Lotus House: genre exploration, spiritual core and traditional cultural imagination
Original title: Lotus House: the genre exploration, spiritual core and cultural imagination of the costume martial arts drama.
In the summer file of domestic dramas in 2023, costume dramas such as Changfeng Du, Sauvignon Blanc, Lotus House, Lucky at Seven o’clock and Lord Snow Eagle occupied half of the hot list. Under the background of network integration, IP development, content is king, element superposition and in-depth marketing, costume dramas maintain a high-profile trend, promote the drama series to go out to sea, and trigger a heated discussion and audience climax. Looking at the domestic costume drama in the summer of 2023, on the basis of insisting on the costume as the creative background, it fully integrates many elements such as Xian Xia, fantasy, mystery, suspense, detective story, comedy, Machiavellian, love, etc., and realizes the characteristic breakthrough of "harmony but difference" and shows the innovative practice of vertical categories under the costume drama track. Among them, the costume suspense detective drama "Lotus House" stands out in the highly competitive drama series with excellent story content and excellent production methods. Douban scored 8.1, and the theme broadcast volume totaled 10 billion, which was rated as an S+ TV series and became one of the fine martial arts dramas with both word-of-mouth and popularity.
The martial arts drama Lotus House is adapted from Teng Ping’s novel Lotus House in Ji Xiangwen. It is directed by and co-directed, starring and Aero. The drama tells the story of Li Xiangyi, the master of Sigumen, who was famous in the Wulin, who fell into a cloud of doubt after the East China Sea War ten years ago, and became a magical doctor of Jianghu, Li Lianhua, and then got involved in a river-lake dispute again, showing a thrilling and complicated chivalrous story.
Integrating "Martial Arts+Detective Cases" and Realizing the Exploration of "Type+"Creation
As an important branch of costume drama, costume detective drama has made quite dazzling achievements, bearing the common memory of a generation. From the series of Bao Qingtian in the 1990s to the series of Hong Kong dramas "Remembering Injustice" in the Millennium, and then to the series of Detective Di Renjie, Young Bao Qingtian, Arrested Officials in the Great Song Dynasty, Four Famous Arrests and Strange Man and a Plum in the early 21st century, detective dramas in ancient costume have gained a good reputation and become one of the favorite TV series. After 2010, costume detective drama entered the creative bottleneck, and the overall performance was not good, and gradually faded out of the TV screen. In recent years, with the great achievements and popularity of costume detective dramas such as Young Tales of the Great Song Dynasty, I don’t know about the Chivalrous Detective Jane, The Longest Day In Chang’an’s Under the Golden Clothes, The Imperial Courtesy, Daming under the Microscope, The League of Gentlemen, and The Mysteries of the Tang Dynasty, this theme has returned to the audience’s sight. This summer, the reputation of Lotus House exploded, which made the audience see the creative potential and type innovation of costume detective drama again.
Looking at the suspense detective dramas of ancient costume in recent years, the four outstanding sub-types are mystery, love, women and juvenile home country. In these sub-types, comedy, youth, ancient style, martial arts, highway and other elements are gathered, which conforms to the current trend of "genre+"and realizes the variation of the detective drama of ancient costume, which is very attractive and ornamental. The popularity of "Lotus House" is that after the integration of "martial arts+detective cases", comedy, suspense, tactics and other elements are superimposed, and the word-of-mouth counterattack is realized with the setting of "unit mystery+unconventional protagonist setting+treacherous light and dark in Jianghu temples", which has gained high popularity and discussion.
As for Lotus House, which focuses on martial arts and suspense, with the battle between good and evil caused by Sigumen and Jinyuan Alliance as the story background, 10 mysterious cases, such as the case of the golden body rising, the case of the female house, the case of yipin grave and the case of picking lotus village, are connected in series in the interweaving of two clues: "Looking for the remains of a single solitary knife" and "Nanyin’s plot to restore the country". In the bizarre case, there is a chivalrous atmosphere, which promotes the audience to experience the story in an immersive way in the rhythm of relaxation. Of course, judging from the theme presentation and genre exploration of Lotus House, the first half of the plot is full of suspense, and the "Detective Lotus League" composed of Li Lianhua, Fang Duobing and the sound of flute flying has formed a deep friendship in laughing and cursing, and jointly promoted the development of the plot; In the second half of the plot, the heroic spirit and chivalrous spirit of the rivers and lakes are more obvious, and a period of stirring chivalry is launched on the basis of clarifying the main line of the story. Although the drama strives to pay equal attention to martial arts and suspense elements, there are obviously too many intrigues and confusing cases in the whole work, and there are fewer young heroes and chivalrous righteousness in the martial arts drama. This also shows that although the creation of "genre+"drama series is a trend, it is more necessary to properly handle the superposition and genre mixing between elements.
