This article is from WeChat official account:NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , author: A bell, editor: Kimura week extension, the original title: “too many female variety, variety and too few women,” drawing from the head: “listen said Tuesday”
The superficial “feminine expression”
As the sub-categories are fully or even over-exploited, the subculture competition-type variety show that lasted for three or four years seems to have come to an end. In the past year, the theme that has become the main theme of the variety show industry is the female theme. The entertainment industry uses a half-new term collectively called “her variety show.”
If you put aside the branch of the women’s team draft, this wave of “her variety show” is probably the beginning of “Sister Lang”. After the show’s phenomenal success last year, a new set of wealth codes for variety shows came to light: Put some elite women in the entertainment industry on the stage, and let their not-so-representative troubles speak for the “female community”. The collective dilemma, and then respond to it with a season of content that lasts thousands of minutes and is close to the texture of skincare advertisements.
The latest case is also from Mango Channel. They created an all-female talk show “Listening to Sisters”. They invited 18 female artists to “focus the camera on women’s self-expression and opinion output.” , Let the 18 sisters cut into hot social topics from a female perspective, and convey female attitudes in the form of talk show comedy.” This description is expected. The talk show from the perspective of the female subject can be so sharp. Yang Li has done it.
But judging from the current three episodes, the female expressions in the show are quite pale.White.
The program claims to “cut into social hot topics from a female perspective”, but in the selection of topics, most of the topics are selected as innocuous so-called “hot” topics, similar to “xx is actually myself”, “because of love”, and “become a beauty.” “Such a light topic. In the latest issue of “Because of Love”, the guests either review their love experiences and emphasize the importance of injury, love, and the pursuit of romance; or married people will talk about how to be considerate and understand each other and maintain the stability of the family, This is probably It’s a long way from discussing with the women we really need.
There are also some topics that can be extended in depth. In fact, we can perceive that the female artists who come to this show have express desires. In the previous interview, Shang Wenjie mentioned that “Listen to Sisters” can prove that “beautiful women can also be thoughtful and humorous”; Shi Lu wants to break the “rock music does not have the stereotype of women”; Wang Ziwen has high hopes for it: ” Every girl can say what she wants to say through this platform.”
But in the program, the complicated and worthy parts of these issues are all taken away. Cai’er Ying talked about the absence of men in the process of parenting. The materials were “Deng Chao who didn’t know which school the child went to” and “Chen Xiaochun who played mobile phone at the child’s birthday party.” The two cases are so relaxed that the social problem of “widowed parenting” has become a light anecdote between celebrity couples.
Shi Lu’s manuscript says “it’s harder for women to play rock and roll, and it’s even harder for single mothers to play rock and roll.” Seeing that the invisible sexism in the rock circle is about to be touched, the conversation turned into a show of herself and her daughter. The mother and daughter are in love. Why is it hard for women to play rock and roll? What does a woman face when she enters the rock industry? The real and structural problems on this topic cannot be answered by the tenacity of individual single mothers.
Another Reiza, who has just become a mother, also came with infinite love for her daughter. She shared her full-time job as a “mother” and the communication with her mother. The complaint is minor. , Happiness is enough to cope with all the tediousness and exhaustion.
Rather than talking about whether motherhood under social and cultural norms exerts too much pressure on women, the actresses on the show seem to be more willing to output conservative mainstream narratives such as “just being a mother”. One of the audience members and IBF Asian Women’s 126-pound Featherweight Champion Hu Die said in the final interview: “Learn more from the voices of these women(Things), there are many mothers and single mothers, but their descriptions are very calm and calm, and I admire them very much.”
It’s not that the feelings shared by these female celebrities are false, but when a show claims to “cut into social issues from a female perspective,” these trivial “female perspective sharing” can’t actually support any discussion. The output of the female celebrities we watched is after all an act of chasing stars and consuming entertainment products.
Cai’er Ying’s latest Weibo is a clip in which she said that Chen Xiaochun would not give her gifts. The content shared a set of her unique gift-receiving philosophy-“You say you like everything a man gives you, don’t not Satisfied, because if you say you don’t like it or you’re not satisfied, he will slowly stop sending it. No one tried to discuss the laziness of men in the maintenance of love relationships under this Weibo, which is quite different from the modern concept of healthy relationship. The comment that I liked most was “I just like to watch it.” You husband and wife are making trouble with him laughing at the scene, so envious.”
The problem of female celebrities is not equal to the problem of women
In fact, this is a common problem for most of the so-called female variety shows that focus on female stars on the market. To put it simply, they only do one thing: use what they have already solved to answer those problems that others cannot solve, and refuse to show the solution process.
In the same period, Wang Ziwen also appeared on another variety show called “Fantastic Again”. This show is for mature women to marry. Gesture to embrace love”.
