As an integral part of China's excellent traditional culture and an important form of my country's intangible cultural heritage, local opera has distinct local characteristics, profoundly reflects the lives, emotions and thoughts of local people, and is an important carrier of local historical and cultural inheritance. Different from major operas such as Peking Opera and Kun Opera, which are played in palaces and danced in pavilions, local opera is mainly active in rural life in the streets and fields. It is an art form that can express collective emotions and construct collective memory.
In recent years, many short video live broadcast platforms have launched live broadcasts of operas. In 2022, the live broadcasts of operas on a certain live broadcast platform covered 231 types of operas, with more than 800,000 live broadcasts and a total of more than 2.5 billion viewers. Local opera is gradually overcoming the time and space limitations brought by "locality" and has once again become an important choice in people's daily artistic life.
From big screen to small screen: Forgotten local drama becomes visible again
The roots of local opera lie in the place. Early local operas were usually of the Caotai style, with the stage usually set up directly in the fields or at the entrance of the village, and the performances were mainly performed during slack periods or during festivals. The people singing, chanting, and playing on the stage may be professional artists or familiar villagers. They put on costumes and spoke familiar local accents, exuding a sense of intimacy, making the art of opera blend seamlessly with local daily life.
However, the other side of the "local" nature of local opera is that it is narrow and monotonous. In an era without the Internet or even television and other media, the audience lacked the possibility of comparison and choice. Compared with the personal communication of opera actors on the stage, the media performance of opera is much more complicated. From the initial movies, to television and current mobile Internet platforms, from the big screen to the small screen, local operas have an ever-changing relationship with the audience through these media.
For most Chinese people, getting acquainted with non-local local operas is basically through movies (including movies or clips that are later replayed on TV and online platforms). In the 1950s and 1960s, my country produced a large number of local dramas, such as the Yue opera "Dream of Red Mansions" and "Five Girls Pay Birthday", the Henan opera "Mulan" and "Chaoyanggou", the Huangmei opera "The Fairy's Match" and "The Consort", and the Pingju opera "Liu Qiao'er" ” and “Flower as Matchmaker” etc. spread local operas across the country. From then on, local operas went out of the local areas and were labeled as “Chinese”, becoming the common cultural memory of the Chinese people.
But then, the further development of media technology and the popularization of television had a more complex impact on the situation of local opera. On the one hand, in addition to movies, live broadcasts of opera performances and opera variety shows further strengthen the affinity of local operas and their adhesion with the audience; on the other hand, the colorful programs on TV also distract the audience's attention from local operas. Compared with exciting TV programs, local dramas are not very competitive, and some are even on the verge of being forgotten.
In the era of mobile media, although media content has become richer, audience attention has been divided, and competition among cultural products has become increasingly fierce, the opportunities for local operas to be seen have also been greatly improved. On the evening of November 30, 2023, a two-and-a-half-hour opera live broadcast on a live broadcast platform attracted 9.38 million opera fans. In addition to well-known operas such as Peking Opera and Huangmei Opera, the repertoire also included Chu Opera, Jingzhou Flower Drum Opera, and Wuxue Wenqu Opera. and other very niche local operas. Another prominent example is that on a well-known short video platform, a user whose main content is to publish short videos of Yudong Diao Troupe performances has 1.877 million fans, and the 759 short videos he published have received a total of 3112.6 Thousands of "likes". Obviously, mobile Internet media represented by short video platforms have brought historic changes to the attention and praise of local dramas.
From presentation to interaction: gathering diverse user groups
When performed on a rural grass terrace, local opera is essentially an interactive art. The performers and the audience are in the same physical space, forming a community of theatrical performances. During the performance, the audience interacts with the actors through expressions, gestures, applause, etc. On the contrary, operas in movies and TV are more of a one-sided performance by the performers. There is a media screen between the viewers. The performers perform in the studio and the audience watches invisibly. The “screen” is both a stage for performance and a barrier for isolation.
