Youth nostalgia drama is a new type that has appeared on domestic screens in recent years.
Inspired by the popular overseas drama "Reply 1988", the creators have successively launched a series of dramas such as "Our Adolescence", "My Youth Meets You", "The Sky of the Wind Dog", "The Soul of Chess" and "Story in Time". The work, in a retrospective attitude, relies on the well-documented historical era and traceable regional space to create a youth memory story of "history shining into reality", combining youth and nostalgia.
We can think of youth nostalgia dramas as a sub-genre branched out from youth idol dramas.
Compared with idol dramas that have become increasingly sweet in recent years, youth nostalgic dramas have more flexible cultural power. At the same time, they can graft the spirit of realism in the narrative, reflect the historical style, build the audience's collective memory, and inspire young people to pursue youthful excitement. Enthusiasm for struggle constitutes the basic background and diversity characteristics of the domestic TV drama industry, especially those original works, whose strengths and weaknesses can provide valuable experience for the development of the industry, allowing more original "small dramas" Participants gain more experience, have stronger confidence, make good use of insufficient funds and other resources, and turn "ingenuity" into "small and beautiful" exploration.
The positive aspect of youth nostalgic drama: forging ahead and protecting tradition go hand in hand
Youth nostalgia drama is a test of creators.
"Youth" and "nostalgia" are a set of seemingly contradictory terms.
"Youth" means freedom, ideals and a new life, while "nostalgia" often represents the nostalgia for the past. Most plays of the same type are based on the former and supplemented by the latter - the new life is full of changes, only Recalling the beauty of the old times, and no matter how beautiful the memories are, it is impossible to return to the old times - this is the conventional narrative path of general youth nostalgic dramas.
In the "Reply" series, including "Reply 1988," each episode deals with a specific year and place, whether it was Sinchon Dorm in 1994, Busan in the late 1990s, or Dobong in Seoul in 1988 Shuangmendong in the district can be regarded as a secret base in the depths of youthful memories. The dilapidation and disappearance of this base means the dissipation of youthful memories.
Or influenced by this series, Zhang Yibai, who once directed "Following Love to the End", directed "The Sky of the Wind Dog Boy" after a lapse of 22 years, and also replaced the youth campus, which was once good at performing, with the streets of Chongqing, and created a There is a strong nostalgic atmosphere, and the group of high school children in the play can only end by waving goodbye and leave their familiar alma mater and homeland.
The recently concluded "Story in Time" (referred to as "Time") revolves around the emotional life and career struggles of young people in the Qingdao State-owned Bicycle Factory in the 1990s. The attempt to update the grammar of types is worth analyzing as a typical case.
"Time" uses delicate plots and convincing characters to prove that "nostalgia" is not necessarily an escape from reality, and "youth" can also protect tradition by forging ahead.
The play really tells a story about the success and entrepreneurship of a state-owned enterprise during the transformation period. It is actually a story about how to put a new life and an old time at the same time.
The male protagonist, Bi Laifu, is the most staunch idealist in the whole play. He makes many choices that ordinary people cannot understand at an important juncture in his life: to give up the college entrance examination to become the backbone of the family as soon as possible; The sincere invitation of the executives of the enterprise... During the viewing process, the author once doubted whether the heroic aura of the hero was too obvious?
Until Laifu took on the heavy responsibility of the enterprise after his master was laid off, but encountered betrayal and separation.
He became forbear and silent, and couldn't help complaining: Why is it so annoying when you grow up!
If this line is placed in other youth dramas, it can become a "youth don't know the taste of sorrow" throughout, but in "Time", it is a very realistic "taste of sorrow", from Bi Laifu to Director Bi and Factory Director Bi , the male protagonist grows into an adult with one foot deep and one foot shallow: the sophistication of human relationships that cannot be sorted out, the misunderstandings and disputes that cannot be justified, and the burden of responsibility that cannot be relieved... This is probably the true appearance of the adult world.
The role of Braveford is believable because of its clear growth trajectory.
He has his moments of integrity and selflessness, as well as his cunning and twisting to meet the rules of the world; he is both an idealist and has a deep understanding of the wisdom of reality; he is determined to innovate and learn new things, but he is committed to his career, inheriting traditions, and Stubborn than anyone else.
Laifu insists that: defending the Feixiang Bicycle Factory is to protect the beautiful memories of youth, and this kind of "looking forward" does not mean clinging to the incomplete, but pursuing the life realm of "a thousand trees spring before the sick tree", which is also for the youth. The idea of nostalgic drama finds a relatively novel way of interpretation.
The Everyday Realism Gene of Nostalgic Youth Drama: Prose Expression, Group Writing
Another difficulty in the creation of youth nostalgic dramas is that this type has the genes of daily realism. When dealing with dramatic conflicts, it is necessary to adopt a prose-style dramatic structure to avoid superficial and overly coincidental external conflicts, but to focus on the details of various characters. Seek out fleeting, everyday drama.
