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After much anticipation, the bleak summer season finally got its "savior". As of the early morning of July 19, the cumulative box office of the movie "Catching Dolls" has exceeded 900 million yuan. The Shen-Ma combination has performed well again. Maoyan predicts that its total box office will exceed 3.7 billion yuan, making it a seed player in the fight for the annual box office champion.

(Photo source: Maoyan Professional Edition)

However, while the box office has been rising, there have been many controversies about the film. Some viewers said that the lies under the guise of good intentions are full of control and self-righteous "sacrifice", making the film look more like a horror movie; others thought that although it looked like a parenting version of "The Truman Show", with the same life for 20 years until the building collapsed, it was purely forced to endure the hardship, and the reconciliation at the end was too hasty.

Netizens made a poster of "Catching Dolls" in the style of "The Truman Show" (Source: Weibo)

Education is a mirror that reflects all kinds of social realities, and of course it is also an inexhaustible source of subject matter for film and television works. Especially in the context of the popularity of realism in domestic films in recent years, education issues are even more common among realistic issues, and there should be a large number of works discussing them.

But the fact is that there are not many domestic films with educational themes, and the market feedback is not satisfactory. Especially when compared with domestic dramas, it is not difficult to find that there are more domestic dramas that leave a deep impression on the audience. What are the reasons for this phenomenon? What kind of educational films and TV series do we need? From the source of domestic films and TV series, we can get a glimpse of the leopard.

A thankless job

The story of "Catching Dolls" is not complicated. It is nothing more than that Ma Chenggang, a first-generation rich man played by Shen Teng, is afraid that his children will not be able to become useful if they grow up in a honeypot, so he decides to start a plan of rich people pretending to be poor. The core theme is still the idea of ​​"suffering first to become useful". From the perspective of the parents in the film, the focus of their lives is completely around their children, which is of course a good intention. But for his son Ma Jiye, everything seems so cruel. He lived in a world of lies and calculations for the first 18 years of his life. His every move was studied under a microscope by a professional team; the neighbors were fake, the stores he often went to were fake, and even the emotional relationships were fake.

For the audience, the comedy and the partnership between Shen and Ma are the main motivations for them to buy tickets. As a genre element, the movie does provide laughs, although it seems more like a "hell joke". In a heavy scene, the teacher who plays the grandmother fakes her death, and the funeral emcee does not forget to point out the theme, "Your grandmother's soul is waiting for you above the Department of Business Administration of Peking University and Tsinghua University". The laughs are accurate enough but also heavy enough.

Young Ma Jiye (played by Shi Pengyuan) (Source: Douban)

But will education plus comedy definitely be successful? No. Except for "Catch the Dolls", there are very few domestic commercial films with educational themes that can achieve a win-win in both word-of-mouth and box office.

These films have a strong cast, with directors or actors who have achieved box office success such as Chen Sicheng, Deng Chao, Huang Bo, etc.; they are not without a breakthrough spirit either. They all hope to break through the inherent paradigm of parents' good intentions, their children's misunderstanding, and eventual reconciliation, and have used comedy or science fiction elements to graft them together, but the results have been unsatisfactory.

"Galaxy Tutorial" is a film that Deng Chao stepped out of his comfort zone as a director. In the film, he reflected on the exam-oriented education, but the theme was put first in the setting. All kinds of storylines seemed to be fillers in the predetermined framework, rather than naturally derived from the development of the plot. Obviously, the road to exams that appeared in the film were all experienced by the audience, but the result of the film did not resonate with them. Instead, it was very embarrassing because it was specious.

The father played by Deng Chao respects his child's choice and hopes to cultivate his child's independent thinking ability, but the difficulties and dangers encountered by the child are objectively caused by this father. The traditional education method represented by the mother played by Ren Suxi certainly has its problems, but this does not mean that the education method of the father as the opposing party is naturally correct. And the golden sentences that come to you, such as "Son, forgive me, I am also learning to be a father for the first time", etc., make the film more preachy.

Mozart from Outer Space is the worst-reviewed film by Chen Sicheng since he took over as director. In the film, the intergenerational conflict between the grandfather and the father is passed on to the next generation. The grandfather rejects the father's dream of music, and the father finally suppresses the child's dream of astronomy. In the end, these conflicts are resolved by an alien who is the other.

As a children's film, it obviously hasn't thought through its target audience - it seems childish when targeting adult audiences, and when the promotional direction changes to being dedicated to children, the children don't buy it.

In the movie "Learning Dad" released last year, Huang Bo, a father who "chickens his baby", was forced to follow other parents in an anxious situation. After going through all kinds of things, he finally let go of his obsession and let nature take its course. In the end, the movie took 614 million yuan at the box office in the hot summer market, which is considered to be quite satisfactory.

Limited by the genre of the film, in order to expand the audience to a greater extent, the creators have added other types of elements to increase the appeal, but they either try to have too much and have no focus, and too many outdated plots have a great impact on the viewing experience; or they simplify the storyline, hoping to use visual effects as the main feature, but without the support of the plot, the presentation of visual effects will only be greatly reduced.

In addition, whether for box office or other reasons, these movies all lead the children to worldly success, but there is no convincing foreshadowing and direct causal relationship with the plot. In "Learning to be a Dad", the child still successfully enrolled in school, but it was through the method of deus ex machina, which is not the most perfect choice.

