After the launch of "Flowers", two versions of Mandarin and Shanghainese versions were released, but in terms of broadcast effect, the latter won by an absolute advantage. In the hot comments on Douban, some netizens said that "Dragon TV will usher in the peak of Taiwanese students because of the dialect version", and many people called for "be sure to watch the Shanghainese version" on social **.
Due to culture, policy, audience taste and other reasons, dialect dramas are rare in the film and television market, and in recent years, the popularity of works such as "Mountains and Seas", "Installation" and "The Long Season" has temporarily drawn the audience's attention back to dialect dramas, and has ushered in a small climax in the near future. After the broadcast of "Flowers", the public's discussion of dialect dramas has risen, and at a time when the popularity of Mandarin is getting higher and higher, do we still need dialect dramas? What blessings can dialect dramas play in the creation of film and television dramas?
Crossing the low ebb of development, dialect dramas regained the hearts of the audience
As early as the beginning of the last century, a large number of excellent dialect dramas have emerged in domestic TV dramas, and in 1982, director Song Xuebin's "People Are Different" opened a precedent for dialect dramas, and also led to the development of local dialect dramas. "Ling Tangyuan" and "Silly Teacher" in the Bashu region, "Foreign Daughter-in-law Local Lang" in Guangdong TV, Changsha dialect TV series "A Family Rushes Forward", and "Liu Laogen" and "Ma Dashuai" in the Northeast have all achieved dazzling ratings and left a deep impression on the audience.
But as it flourished, problems also arose. "Crude language" and "malicious smear image" and other reasons have caused many programs to be suspended. At the same time, under the tide of promoting Mandarin among the whole people, dialect dramas are gradually declining. In August 2009, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television reiterated the "Dialect Restriction Order" through the official **. After the restriction was introduced, the use of dialects in domestic dramas began to decrease significantly, and there were no longer TV dramas that were clearly all in dialects and broadcast nationwide.
After 2015, "Ordinary World" and "White Deer Plain" began to add a large number of Shaanxi dialects to the dramas, making dialect dramas break through geographical restrictions and reappear in the public spotlight after many years. Since then, the Fujian and Ningxia provinces linkage poverty alleviation drama "Mountains and Seas", which is dominated by dialogue in the northwest dialect, and "Loading the Stage", which tells the life of Xi'an citizens, have landed on CCTV, David TV and *** platforms, and have gained a good reputation nationwide.
The youth coming-of-age drama "Hometown, Don't Come to Harm", which uses a large number of Chengdu dialect dialogues, has sparked public discussion. "The Long Season" dilutes the sadness with the joy of the Northeast dialect, and the ** volume of the Shanghainese version of "Flowers" shows that it is more popular.
Previously, dialect TV dramas had certain advantages as a TV cultural content that reflected specific regional characteristics and reflected niche and localization, but with the change of broadcast channels, dialect TV dramas have broken the geographical restrictions and have a high degree of acceptance among the audience.
For audiences in the local area, dialect TV dramas are close to daily life and have great affinity. For audiences in non-local areas, works such as "Mountains and Seas", "Installation" and "Ordinary World" are very pyrotechnic, which can meet the local plots of some audiences; Dramas such as "Hometown, Don't Come to Harm" and "Flowers" have their own recognition, and the fresh elements of dialects make the public curious about learning and understanding regional culture.
With the continuous enhancement of the professionalism, language adaptability, and rationality of dialects, the unique value of dialects in film and television dramas is being re-examined. The familiar context not only helps actors to shape their roles, but the use of dialects can also play a role in the creation and expression of film and television dramas.
Actors use dialects like fish in water, and they are more comfortable shaping characters
Hu Shi said in the preface to "The Biography of Flowers on the Sea": "The literature of dialects is so valuable, because dialects can best express people's divine principles. The vernacular is far better than the ancient vernacular, but it is not as good as the dialect that can express the speaker's expression and tone. The characters in the ancient texts are dead people, the characters in the popular official language are living people who are unnaturally pretentious, and the characters in the dialect are people who are naturally revealed. ”
The dialects of different regions are different in terms of pronunciation, intonation, sentence structure, sentence tone and other linguistic appearances, but they have a common feature in the texture of the corpus and the content of expression——— vivid, specific and life-like. Tong Xiangyu's northern Shaanxi dialect in "Wulin Gaiden" is "beautiful, beautiful"; Xing Zhutou's Shandong dialect "I'm very incomprehensible"; Xiaoliu's Tianjin dialect "take care of my seventh uncle and grandfather" are all golden sentences left by the dialect, shaping classic characters. Director Shang Jing said in an interview: "Dialects come from life and folk, and when actors perform in dialects, they are more vivid and down-to-earth. ”
Familiar context** performance can provide actors with a more comfortable performance space. Tang Yan, who uses the Shanghai dialect to act in "Flowers", is smart and bright, diluting the traces of performance, like a bird that has broken free from a cage, many people commented on Tang Yan's "acting explosion" in this work, and film critics said that Tang Yan's acting skills were reborn The appearance of entries such as "Flowers" also proves the blessing of dialect on acting. The leading actor Hu Ge also believes that dialects have their own unique charm, and the use of dialects and Mandarin when performing will have different performance sensations and release rhythms.
