Smart people have turned family dramas into "Strange Talk"

On the stage of family dramas, the complexity of human nature and the trivialities of life are interwoven into vivid pictures. With its unique narrative technique, "Song of Ordinary People" pushes the conflicts and contradictions of family dramas to the extreme, allowing the audience to find their own shadows in every plot twist. This drama is not only a discussion about love, marriage and the workplace, but also a debate about human nature, values ​​and life choices.

The great family drama directs human quarrels.

As a gold mine that can never be exhausted, the hit drama "Song of the Ordinary Man" has brought up a series of topics like "The Debaters". Mr. Hard Candy made another empiricist mistake, thinking that it was another "social anxiety drama with a strong sense of déjà vu" when it was first aired. Especially since the female lead had just failed in a drama of the same type, it was definitely not going to work.

However, our army was careless, and the others upgraded, and the unemployment, cheating, and beating the mistress that made the audience overwhelmingly upgrade to "anyone can stand with" all mortals and annoying people.

Q: A male civil servant in Beijing is content with poverty with a monthly salary of 8,000 yuan, but is despised by his wife who earns more money outside the system. Should she divorce her unmotivated husband? Those who feel sorry for Xie Meilan (played by Chen Haoyu) denounce Shen Lei (played by Qin Junjie) for not making progress. How long have they been married and still live in a rented small house? Who dares to have a child? Those who support Shen Lei criticize Xie Meilan for turning her back on her husband and spending all her savings to buy a cemetery for her mother-in-law's medical treatment, but ended up being labeled as unmotivated. Don't you yourself earn enough money to satisfy your own desires? In the final analysis, you are just looking for an excuse to climb up the social ladder!

The strong flavor of "The Ordinary Man's Song" lies in the extreme: extreme characters + extreme contradictions, and the reality can be suspended for this. I dare not imagine how dramatic the plot before the debate would be if it was performed by Jin Jing. Jin Jing touched her belly with one hand and pointed at the man with the other hand and shouted angrily: "No! I can't. I can't let my child be born in such a small rental house, and start to crawl back and forth after crawling less than five meters on the ground."

Chen Ming, the affirmative party, stood at the center of the universe and called for fulfillment: "If love is a hand-in-hand marathon, now the girl is running much faster than the boy, should the boy let go?" Fu Shouer, the negative party, adhered to tradition: "This man gave everything for you, but all he got was a divorce agreement. Today we are not talking about the future and quality of life, but only about conscience. Your so-called fulfillment and leaving is actually a betrayal!"

After listening to the whole show, it seems that the woman is right and the man is not wrong. But at the same time, both of them completely exposed the inferiority of human beings, allowing the audience to criticize from a moral high ground. When family dramas lose their obvious value orientation, whether it is an unsolvable debate or an unknown ending, it increases its topicality and watchability.

Three pairs of topics

The surface narrative of "Song of a Mortal" is mainly about the couple Shen Lin (played by Yin Tao) and Na Wei (played by Wang Xiao), and extends the love, hate, separation and reunion between three pairs of couples aged 40, 30 and 20. But in essence, it is about three pairs of core issues: Should I be a low-profile full-time rich wife? Should I divorce my unmotivated husband? What should I do if my boyfriend despises me for not working hard at a second-tier university?

The first couple, Yin Tao and Wang Xiao, are in a typical dilemma of the middle-aged middle class. Wang Xiao's company failed to raise funds and finally chose to start a business. Yin Tao returned to the workplace to solve the family crisis and was also unstable. The point that aroused public discussion was the dilemma of the middle class and the communication between husband and wife. The couple, who seemed to have a rich and stable life, actually had poor risk resistance. After buying a 500,000 yuan car and filling a debt of 800,000 yuan, they were completely back to square one.

Of course, the core is still the old question: Is being a housewife a job? When the couple was in love and had no financial problems, Shen Lin tried her best to defend the legitimacy of her existence in front of her classmates, and from time to time she would post on her Moments to enjoy her leisure time. But when the conflict intensified, she was a parasite in Na Wei's eyes. "Your parents built a house, and I sent tens of thousands of dollars there. You never had to ask me for money, but I had to look up to you when I wanted to buy a new car."

