Suspense online drama+real password, how to "expand the circle" after "breaking the circle"?
In previous years, the drama involved in the case mainly showed the case and the process of solving the case, which may involve many negative factors. Once the start is not good, the angle is wrong, and the interest point deviates, it will become a product of uncertain factors such as showing the criminal process, portraying the criminal psychology, exposing the means of detection, causing social terror and so on.
The network has expanded the concept of suspense theme, and at the same time, suspense theme, whether it is based on cases, or fighting wits and burning brains, has shown a realistic trend of change.
The greatest aesthetic feature of traditional film and television drama series is realistic expression, and cool feeling manufacturing is the symbolic artistic style of online drama. Network dramas use the cultural production mechanism formed by network culture to strengthen the visual expression of our traditional realistic spirit, make the realistic things more visible, and are especially welcomed by young audiences, thus continuing the realistic spirit. At the same time, it enriches the connotation of cool feeling with the spirit of realism, making the consumption of cool feeling less pale and empty. Internet dramas with suspenseful themes such as Hidden Corner and The Wind Rises in Luoyang all have realistic connotation behind them, but the expression form it takes is a new form from the Internet, and this aesthetic fusion formed in the process of two-way travel is also one of the reasons for the emergence of fine products.
During the period from the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022, there are two works worthy of attention. One is "Opponent", as a network-TV simulcast drama, which takes national security as the theme and interprets a spy war story in a narrative way that conforms to the network aesthetics. The other one is Dui Dui, which can be classified as a drama involved in the crime, and it is also suspenseful. The whole drama is constantly "cool", and it is the first online drama to win the "net logo". As far as the integration mentioned above is concerned, it seems to have a more symbolic significance. In fact, since it is integration, it is not a substitute for each other, but a new life. Just like when Ling Huchong just learned the star-sucking method, there may be some conflicts in the early "two magical powers", but we believe that after a period of adjustment, there will be an effect of 1+1>2, presenting us with a brand-new TV drama (online drama) aesthetics created by contemporary China.
We can take two plays, Illustration of Hunting Crime and Dawn of the River as examples. They are all suspense themes, and there are cases behind them, but the main digging point and theme conception of the two works are not the case itself. Its change has just injected more life connotation and social emotion into the suspense theme, and transformed the TV series involved in the case that we think is difficult to grasp into realistic works.
The Book of Hunting Crimes must sound like a story of police solving crimes, but there is no specific case, but it describes a new screen image of film and television — — Criminals’ portraitist provides a fresh professional type and a fresh screen image from the novelty of characters, and also provides a new angle for suspense subjects.
Jiang Zhao Dawn seems to be a drama involving cheating and killing his wife, but its difference lies in injecting more social connotation and emotional concentration in life. This drama is about how a psychologically depressed woman redeems herself in the face of difficulties. It does not focus on the case itself, but focuses on how ordinary people deal with emotional pressure in social life and family life, how to face difficulties, how to face all kinds of uncertainties, and even the living state, emotional state and psychological state when life is threatened. This is the so-called reality. If there is no reality, there will be no empathy and resonance of the audience, and it will not have such a great impact.
Therefore, these two dramas have broken through the traditional suspense types and traditional stories involving the case, regardless of originality, reality or spiritual expression. They have won praise with innovative techniques and high-quality production.
There are at least two ways to express the realistic content of suspense dramas. One is to weave a story directly from real life and real cases, including some case news, which is similar to what we often say, "take all kinds of things and combine them into one." The other is to tell an ancient history, legend and even a completely overhead suspense story, but this story is full of strong realistic concern. The former case, such as the beginning; In the latter case, for example, The Wind Rises in Luoyang, both the spatial metaphor of urban settlements, such as gods and bad wells, and the process of changing fate from the bottom are full of "reality".
It is worthy of recognition that the social consciousness rooted in reality and the deep motivation of audience psychology have injected social hot topics with speculative characteristics and ethical values into suspense dramas, which is also the content charm of suspense dramas. Disappearing Children talks about social phenomena through suspense, and substitutes many social issues such as family education, old-age care and the safety of women living alone into the plot. "Disappeared children" finally returned home safely, and talked about the core theme of "healing and redemption", which reflected that suspense dramas actively led the social fashion of being good, good and upward, and deeply cultivated and polished the value connotation and emotional orientation of suspense dramas on the fertile soil of reality, which triggered the audience’s empathy.
"Reality" is an important core of the online drama series with suspense theme, and this core lies in the fact that "reality" happens around you. Therefore, it will artificially create a sense of being there. When Don’t Talk to Strangers exploded, it became a buzzword, and even a generation’s understanding of society fully showed the strength of "reality" in suspense dramas. However, as teacher Li Jingsheng said, such dramas may "cause social terror". This requires some neutralization and guidance.