There is a unique regional dialect, connecting the local customs, but also reflecting the character and temperament of the character, language as the outlet of the character image, to strengthen the personality of the character, so that the character highlights the personal characteristics have a non-negligible role. For example, Gong Biao's mantras such as "Who are you with" and "Look at you" in "The Long Season" can always expose his reckless and temperamental personality.
At the same time, dialects can add convincing to the characters. Most of the actors in "Flowers" are Shanghai locals, and when they follow the lines on the spot, they will unconsciously bring their daily habits to express themselves. Reiko and Po are bickering in many scenes, Ma Yili said in an interview that the two will add words and sentences that are in line with the sense of Shanghainese quarrels according to the scene, and "adding more hateful words" has no sense of disobedience, but adds fireworks. Screenwriter Pan still said that the stalk lines in the ** circle of "The Long Season" are all hung by the actors.
In TV dramas, it is easy to understand the personality of the characters through language recognition, and dialect can not only amplify the characteristics of the characters and make the characters more convincing, but also make the actors more relaxed during the performance, and assist the inspiration to burst out to present more highlight moments in the second creation. Helping good actors create brilliant characters and achieve classic characters is an advantage that cannot be ignored in previous TV dramas.
Create an authentic atmosphere and arouse the emotions of the audience
Relying on unique language and trendy forms of expression, dialect TV dramas have the role of creating contradictions and conflicts, creating joyful effects, and serving as a carrier of regional cultural communication at the creative level, and achieve the purpose of attracting audiences through the reproduction and expression of daily life.
First of all, the clash of dialects can help the play set up reasonable and novel contradictions. Chen Jinshan, a Fujian-speaking construction aid cadre in "Mountains and Seas", started a difficult dialogue with the locals in Ningxia, from "research on sand control" being mistaken for "research suicide", to "Juncao" and "golden grass" making people stupidly unable to distinguish between them. The "misalignment" of language highlights the difficulty of supporting the Northwest Territories.
It can be seen that a small amount of line information is difficult to receive or misplaced, which does not affect the audience's enthusiasm for viewing, and even when the audience actively responds to and eliminates this difficulty and dislocation by contacting the context, it is easy to produce a humorous effect.
Second, slang in dialects can generate a sense of humor. Many catchy, rhyming, and humorous forms of language come from folklore, such as proverbs, slips, and afterwords. They have gone through the accumulation and precipitation of history, condensed the wisdom of the working people, and have a strong speculative and life atmosphere, which is both colloquial and witty. These linguistic phenomena from the folk can only be expressed in their "mother tongue" - dialects, so that their charm can be vividly and vividly reflected.
Wang Xiang, played by Fan Wei in the Northeast dialect drama "The Long Season", used "a Santana in the heart" to describe his wife's heart stent as expensive, which immediately added a touch of joy to this sad event. "The Story of the Cooking Class" Zhou Xiaobin plays Da Zhou from Liaoning, and there are often proverbs and afterwords with hometown characteristics in his dialogues: such as "The black blind bear enters the bud rice field - blind breaking", the black blind man and the bud rice are common nouns in the Northeast, a few words not only made the audience laugh, but also made the hometown ** generation clear through dialect.
On the other hand, dialects can serve the expression of regional culture and provide an important transmission carrier for the inheritance of regional culture. After the broadcast of "Flowers", there was a boom in Shanghainese learning on the Internet. "Follow Mr. Bao to learn Shanghainese" "Ask who understands Shanghainese?" Messages such as "really have a tone" are all over the major social platforms, and many locals have taken screenshots of the Shanghainese lines in the play, marked the pronunciation, and made a detailed science popularization of Shanghai slang culture.
In general, the reason why dialect dramas can be popular is not only because it uses dialects, but also because of solid stories, reasonable plots, real backgrounds and other aspects of hardware that can attract the interest of the audience.