable. The world-famous "Kingdom", despite Netflix's capital injection, still can't escape this situation; the "Asda Chronicle", which claims to create a Korean version of "Game of Thrones", although the story and scene scheduling can be top-level configuration of Korean dramas , But compared with "Game of Thrones", it still looks like "drawing cats to draw tigers".
Recently, Korean dramas have a tendency to be framed by transnational production. It seems to increase the scene and seek a certain degree of breakthrough in production scale, such as "The Descendants of the Sun" for Greece, "Force of Love" for Switzerland, and "Boyfriend". "For Cuba, but this kind of implantation is more like a picture display-that is, the beauty of the picture and the need to shape the mood, which is still the consistent routine of idol dramas-rather than serving the depth of the plot. Most of the Korean dramas with little structure are limited to the creation orientation of a specific closed space and time, on the one hand, it restricts the mining of Korean dramas' ideology and culture, and on the other hand, it is also easy to break away from reality for creating conflicts.
In recent years, due to the explosion of dramas such as "Ghosts" and the relatively limited depth of life that can be explored, many Korean dramas simply give up reality and look for creative inspiration from the aspects of gods, fantasy, etc., to make up for the reality. From "You from the Stars" to "Yeshang Scholars", "The Legend of the Blue Sea", "My God and Ghost" and "Kingdom". And even focusing on reality, because it is limited to a specific time and space to make the scenes and contents deeper and artificially narrower to strengthen the grasping force, resulting in dramatic conflicts from reality and appear unreal. For example, the first episode of "The World of Couples" created a "conflict" in which everyone knew that her husband was derailed and concealed from her husband. The first episode of "Forced Landing of Love" let the hostess glide to other countries because of a tornado. 》 The first episode created a heroine who was extremely successful in her career and became a public enemy of all people ... All the drama conflicts are intentionally done to strengthen the plot to some extent, and it is inevitable to feel a sense of separation from reality.
Going high, walking low, and ending badly are the biggest limitation and the biggest flaw in Korean dramas. There are many examples. This aspect is due to the production and broadcasting system of Korean dramas, which makes the plot constantly adjusted according to the feedback of the audience and the market, so that the trend of the plot and the writing of the script are full of uncertainty; on the other hand, it is also for the start of the broadcast. It quickly grabbed the audience and made the conflicts in the early stage of the drama too concentrated and extreme, so that the plot behind it is difficult to echo the expectations in the front, and it is inevitable that the audience will eventually be disappointed.
Inspiration of Korean drama:
Mentality control + emotional mobilization + detail drawing
Although Korean dramas have their own limitations, Korean dramas have become one of the representatives of Korean wave, and there are still reasons for their success. Domestic dramas can draw inspiration from at least three aspects, so that they can learn from each other while maintaining their own characteristics.
The first is to grasp the social mentality. As an extremely commercialized cultural product, Korean drama has its uniqueness in grasping the market and audience. In recent years, domestic dramas have also paid great attention to seizing social hotspots and pain points in their creations, but in contrast, Korean dramas are better at grasping the social mentality while basing on the audience ’s experience and needs, and digging deeper into the reasons behind, so that TV dramas can be trusted and understood. For example, dramas such as "Unborn" and "Black Dog" focus on the workplace, and in response to the current economic downturn, Korean young people's needs for workplace rules and humanity exploration; and "Secret Forest", "Regal Defender", "Itaewon Cl ass" "Master Romance Doctor" and others show people's pursuit of justice ... And the grasp of all TV dramas' mentality is actually the search for humanity. At this point, the performance of Korean dramas is remarkable.
The second is emotional mobilization. Rhythm control and emotional mobilization are very commendable aspects of Korean dramas. They often render and mobilize emotions through empty shots, music, and flashback, so that the audience ’s emotional experience and the TV drama ’s emotional output are at the same frequency, thereby increasing empathy. And attract the audience.
Finally, details are drawn. Another important feature of Korean dramas is to tirelessly paint the details, so as to achieve a better audience substitution and similar slow variety and spiritual comfort effects. However, the rendering of emotions and the drawing of details are also easy for people who do not like Korean dramas to feel protracted and long. How do domestic dramas learn from their superiority and discard their shortcomings? It is necessary to balance the weight in the creative process.
(The author Lu Peng is a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)