【Watching the Trend of Literature and Art】
Author: Wang Yichuan (Professor of the School of Arts, Beijing Language and Culture University, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Literary Critics Association)
As the sun and moon advance, the laws of the year are renewed. In the past year of 2023, Chinese TV dramas (including online dramas) have been richly and diversified in creation, and there are remarkable masterpieces of different types, showing a pattern of their own beauty. On the basis of maintaining the in-depth advancement of supply-side structural reform, creators allow China’s excellent traditional culture, realism spirit and innovative narratives to infiltrate and inspire each other, making the industry show various innovative forms that are popular and different creative concepts. Ming Guying’s vigorous momentum has provided an excellent answer to the high-quality development of film and television.
Excellent traditional culture is presented in various ways in contemporary life
TV series use images to carry rich cultural imagination and strong reality observation, and can carry out creative transformation and innovative development of China’s excellent traditional culture from multiple levels and dimensions. This year, some works used vivid real-life stories to reveal the positive role that the unique spiritual character of the Chinese nation plays in contemporary life. For example, “Crazy” tells the story of detective An Xin’s 20 years of tracking and investigating evil forces, and eulogizes the noble qualities of the people’s police such as benevolence, dedication, and integrity. Some works create artistic images of real historical figures and explore the contemporary value of ancient ideal personalities. For example, the biographical drama “Ding Baozhen” narrates the famous Qing Dynasty official Ding Baozhen’s deeds in controlling floods in the Yellow River and rectifying salt affairs in Sichuan. It shows his sincere personality infiltrated by China’s excellent traditional culture and brings enlightenment to contemporary audiences by learning from history and applying the past to the present. Some works reasonably fictionalize ancient costume stories and awaken the national memory and cultural genes of contemporary audiences. For example, “Lotus Tower” and “The Story of Yunxiang” may tell chivalrous stories about solving strange cases in the martial arts and restoring peace to the world, or portray full-bodied characters with sincere and implicit emotions, who are willing to make sacrifices, or depict daily scenes of the ancients that reflect modern life. , inspiring the audience’s admiration and yearning for China’s excellent traditional culture. Every word, song, scene, object, person and incident in these works has become a “guiding star” that guides the audience to the depth of history and culture, leading the public to absorb historical wisdom from the authenticity of life and discover the traditional humanistic spirit in ancient elegance. beauty of.
Stills and information pictures of the TV series “The Road of Life”
As a relic of social life in the past era, tradition needs to be transformed with the help of contemporary art forms and continuously developed according to contemporary advanced values. For example, “I Just Met You” tells the story of the variety show team’s filming of the cultural program “Inheritance”. The design uses the story of the intangible cultural inheritors and their families in the drama to inherit the intangible cultural heritage skills, excerpts from cultural programs, and interviews with real-life intangible cultural heritage masters. The triple text of actual records depicts the actual actions of the contemporary cultural media industry in transforming intangible cultural heritage skills into elements in the real world. It truly shows the various encounters that traditional culture faces in the contemporary era and the various possibilities for development, and realizes the connection between ancient and modern times. The spiritual harmony and emotional connection between people help China’s excellent traditional culture find its value foundation and spiritual dimension in the new era, and promote the construction and cultivation of modern civilization of the Chinese nation.
The spirit of realism and the spirit of traditional humanism infiltrate each other
Another outstanding achievement in the creation of Chinese TV dramas this year is that it has achieved fruitful results in promoting the mutual infiltration of realist literary and artistic spirit and traditional humanistic spirit. The humanistic tradition of focusing on individual moral cultivation and the realist spirit of adhering to the principle of objectively reproducing the reality of social life are integrated into a new paradigm of Chinese realism in the creation of TV dramas.
Stills and file pictures from the TV series “Welcome to Maille Village”
For example, “Going to Where the Wind Is” uses realistic writing on the psychological healing process of Xu Hongdou, a hotel executive in a metropolitan city. It first truly shows the heart-wrenching situation of this urban white-collar worker after the death of his best friend, and then lays out the story. He went to Youfeng Xiaoyuan in Yunnan and met Xie Zhiyao, who gave up his position as a company executive and returned to his hometown to start a business, and achieved a process of mutual healing. “The Road of Life” continues the realism spirit of the original novel “Life” and extends the life trajectory of the main characters to Shanghai. Through the comparison between the countryside of northern Shaanxi and the city of Shanghai, the creator intertwined the differences in urban and rural life contained in the original work with the differences in life between the east and the west in the play to jointly interpret the psychological confusion of people in the period of social transformation. Gao Jialin, a young man from northern Shaanxi, worked hard to change his destiny. He went through successive tests such as having his university quota replaced and losing his teaching job. He never gave up and was determined to pursue his ideals in life in the vast world. There are also “Father’s Grassland and Mother’s River” and “Love Full of Nine Bends”. The cross-generational and cross-regional narratives of such works present the truth, goodness, beauty and fireworks of characters from different eras and regions, demonstrating the Chinese humanistic tradition. The spirit of self-improvement, studiousness, novelty, friendliness, and dedication have the power to nourish the souls of individuals in contemporary society.