Thirty years

If movies can only try to increase dramatic conflicts and pile up genre elements in the display of educational genres due to length, then TV dramas may be more suitable for showing the love and alienation between generations, and the unspeakable but ubiquitous emotional tugs in longer episodes. In particular, TV dramas on educational themes are often a branch of family ethics dramas, and a larger capacity can support it to depict little by little "trivialities".

However, although educational themes can resonate with social reality to a great extent, the development of educational dramas as a genre of drama itself has not been smooth sailing.

In 1985, the TV series "Looking for the Lost World" was broadcasted, which is considered the starting point of educational TV series in mainland China. The drama tells the story of how teachers in a work-study school save the "problem teenagers" in the school. In the 1990s, "Sixteen Years Old Flower Season", "Seventeen Years Old Don't Cry", "Flower Season and Rainy Season" and other TV series were launched. At this time, educational dramas were mostly linked to youth. The narrative subject was no longer confined to a single teacher-student main line, but began to show the unique inner world of teenagers, the troubles of growing up and the ignorant emotions.

The 2002-broadcast "The Sky of Eighteen Years Old" imitated the once popular Japanese manga "Hot Teacher" in terms of subject matter and character setting. Gu Yuetao, played by Bao Jianfeng, showed an equal relationship between him and his students as both a teacher and a friend. At that time, during the heyday of idol dramas, the hazy emotional descriptions in the drama were also sincere, and it became a hit drama at the time. However, at this point in time, the proportion of educational dramas in domestic dramas is still relatively low, and the main force in the market is still costume, military and family themes. The success of "The Sky of Eighteen Years Old" will be difficult to replicate for a long time.

Later on, campus dramas basically became centered around youthful romance, with education being a background, but it was only a source of pressure and relief while in love.

Stills from "18 Years Old Sky" (Source: Douban)

Therefore, the scene for discussing education has shifted from campus to family. The real boom of domestic education-themed dramas was around 2010, when the two-child policy was gradually implemented. After 2012, dramas on education-themed dramas began to return to the public eye: in 2012, "Little Children Are Hard to Raise" with parenting stories as the core appeared; in 2013, "Child Slave" faced the transition from primary school to junior high school, and "Little Daddy" explored a different kind of father-son relationship. However, after the traditional narrative of "strict father and kind mother" was deconstructed, "Tiger Mom and Cat Dad" became another form of stereotype, becoming a new stereotype of drama that has influenced the drama to this day.

In 2019, educational dramas ushered in a wave of explosions, and dramas such as "Little Joy" and "Life of Pi" achieved good broadcast results. Various production companies have also made efforts in this theme. The reason is that in addition to the increasingly limited environment of TV drama themes, educational dramas that can combine class differences, intergenerational conflicts, and campus youth have obvious creative space, and are more in line with real life, and are more likely to resonate with the audience.

Last year's educational drama "The Young Dragon" creatively moved the topic of education from the family back to the campus. The campus is no longer a container for love, and the college entrance examination finally has a process rather than just a result.

However, in terms of creation, this type of educational subject matter still has considerable limitations. First, the educational experiences of film and television industry creators are difficult to resonate with ordinary families. This situation is similar to the fact that many workplace dramas deviate from reality.

Secondly, there are many difficulties in establishing educational themes, which is an important reason why domestic films are relatively less involved in this theme. Dumo once saw creators come up with educational projects when participating in venture capital activities, but the "industry seniors" present all mentioned the current situation that educational themes are difficult to pass the review, and suggested that creators be mentally prepared.

What kind of educational works do we need?

There are difficulties objectively, but we should still try our best subjectively.

Wang Jun, the director of "Little Farewell" and "Little Joy", once said in an interview with the media that education is a very broad topic. There is no absolute right or wrong, and it is necessary to teach students in accordance with their aptitude and personality. Moreover, he did not shoot educational dramas to solve any problems or put forward any concepts, but just hoped to present reality to the audience and trigger more discussions.

In a parent-child relationship, the status of parents and children is naturally unequal, but if placed in a dramatic conflict, the two should not be unilaterally controlled and educated, but should influence each other in order to grow together. Whether it is the plot setting of "parents are all evil" or "children are all ungrateful", it is to elevate extreme cases to the whole. Although it may temporarily hit the preferences of some audiences, after the lively publicity, there will be nothing left. Based on the understanding and refinement of real life, let the dramatic conflict serve the story rather than the other way around. After all, sincere and down-to-earth emotions and plots have their own power.

The Indian film "The Starting Line", which has a similar plot to "Catching Dolls", goes a step further than the former. The parents who also started from scratch were forced to pretend to be poor in order to choose a school. In the interaction with neighbors in the slums, the parents also grew up. After their child was successfully selected, they inadvertently changed the future of another truly poor family. Although the male protagonist's conscience was awakened at the end, the act of giving up the admission quota is still close to a fairy tale.

Stills from "Starting Line" (Source: Douban)

The ultimate goal of education is to enrich and complete one's personality, and success in a realistic sense is not its only goal. In the most classic educational films, such as "The Chorus" and "Dead Poets Society", the protagonists ultimately failed to achieve immediate success, but they also left traces of their journey.