The second couple, Xie Meilan and Shen Lei, are a young couple in emotional entanglement. Xie Meilan complained that Shen Lei did not do his best to treat her mother-in-law, which led to dissatisfaction with his lack of progress. Shen Lei believed that he had used up all his savings and did not understand Xie Meilan's behavior of aborting the child without permission.

Sure enough, domestic dramas can limit population growth more than sterilization surgery. Life is a long journey. When one party's material and life views change dramatically, should the incompatible partners continue to walk together? The difficulty lies in that it is difficult to calculate the economic accounts and debts of favor. It is said that the man did not use his connections to save his mother-in-law, but he had spent all his savings. And he cooked and brought the food to the hospital after get off work, so he is considered a good son-in-law. It is said that the woman is too ambitious, but the man said, "Use your 10,000 to rent a house and live, and I will save the 5,000 first." After being together for more than ten years, it is always an old and shabby rented house and a Didi electric donkey that makes a lot of noise. How can it not be annoying.

The third pair is Li Xiaoyue (played by Zhang Ruonan) and Na Jun (played by Zhang Zhehua). On the surface, it is a difference in work attitude between curling up and lying down, but the way it is presented is that the Tsinghua undergraduate and master's man is getting more and more tired of the beautiful second-tier women, and after going out for blind dates, he finds that the second-tier girlfriend is still more attractive. The key is that it has fallen to the dusty "love", and there are still people who can eat it. After beating the pervert away, they cook fiercely and hug each other, sweating profusely, which is quite the style of a male-oriented love novel.

The points that sparked public discussion included differences in career planning and attitudes toward life. Based on the idea that there must be an antidote within seven steps, I think that "Song of a Mortal" should have a love exchange. One dislikes her husband for not being ambitious, and the other dislikes her boyfriend for being too ambitious. It's just right to swap. They are still a family, and the key is to digest it internally without wasting it on others. In the original novel, Li Xiaoyue did go to farm with Shen Lei. If the series is not adapted, it will surely set off a new round of debate.

The benefits of flaws for everyone

Different from the style of previous family dramas, the reason why "Song of Ordinary People" has a protracted debate is that it abandons the character creation and plot design with obvious tendencies, and instead creates a world where everyone has their own flaws: everyone has something annoying, and everyone also has a side that makes them right.

Although Na Wei lacked a sense of crisis and always hid major plans from his wife, he made big mistakes. But overall, he cared about his family and was able to communicate with his wife in a timely manner. He had the loyalty and courage of a traditional scholar and followed his former boss for more than ten years without thinking of looking for a new job. He was also incomprehensible and stubborn. He paid off the huge debt for the company opened by his boss for his lover, but still lost his job. To put it nicely, he fulfilled the boss's kindness to him, but to put it bluntly, he was a complete scapegoat.

Shen Lin has the problem of being a low-class rich wife, but she is still motivated after returning to the workplace. Squeezing into the subway is probably the worst daily torture that the screenwriter and director can think of for a beautiful middle-class woman! The psychological activities when signing up for the confinement nanny training class are also quite empathetic - others think I am here to find a confinement nanny, but in fact I am here to join the confinement nanny team.

Although Li Xiaoyue has a Buddhist attitude towards work, her work ability is outstanding. In other words, she has the ability to make money, but she just doesn't want to make money. The key is that she is economical and practical. She chooses underground shops to buy clothes, and she also masters the art of bargaining. What's more, she is beautiful and looks good in everything. Such a perfect character makes people feel a little distorted. This can't be the fantasy of some straight man before his death!

Na Jun's image is the most contradictory. On the one hand, he advocates that only by working hard can one gain a foothold in a big city. On the other hand, he is afraid of continuing to work hard, and after seeing a colleague transfer to a management position, he is also eager to make a move. He has many requirements for his girlfriend like a boss, but he is not happy when others ask him to do something on a blind date.

Such a double-standard character, just wearing the face of "Dragon Aotian" Zhang Zhehua is enough to be confusing. I saw many netizens being crazy about him, "Although he has a strong daddy vibe, he gives me a full sense of security." The premise of tolerating the daddy vibe may be his large apartment and million-dollar annual salary. Otherwise, how could he have a girlfriend even though he is so difficult to please.

Even the biggest blood bag of the show, Shen Lei and Xie Meilan, are not without merit. Shen Lei is mediocre at work, but he takes care of all the housework and never lets the woman get involved. I can't believe how cheerful I would be if someone prepared hot meals for me every day after get off work! Although Xie Meilan despises Shen Lei, she has not crossed the line with her boss in her marriage. It is also very embarrassing to be splashed with dirty water by her husband for no reason during a meeting.

