Amusing all young people-now, no one will easily let go of this prosperous business.This year, Ma Dongge created “Le Summer 3” and saved a brand new IP “Annual Comedy Competition”. As for whether it is funny or not, it varies from person to person-some people laughed and forwarded 10 group chats after watching the sketch comedy “Internet Medical Examination”, and some people felt confused after watching “Mancai” and “Strange Neighbors on the Bus”.
Produced | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Cucumber Soda
Edit | Zhazha County
Title Image | Stills from “The King of Comedy”
The Hotly Discussed “Internet Physical Examination”: Iqiyi Tucao Iqiyi
Behind this variety show is an interesting phenomenon: on the one hand, the laughter of young people has risen and it is becoming more and more difficult to please; on the other hand, whether it is an offline talk show or an online funny video, they are willing to Pay the bill with laughter”. A talk show lover told me that in order to get the tickets for the Halloween “Open Mai”, she answered the questionnaire for several days before she was selected.
Comedy and laughter are becoming the most turbulent new trends. I found the screenwriters and actors of the “Annual Comedy Contest”, and chatted with the workers on the front line of comedy content production about the stories behind the laughter.
We seem to be welcoming the arrival of the “laughter economy”:This is a golden age of telling jokes, and it is also an age when laughter gradually becomes extravagant.
The laughter of the Chinese audience is getting higher and higher.
One phenomenon is that even the elders who have made fun of several generations cannot maintain the “ridiculousness” that has been like a day for decades.
Take comedy movies as an example. There are comedies in the Beijing circle centered on Wang Shuo-Feng Xiaogang, and there are Hong Kong-style comedies represented by Stephen Chow. The once king of Chinese comedy has now become history.
“The King of Comedy” is so funny, it has even surpassed Wulitou itself, and has an autobiographical and inviolable divinity.
The screenwriter Liu Beast (work “Internet Medical Examination”) shared a short story: In offline comedy theaters, Liu Piaopiao’s soundtrack is often used as the opening, because it is the cleanest and refreshing melody in all comedies.
But is the “New King of Comedy” 20 years later funny?
Fans won’t say anything bad, they just used the phrase “I don’t think I owe anyone anymore for movie tickets”. Stephen Chow almost gave up on the creation of new laughs, and continued to regurgitate the famous scenes.
“The New King of Comedy” 2019, Douban score 5.9
Correspondingly, Feng-style comedy also died down.
The 1997 “Party A and Party B” is funny. Ge You doesn’t even need to exert any effort. Just standing in front of the camera, the audience can recite the famous line “The landlord’s house has no surplus”.
It was also written by Wang Shuo, “Private Customization” slipped to the opposite of laughter, so that it did not leave any baggage that can stand the test of time.
“Private Order” 2013, Douban score 5.8
I asked several fans the same question in a row: What year did the domestic comedy movie stop? The answers they gave were all over 10 years.
“If I had to name a domestic comedy movie that would come out with repeated laughs until now, I might still say “Crazy Stone” 15 years ago.” Fan Xiao Zhangsan told me.
“Happy twist comedy movies are certainly funny, but apart from’Ma Dongmei’ and’Making Sins’, can you still think of more memorable stories?” For Xiao Zhangsan, happy twists cannot represent Chinese comedy movies. The ceiling, but helplessly, this is now above the average level. On Douban, there are still a lot of domestic comedies with an average score of less than 5 points.
Ning Hao and “Crazy Stone” who debuted at the pinnacle
Although there is no miracle that shines through film history, comedy has been pulling the box office of Chinese movies anyway, and it is pulling with great power. In the multi-billion club, you can see Jia Ling, Shen Teng, Xu Zheng, Huang Bo, the vanguard of these Chinese comedians.
“Hello, Li Huanying” with a box office of 5.2 billion has become the new apex of Chinese comedy movies
Compared with the big screen, the sitcom on the small screen is not so lucky, it is almost extinct.
In the 1990s, Yingda introduced the concept of sitcoms through “The Cosby Show”, coupled with the magic pen of the literary master Liang Zuo, “I Love My Home” was born. For many young people, “I Love My Family” is one of the comedy enlightenments. The actor Tetsuo and the screenwriter Yu Ao (the work “Laugh, Piolevic!”) told me that if one day I can only bring one set of discs to the isolated island, then there is no doubt that it is either “I Love My Home” or “Friends” “.
The reason why “I Love My Family” can stay in the heart of screenwriter Yu Ao is because she “believes” in the relationship between the characters and believes that such a family exists in Beijing in the 1990s. The same goes for “Friends”, condensing the Central Park of the six protagonists.coffeeThe museum is a real paradise in the hearts of movie fans.
“I Love My Home” 1993
Whether it is domestic or foreign, sitcoms and familiar canned laughter all stay at a certain node. This node is “Wulin Biography” and “The Big Bang Theory”.
Since then, sitcoms have declined and are regarded as classics, and there are only a few back and forth.
“Wulin Biography” 2006
There is also a kind of comedy that has a stronger sense of existence, and it has almost occupied all Chinese comedy memories. After Chen Peisi and Zhao Benshan, there has never been a new “Sketch King” in China.
