Hu Xiang

Recently, family dramas such as "Mature Year", "Wife's New World" and "Grandma's New World" have been broadcast on the screen, blowing a "family style". These dramas have their own innovations in theme selection, narrative techniques, and aesthetic expression, there is no lack of highlights, and some of the image quality is very high, but they also reflect some common problems, the most important of which is not deep enough.

Exhaustive but lost the focus of expression

Family drama is a common type of domestic TV drama, which mainly reflects the problems faced by one or several families, such as housing, marriage, children's education, family ethics, etc., through these typical problems to reflect the common problems faced by the current family and even the times. If it is only to show the warmth and happiness of the family, it will naturally not be attractive, but there are too many questions to talk about, and the focus will be lost.

For example, in "Mature Year", the beginning is a large family wishing Ni's mother's birthday, but at this time, the second son of the family, Ni Weiqiang, that is, the husband of the heroine Zhang Chunmei, "disappeared" and became the male version of "runaway Nala", so that some barrages played "Is this a suspense drama". Ni Weiqiang, who disappeared next, actually proposed to divorce Zhang Chunmei, and when we continued to explore the reasons for their divorce, the plot divided the clue of the eldest Ni Weimin's family, telling the embarrassment and crampedness of their son and daughter-in-law who did not dare to have children because they did not have a big house. But on this clue, the troubles of daughter-in-law Liu Hongyan's mother and a group of stepsons were also separated in their hometown. This side box is not over, Ni Weiqiang's sister Ni Weizhen encountered one after another in the workplace of the TV station - the program was suspended, and the love with Xiao Xianrou was tortuous again... The audience watched this and forgot that, and their attention was constantly distracted - is it a mid-life marriage crisis, or a pension, or a high house price? Where is our focus? If we trace the essence of the failed marriage of Zhang Chunmei and Ni Weiqiang, like the movie "Mr. Zhao", isn't it more touching?

This problem is also evident in "Grandma's New World" and "Wife's New World", two seemingly sister works, but in fact completely different. "Grandma's New World" tells the story of grandmother Sun Yuping who suddenly left after recovering from a serious illness and "wandered" in an uncertain place, telling the legendary experience of fantasy drifting after her grandmother ran away in the form of a road movie. This drama focuses on the world of the elderly, the narrative technique is eye-catching, and the story is also thought-provoking. In the first story, she helps a female criminal to repentance and become a new person. Next, she accidentally met the elderly painter Chen Tong and his vegetative "sister". Sun Yuping and Chen Tong almost got married because of their similar interests, but because of Chen Tong's morbid feelings for her vegetative sister, she could only choose to leave silently. The work adopts a tracking serial story mode, but in each story, there is another story, like a story matryoshka doll, and the audience's perspective needs to be constantly changed. This seems to be a full reading of the warmth and coldness of the world, but it is difficult to have a story that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In this year's family drama, this drama dares to explore the theme of old age, dares to innovate in narrative techniques, and dares to use prose-style narrative rhythm - these are all impressive. But its complex form and dragonfly point of expression are sometimes difficult to impress.

"Grandma's New World" intends to invite the audience to delve into the emotional world of the elderly, showing the process of grandma from a transparent body that was ignored and insulted to gradually becoming clear and gaining a strong subject personality, which was rarely paid attention to in family dramas before. But from the point of view of presentation, one by one, the grandmother in each story is still as stoic and kind as at the beginning of the series, lacking changes, and does not dig deep into her uniqueness, and the characters appear flat. In addition, another problem with the work is that some plots are biased towards self-talk imagination and whispering, and do not deeply touch the real contradictions in real life.

Plot patterning and routine

Ordinary people love to watch family dramas. Every time a classic family drama is replayed on the screen, it can attract a large number of audiences to watch with relish, such as "The World" and "Parental Love", because the work accurately finds the historical memory and emotional memory that resonates with the audience, and the uniqueness of the story and emotions is also outstanding. However, in recent years, urban family dramas have rarely been impressive, mainly because of the patterned and routine creation.

"Wife's New World", the audience can guess the end when they see the beginning. The story tells a standard middle-class marital crisis story: the heroine Shen An'an is a housewife, and her husband is a marketing manager of a clothing company. One day, Shen An'an's former neighbor's sister returned from abroad and temporarily stayed at their home. This sister seems simple but is actually very scheming, and after several provocations, the male protagonist has no power to fall into the gentle township, which leads to the breakdown of the marriage between the two with Shen An'an. We look at ancient and modern Chinese and foreign literary works, and look at film and television works around the world, such stories abound, not to say that they cannot be filmed, but the plot of "Wife's New World" is too false and naïve. For example, the metaphorical red high heels in the play, the heroine knows that the shoes were specially given to her by her husband, but when the female number two put on these shoes several times, the heroine did not have a strong attitude of opposition, and even when the male protagonist let the female second wear to the interview, she did not completely stop it, this over-tolerance of the "Virgin" performance is really not in line with the reaction of the characters in normal life. The male protagonist in the work is a sanctimonious hypocrite in traditional literature, which is very much in line with the trend of disparaging male characters in recent years. The work rarely has a new value output, and does not explore new marriage relationships.

It can be seen from this drama that some of the current family dramas have begun to be "micro-short dramas", putting a lot of space on the specific details of how men and women cheat on each other, and catering to the audience through the strong stimulation of the plot picture, similar to those social hot news that occupy a huge amount of traffic. In other words, the creators are still shallow to create a "refreshing feeling" that explodes after being bullied, detached from the cultural responsibility that family scripts should bear. Is it necessary for us to be so obsessed with this plot? Wouldn't it be better to focus on the heroine's gradual process of finding herself early? In these rapidly changing times, there are many new marriage issues worth discussing, but the work only shows an old relationship.

Objectively speaking, the current family drama itself integrates society and family, and it is impossible to talk only about one side of things, but family drama cannot be comprehensive, rather than a hammer in the east and a mallet in the west, it is better to calm down and dig a deep well and draw a clear spring for the audience. There are many topics that need to be explored in depth in the family today, wouldn't it be better to explain a problem thoroughly?

In "Mature Year", the new editor-in-chief said to Zhang Chunmei that he wanted to do a special issue on the power of new women. Zhang Chunmei agreed, saying that she should immediately interview real women's stories. The editor-in-chief said that it starts with you, because you have a successful career and a happy family, which is a typical representative of successful mature women. Zhang Chunmei asked him, do you mean "going up to the hall and going down to the kitchen"? The editor-in-chief agreed. Zhang Chunmei said that this is not the power of new women, and society should not still use this outdated label to show women.

This conversation is interesting and valuable. If the work really explores in depth along how to express the "new female value", instead of packaging the hot issues in the current society, I believe it will be more meaningful and powerful than what it presents at this stage. (Beijing Daily)