What is puzzling is that the masses nowadays have the "exam-based mentality" to infinitely beautify and even deify Shen Lei's work within the system. I admit that his free restoration of archives is a virtue, but the way he applies glue does not make people's blood boil. Of course, investing is just looking high-end. Before Xie Meilan was promoted to director, she was just a migrant worker in the financial sector. It's just that she is surrounded by stories of getting rich overnight and tens of millions of projects, which can easily make her patience threshold lower and lower.

"Song of Mortals" has demystified various professions. Everyone has advantages and disadvantages that cannot be ignored, and intimate relationships are the best litmus test.

Allegory in a realistic way

Due to the flaws and imperfections of the characters, the audience can take sides when discussing "Song of a Mortal", and it no longer has the sole orientation of a moral high ground.

This is rare in family dramas in the past. In Nothing But Thirty and Good Things Come in Pairs, everyone scolded the cheating scumbag Li Zefeng. In Home, the audience collectively looked down on the down-and-out white moonlight Feng Shaofeng. In short, when one party has serious faults and falls into a moral trough, the voices supporting them are always in the minority, and the arguments also seem rather strange and extreme. Maybe in The Rap of China, the initial votes for the pros and cons were 85:15. But in The Song of a Mortal, each side was criticized, and the initial votes were balanced 50:50.

But like "Welcome" and the "Ode to Joy" series, "Song of Ordinary People" is still a typical midday sun-style urban fable - at first glance, it adopts a realistic approach, but it does not stand up to scrutiny at the factual level.

Li Xiaoyue was invited back to her original company for a promotion and salary increase even though she had already been fired because of a plan. The fact that she is a genius at work with a bachelor's degree and a Buddhist attitude is shocking, and the boss's management method is even more puzzling; Na Jun's blind date is so stereotyped that it seems like he came out of a joke or short video, and he encounters all kinds of weird people; Na Wei, because he was the legal person of his boss's lover's company, paid 800,000 yuan without going through any legal procedures, which is also incredible.

Not to mention the messy economic accounts of the whole play. But it doesn't matter, the audience is more concerned about the final fate of the characters. In the middle-aged dilemma, Shen Lin and Na Wei, who support each other, are a fable of counterattack from the bottom. When the family economy returns to normal, the emotional problems disappear. You are just sliding down the middle class for fun, and you will meet at the top again if you work hard.

In the plight of the young couple, Shen Lei chooses to escape, and walks towards poetry and relief among the mountains and rivers, while Xie Meilan continues to pursue social Darwinism and floats in the waves. However, I must point out that the interpretation of "the overbearing president falls in love with her who has a miscarriage" is somewhat biased and malicious. According to her ever-expanding material desires and security needs, the overbearing president in the play may not be the final good man.

The future of the involutionary and Buddhist groups has already begun to take shape, with several dizzy scenes suggesting that the involutionary king has damaged his health. At this time, whether the second-tier girlfriend stays or leaves is more worthy of public attention and speculation. Straight male fans should want Zhang Ruonan to stay. After all, when the character has been distorted, the audience does not mind her adding another layer of the traditional virtue of "never leaving" to her.

In a small city, ordinary people have to fend for themselves. In the pursuit of self-realization and self-cognition, people have never stopped. But before achieving success in the secular sense, most of you and me in this world should probably reconcile with mediocrity. First accept your own mediocrity, then accept your partner's mediocrity, and finally see through the big picture and accept your children's mediocrity. There are so many "unmotivated men and women" in reality, and I don't see them sitting around debating every day.

As an urban fable, or simply an adult fairy tale, the creation of this kind of family drama can only allow the audience to constantly project themselves. Am I the married man in the middle-class crisis? Am I the despised second-rate woman? Am I the social deserter who lives in the system and waits for death? Am I the independent woman whose ability cannot keep up with her desire?

But the solution to the problem often cannot be achieved in literary works. It is only responsible for helping people who are already in a certain state to find the rationality of existence: he/she is very similar to me, so there should be nothing wrong with me.

Editor | Li Chunhui This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Xie Minghong], WeChat public account: [Entertainment Hard Candy], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and reproduction is prohibited without permission.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.