Stills of "The Wind Rise of Neon Clothes" that fell into the adaptation routine

　　Recently, the online writer Wei Yu complained about the "magical reform" phenomenon that some of his works other than "Sto" suffered during the film and television process, which has caused heated discussions. At the same time, how to modify the film and television adaptation and whether it should be respected. The problem of the original work is once again brought to the front of the stage.

Novels/movies have their own laws, and adaptations of the original works to the greatest extent may not necessarily succeed. This is certainly true.

But it should also be noted that respecting the quality of the story, not being superstitious in “routines”, and not replacing the valuable innovations and explorations in the original work with clichés. These are issues that need attention in the process of transforming from the original work to the film and television.

　　Taking the film and television adaptations of online romance in the past two years as an example, the problem with many film and television dramas is not whether they respect the original work, but the "removing the essence of the fake" and "replace the old with the new" in the process of adaptation.

Turning professional women into "silly white sweets" and interpreting "love" as "headless" and "unhappy" is not so much catering to the audience as it is an underestimation of the audience's appreciation level.

Person setting:

　　"Silly White Sweet" in a new professional vest

　　From 2020 to 2021, all major video platforms have launched many romance dramas adapted from online texts.

For example, "The Rose of Little Storm Time" (adapted from "Little Storm 1.0"), "Heartbeat Source Project" (adapted from "Broker"), "March 30 of Ten Years" (adapted from the novel of the same name), "Wind Qi Nishang (adapted from "The Bright Moon of the Tang Dynasty"), "Three Thousand Crows Killing" (adapted from the novel of the same name), "Jin Xi He Xi" (adapted from "Yuzhao Ci"), "Song of the King" (adapted from " "Swordsman")...Although they have different types and different plots, they are all playing romance cards.

These dramas may have a lot of traffic stars participating in the performance, or have the original IP blessing, at the beginning of the filming, when it is finalized, and before the broadcast, all people are looking forward to.

However, their ratings were not satisfactory after they started broadcasting.

The problem is not whether to respect the original work, but in terms of gender cognition and narrative processing, the adapted screenplay's notion of dealing with personality and contradictions is relatively lagging, and it relies too much on established "routines."

　　The author has noticed that in recent years, the heroines of romance dramas have moved closer to the tastes of professional women, and they also tend to choose the type of workplace when they choose to adapt the text.

However, it seems to be affected by a stereotype of gender perception. The shaping of the heroine in love by these romantic dramas is more or less biased towards weakening her IQ, narrowing her vision, and willfulness of her emotions. It is still a kind of "stupid". "White Sweet" setting.

These treatments are particularly manifested in the intentional selection and treatment of the plot of the original work.

Although they have chosen many professional female protagonists, they deliberately selected and dealt with the female protagonist’s "career line" with a solidified gender awareness in the process of film and television adaptation.

Although it represents the scientific research process of the Institute of Virology, the film and television narrative highlights the gossip of the laboratory, talking badly about colleagues, making small reports, and squeezing out newcomers. It seems that the research institute has been written as a Qing harem in order to adapt to the female protagonist group portrait; it does not present the formal logic of commercial warfare. , But to highlight the heroine's "little cleverness", such as secretly wearing the waiter's clothes to the bathroom to block customers to talk about cooperation; costume dramas tend to show the heroine's destruction of the rules, rather than showing the heroine's home country revenge and strategizing.

　　Therefore, after the heroine played strongly, due to the scarcity of professionalism, the career line collapsed all the way, saying "there is no accident in my dictionary", in fact, the career is full of accidents.

The screenwriter always asks the male lead to evaluate the female lead as "innocent and straightforward, pure and innocent." It seems that if you do not act impulsively, unsuspectingly, and repeatedly deceived, you will not be worthy of being "innocent" and "pure."

Therefore, such a female protagonist buys the company she works on impulsively, and does not consider the follow-up business issues at all; or is easily defrauded of the sample clothes in her hand, or the woman pretends to be a man but drinks nonsense to reveal her identity; Assassination, unable to save oneself...

　Narrative:

　　"Lying to win" in career and low-level misunderstandings in love

　　In many episodes of online text adaptations, the heroine's halo settings such as "forbearance", "endurance" and "brave" have been weakened, and instead rely on various "lying and winning" narratives, such as noble birth, blessings of gods, and supporting roles. Incompetent, the villain against the water... the most prominent is "boyfriend fishing."

After the "hero saves the beauty" routine is used badly, the semantic function will also change, gradually changing from expressing protection and respect for women to identifying the weakness of women.

In the original net texts, mutual assistance and mutual rescue between men and women are often treated equally, but the film adaptation will strengthen the function of the male protagonist to promote the female protagonist.