In addition to the usual daily necessities, rice, oil, salt, and fireworks in the market, the plots of many industry dramas, workplace dramas, urban dramas, and youth dramas in 2023 are also highly intertextual with real life, playing the role of channeling emotions, relieving stress, healing the soul, and inspiring thinking, making TV dramas art It is closer to the hearts of the audience and has a deeper significance in guiding social reality. For example, “White Castle”, “Ask the Heart” and “Welcome to Maile Village” directly face the contradictions between doctors and patients that exist in reality, internal conflicts within hospitals, as well as deeper issues of doctors’ career development and professional ethics, and show the characters’ responses to crises and crisis after crisis. The process of gradual emotional sublimation and spiritual purification in the test of reality demonstrates the professional mission and spiritual pursuit of doctors. “Days of Chasing the Light”, “Once Upon a Time”, “Just Love”, etc. focus on the simple and beautiful youth time, write about young people’s true psychological state and different attitudes towards life when facing learning and emotions, and inspire the public to understand “the power of long-distance relationships”. Is it successful?” and “What educational philosophy should we use to face the college entrance examination?” and other topics. There are also “Hometown, Goodbye”, “All the Way to the Sun”, “Ordinary Road”, etc., which use plain writing to describe the struggle stories of the young generation taking root in big cities. They not only show the difficulty of working hard in the workplace, the pressure of entering society for the first time, but also face the focus of reality. , and depicts the light of hard work and growth, the warmth of emotional concern, and soothes real anxiety. There are also “City of Youth” showing entrepreneurial stories behind technological changes, “Glory of Fathers” showing the changes in life during the historical process of forestry reform, and “Promise You Thousands of Lights” showing the innovation and dedication of the nuclear industry in the new era to strengthen nuclear power and serve the country… …The creator collects a large number of real character prototypes, industry stories, case files and other materials for script creation, depicting vivid and vivid scenes of the city and the fireworks world, and allowing the creation to reflect reality, allowing tradition to respond to the times, and making the characters in the play The moral choices, value pursuits and aesthetic orientations condense the positive and enterprising spiritual power, and moisturizing things silently leads the trend of the times and social trends.
Genre narratives continue to innovate in style and expression techniques
This year, TV dramas have taken solid steps in genre exploration. On the one hand, creators continue to structure stories according to a certain “format”, accurately locate target audiences and “supply them on demand.” On the other hand, they abandoned mechanical cliches and targeted thinking, and while shortening the length of the series, they also focused on enhancing the aesthetic effect of genre narratives, thereby achieving new breakthroughs in style and expression techniques.
Poster of the TV series “All the way to the sun” file picture
For example, suspense dramas exaggerate the exciting confrontation between good and evil, tell the suspenseful detection process, and lay out the intricate relationships between the characters, so that the audience can gain a sense of participation and interaction in the process of independent interpretation of the text. “The Long Season” constructs a narrative structure that spans nearly 20 years and seamlessly switches between three time points in 1997, 1998, and 2016. It tells the story of taxi driver Wang Xiang, his brother-in-law Gong Biao, and retired police officer Ma Desheng who jointly investigate fake cars. , and then re-trace the course of the unsolved case many years ago. Three time spaces and multiple clues are interspersed and spread out. It seems chaotic, but there is a certain logical sequence. The story is told in the memory, and the memory is recalled in the process, forming a wonderful dramatic tension, guiding the audience to follow the plot and list the mysteries. Questions and guesses. In addition, “Thirteen Years of Ashes” lays out the process of exploring the truth of unsolved cases that spanned thirteen years. It takes the form of a “wedge” at the beginning of each episode to lead out an important clue to be traced in the episode, making the drama suspenseful. Clustered. There are also “The Silk Case of the Ming Dynasty under the Microscope” and “Imperfect Victim”, which all work hard to strengthen the suspense plot arrangement. With the help of a large number of difficult puzzles and dense details, they deeply analyze social issues and sort out various The logic of the case faces the complexity of human nature, leading the creation from “suspense” to “suspense + reality”, and from the pursuit of novelty and excitement to the real and profound.
Data pictures
Not only suspense dramas, but also science fiction dramas have made breakthrough progress on the road of genre innovation. Although TV series have created many masterpieces of the times, they have not done enough to explore new science fiction themes. The TV series “Three-Body”, which will be broadcast in early 2023, will be the first to adapt a hard-core science fiction IP in the form of a live-action series. It will explore the relationship between human nature, technology and the universe in the process of finding the truth about the “Three-Body Civilization” invading the earth. The discussion theme stimulates the audience’s curiosity about the science fiction world and highlights China’s responsibility and mission in the future science fiction world. After the show was aired, it received a lot of praise. In particular, it was successively distributed to many countries and regions. It was also featured in mainstream media in the United States and was highlighted in the “China’s Guest Country” event at the Cannes TV Festival in France in autumn. This phenomenon shows that Chinese science fiction dramas have successfully entered the hearts of Chinese and foreign audiences, achieving an aesthetic breakthrough in the history of Chinese science fiction creative art.
At present, the rapid rise of micro-short dramas is profoundly affecting the entertainment consumption habits of the audience, and has a certain impact on the creation of TV dramas. Faced with such challenges, TV drama practitioners should consciously follow the trend of the times, respond to the people’s voice, respond to changes in the media environment in a timely manner with high quality, excellence, and innovation, update creative ideas, and strive to make more contributions in the construction of the modern civilization of the Chinese nation. A novel yet mature aesthetic practice.
“Guangming Daily” (page 15 on January 3, 2024)
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责编：张璐琢 ]
