[Viewing the tide of literature and art]
In the second half of 2021, the Central Propaganda Department issued the "Notice on Carrying out Comprehensive Governance Work in the Cultural and Entertainment Field", deploying comprehensive governance work for prominent problems in the cultural and entertainment field, such as traffic first, chaos in the "rice circle", and violation of law and morality.
Since the "Notice" was issued, the appearance and ecology of variety shows, including TV variety shows and online variety shows, have shown some new changes: creators have innovated and diversified program types and forms, and paid attention to the presentation of social, cultural and thematic content. It attaches importance to providing audiences with a more upward and better cultural and aesthetic demonstration, and attaches importance to the guidance of positive social values, including shaping the value of youth.
More and more thought-provoking programs
Looking at the recent ecology of the variety show industry, we see that the types of programs are more diverse and innovative, and the theme positioning is more positive and positive.
Judging from the type of programs, some time ago, the main focus was on traffic, consumption, the development of excessive entertainment, and the phenomenon of "screening" in the talent show category has been effectively corrected.
The creators opened up their ideas and effectively expanded the program creativity, and major themed, social, cultural, and documentary programs "blowout".
Among the major themed works, programs such as "China in Stories" and "Party History in Art Classics" were broadcast on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party, showing the magnificent development of the Communist Party of China in the form of variety shows.
Programs such as "Ice and Snow Dream Team" and "Ice and Snow Are Burning" effectively matched the theme of the Winter Olympics, and programs such as "Night in Great Wan Chai" complemented the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Although cultural works have been popular for several years, it is gratifying that the development of such programs has not fallen into the bottleneck of homogenization, but continues to demonstrate innovative ideas.
Recently, China Central Radio and Television Station's "China in Classics", "National Treasures Exhibition Season", "Ancient Rhyme and New Year", "China Archaeology Conference", "China National Treasure Conference", "2022 Chinese Poetry Conference", "Classic Chanting" (Season 5) ), Henan Satellite TV's "Chinese Festival" series, the online platform's "Coming!
Works such as Luoyang" and "Full Moon Party", constantly explore the transformation of traditional culture, traditional art, and traditional concepts into modernization, fusion, youth, and network transformation, and constantly adapt to the behavioral habits and aesthetic preferences of contemporary audiences and users to achieve A sustainable value-leading effect.
The sudden emergence of social works with documentary color is a new phenomenon worthy of attention recently.
Among them are "New Travels" and "Hello Life" (season 3), which focus on daily social life and the ecology of ordinary people, as well as "vertical" social variety shows focusing on specific groups, such as "We Go Forward" and "Forge Forward" "The Blue" focuses on firefighters, "Summer of the Eaves" focuses on the elderly living alone, "Forget the Farm" focuses on cognitively impaired groups, "We Are New to the Workplace" and "Exciting Offer" (Season 3) focus on The living and working conditions of young people entering the workforce.
Some of the groups shown in the program have special and important social contributions, some have different special difficulties and are easily ignored by other members of society, and some face special stages of life.
Under a healthy variety show ecology, variety shows should not only have the type of "making people laugh", but also have more types that make people think Extensive cognition, reality observation, and quiet contemplation.
Furthermore, behind the diversity of variety show types, the themes of recent variety shows have shown a more positive, healthy, upward, and kind-hearted situation: programs may focus on the social growth of youth groups, or pay attention to the reality of the grassroots and ordinary people in society. People's struggle for life, or paying attention to the inheritance of traditional culture and art, not only shows the level of innovation and creativity in this field, but also gradually releases the unique functions of literary and artistic works to stimulate emotion, gather strength, and correct value at the broad social, cultural and conceptual levels.
Healthy aesthetic orientation leads the audience
Since the comprehensive management work in the field of entertainment has been carried out, the field of variety shows has not only improved in terms of content and form, but also made great progress in guiding the audience's cultural aesthetic experience.
For example, the popular "fan circle culture" has been effectively curbed.
Some online variety shows, such as idol development programs, once triggered a wave of deformed star chasing such as blind investment by fans, excessive marketing by financial sponsors, and excessive consumption of young groups, worshipping money, invading other people's privacy, and worshipping appearance.
With the implementation of regulatory measures, the strengthening of self-discipline of practitioners, and the direction of public opinion, the chaos in the "fan circle" has been effectively corrected, fans' star-chasing behavior has become increasingly rational, and major public opinion incidents caused by crazy star-chasing behavior have basically disappeared.
There are also controversial aesthetic orientations that have appeared in some variety shows, which have been effectively curbed.
Variety show creation methods such as excessively displaying the "neutralized sissy style", exaggerating the male femininity, and highlighting the "gorgeous" appearance of the contestants are hard to find.