Whether it is “EatNoodle”Protagonist and Supporting Role” is still “Police and Thief”, and Chen Peisi played a series of clowns who were “smart and wronged”. The more mistakes he made on stage, the happier the audience laughed.
In a recent talk show, Chen Peisi said that comedy has always been accompanied by actors’ “mild self-harm” to themselves. Behind the laughter is the actor’s self-deprecating, self-deprecating and even “self-abuse”. There is a subtle “difference” between the actor and the audience-if the actor is below the audience, the audience can get a sense of looking down and smile naturally.
Skit “Eating Noodles”
And Zhao Benshan took another path.
Six Beasts once talked about Zhao Benshan with a northeastern man, and the other said that Zhao Benshan’s works “have not undergone any artistic treatment, and moved the life of a farmer to the stage”.
We saw the cute “four-six-eight sentences”, the funny “off the stool”, and the simple cunning and cuteness of a farmer, who imitated the real ordinary people in the torrent of the development of the times.
Skit “Happy New Year”
In the era after the king of sketches, there was also a show called “Laughter Meeting Room”, where two comedians, Qiao Shan and Pan Binlong, walked out.
The actor Lu Yan of Mancai Group (“Strange Seats on a Bus”) still recalls the feeling of seeing “Laughter Conference Room” in the university, “Laughing to the point of kneeling on the ground and crying.”
Qiao Shan in “Laughter Conference Room”
For a long time after that, the laughter gradually weakened, and the family surroundedtelevisionThe scene of roaring laughter in front of the plane became more and more rare. Comedy shows no longer create laughs, but instead piece together, carry, and repeat the stalks that have been chewed up on the Internet.
Everyone on and off the stage knows that works that can amuse people are becoming rarer.
With long legs on the audience, they walk wherever it is funny.
When talking about “Is people’s laughing point getting higher and higher”, the actor Tetsuo felt the same way: “Everyone is drawing more and more things, and the huge data of the Internet is pushed to us, bringing all kinds of things. As a creator, it becomes more and more difficult to find a completely different entry point.”
Tetsuo’s work “Laugh, Piolevic!” 》
The sudden increase in the amount of information received is the direct cause of the higher public laughter.
Once upon a time, a TV set might make people laugh in a village; but now it’s turned upside down.cell phoneIt’s full of content that can make you laugh. Choosing who will make you laugh has become a consumer’s right.
The appearance of short videos intensively stimulated the rhythm of laughter.
You can go to station B to collect hundreds of ghost and animal videos. Under the grotesque editing technique, the jokes are woven into a intensive concerto—the video of ghost animals has become a post-modern landscape created by young people.
Regardless of the world’s harassment, open the ghost animal area, the scenery here is unique.
You can always find the latest comedians on the short video platform.
Since the “happy life of the fourth child” became popular in 2019, a large number of bloggers who “played 20 roles per person” quickly stood up. The short and fast performance rhythm, rooted in the topic of daily life, easily harvested hundreds of thousands of likes, and won the highest evaluation of “Oscar I don’t watch without you”.
The happy life of the fourth child is the essence of middle-aged women, lobby managers, and courier guys.
The voice of comedy has returned to the grassroots creators.
For example, Zhang Ce, the director of the “Zhu Once” series, filmed the “Once Upon a Time in the Square” series after leaving Zhu once, and became the hottest serialized black comedy micro-film on station B.
The footage of “Once Upon a Time in the Square” is a parody of Quentin’s “Kill Bill”
In the era of short video, there is not much time left for professional comedy creators.
More importantly, compared with these “foreign enemies,” the people obviously have higher expectations for traditional comedies that consume more time and cost. To put it simply: You will not be angry because the 10-second ghost animal is not funny, but you will definitely be disappointed because the 10-minute comedy is boring.
The audience’s expectation of comedy is more than just laughter, they also want to derive higher value from it than laughter.
“The King of Comedy”
If comedians just want to make you laugh, they have practiced 100 methodologies technically.
Six Beasts analysis: “Laughter is the relief of tension. I will create a pressure for you first, and then find a way to remove this pressure for you. When you find that it is not a real threat, you can laugh.”
Wrestling alone is funny, but bleeding from a fall is not funny. We watched “Escape from the Tiger’s Mouth” were so happy that we were so happy that we were sure that the protagonists would always get away safely. Once the danger does happen, the comedy becomes a tragedy of World War II.
“Escape from the Tiger’s Mouth” 1966
However, no amount of comedy skills can match the word sincerity.
Huang Bo said in the show, throwing out the principle hidden in the comedy——Comedy is a person who does a stupid thing very seriously.What the audience laughed was not the “stupidness” of this matter, but the “serious and seriousness” of this person.
Jiang Long, the actor who played the “killer”, took a long time to realize the meaning of this sentence.