These works are more deeply involved in social reality. While affirming the progress of the times and the achievements of social development, they also pay attention to various practical problems. They emphasize social benefits and value orientation, explore people’s living conditions and the complexity of human society with the help of suspense, reflect the style of the times and show cultural charm, which can not only meet the entertainment needs of the audience, but also cultivate their aesthetic taste and produce social influence and cultural value.
It can be seen that the creators of suspense dramas actively follow the trend of realism, pay attention to social reality and people’s living conditions, reveal the essence of life and the characteristics of the times, write a rich and full spiritual world of human beings, and try multiple explorations in the field of themes.
Online drama series can directly reflect the state of young people’s lives at present than TV series. Suspense theme, as one of the themes of this year’s online drama series, has also become a window for us to observe the state and preferences of young audiences.
The popularity of online dramas with suspense themes such as The Beginning, Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle, Stars, Dawn in the River, etc. this year shows two characteristics of this generation of young audiences: first, the improvement of aesthetic taste. The coolness of the above-mentioned online dramas is not a realistic coolness, but a brain-burning, curious and intellectual gymnastics, in which besides the improvement of aesthetic taste, there is also an improvement of artistic accomplishment; Secondly, the daily life in the epidemic is relatively poor, which especially needs the stimulation of literature and entertainment. The suspense theme has obvious decompression effect on young audiences. This can be well shown in the series "Coward" and "Meritorious Service" which have not yet been released, such as "Snowy days in Northeast China = the sense of isolation caused by people facing nature = the atmosphere of terror".
The combination of these two features will give birth to a new expression, such as unexpected arrival. Like the previous Under the Sun, it creates a different suspense theme, that is, it uses suspense to express the topic of "women’s growth" in the cloak of urban emotion. Since the first half of my life, "a stay-at-home wife is in trouble" has become a motif with a strong sense of the times. Unexpected arrival is no exception, and it also incorporates "sadomasochism", a network element that highly meets the requirements of "cool feeling" and a strong urban atmosphere. From this, we can see that the younger generation of viewers no longer simply believe in the "silly and sweet" "princess dream". They are aware of the need to strengthen the ability of "fighting monsters and upgrading" while maintaining their dream fantasy, and walk out of the greenhouse in captivity with high morale. If we think about the change of epidemic situation in three years and the popularity of this mystery drama, we may have more new understanding of this generation of young people.
In the past, we used to understand "mainstream audience" as being biased towards middle-aged and elderly people, who used more TV, newspapers and radio. However, from the perspective of consumption power, network communication power and social influence, young people over the age of 18, even between the ages of 16 and 35, are becoming mainstream audience today. Therefore, through the docking and development of suspense themes, we can see that young people are paying attention to social topics, and they are thinking about art, or they are paying some shallow or deep attention to society.
Of course, what supports this turn is its innovation at the whole narrative level, which is not limited to self-operation, spontaneity, autonomy and self-action at the network level. In the narrative innovation and discourse innovation of online drama series, we can clearly see a new trend in the process of network development, that is, the drainage and integration of various media has brought new narrative discourse and produced a new narrative form.
For example, the circular narrative of "infinite flow" used in The Beginning and Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle and Bright Stars was once one of the classic narrative modes of film and television, and the classic film "Run Lola" was used. The classic narrative created on the big screen is used in the online drama collection and recreated according to the audience’s viewing habits, which has created the reputation and traffic of online drama series with suspense theme today. This shows that the success of our online drama series in the whole viewing level is not only the theme, but also the synergy between the competitiveness of the theme and the innovation of narrative discourse, and between the development of online drama series and other online audio-visual products.
From The Longest Day In Chang’an to The Mysteries of the Tang Dynasty, suspense-themed online drama series formed a new narrative form of "history+suspense" during the transformation of historical resources. If The Longest Day In Chang’an, under the surface suspense theme, through the modern adaptation of costume characters, shows his concern for the current real life, as well as his thinking about practical problems and social psychology, it is a narrative exploration of suspense-themed online drama series; Then, the upsurge of "strange aesthetics" set off by "Records of Mysteries in the Tang Dynasty" on the whole network realized the innovative combination of "strange interest" and "ancient meaning" at a deeper internal mechanism level. "Seeing all beings under a strange case", the drama organically integrates anecdotes, strange events and mysterious cases with the historical humanities, folk customs and strange legends of the Tang Dynasty, sews up the narrative gap of suspense texts from the historical depth to output modern values, and the visual effects skills of "emptiness" and "reality" create the modern style of Chinese aesthetics, which well meets the aesthetic needs of the audience for "high intelligence", experience and excitement.
The new narrative discourse and narrative patterns stimulate the innovative vitality of suspense texts, and the drainage and integration of various media help suspense dramas to achieve "expanding the circle" on the basis of "breaking the circle" along the sustainable, multi-level and three-dimensional communication path, and achieve more innovative and energetic high-quality development.