　　For example, the male protagonist has higher capital ability or strategic abilities, and always sends out the information needed by the female protagonist in time, acting as a solver and savior, rescuing the female protagonist in the fire, rescuing the kidnapped female protagonist, and rescuing the victim The female protagonist framed for plagiarism... In "The Wind Rises and Neon Clothes", Liuli was framed by Zhuo Jinniang and others and was hunted down. Pei Xingjian was rescued, even from childhood to adulthood; in "Tonight and Evening", every winter When Yue Adventure’s assassination failed, Feng Xi rescued her, and even gave her a chance to be reborn again and again. There is such a famous scene in "Three Thousand Crows" where Tan Chuan somehow appeared in Fu Jiuyun and the villain Baihe Dragon King. At the scene of the confrontation, he was shot down by the villain within a second, and Fu Jiuyun had to sacrifice himself to protect her.

The female protagonist "prefers to Tiger Mountain" but relies on the male protagonist to save. It seems to "lie down and win", which actually solidifies the existing cognition of gender strength.

For female audiences in the current gender cultural change, this setting seems a bit old.

　　In terms of love narrative techniques, "misunderstanding" is an important technique to increase drama conflict, but it relies too much on technique, and simplifies the narration as the heroine who is paranoid and partial, making judgments and not listening to explanations. This kind of lazy narrative Processing does not create exciting viewing effects.

Because text works use an internal perspective, film and television works use an external perspective.

Misunderstandings in literary works, through the psychological perspective of the heroine, in many cases can more or less straighten out the logic of the heroine's words and actions, and maintain the reader's sense of substitution.

Restricted by external perspectives, film and television works lack inner perspective. If you blindly use low-level misunderstandings to create dramatic conflicts, the paranoid heroine will weaken the audience's sense of substitution, and will appear ridiculous instead.

　　In addition to paranoid misunderstandings, the paranoid moral requirements of the heroine will also weaken the dramatic tension.

Indiscriminately, directly rebuke the male protagonist for cold-bloodedness; be compassionate in business competition; blindly occupy the high ground of kindness and accuse the male protagonist of calculations and plans... Ethical judgments should be based on rational analysis, and good literary works will be presented Various moral dilemmas are used to show the tension of human nature and the preciousness of choices.

When film and television dramas are indulging in letting the heroine accuse the heroine with irrational "kindness" and "sympathy", and constructing the heroine setting from this, it will only make the audience feel that the character setting is too shallow.

The accusation of inequality makes the relationship between the two parties lose any space for dialogue. Therefore, it is only the "will of God" imposed by the screenwriter that the male protagonist will go forward and stick to the "love".

　　reason:

　　Types and routines of misread web articles

　　Romance drama adaptations prefer to shape the "headless" hostess and the "unhappy" love model. This is to impose a low-inflicted prejudice on women and feminine emotions, not so much that it caters to women's self-identity. It is better to say that it is slow to react to the changes in the emotional reality that are happening at the moment.

　　Analyzing the reasons, in the author's opinion, the current film and television adaptors lack sufficient understanding of the emotional reality of the types and routines of the original online literature.

Although many times online literature is based on an overhead world view, this does not mean that online literature creation is just a castle in the air.

Their deep structure all metaphors the current reality in various ways.

The success of a certain routine also has a psychological reality basis. When this reality basis changes, the existing routine will inevitably no longer apply.

For example, the sinking market of women’s channel online articles this year has changed from "dominant president" narrative to "female protagonist" narrative, and the high-end market has changed from "pure love and romance" to various "elemental literature" and "professional literature". Many types of web documents have entered the "variant" era.

The reason for this change is that online writers who have been in close contact with readers feel the changes in the psychological reality of the readers.

At the beginning of the market, the "pure love" narrative demonstrated the importance of love ethics and completed the original utopian imagination and construction.

But then, rationality and reality were introduced into online writing to enrich and deepen the understanding of "pure love utopia", the so-called realism of romanticism.

The changes in social structure and the strengthening of women's workplace functions also make "pure love" unable to meet the needs of women's cultural consumption.

However, when many new changes were added to the original online literature, the film and television adaptations could not accurately grasp the core of the success of the work, changing "variants" into outdated routines, and roughly dealing with "workplace", "wuxia", "scientific research" and other online articles. The emergence of new elements will cause the adaptation of romantic dramas to escape into the old and old.

　　Respecting the original works does not mean completely restoring the original works and disrespecting the laws of film and television adaptation. Rather, it means not to discard the wonderful stories, innovative elements, or the contradictions and in-depth thinking that the authors carefully constructed in the original works, and replace them with obsolete ones. , Take it for granted "routines"; don't ignore the psychological changes and popular cultural shifts of readers touched by the original authors, and the new images and new content produced from them, and replace them with stereotyped repetitions and imitations.

In addition to data, the success of current film and television adaptation and IP conversion is increasingly dependent on innovations such as narrative methods and emotional orientation.

Facing a changing society, facing up to the improvement and innovation of content quality is an issue that needs urgent attention in film and television adaptation.

When both the original author and the adaptor recognize this, maybe the two parties can achieve each other better.

　　(The author Li Wei is a professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Nanjing Normal University)