Silent art, idyllic charm.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “iwanghong headline” (ID: WHTT1111), author: Chen Yilian, editor: Chen Chen.
On January 22, 2018, on the way back to her hometown, Shen Dan uploaded the first short vibrato video, which opened her way to an unexpected popularity called “Homesickness”.
Back to May 10, 2021, in order to respond to various speculations from the outside world and to give fans an explanation, Shen Dan released a video of memories from 18 to 30 years old on Douyin, briefly telling himself Becoming a single mother, failing to start a business on her own, and returning to her hometown to restart her life experience and mental journey. According to data from Feigua, Shen Dan gained 929,900 followers that day with this recollection video.
As of May 23, 2021, the number of followers of Shen Dan’s Douyin account @乡忧 has reached 16.631 million. In less than three years, the pastoral theme creation and personal charm complemented each other, allowing Shen Dan to achieve the leap from ordinary users to top Internet celebrities.
1 The Art of Silence
At first, the audience only had sympathy and sympathy with the video content of @乡忧. For the time being, the focus remained on the landscape and farm life shown in the video, from the stove fire to the fish pond in the fields, from the brick house on the dirt road. , Going to the tea mountain bamboo forest, everywhere poked in the hearts of foreigners who toiled in the fast-paced city.
To be sure, the audience at this time only remembered the name “Homesickness” and did not know who “Shen Dan” was. As the time of attention is getting longer and longer, more and more videos are accessed, and the audience’s attention gradually shifts from the content of the video to the heroine.
Anyone who has watched Shen Dan’s video knows that in the video, she rarely looks at the camera, and always works in farming silently. She is even unsmiling, only getting along with her daughter, grandma, and folks. At that time, there will be a smile. The audience cannot have line-of-sight contact with Shen Dan through the video, and it is also difficult to hear Shen Dan’s voice. Shen Dan who remains in his mind is always silent and neat.
Shen Dan never speaks, which makes the audience’s attention more focused on what she did. After the accumulation of video clips, anyone can find that this rural woman seems to be omnipotent: it is commonplace. Rural delicacies can also make rare intangible cultural heritage dishes. You can also take care of “men ploughing and women weaving” alone, fishing and plowing fields, picking tea and chopping wood, brewing cakes, carrying sacks on one shoulder, and digging bamboo shoots in one hand. , Driving motorcycles, trucks, tractors and other types of motor vehicles… Shen Dan said that he “lived as a female man”, but fans felt that Shen Dan was more like a “superwoman”.
(Picture source Douyin@乡忧)
After the praise, suspicion arose. Before the release of Shen Dan’s memory video, many people tried to analyze “clues” from Shen Dan’s speechlessness. Among them, the most widely circulated remark was: “Shen Dan is an entrepreneur with tens of millions of assets, and his account has a team. In business, everything is deliberately acting to attract fans.”
Audiences who are accustomed to feeling “homesickness” in Shen Dan’s videos with only body language and natural voice, firmly believe that @乡忧 should be equated with “Shen Dan”, not a team operation The product of this, otherwise it is deceit and a tarnish to “homesickness”. Shen Dan’s reminiscence video played a role in dispelling rumors and explaining to a certain extent, which gave the vacillating audience a reassurance: “Homesickness” or “Homesickness” is the pastoral song they longed for, and their dreams are still there.
From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand why this memory video has allowed Shen Dan to soar nearly a million fans. After paying attention to the account of @乡忧, many fans turned Shen Dan’s video from beginning to end. After opening Shen Dan’s first video, you can see the “archaeological” comments left by these “full of joy” fans.
(Picture source Douyin@乡忧)
This video released in 2018, the comment time is constantly updated, and the source of traffic is Shen Dan’s popular memory video, and the long tail effect brought by subsequent video updates.
It is undeniable that language has powerful rendering power, but in many cases, silent white space is more likely to stimulate the imagination and perception of the audience. Shen Dan’s silence allows the “homesickness” to be better conveyed to the audience in front of the screen.
2 The charm of the pastoral
“Homesickness and Li Ziqi seem to be.” Under Shen Dan’s video, there are many such comments. From content modeFrom the perspective of the above, Shen Dan and Li Ziqi are indeed very similar. They both show pastoral scenery in the process of making rural delicacies.
