In “The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise You”, Yang Zi and Xiao Zhan can be said to be the top flow combination.However, the routine is old and the characters are repeated until the end of the broadcast. Compared with the traffic level of the two leading actors, it can almost be said to be an upside-down failure.
Min Sijia
“Agarwood is like crumbs” almost replicates “Fragrant Honey as Ashes as Frost”: starring Yang Zi, adapted from an online novel, an ancient puppet love spanning past and present lives, but it failed to replicate the success of 2018. Two-thirds of the episode has been broadcast, and it has not yet shown its score on Douban; in another dimension, it has just passed the volume of 42,000 people “watched”, and “Sweet Honey as Ashes as Frost” exceeds 180,000″ The “I have seen” mark also just shows the quantitative standard between “paste” and “out of the circle”.
But whether this kind of “fog” is an external problem of a typed product like ancient puppet drama, or an internal problem of Yang Zi’s stagnant acting skills in similar roles as an actor, perhaps we have to look at it from a macro perspective, so this year Yang Zi’s other drama “The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise” has become a reference object. Compared with “Agarwood is like crumbs”, “The Rest of Your Life, Please Advise” seems to have a more “explosive” sense of sight. Yang Zi and Xiao Zhan’s top traffic combination, and the urban background is also easier for people to substitute. However, perhaps because it was filmed in 2019, the routine is old and the characters are repeated. Until the end of the broadcast, the volume of sound it has gained is almost an upside-down failure compared with the traffic levels of the two leading actors.
The decline in word of mouth of the two major dramas has brought a node to discuss Yang Zi. From the perspective of the actor’s life cycle, Yang Zi, who will turn 30 this year, is indeed entering a new period. She, who has come all the way from a child star, may be the one who knows the most about appearance anxiety among the female stars of the same generation. The content of the interview that was repeatedly mentioned, Song Dandan’s kind advice to Yang Zi to “grow up like this, don’t act”, although cruel, but also clear the truth. “Growing up like this” does not point to the standard of appearance of ordinary people in daily life, but to the ecology of appearance in the entertainment industry that regards appearance as an important sorting standard. In her childhood, Yang Zi could still walk beyond this standard by relying on the age limit of her characters and her own civilian level, but when she grew up, she had to face the aesthetic standards of the adult world.
The girl next door and the adult world
When we look back at “Family with Children”, Yang Zi’s performance is really amazing, but this kind of amazing is only limited to roles like Xiaoxue: the child next door, excellent, proud, and strong in self-esteem. The affinity of the girl next door, this complimented description, is actually a bit cruel to Yang Zi as an actor, it points to “not beautiful enough” and “ordinary”. But family melodramas like “Family with Children” complement this commonality, which is what the audience needs. The delicate situation of a young girl as the eldest sister in a multi-child family, the sensitive mind of an adolescent girl, and the arrogance and pride of a Beijing girl are partly performed by Yang Zi, and partly also belonged to herself at that time.
But a cruel fact is that the feeling of a girl and a national girl is a state with a very short shelf life and a time cut-off point, which is similar to the “curse of child stars” that Hollywood often mentions. Many actors who have become famous as child stars need to face the shedding road of rediscovering their own acting direction. Shirley Temple is a prime example of losing her screen magic as an adult. In the significantly different Eastern context and Chinese performing arts circle, their cultural background and entertainment ecology have created a more cruel environment. A large part of the actors choose to prolong their girlhood and teenage period as much as possible. This road is not for everyone. The preservation period of the appearance and the matching of the characters are indispensable. Zhou Xun is an example of the extremely long teenage period on the screen. In the field of TV dramas Then there is the head traffic like Zhao Liying.
The appearance condition determines the path of “extending the girly feeling”, which is not suitable for Yang Zi, and the reason has to go back to Xiaoxue’s recognized affinity. There is no acting advantage at all, especially in this era of flattering beauty.
The burnout period is a good proof. After “Family with Children 2” in 2006, Yang Zi, who has entered puberty, has works but does not enter the hot discussion field. From the perspective of all traffic while young today, you can use the trough period. to define. For Yang Zi at this stage, acting is not a problem, but appearance is the threshold.
Yang Zi’s problem may be the problem of ordinary girls. She can’t stay in the girlhood forever, and she can’t be put into the roles of beautiful women on the market. But Yang Zi’s choice is to get close to that template and do everything he can, even at the cost of sacrificing his acting skills.
Fit and performance singularity
In 2014, “Battle of Changsha” was Yang Zi’s highest rated work. In addition to the bonus from the team, Yang Zi could also make a rich, layered and emotional performance in performance at that time. The changes of the characters who have awakened in the middle-aged and grown-up cannot be said to be profound, but they are moving in a civilian way. But she is still not suitable for the role. Age is one aspect, and the Beijing accent also makes people play. The heroine that the crew decided at the beginning was not her. The temporary change of roles brought this turning point. Later in the story, Yang Zi performed The sense of crampedness is even more obvious, and it is impossible to understand or support the turmoil of the big era.