Chivalry and ordinary people, rich spiritual core and cultural artistic conception
As netizens commented, "Lotus House" "tells an indifferent but not thin chivalrous feeling and ideal of home and country with a different kind of Jianghu story." The most valuable thing is that "Lotus House" shows the good and evil of human nature from the perspective of "love and affection" on the basis of martial arts dramas, and expresses the strong practical significance behind the truth of each case. From Li Xiangyi, the master of Sigumen, who is famous in Jianghu, to Li Lianhua, a leisurely Jianghu doctor, behind the change of identity is still a generation of heroes who stick to the bottom line, stick to themselves, have a just mind and are devoted to life.
For Lotus House, it is precious to examine rivers and lakes, humanity and home country from a male perspective, especially the respect for women and the concern for women’s emotional world, which makes people particularly moved. In the "Women’s House" unit, the women who were abducted into the deep house by Yu Louchun were like prisoners, losing their right to choose and be free. These women are both murderers and victims. They unite and watch each other in the women’s house, resist malice with their weak bodies, and strive to save themselves in desperation. At the end of the case of "The Woman’s House", the audience was deeply grateful for their good ending. In the "Palace Blissful Tower" unit, in the face of the rebellion of Shan Gudao and others, Li Lianhua and Fang Duobing broke the cocoon in layers of difficulties, uncovering the secret of royal blood relationship that can shake the world. In order to better stabilize the rivers and lakes and temples, Li Lianhua used the only flower that can last for a long time to detoxify Emperor Daxi, and saved everyone with his own body. The chivalry presented in Lianhu Building is more about the responsibility and the sense of home and country with "serving the country and the people and caring for the world" as the spiritual core.
In addition, Lotus House presents the pursuit of artistic conception aesthetics through a large number of traditional cultural symbols. This unity of reality and reality, which is born outside the image, has a unique expression in Lotus House. Because Li Lianhua misses Master, she dances a sword in the bamboo forest, and the bamboo leaves flying with firm but gentle waves present her own Zen beauty, which conforms to Li Lianhua’s uninhibited and worldly state of mind, and also reproduces the literary landscape of "a sword floating, a towel and cloth" in poetry. At the end of the drama, Li Lianhua broke his sword and flew off a cliff and jumped into the river. At this time, the river was misty and rainy, and the clouds surged with it. Coupled with the rendering of the background music of A Pot of Lotus Drunk, Li Lianhua’s broad-minded state of mind was integrated with the surrounding environment, just like the true portrayal of "The boat died from now on, and Jiang Hai sent the rest of his life" in Su Shi’s Linjiangxian. At this time, when the camera turned, Li Lianhua put pen to paper, showing the emotional changes and aesthetic artistic conception that the open-mindedness of time has passed, the hope of protecting the people and the original heart, and realizing the world, all beings and their own life realm among all sentient beings.
Although the summer file of domestic dramas has come to an end in 2023, the costume detective craze brought by Lotus House continues, and the number of costume detective dramas to be broadcast alone has surpassed 10 such as The Case of the Tang Dynasty Digong, The Apocalypse, Under the Fancheng and The Westbound Journey of the Tang Dynasty. On the basis of "costume+detective stories", these dramas fully integrate fantasy, suspense, comedy, thriller, adventure and other elements, create distinctive types, and attract the audience’s attention with complicated unsolved stories. However, only blindly pursuing the superposition of elements and genre innovation can easily lead the detective drama of ancient costume into the wrong path of creation. On the basis of local culture, we should dig deep into the plot, strengthen the characters, clarify the logical relationship, and explore more diverse genre creation and value propositions.(Author: Yue Zongsheng, a postdoctoral fellow at Tsinghua University School of Journalism and Communication, this article is a major national social science project "Audio-visual quality products promote the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese excellent traditional culture", with the project number of 22ZDA083)