Ten years of explosive changes: from word-of-mouth hanging upside down to word-of-mouth
2021-08-25 10:19:51Source: Wen Wei Po
View summary
In recent years, the upside-down of word-of-mouth in popular dramas has gradually decreased, and the phenomenon that popularity is directly proportional to quality has become more common. Looking at this year alone, the most typical “Era of Awakening” and “Sentiment of the Mountains and Seas” have aroused extremely positive and lasting heat and continued discussions. The scores remain high on the scoring website, and the Magnolia Award was won at the Shanghai TV Festival. Many awards and multi-faceted awards are enough to show how well these masterpieces are.
Explosive dramas are the highest evaluation of popular TV dramas or online dramas in recent years. In the Internet age, the criteria for measuring hits are not absolutely unique, or the ratings are superb, or topic discussions are raging, or derivative works are endless, or they are unforgettable after many years. Of course, there are some popular dramas in the popular dramas, so the above situation is the same.
Generally speaking, a hit drama is a relatively successful commercial drama, which can often create a cultural phenomenon that transcends a single drama and becomes an organic component of popular culture. But once a hit drama, although it is a commercial praise word, it is not necessarily a cultural affirmation. Although there have been many classics in the popular dramas, there are also many representatives who are not well-received. While “Legend of Wu Mei Niang” won the annual ratings championship in 2015, it was also condemned and constructed by verbal criticism of historical figures. The 2013 version of “Swordsman” has harvested countless tears and topics with multi-faceted sadomasochism. Vigorously criticized the unqualified adaptations of the original work; “Gongsuoxinyu” and “Splendid Weiyang”…Many hot discussions under the high ratings of the popular dramas were more criticism than praise. Some people even study the psychology of popular Lei TV dramas. Why are some dramas revealing cheapness and embarrassment from the performance to the plot and even the pictures, but the audience still scolds while watching and watching while scolding?
In recent years, this kind of upside-down reputation in popular dramas has gradually decreased, and the phenomenon of popularity and quality being proportional has become more and more common. Looking at this year alone, the most typical “Era of Awakening” and “Sentiment of the Mountains and Seas” have aroused extremely positive and lasting heat and continued discussions. The scores remain high on the scoring website, and the Magnolia Award was won at the Shanghai TV Festival. Many awards and multi-faceted awards are enough to show how well these masterpieces are.
Specific performance:
The development of realistic themes, the transformation of ancient costume themes and the rise of other themes
To clarify the changes in popular dramas, we must start with the breakdown of specific themes, because their development and transformation are not consistent.
From quality to quantity, the most eye-catching works are realistic themes. In the past ten years, there have been many popular dramas with realistic themes, from “The Temptation of Going Home”, “Let’s Get Married”, “Ode to Joy” to “The Name of the People”, “The First Half of My Life”, “All Very Good” and “Thirty Only” “The Hidden Corner”, “Mountain and Sea Love”, etc., realistic themes have a clear trend of landing and refinement in the past ten years.
Landing and refinement are first reflected in finding a better way of speaking mainstream stories and annual themes, and the realism of realistic themes is stronger. Works such as “Mountains and Seas” reflecting poverty alleviation work and “Great Rivers” bearing in mind the reform and opening up have the attributes of tribute dramas, but they all use the theme to choose high-quality stories and explore new possibilities for the creation of the main melody. Secondly, landing and refinement lies in further docking with a wider range of practical problems. Previously, a major focus of realistic themes was family emotional ethics, and the creation of this part is advancing with the times. For example, “Everything is Good” throws the topic of patriarchy and support for the elderly, “Xiaohuanxi” discusses the college entrance examination and education refraction. The family contradictions and parent-child relationship, realistic themes maintain the closeness of dialogue with the times and dialogue with the audience. Furthermore, suspense dramas have become reality themes that have sprung up in recent years. In recent years, the production of refined and explosive new styles has emerged. Using “White Night Chasing the Murder”, “Secret Corner” and “The Silent Truth” as typical examples, it has created a new strong plot and strong suspense. Boutique type.
Other subjects have their own iterative changes. The explosion of costume themes has experienced the rise and fall of the heroine drama. “The Legend of Zhen Huan” in 2011, “The Legend of Lu Zhen” in 2013, “The Legend of Wu Mei Niang” in 2014, “The Legend of Miyue” and “A Thousand Bone Flowers” in 2015, “The Biography of a Female Doctor Ming Fei” and “Splendid” in 2016 “Wei Young”, “Chu Qiao Biography” in 2017… The costume “Big Heroine” drama can make a long list, but this type of popularity is getting more and more difficult. The “Big Heroine” aired this year The drama “Shangyang Fu”, even if there are heavy actors starring in it, all came home. It shows that the narrative and personality of the “Mary Su”-style heroine drama has passed, but because it is out of reality, it has lost the audience. To a certain extent, they have broken away from the old routines such as “Knowing whether it should be green, fat, red and thin” and “Strategy of Yanxi Palace”, etc., each of which has developed a new path for the heroine’s ancient costume theme explosion drama. The fairy tales represented by works such as “Three Lives III, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms” and “Sweet Honey Is Like Frost” are also seeking new changes. Sadomasochism and sweet pets have taken turns to become the darlings of the fairy tale genre. The male lead drama gradually found a suitable path after many years of silence, and works such as “Celebrating More Than Years” became a new type of explosion. Generally speaking, dramas about costumes used to be the place where accidents occurred frequently in scripts, performances, special effects, and service, but now it is necessary to tell a qualified story with a higher quality and innovative ideas, in order to have the possibility of highlighting the encirclement.