However, when entering mobile Internet platforms such as short videos that can display audience feedback and interaction in real time, both viewers and performers are jointly transformed into platform users. Although their identity differences have not disappeared, this only shows that the way and depth of various users' participation in platform activities have changed. different. With local opera as the theme, it does not matter whether users watch or perform. What is important is that they realize the connection and interaction across regions and cross-professional identities, and thereby activate the local opera itself.
Take a user of a live broadcast platform as an example. Although her note is "Musician", browsing the short videos posted on her page shows that she is just an ordinary fan of Nanyin, a local opera in southern Fujian. One of the three videos pinned to the top of her homepage is Nanyin's "Three Thousand Liangs of Gold" The other part is "Rakshasa Haishi" which he "played" in a Nanyin accent. It is this kind of ordinary user who currently has 80,000 fans and has received 464,000 "likes". Fan IP addresses are widely distributed around the world. Under the video of Nanyin arias pinned to the top, some users said, "Nanyin, a cultural treasure of southern Fujian." Some users also talked about the difference in pronunciation of Nanyin arias and Mandarin. Another user commented, "It reminds me of my mother." The "related reading" of the video is further linked to Nanyin arias on CCTV, Straits TV, Xigua Video and other platforms. Starting from this ordinary user, the mobile live broadcast platform connects a Nanyin world composed of diverse users and diverse contents.
From this we can see that unlike the large screens of movies and TV, the significance of the small screens of mobile phones and short video live broadcast platforms lies in connection. Similar to Caotai, the platform connects the art community using local opera as the medium to the greatest extent, and the art community is further connected through the platform to form a community of life and emotion.
You can see the cuteness: making local drama come alive in daily life
Mobile phones and short video live broadcast platforms provide at least three opportunities for the return of local operas: portability, interactivity, and daily life based on these two. The mobile phone on which the platform is based is the most commonly used personal belongings of users and is never left without them. The daily life of local operas on the live broadcast platform not only means that users can use the platform to enjoy operas anytime and anywhere, and the viewing behavior is seamlessly connected with daily life; it also means that the topics users interact with during the viewing process not only involve local operas, but also involve multiple aspects of daily life. . Platform live broadcasts and short videos have opened a channel for local dramas to connect with daily life.
As shown in the original performance of the Chinese Yin Lao tune "The Sound of the Order Shakes the Mountains and Rivers" in the movie "White Deer Plain", local opera was originally a way for the people to rest and express emotions after their production and life. To a certain extent, high-end professional stage performances Alienating the connection between opera and life, the short video live broadcast platform has allowed local opera to return to the people. Even great performers often attract fans and gain attention on the platform in a friendly and friendly way.
In the lens of the user of the live broadcast platform, Liu Zhonghe, a performing artist of Henan opera, is holding a fast food box and enjoying noodles that are so simple that they are almost shabby; in the top video of Wu Qiong, a famous Huangmei opera performer on the platform page, Wu Qiong himself is jumping, singing and dancing, as cute as in a square The girl next door who leads the dance. In the videos released by these artists, you can see their wonderful singing, patient and meticulous narration, as well as various interesting life jokes and gossip about their teachers and friends. Mixed performances of traditional opera, pop music and pop culture are also common. As for opera artists, they have covered the "Goddess Pi Guan" aria from the two-dimensional game, which is a famous example of local opera actively reaching out to young people.
Last year, Chen Lijun, a female born in the 1990s who was born in Yue Opera, became popular on the Internet with a short video of holding a circle with one hand in the Yue Opera "New Dragon Inn". She was handsome in appearance and elegant in manners. She was praised by netizens as the "ceiling" of women dressing up as men, which made Yue Opera very popular. Big attention. This also provides good experience for learning how local opera can reach the public and establish an approachable and lovely new image in the new media era. Whether an artist leads opera to surrender to life, or life and art go both ways, the return of local opera to daily life through new media platforms is both upright and innovative. The art of local opera originally comes from the people, and thus returns to the original intention.
(Guangming Daily author: Yin Xiaoyun, associate professor at Fujian Normal University Union College)