“Ode to Joy” and “Dear, Beloved” should be regarded as the two works with the highest degree of matching between Yang Zi and the role. Qiu Yingying’s crampedness when submitting her resume at the job fair and her flexible position as a mobile in the relationship between the four girls were all suitable for Yang Zi at that time, and she was also within the control of her acting performance and performance. But we have been able to see the price she paid for her beauty since then, especially when the facial expressions are strong, the sense of incompatibility between the five senses has begun to destroy her acting skills.
Compared with Qiu Yingying, Tong Nian in “Dear, Beloved” is less down-to-earth in terms of setting, and the soft and cute scholar is even a bit of an empty character, so Tong Nian played by Yang Zi is saying anything. When it comes to the lines of the professional part, it will give people a strong sense of “reciting white”. This kind of professional performance makes people feel awkward and embarrassing, and the traces are as heavy as a mask painted on the character’s face. Similarly, there are also 2021. “The Female Psychologist”.
From “Ode to Joy” in 2016 to the present, Yang Zi is indeed gradually approaching the adult aesthetic standards of the entertainment industry, and has also taken on many roles of beauty attributes. Accompanying this is the visible stiffness of the facial muscles, the loss of facial emotional detail, and the limited range of microexpressions. This separation of actors’ appearance and acting skills is most obvious in “Qingyunzhi”, in which Yang Zi played the role of a beautiful woman for the first time and tried her best to create a fairy-like and deserted texture. In the latest “Agarwood is like crumbs”, even when angry or angry, it can be seen that Yang Zi can only rely on his eyes, brows, and mouth to move his face, expressing his emotions in a very limited way.
But what’s interesting is that on this road that is gradually approaching the adult aesthetic standards of the entertainment industry and gradually being limited in performance control, “Sweet Honey as Ashes” has instead become a special existence. Jin Mi, who has eaten the Heartless Pill, is ruthless and unloving, so in the part before awakening, he can return to external stimuli and emotional offensive with humility. This strong and indifferent contrast is an integral part of the Xianxia drama “Su Feeling”; In the middle stage of acting with a veil, it can cover up the weak performance to the maximum extent, and take advantage of the performance of the eyes. Therefore, the success of “Sweet Honey Like Frost” is due to a variety of factors. When there are shortcomings in the actor’s career, they just get stuck in the texture and gap of the character’s characteristics. This is a unique singularity in an actor’s career that cannot be reproduced or continued.
The irreplaceability of “not beautiful enough”
Going back to “Agarwood is like crumbs”, when we are already tired of Yang Zi’s quirky aesthetics, the fairy tales of the past and present cannot provide a deep performance space, and the rigid and single facial expressions of the protagonist Yan Dan are also difficult to support. The sadomasochism across generations, the audience will no longer pay.
But a topic worthy of discussion is that we, as the audience, are very accepting of Yang Zi’s role as the “beautiful” in the setting, the daughter of the flower god, the incarnation of Hanli, and the white snake Yaoyao. It is a character that Yang Zi cannot suppress with his appearance at this stage. The fundamental mechanism behind this must be viewed from the perspective of the audience’s expectations.
If we classify Xianxia dramas and idol dramas from the audience’s mentality, most of the successful ones have met the audience’s two expectations. One is the “imagination” that is far away from life and looking forward to legends, and the other is the “substitute” that is close to oneself and immersed in the drama. No one will feel that they are Zhao Yazhi in “The Legend of the New White Snake”, and very few people will replace Liu Yifei in “Meng Hualu”. Their “beauty” is a highlight and a barrier, isolating the audience under the stage, we Look at them, is reading the legend.
But another type of work is completely different. The representative is the popular work starred by Yang Zi, and perhaps “Prank Kiss” can be used as a reference. Today’s Yang Zi has certain similarities with Ariel Lin during the “Mischief Kiss” period. They are cute, but not too beautiful, and sometimes they don’t even look good. The performance is flawed, blunt and awkward, but it is these The rough edges make us feel that we can be “them”, and their affinity, neighborly sense and insensitivity are not offensive and can be replaced in the movie-watching imagination. So the audience gets a sense of substitution in watching, and their “not beautiful enough” substitutability just constitutes the irreplaceability of actors in idol drama products. When we look at them, we are entering the legend.
The paradox here is that, from the perspective of audience psychology, “not beautiful enough” has become a key factor for Yang Zi’s success, but in terms of industry standards, “not beautiful enough” has become an anxiety about her appearance. She made a choice and paid a price for it. As women, will “them” living in other social fields have more choices?
[
责编：张晓荣 ]