And among the popular dramas, there is also the phenomenon of small and popular dramas, that is, the broadcast of their dramas focuses on the field of focus, but it may also achieve out-of-circle detonation. Although the works such as “Chen Qing Ling” and “Mountain River Order” seem to be themes of ancient costumes, the core is the subculture theme in the narrow field. These works are difficult to be viewed as universal works, but their huge user stickiness and participation The popularity makes these works surprisingly high in per capita dissemination and per capita consumption intensity, and they have also become smash hits and even extremely star-making works.
It should be noted that although it is said that the popularity of more and more popular dramas is directly proportional to the quality level, it cannot be said that all the popular dramas are no longer upside down. On the one hand, among themes that are relatively scarce in the market, there are still some subcultures, such as some sub-cultural themes, that the audience pushes ordinary quality drama series to the hot spots of public opinion due to short supply. On the other hand, the situation of anticlimacticism also exists in many popular dramas, resulting in many episodes whose reputation is not constant, driving high and low.
main reason:
Progress and changes in production and consumption
Explosive dramas gradually change the situation of upside-down reputation, depending on many reasons. Among them, the changes on the production side and the consumer side are particularly worthy of attention.
From the production side, the creation of serial dramas has been affected by the triple dynamics.
First of all, the policy orientation has further established the focus and norms of the creation of TV dramas and web dramas. The proportion of realistic-themed dramas in the hit dramas has been increasing year by year, which is related to the encouragement and guidance of the competent authorities. The gift-giving function of major themed film and television dramas has been further highlighted, and it has also prompted the main melody drama to seek better transformation and evolution. Restrictions and regulations on online dramas and costume dramas have also given birth to the emergence of popular drama series that have undergone adjustments and changes in the corresponding fields.
Secondly, the improvement of industrialization level has led to an average increase in the production level of TV dramas, and many works have appeared in the artistic pursuit of intensive cultivation. For example, “The Silent Truth”, as a suspense network drama, shows an industrialized level of excellence in performance, scenery, photography, etc.; “Awakening Age”, as the main theme of the TV series, embodies the highly literary lens language and plot performance. These works not only create vivid characters and tell hearty stories, but also respect TV dramas and web dramas as a form of audio-visual art creation, and seek progress and breakthroughs in artistic texture. Correspondingly, the decline of some dramas is also due to their insufficient industrial maturity and failing to keep up with the development of the times.
Third, the addition of Internet power constitutes a new driving force for innovation and change. On the one hand, Internet capital, Internet platforms, and Internet culture have provided dramas with new ecology from all dimensions. The reputation of dramas is to a large extent online reputation. Both Internet dramas and TV dramas need to consider the entire industry chain from the network as the starting point. Variety. On the other hand, the Internet has led to more intense competition for drama series. Internet users are faced with more choices of meta-video content, such as foreign long videos and domestic short videos. The development of drama series is also related to wider competition.
From the receiving end, the audience has also changed. First of all, because the public has more and more choices for the arrangement of leisure time, they are less and less patience with episodes, and there is an upward trend in the quality of episodes, especially in some types of episodes that are already very abundant in the market. , Such as urban emotions, costume history, spy war years, etc., the audience’s viewing experience is relatively sufficient, and the quality of the work is directly related to the audience’s evaluation. In some markets, new themes or niche themes where supply is relatively in short supply, audiences have shown relative tolerance.
On the other hand, there is a change in the proportion of audience composition, with young audiences playing an increasingly important position in the overall audience. In this respect, with the development of TV dramas and network dramas, national dramas have become an important category for young people to consume cultural products in our country. On the other hand, the Internet has become the birthplace of the reputation of drama series, and the Internet is the most active platform for young audiences to participate. The preferences and choices of young people have greatly influenced the configuration of elements and creative tendencies of dramas in recent years. Therefore, these works that are relatively catering to young audiences are naturally easy to gain a better reputation.
It should be noted that since the relationship between Internet word-of-mouth and young audiences is the closest, works that are more able to affect the enthusiasm and aesthetic taste of young people will be easier to gain praise and generate popularity under the same circumstances, and the target audience will be more targeted. The public opinion dissemination of older works is relatively limited, which is the audience deviation that needs to be paid attention to when discussing popular dramas and their reputation.
Yang Hui
(The author is a lecturer at the School of Literature, Capital Normal University)
.