The new TV version of Dream of the Red Chamber has just ended on Beijing TV, but the series has been surrounded by controversy. For example, there has been a lot of criticism over the costumes and the chosen actors and actresses, who won the prized roles through a highly competitive TV show. When the series first aired critics argued that it would serve better as a ghost story with its eerie music and pacing. Song Shinan (宋石男) wrote this for The Beijing News:
This is a horror show that will make you want to hit the director. Lin Daiyu, whose movements should be like a willow stroking the wind is, incredibly, played by a chubby little woman with baby fat all around her face. In the future when she dies by spitting blood, God knows how many mouthfuls she will need to spit before she dies. Her fishy, bloated eyes also adds a few cents to the tragedy of her story. The precocious playboy Jia Baoyu is a little brother in the new version, with the stink of milk on his breath. What will happen to the bedroom scene with Xiren? The actor who plays sassy Sister Feng is weak and fake, and totally without the usual imposing manner; she’s not like Jia Lian’s wife, more like a mistress! (Apart from the main characters, the minor characters are also extremely unreliable. Grandma Liu is such a legendary figure, but in the new version is played by a big fat auntie. I tested her with my eyes, and her weight is at least 150 jin! How could a poor countrywoman get so fat? Does she eat pork sausages for every meal?)
Song Shinan, who also goes by the name of Si Yi (四一), contrasted in the same blog post the current version with the classic ’87 version, talking about the difference in idealism between the two eras:
In my opinion, it’ll be hard to replicate the idealism in the ’87 version of Dream of the Red Chamber. At that time, from the director down to the actors － even the stage manager － are devoted completely and are spectacular. Not only are they in awe of Dream of the Red Chamber, but they also have a deep relationship with it. Not only the main characters but the minor characters are also deeply involved in the story. For example Lin Daiyu and Qingxia, they are both using their lives to act. Nietzsche said, love everything that’s written with blood. We say, love all shows that are acted with life. Now, idealism has been stripped away by material gain, and using your life to act has long ago become history. How can we hope that, with a show that was built on money, a show that loves to plagiarize vulgarity, and one that is flooded with the lowly unwritten rules, how can this become a classic? It can’t even be exquisite. The water has flowed away, a classic cannot be repeated; what we can enjoy, is its memory.
The most vociferous response to the 2010 adaptation has been how awful it is compared to ’87 TV version of Dream of the Red Chamber. Out of the four classics, a few has seen new adaptations for TV, including the 2010 version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义).
In terms of Dream of the Red Chamber, the press also had various criticisms about its actors going to events in fashionable nightgowns, and plenty of online discussion revolve around how the actors of the new cast has deviated from the purer and more ascetic lifestyle supposedly kept by the actors from the ’87 version.
Shi Kang, novelist and writer of the TV series about the lives of six post-80s graduates, Struggle (奋斗), recently wrote two posts about Dream of the Red Chamber on his blog, indicating why he turned down writing the script for a TV adaptation of the classic, and how the story can’t appeal to today’s generation of TV viewers. His Struggle and Big Shot’s Funeral (大腕) scripts were both irreverent and funny, but he hadn’t done much historical writing. However he expresses resentment at the lofty position of Dream of the Red Chamber and the inadequacies of Redologists. At the same time, we hear Shi Kang’s mockery of commercial culture today, which is up against the quotidian of ancient Chinese civilization.
Dream of the Red Chamber Came and Then Went
by Shi Kang (石康)
A few years ago when I was still employed in a TV crew, someone asked Zhao Baogang (赵宝刚, the director of Shi Kang’s Struggle 奋斗) to direct Dream of the Red Chamber, and he asked me whether I wanted to write a script for it. My mind did a quick whirl around the stories of the main characters, then I thought about the relationship between the characters and modern living. Then I shook my head, and said that I couldn’t do it with my level of education.
Scriptwriters are usually proud of how they write stories, how could they simply refuse to do something that can make money easily?
The reasons are simple. Looking at it purely in terms of the story, Dream of the Red Chamber is a story that’s really hard to structure. It’s a fluid life story, and you have to use your literary accomplishments in handling this kind of story, not your scriptwriting skills.
On the other hand, with the change wrought by age, the cultural background and the experience of reading Dream of the Red Chamber changes. When you’re young you can read it like a romance, reading about the arguments between young boys and girls derive a certain satisfaction. Those with a background in Chinese culture can see from the artistic conception of Dream of the Red Chamber the endless distress of the scholar, and of course, the better read you are, the more levels there are to reading Dream of the Red Chamber, the joys within, its coldness and the warmth. And this is the exact weakness for scripting a popular show, because it’s very hard to get a scriptwriter who can simultaneously please this many people.
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