No country for old kids (2)

Email|Print|Comments       twitter     facebook     Sina Microblog     reddit    

Changing audience base

According to Gao, young people have certain preferences: They love action, romance, comedy and things they can relate to.

Films with the theme "youth," featuring funny moments in classrooms or school hallways, just fit into the generation's aesthetic taste on commercial films.

Although the study of teen films has always kept a blurry boundary since it is hard to specify the exact age when adolescence begins or ends, the youth culture presented on the big screen (first love, rebellion and coming of age) is a reflection of the changing audience base: People going to cinemas today are younger than those who lined up to see films by China's fifth generation of directors.

"No wonder films like A Simple Life directed by Ann Hui and Full Circle, which both feature the elderly, could hardly be hugely successful at the box office because of the age structure of the Chinese audience," said Gao.

Different teen styles

Typical genre films made by different countries often share many similarities. Teen films in some regions, however, seem to show more of the unique side of the local culture and social system.

For instance, the general impression for many Hollywood teen movies like the American Pie series, Mean Girls, High School Musical series and Dead Poets Society is either to have comic elements and naïve behavior, or to criticize the education system and adult values.

By contrast, famous Japanese teen films such as Kids Return by Takeshi Kitano, All About Lili Chou by Shunji Iwai and more recently The Kirishima Thing by Daihachi Yoshida all touch the crucial and sentimental side of youth.

The Chinese film market, however, has a gap when it comes to the teen genre. Apart from the familiar Chinese teen films from Taiwan loaded with bright colors and lighting effects as well as beautiful footage of campuses, the most famous mainland teen films - Jiang Wen's In the Heat of the Sun (1995) and Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle (2001) - were made over 10 years ago.

"There were only a few teen films in the market before. Especially, action films and period drama were not as popular last year, suggesting that audiences were looking for new things...We are confident about films that contain the youth theme," An Lifen, producer of Tiny Times said to Beijing Evening News.

Within the limits

Film critic Wang Siwei says that two important elements of a teen film are commonly missing in Chinese films in the genre: sexual awakening and social background.

Young Style has a touch of the sexual themes, but the focus is on a love and hate relationship with the senior year, gaokao and their teachers.

According to Wang, the unwritten rule for Chinese teen films is that relationships that happen during middle school should not be promoted. In the past, such "early love" stories were not even allowed to be shown on the big screen.

Now, the overall situation has improved but the storyline is still confined to a box in which the final part of a teen film must to go back to a mainstream value: Young people should be depicted working hard to get into a university, and falling in love before college was not a helpful thing.

This has been proved by Liu Jie. In an interview with sina.com, the director said that a complicated love triangle among students was cut from the script.

"Indian film Three Idiots, for example, has a strong critical view toward the education system. But our films need to play within the system. That's just how it works," said Wang.

The Chinese film industry is probably a long way from producing anything like Juno directed by Jason Reitman about a teenage pregnancy with a happy ending.

Until the industry matures, symbolic scenes such as turning off an alarm in the morning, handing in exam papers one by one and staying overnight playing Dota (a popular online game) at an Internet bar as well as certain characters like a strict teacher or an academic genius will probably continue to be recognizable features for Chinese teen films.

We Recommend

• Air Forces arrive at designated area to join China-Russia drill
  
• Hospital comes to aid of tragic family of ‘Chinese Cabbage Dad’
• Czech artist performs bubble show at Hong Kong mall
• Italian Supreme Court confirms Berlusconi's jail verdict
• Run naked as punishment for missing sales target
• International Grand Bazzar in Urumchi,Xinjiang