But in terms of expression, Shen Dan and Li Ziqi are two completely different factions. There are two fans (meaning fans who like both at the same time), and they sum it up like this: “Li Ziqi interprets poetry and distance. Homesickness interprets firewood, rice, oil and salt.”
For example, it is also making candied haws. Li Ziqi’s video cuts directly to the subject, starting from bunching hawthorn fruit, while Shen Dan starts from smashing the target; after Li Ziqi is stringing candied haws, he enters the sugar-coated link, and Shen Danze One more step of boiling sugar.
(Picture source Douyin@李子柒、@乡忧)
Of course, this does not mean that Li Ziqi will not be able to lay the groundwork or make sugar; unlike Shen Dan’s reservation, Li Ziqi just abandoned this part of the display.
The choice between the two in terms of content just proves that the focus of the two creations is different-Li Ziqi is an “abstractist”, and what he gives the audience is the visual enjoyment of focusing on the landscape and the countryside; Shen Dan is a “realist” , The audience is given a detailed experience focusing on farming and human relations. In a broader expression, Li Ziqi is spreading culture, and Shen Dan is sharing in life.
For this point, in addition to the above-mentioned grass targets and boiled sugar, the candied haws video has a more intuitive performance: Li Ziqi did not explain the “home” of the candied haws, and Shen Dan cut into the screen of the divided candied haws at the end of the video.
(Picture source Douyin@乡忧)
Li Ziqi’s pastoral atmosphere is exquisite. It does not eat fireworks. It is the ideal world of “picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence and leisurely seeing Nanshan”, so her videos often show some beautiful spaces that can be used as wallpapers. The lens (also called the “scene lens”, which means that there is no one in the picture).
(Picture source Douyin@李子柒)
In contrast, Shen Dan’s videos have almost no empty shots for shooting scenes. “People” are always the protagonists under the shots, which are more pyrotechnic and human. This is where the charm of the pastoral theme lies. It can be Li Ziqi’s sentimentality to the scenery, or Shen Dan’s outspoken thoughts.
In addition to this, the charm of the pastoral theme is also reflected in the “relevant”. Needless to say, Li Ziqi is called “the fairy who has fallen by mistake” by netizens; Shen Dan’s character seems to fall on the ground everywhere, but carefully, Shen Dan is as full of “brilliance” as Li Ziqi-male fans say she She is a virtuous, virtuous, diligent and capable “perfect daughter-in-law”. Female fans regard her as a “human ideal” with misfortune but miracles in marriage.
Shen Dan’s positioning of @乡忧 as “recording the real life in the countryside with tiny lenses” is not funny, not high-powered, plain and honest narrative methods, but let the audience and the creator empathize and experience that A love of life. At this time, Shen Dan is still grounded. After all, she never speaks in the video, and the audience does not know her psychological activities.
When the audience sees Shen Dan’s motivational video copy, most people feel that they have touched Shen Dan’s heart, understand Shen Dan’s values, and naturally use their imagination to complement Shen Dan’s people. Suppose, Shen Dan’s senses have undergone a “qualitative change”. Whether it is a “perfect daughter-in-law” or “an ideal in the world,” Shen Dan is “refined” at this moment, or is still “out of silt but not stained” even after weathering.
(Left is Shen Dan leading the villagers up the mountain to pick tea, right is Shen Dan using intangible cultural heritage techniques Skin Breakfast/Tuyuan Douyin@乡忧)
According to data from Feigua, the proportion of men and women in the fan group of @乡忧 is balanced, mostly over 30 years old.
(Data comes from Feigua data)
It can be seen that the user groups who like Shen Dan are very close to the age of Shen Dan. When they are more sensitive to local people and spiritual chicken soup, their way of thinking about problems is more or less in common, and it is easier Empathy in Shen Dan’s video.
The balanced male-to-female ratio is also the result of empathy. Male users will have a pity and affection for Shen Dan, who is “single divorced and capable baby”; female users are Shen Danfa who is “strong and desperate to support the sky”. Admiration and yearning from the heart.
In short, the audience will inevitably be paved with “homesickness” from a simple understanding of Shen Dan to an in-depth understanding of Shen Dan. In other words, Shen Dan can become popular. Pastoral theme content creation is the foundation. The emotional resonance in the content makes the audience become fans; and the subsequent emotional sublimation allows fans to become more sticky. The competent “Shen Dan” and the pastoral style ” “Nostalgia” is mutual achievement.