Can The Reader provide a possibility for the publicity of cultural products?
14:47 on March 15th, 217 Source: Pan Jiaojiao, The Paper
When Adorno and Hawke Harmo put forward the term "cultural industry", they had already foreseen that mass media chaos would become a daily life: small "fresh meat" was a big hit in the TV industry in China, and whoever won the "fresh meat" won the world in both variety shows and TV dramas; And "The world wants to be deceived", even if it is an expression package performance and PS-type editing, as long as it is matched with popular IP and "fresh meat and small flowers", it can lead to a climax of viewing and commercial success-regardless of whether the script is plagiarism.
when the writers and old actors in the TV drama industry lament that it is not free to take away heroes, the humanities variety shows such as The Reader and Seeing Words as Face seem to usher in "the time and the world work together", and stand out from the full-screen entertainment and competitive variety shows with their sincere and direct expression, and are hailed as a clean stream-the rapidly rotating cultural and industrial gear, which seems to be stuck.
"unexpected" popularity?
To some extent, it is not surprising that the appearance of programs like The Reader has caused ripples in the audience. "The Reader" is more like a series of interviews with people by reading aloud. In each program, there are a lot of interview time, recording VCRs and cross-talk soundtracks, and there is not much time for reading literary works. It is also in the interview that the extraordinary persistence of ordinary people and the simplest feelings of public figures-sincere affection, love, love for nature and love for all beings.
it is natural and logical to express and talk from the heart and impress the audience through the role of light, audio and video. Emotional programs have always been a popular darling in the TV market in China. In 212, when the "Entertainment Restriction Order 1." was promulgated by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the total broadcast amount of seven kinds of programs, such as dating, talent show, emotional story, game competition, variety entertainment, talk show and reality show, was controlled. It is not difficult to see that many of these types of programs regarded as "pan-entertainment" by SARFT are based on emotions. Among local TV programs, emotional programs are the most eye-catching devices. It can be said that marriage and family mediation programs hold up half of local TV stations.
The Reader is interpreted as "unexpected" by the outside world, because it makes no secret of its humanistic characteristics, and "our Reader is the perfect combination of life worthy of attention and words worthy of attention". However, in the previous competition with pan-entertainment programs, humanities programs rarely broke through and surfaced. Under the circumstance that humanities programs are marginalized, the existence of The Reader has become a scarce resource like a pearl of Canghai.
The decline of humanities programs is not simply that there is no flow of "fresh meat" and "small flowers". Both Art Life and Reading are calling celebrity resources. In The Reader, the readers are mostly famous and influential public figures, with only a few ordinary people. It's not because the emotions are not fully mobilized. Take China on the Tip of the Tongue as an example. Behind the frames of delicious food and eating goods one by one, there are heavy feelings, which has also made the "tip of the tongue fever" all the rage. It's because in the face of crushed entertainment and emotional variety, humanistic emotional programs don't pursue entertainment, let alone take a "moral neutrality" attitude-on the contrary, they are always pursuing an interpretation of ideal personality and concern for dignity and value.
not pursuing entertainment means not avoiding serious problems, or even blindly following the behavioral logic of the entertainment industry. For now, it means not pursuing the joining of "fresh meat" and "small flowers". "Fresh Meat Flowers" are mature products of the entertainment industry. Their symbolic images are copied and spread in all media channels by means of modern science and technology. The entertainment industry seeks their fans (consumers) while creating their consumers, and makes "Fresh Meat Flowers" into successful commodities with the widest range of consumers.
having a "moral bias" attitude requires clear values and concerns beyond financial interests, which will also limit the content, form and expression of the program. As a value provider, it is difficult for a program producer to hide his value bias as an "information provider", or even avoid avoiding the conflict of values and let the value he feels wrong spread widely. For example, many emotional programs call themselves life service programs. Under the neutral term of "service", naked money worship, biased expression and even discrimination can be openly tolerated as diverse speeches to cater to the psychological needs of different audiences, and even deliberately create "exotic flowers" and conflict effects to attract people's attention with drama.
for the mass media, refusing or not pursuing the use of mature "goods" in the entertainment industry, not avoiding serious problems and having a clear attitude of content values may all affect the number of potential audience users, ultimately affect their success or failure in the "ratings" competition, and fail to complete the main task assigned by the cultural industry-producing consumers. This means that this heterogeneous force may be rejected by the cultural industry, or even thrown out. This is the joy and surprise of the success of The Reader, and some critics even hope that The Reader can open up a new type of cultural programs, change the status quo of entertainment variety, and calm down the noisy glitz of variety industry.