There is also the phenomenon of excessive plastic surgery, excessive use of filters, excessive wearing of fancy clothes, and excessive judgment of ugliness for the sake of fame, which are gradually replaced by strong aesthetics, high-spirited aesthetics, emotional aesthetics, and elegant aesthetics.
Many representative programs are close to life, reality, and culture, allowing audiences to discover beauty in daily life and cultural flow, and appreciate the true meaning of truth, goodness and beauty.
In addition, the superficial entertainment content blindly presented in many works has also obviously converged.
Especially in some low-profile and shallow-minded programs, the guest contestants made fun of each other, sarcasm, dwarfed, and insulted each other, through exaggeration, vulgarity, banter, and dramatic performances. The phenomenon of gaining traffic through views and other methods has decreased significantly.
It should be seen that the short-sighted approach of crooked and slaughtering chickens runs counter to the creative orientation of variety shows to dig deep into the ideological connotation, so that the show cannot leave a mark in the audience's cognition, and will eventually be abandoned by the industry, the market and the audience.
The phenomenon of overt or covertly conveying negative values in variety shows has also aroused the vigilance of regulators, practitioners, scholars and audiences.
These negative values involve not only universal issues such as materialism, hedonism, money worship, irrational consumption, and visualism, but also the concept of “passive life” that directly affects young audiences, such as lying flat and Buddhist.
It should be noted that the emergence of controversial or even deformed cultural and aesthetic phenomena in the field of variety shows is mostly inseparable from the intervention of bad capital.
Therefore, restricting and guiding capital is the fundamental of governance in the entertainment and variety fields.
If capital can consciously take providing positive cultural and aesthetic experience as its own responsibility, then variety shows will play a more positive role in creating a good social atmosphere, especially in making young people face the socialization process positively.
More insight into social reality
As the Internet continues to intervene in life, its massive information display and storage characteristics make the audience exposed to the excessive display and supply of information, and people's attention resources are becoming more and more scarce.
At the same time, in the face of this rapidly developing and transforming society, the people's attention resources are very important.
If the public's scarce attention can be directed to positive, positive and valuable issues, it will greatly contribute to social development, national construction and national rejuvenation.
Under this background, as a dense area of cultural products and literary works, the variety show field should shoulder greater social responsibilities, and practitioners should also have a greater sense of mission and responsibility.
The good news is that the exciting years presented by major themed programs recently let the audience see the style of the times, the diverse life presented by social programs allowed the audience to see the social ecology, and the cultural connotation presented by cultural programs allowed the audience to see the spirit of inheritance.
These shows have a strong social impact through premium content and penetration.
This transition from "flow-only" to "positive energy" is a concrete manifestation of the variety show's directing the public's scarce attention to something more valuable.
It is also pleasing to see that many variety shows have begun to focus on young people and cultivate a youth culture with positive energy.
Only by understanding young people can we grasp the future of the development of the field of literature and art.
Motivating young people to uphold more positive values is the key to ensuring the sustainable development of the country and society.
Variety shows, as a form of literature and art that are frequently contacted by young people and have a strong desire to watch, should shoulder the responsibility of "facing youth at every step".
In the next step, in the process of positively leading social and cultural values, the platform should constantly consolidate the main responsibility, the creators should also constantly consolidate the value feelings, and the variety show should fully integrate elements such as the spirit of the times, cultural value, social style, and personal struggle. In the creation, a three-dimensional, rich, real, positive and lovely Chinese image and Chinese image are presented to users and audiences.
Finally, it needs to be added that in addition to the new changes in content production and the aesthetic, cultural, and value energy it brings, the recent spread of many variety shows is also worthy of praise.
"Pay attention to communication" has gradually been implemented from the slogan to the concept and action of the variety show industry.
Recently, both TV variety shows and online variety shows are constantly strengthening the advance planning of dissemination, and attaching importance to the multi-platform linkage secondary dissemination after the program is broadcast.
In this era of media integration, under the state that network communication has profoundly changed the human media landscape and people's cognition, media integration communication has changed from an auxiliary role to a key link that determines the success or failure of programs.
Program producers need to realize that it is outdated to just provide content materials to various platforms, deeply participate in the communication chain of each platform throughout the whole process, dynamically adjust the communication content and strategies according to the communication results, and effectively use big data algorithms and artificial intelligence, etc. With the help of cutting-edge communication technology, it is the right way to realize the multi-line harvest of program content, communication and influence.
(This article is a phased achievement of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Ministry-level social science project "Short Video Cultural Hotspots and Phenomenon Research", author: Liu Jun, director of the editorial department of "Modern Communication", a journal of Communication University of China)