What can be learned from "Reply 1988" is that no matter the number of scenes, each character has a carefully sketched portrait, and a polyphonic group portrait is formed with rich and delicate details.
Not only the parents and siblings of the heroine Deshan, but also her little friends and their respective families, are alive with complete and distinctive growth lines.
As for the protagonist's love story, it is not deliberately focused on highlights, but only as part of the growth process from childhood to youth. Whether it is sour or sweet, it constitutes part of the memory of youth.
In comparison, "Children of Qiao's Family", which will be released in 2021, although it also has a "life flow" and specific regional scenes similar to "Reply 1988", it also focuses on the growth of the younger generation, but it focuses too much on the original family. Serious flaws: Losing her mother in childhood; getting along with a "dirty father" who is addicted to gambling; Sanli was molested by adults at a young age... When the story develops into "dog blood", extreme material scarcity distorts family relationships and "youth growth" "Transformed into "survival in misery", it has no time to take into account the pursuit of a higher spiritual level, and it also means that it is drifting away from the experience of ordinary audiences.
The audience's experience is only "rising blood pressure", not "blood boiling", and such youth loses its nostalgic meaning, which is not harmful as a family ethics drama.
Once you get rid of the love plot that is too bloody and get rid of the hero settings of idol dramas "Love Brain" and "Beautiful, Strong and Miserable", youth nostalgic dramas may find more down-to-earth and more life tension in the field of history and reality. dramatic conflict.
"The Sky of the Wind Dog" involves the hardships and struggles of the lower-class people in real life, but after the show was well received by the audience, the main creator did not bear his temper, and deeply cultivated the most valuable gene of daily realism in this play. Can't wait to move to the big screen - the sequel movie "The Sky of the Burning Wild Boys" goes to the exaggerated and crazy youth musical route, and the audience's disappointment is beyond words.
"Time" inherits from "The Sky of the Wind Dog", and at the same time abandons the sad and youthful background of "Wind Dog", showing a more positive and optimistic side.
Combining youth growth with the entrepreneurial stories of state-owned enterprises struggling to survive during the reform and opening up transition period may make people see the shadow of "Big River" or "Shan Hai Qing", but its foothold is still "Youth Growth". The theme, combined with the conflict and cooperation of the two generations, still does not lose its distinctive genre characteristics.
This will remind other creators of the same type of theme: the nostalgic era is not necessarily just a corner of sweet youth. The two forces of historical foundation, advancing and retreating, are twisted into a rope, and the theme of youth and nostalgia is expected to become a contemporary Chinese story of "not forgetting the original intention, and never forgetting".
Young actors need to polish off the original unrealistic idol halo in such works, and steadfastly perform ordinary daily life in a situation where there are few misunderstandings, coincidences, and dog-blood sadomasochism. University", and give young audiences of the same age a positive and positive value guidance.
Image Mistakes in Youth Nostalgic Dramas: Using Distortion Filters to Express Poetry
There is a common understanding in the film and television industry: movies focus on creating atmosphere, while TV plays focus on dialogue design.
In recent years, this convention seems to be no longer accurate.
The poetic presentation of video language does not matter the size of the screen, and the atmosphere of romance and eloquence is increasingly occupying a more important space in the TV drama art, which was originally dense in dialogue.
The ambition of the domestic TV drama industry to create a cinematic atmosphere has become a potential aesthetic goal, and it has also profoundly affected the tone design of youth nostalgic dramas, but occasionally it is too much.
"Children of Qiao's Family" accurately restores the social style and daily utensils of Nanjing in the 1970s and 1980s. The older generation of audiences are full of praise for this, but there are also audiences who are critical of the show's "sense of construction" scene.
In order to maintain the audience's conventional cognition of youth dramas, "Time" deliberately or unintentionally exerted too much force to create a light and shadow atmosphere with both youth and nostalgia, which was repeatedly complained by the audience for "filter distortion".
The poetic pursuit of images in nostalgic youth dramas far exceeds that of other drama films. Therefore, the design and selection of light and shadow, sets, and props can be described as "one point is too fat, and one point is too thin."
In fact, the "poetic atmosphere" sometimes does not lie in the filter, and excellent youth nostalgia dramas can win with ingenious image rhetoric.
Every scene - such as the cheese building, alleys, attics, every daily necessities with traces of the years - such as red and white game consoles, Walkman, as well as dialects, local delicacies... These are not only important memory certificates Objects are also an integral part of image rhetoric, and even without the blessing of filters, their halo cannot be concealed.
If the director grasps these highlights and abandons those vain filters and lighting, I believe that dramas with "youth" and "nostalgia" elements can still present a higher artistic quality and become the favorite of the audience.
(The author is Zhou Qianwen, associate professor of Shanghai Film Academy, Shanghai University)