Building social relations, not cultivating consumers
Although it is difficult to find the traditional TV ratings of The Reader in the report, the unanimous evaluation of the media is a win-win situation. As evidence, The Reader has swept through the circle of friends and got a high score of about 9 points on Douban. The long queues in front of mobile reading kiosks set up in several cities have also become the focus of media reports.
The screen-swiping in the circle of friends can show that it has attracted attention from a specific group of people, and Douban is also a website with a specific cultural taste. Douban youth is often regarded as synonymous with literary youth, and its "book, audio and video" scoring standard is also a scoring system that is nothing more than commercial interests. As a ground promotion method, the reading booth is also known as a mode of obtaining program video resources-this simple recording studio will record the audio-visual materials read by the public, and the accumulation of people's heads does not prove the universality of the participating groups-it cannot be ruled out that this is a kind of herd participation, and obviously, the known reading booths are located in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
This is a popular demonstration method under the inertia thinking of "cultural industry". The evaluation standard of word-of-mouth and online rating replaces the "number" in the statistical probability sense of ratings to demonstrate the social significance and value of a cultural product. This way of argument still falls into the stereotype of cultural industry, paying more attention to the commercialization ability of cultural products rather than their liberation, which masks the real question behind humanistic cultural products such as The Reader: What is the meaning of reading aloud? Does our society need to read aloud? Can reading aloud create a better self and society?
As a producer, director and host, Dong Qing directly answered the real question. She redefined "reading aloud" and thought that "reading aloud is a very private matter, but reading aloud is not, reading aloud should have an object, and it is just like singing". This kind of reading aloud "can convey feelings and express feelings", "but many of us don't form this habit because it seems a little formal. In fact, if you think about it, reading aloud means talking. I even think it has a larger mass base, because there are more people who can talk than people who can sing. " The implication is that reading aloud is a means of emotional communication. The production and dissemination of The Reader can make more people familiar with this means of communication. As long as you can speak, you can read aloud.
Therefore, The Reader was not produced to save the book publishing industry that has been treading on thin ice in recent years-this industry needs to respond to the market challenges of online literature and online reading on the one hand, and face the changes of retail channels on the other hand. Bookstores in the streets and lanes are gradually disappearing under the double squeeze of high rents and shrinking readers. Nor is it a supplement to personal reading materials and knowledge reserves, for utilitarian knowledge acquisition, or as a tool for introspection or self-motivation, that is, reading aloud is not to promote chicken soup for the soul, but to become a way for teachers to coach or show off their tastes or show off their skills. Reading aloud is not to achieve individual meditation and self-construction, but also a communication effort to face others. This means that reading aloud is an immaterial contact between two souls, and it is a kind of communication. Through reading aloud, a series of relationships with others and history can be established. The subtext behind it is that the communication between people and between people and history can always be open.
Therefore, The Reader is not another version of Touching China. Although the soundtrack, lighting and the appearance of the host and guests are full of ritual, its stage core is the theater and the library. The library stores the knowledge and spirit of the past, while the theater uses the past as a guide to perform the joys and sorrows of the present. Reading aloud is not regarded as an act that requires skill, and public reading need not be monopolized by professionals. Here, there are fathers' teachings to their sons, mothers' expectations to their daughters, granddaughters' thoughts to their grandmothers, sons' gratitude to their mothers, deep affection between husband and wife, goodwill and expectation to the world and nature, gratitude, thanks, encouragement and remembrance.
I feel happy about the newly born Reader, because it clearly expresses its "moral bias", instead of spreading a cultural value with a flattering entertainment attitude and neutral stance. At the same time, I also have a kind of expectation. As Peters said in "Speaking in the Air-A History of Communication Concepts", "The issue of communication is a political issue, which involves the right of access and the availability of opportunities". Can the Reader, as its producer said, devote itself to everyone's right to speak and the possibility of communication, and whether the recitation in the reading booth and the expression of voices from all walks of life can enter the stage of speech with an equal opportunity?
Of course, there are hidden worries. Could it be that this is just another "represented" speech performance, another mode of cultural commodity production-trying to turn the voice of a certain class or group into the voice of the whole society? And cultivate this class and group into happy, numb and unaware consumers above the cultural industry?
At least, at this moment, we are cheering the birth of a clean stream, witnessing that the gear of the cultural industry has stopped for a second. Can the production and dissemination of cultural products begin to operate slowly in another logic from the Reader at this moment? There is no answer. We can only know clearly under the guidance of "rational pessimism and will optimism": history is created by people.
(Source: China Writers Network)