“Before we thought that acting too seriously would not be brilliant, but later discovered that being serious is the funniest. Doing a stupid thing seriously is cute and non-aggressive. If you act too hard, you will become greasy. “
Jiang Long and Zhang Chi’s “This Killer Is Not So Cold”
Screenwriter Yu Ao also has experience: “Dislocation, misunderstanding, dwarfing, repetition… are all comedy skills. But the character must be very serious about this matter, he is not aware of what he is doing. (How funny it is) will make the audience laugh from the heart. If an actor always thinks,’I’m doing a funny thing,’ the audience won’t find it funny.”
A few days ago, the tidbits of “Ma Da Shuai” flowed out. When Zhao Benshan spoke to “Fan Debiao, the Ruthless Man in Liaobei”, he inadvertently said a word:It is straightforward sincerity.
This may be the mystery of comedy.
However, what is lost in many comedies on the market happens to be sincerity.
Source: Douyin
Comedians are not ignorant of the power of sincerity, but in the face of traffic, they are forced to join the stalking carnival.
“The audience can accept at most 8 minutes, no matter how long it takes, they won’t be able to stand it anymore. But I think if we can make a solid text now, 20 minutes, through rehearsal, like “I Love My Home” every day Create a rehearsal, put the role’long’ on the actors and broadcast it, the audience will get in, but there is no such team doing such a thing now.” Screenwriter Yu Ao told me.
The 8-minute time compromise led to a more industrialized comedy production, and the jokes began to roll in. The mass-produced jokes on the Internet dilute the public’s perception of laughter.
“Actors and screenwriters have to use new techniques to make the audience laugh. This is a bit like the performance of “Oriental Scala” with a beer bottle hitting the head. The work has to be upgraded.” Tudou, the actor, knows very well that doing comedy is a whole job. If the work is not working well, the audience will naturally not buy it.
This is almost a problem faced by all comedians. The actor Zhang Chi said that unexpected surprises in the past were enough to be funny enough, but now if you want to amuse the audience, you have to “turn another layer of unexpected surprises”, and go up the base like Lego, even It doesn’t matter if you end up going outrageously.
Tudou and Lu Yan’s comic work “Strange Neighbor Seat on a Bus”
Creators are often trapped in the gap between “manufacturing heat” and “self-expression”. One carries traffic, the other contains depth. It’s a pity that only in highly idealized situations can you have both.
The actor Zong Juntao of “San Mao” told me: “A good comedian, it’s not difficult to amuse the audience, especially when you have mastered some passwords, rhythms, and skills. But if you want to add your own It will become difficult to express. There are often fights between pleasing and expressing to the audience.”
Take “Sanmao’s Defense” as an example, the laughter climax of the whole work, it is the sentence “Mao Mao is not easy.” This is a homophonic stalk, and the technique is not tricky, but there is no doubt that this is the most out of the circle line.
“The stalk is a memory point, it is convenient for you to remember one thing, and it has a newer context in communication. But I think because it is for the convenience of communication, you can express this set of things, and then you can take it back. Put it in the work and express it again. Isn’t this an endless loop?” Zong Juntao was also a little confused. Is the audience laughing for the sake of stalking or for comedy?
“Sanmao Defense”
This is the time when comedy is most needed, and this is also the golden age of comedy.
Chen Peisi shared such a story. When he went to the countryside to perform in the 1980s, the actors tried their best on stage, but the audience still did not laugh.
He wondered, is the acting not funny enough?
As a result, a closer look revealed that the audience were all suffocated, wanting to laugh but not daring to laugh.
Laughter is the most precious emotional expression of the Chinese
The former Chinese audience was serious. And now, they are eagerly looking forward to a heartfelt laugh.
This is also the power that comedy can give the public:
Or, bombard you with a series of laughs, so that you can get a short decompression without thinking. Or, use a rigorously designed plot structure to make you fall into a period of complicated silence and thinking after you finish laughing.
Just like the screenwriter Yu Ao said, “We should have some comedies. After you laugh, you will think about some problems, or you will see a mirror and make changes to your predicament.” It is even more ideal. Status, can give you the courage to pierce the truth of life.
“It’s nice to laugh unscrupulously.”
The existence of comedy is nothing more than giving the audience a “sense of superiority”, allowing them to confirm their own situation when they are confused, painful, and upset——
“We are ranked in school. When we suddenly came to society, there was no ranking. So everyone hides a kind of “unease”. What is it about me? How many places do I rank in this system? So when When you know a piece of information and others may not know it, the reason you are happy is’I seem to be pretty good.'” Six Beasts interpreted it like this.
But I think that comedy is not just about comforting, but its further significance lies in exploring the boundaries of a society’s tolerance.
A person who can accept offense is a truly humorous person; a comedy that dares to offend is a real comedy. This era is too tight. We are trapped in big and small mortars. Accepting ridicule, even ridicule ourselves, is the sign that a group really has a sense of humor.
Finally, actor Jiang Long shared an interesting detail with me. The original title of “This Killer Is Not Cold” was called “The show must go on”, but it was changed to the current “killer” because it was not conducive to spreading.
The show must go on is a very romantic code phrase, which is spoken to the comedy creators, and is also spoken to the audience in the audience.
Let the comedy go on freely:
People nowadays need to relax more than ever, and they need comedy more than ever. Because the world never lacks seriousness and tension, what is lacking is true happiness.