From the very beginning, the program focused on creating women’s yearning for love, urging women to actively seek out their partners by magnifying the beauty of love and the power that love gives. At the same time, among the dating partners selected for the 5 female artists, they instilled another standard of good love for the audience. Looking for “evenly matched” love, the selling point of the male guests is highly educated and glamorous work. , Superior family background. To put it bluntly, it is the high EQ argument of “rights at the door,” which uses hardware versus hardware and materially defines the dating partners of female celebrities.
The pair of CP Wang Ziwen and Wu Yongen who brought the most topics in “Yuan Ran” is the most successful love story created by the show group. The relationship between the rich female star and the low-key Chinese handsome guy, Wang Ziwen even made his own Son, the program team also vigorously promoted it as a fairy tale about the happiness of single mothers.
But fairy tales cannot withstand the impact of ordinary people’s lives. Ordinary women giving birth out of wedlock, and Wang Ziwen giving birth out of wedlock, may face completely different problems. They first need to figure out to what extent the law guarantees unmarried childbirth, how should a woman give her child a hukou, how to solve the child’s education problem, and how to solve the whole society’s discrimination against children from single-parent families…More importantly, , In the process of raising children, what kind of help can families, schools, work units, women’s federations and other organizations provide to single mothers?
Similarly, Shi Lu’s existence does not represent the situation of all women in the ring. She grew up in Beijing and has better learning resources and opportunities to get in touch with the independent music scene. Her mother was a teacher at the Children’s Palace. When she was a child, her father would rather spend all her savings at home and buy a piano for her. She breaks through the shackles as an individual, and we must pay tribute to her, but paying tribute to her personal efforts and acknowledging the gender fence of rock music are two different things. Her exceptional existence cannot answer why the proportion of male rock music practitioners is far greater than that of females, and whether the misogyny tradition of rock music that began in the last century still exists today.
In fact, variety shows and female stars can hardly answer any specific questions. “Fantastic” focuses on using the images of female celebrities as single mothers and divorced women, linking these two images with love, creating some brightly colored pictures that show a bright future, but it never speaks. Brighten up the dim and cruel reality behind it, and how the female stars deal with these problems. Love that is as easy as a fairy tale may not save single moms, but it can add to the legendary stories of female stars.
The same illusion is repeated in different types of female variety shows. The “Mom is Superman” series says to show “the most authentic family life and the most true-feeling parenting experience”; “Mother and Mother” will be shown How to get along with husband and wife, mother-in-law, mother-daughter/mother-child…When everyone is doing unskilled housework in the rented house, and the show shows how happy mothers with children are, more mothers are dealing with spouses not participating Whether parenting, spouses hide their children, and housework can be regarded as paid labor.
Using female stars’ happy life visions to set a benchmark for women in the whole society, using feminine topics but not acknowledging the existence of all women, this is a common problem in women’s variety shows.
The intersection of women’s issues, the singularity of women’s variety shows
Of course, it is very difficult for female variety shows to fully show the face of Chinese women today.
Black feminist scholar Kimberly Crenshaw refined the theoretical framework of “intersection” around 1990, pointing out that women’s issues and racial issues are overlapping. Oppressed by gender and raceForced double stacking. Later, cross-cutting research continued to deepen, pointing out that identity units such as race, class, age, region, sexual orientation, etc. all opened up a new dimension for women as a whole and created a new microscopic experience of inequality. This perspective challenges the gender determinism in previous feminist studies, and believes that recognizing this complexity is more conducive to restoring the real social picture.
Applying this perspective, Chinese women also have diverse and complex situations. A female born in the 00s in the city and a female born in the 70s in the rural area obviously need different feminist support. Variety shows can’t show the whole picture or carry everything, this is also normal.
A fundamental dislocation of most “her variety shows” is also here: they claim to serve women, but the individual and attention content they present cannot achieve this goal from the beginning. “Listen to Sisters”‘s concept of “allowing 18 sisters to cut into social hot topics from a female perspective”, the real meaning behind it is to allow 18 elite women who have achieved great success in the pan-entertainment industry to cut into some social issues from their perspectives. The Internet has aroused widespread discussion of public topics that loom over women and everyone in society. What valuable reference can be given?
But this is not the reason why women’s variety shows continue to abuse the female-themed production model of non-progressive entertainment products. Since the banner of feminism is held high, at least some experiments must be done, right?
If variety show guests are usually celebrities, there are few ordinary amateurs, focusing on the life experiences of female stars, naturally, this single identity and class is difficult to break through, then is the single female face Can you work hard? Why do women still focus on the identities of happy wives and loving mothers in variety shows today? Is it possible that a little focus on women’s careers, hobbies, and public life will lead to a cliff drop in ratings? If the presentation of identity and appearance is limited by the viewing taste of the market audience, can there be a breakthrough in narrative unity? Apart from the “sister narrative” where self-improvement is strong and self-confidence is happy, can there be more attempts?
It is true that variety shows are not the answer to social problems, and they don’t have to carry too much social responsibility. But when it keeps using female symbols and voices to decorate programs, peddle members and vote, we have the right to ask for more.
This article is from WeChat official account:NorthPark (ID: northpark2018) , author: A bell