Author | Xie Minghong
Editor | Li Chunhui
"We are eager for safety and adventure. These two basic needs stem from different motives and pull us in different directions in our life-struggling in the tension between separation and aggregation, individuality and intimacy, freedom and commitment."
Esther Perell’s assertion of intimacy in dangerous liaisons was performed in the just-concluded urban drama Our Marriage in Bai Baihe and David. When we have a stable life that everyone admires, we can’t help but want to see the outside world. In order to find personal value, even if you are exhausted, you must fight hard.This is not asking for trouble, but being glad you came.
However, when Bai Baihe’s stay-at-home mother, Shen Comet, wants to return to the workplace and enjoy another kind of life scenery, she finds that the gap in front of her is not only her husband’s incomprehension, but also the constraint of social prejudice. The husband, who is in the critical period of his career, hopes that she will "stop" and do a good job in the rear. In the ever-changing workplace, I have doubts about this sudden mother-can I keep up with the rhythm after not going to work for so long?
Strangely, although there is no written standard, the whole society’s discipline and gaze on women can’t wait to produce a White Paper on Perfect Women. It is the basic task to teach your husband and children at home, and the highest moment of social activities is to go out to accompany your husband to attend activities. When Shen Comet became an escapee and rebel of this "White Paper", she was under the pressure of a mountain and a tsunami, that is, she wanted to take a head, catch her breath and argue with it from the stereotype.
Should women be what the society likes to see, or what they want? Marriage and career planning, is it difficult to have your cake and eat it? Is a benign intimate relationship either/or complementary? These social issues were put forward and discussed in Our Marriage.At the end, we didn’t know whether we were involved in another futile argument with a strong sense of substitution or saw a solution.
Is there a contradiction between marriage and individual value?
"Our Marriage" is an urban emotional drama directed by Shen Yan and Liu Haibo and starring Bai Baihe, David and Rulu. It tells the story of Shen Comet, a stay-at-home mother, returning to the workplace and having a disagreement with her husband Sheng Jiangchuan. After that, they re-examine the meaning of marriage and share the wind and rain together.
Although it’s over, Our Marriage has a lot of aftereffects.It reminds us once again that some ideas that seem to have been widely accepted are difficult to implement.
Persuading stay-at-home mothers to return to the workplace has been regarded as a traditional art ability of netizens, which has basically become a subtle consensus, but this does not prevent them from encountering obstacles and setbacks when they return to the workplace. People seem to have a natural distrust of married and fertile women in the workplace. As Cao Daren, the boss of Shengjiangchuan, said, the workplace system has not left women a way out, and such rules are often formulated by the previous generation.
Since the rules were formulated by predecessors and are no longer suitable for the contemporary family structure, why not break them? "Our Marriage" disintegrated this "distrust" all the way through Shen Comet’s career path. The family life and career struggle of women in the workplace are presented in many dimensions, which is bitter and sweet. It is really not possible to get through customs by shouting a few slogans.
The first thing that comet Shen faced was the double standard of her husband Sheng Jiangchuan’s confidence. On the surface, they are the "division of labor" between men and women, but in fact they are unilaterally sacrificing women’s career prospects. Women are assigned to the "jobs" of their wives and mothers. Although they are full of rewards, their work achievements are difficult to quantify.
Comet Shen made grandiloquence in the investment banking forum, but was regarded as "crossing the border" by Sheng Jiangchuan. In his eyes, his wife’s idealism has long been out of line with the laws of the real society, but it has never been announced. The reason for this sense of superiority is not because his wife has no job.Brothers and sisters who used to be evenly matched in the debate have now become a housewife who doesn’t understand these things outside and doesn’t need to tell her too clearly. She just needs to buy cherries to coax her.
However, with the return of comet Shen to the workplace, the battlefield between them spread from family to workplace, from "wildfire" to "anger". The music festivals of the two companies declared a war. Here Sheng Jiangchuan just wanted to encourage college students to be the main audience, and there Shen Comet had already entered the school to promote it. Seeing that Sheng Jiangchuan was so angry that he gritted his teeth and stamped his feet, I believe many viewers expressed their long-term sulks. Women’s ability in the workplace can never be underestimated, just because there are too many obstacles.
I wonder why Huang Xiaoxian in 33 Days of Lovelorn was praised for her straightforward personality, while comet Shen in Our Marriage said that she was short-tempered. One-dimensional praise for gentleness, courtesy and frugality is undoubtedly an imperceptible discipline of women’s morality. It is believed that forbearance and propriety, breaking teeth and swallowing blood are the role models, but it is unacceptable to speak bravely for yourself and pursue individual expression. Of course, women have the right and freedom to express their anger, and the hard candy gentleman who often "quarrels and secretly regrets because he didn’t play well", not to mention how much he envies Shen Comet’s eloquence.
"Our Marriage" shows the high-spirited Shen Comet and also depicts the scarred Shen Comet. On the surface, it is her personal breakthrough, but its core is the national discussion of women’s predicament. Do women only deserve to pick peppers in the investment banking forum as a SPA? Is the perfect full-time wife in the social stereotype necessarily the optimal solution? After six years of widowed parenting, should we still suppress individual feelings? I’m not satisfied with being such a middle-class wife, but I’ll give you this blessing. Do you want it?
Intimacy is not a debate.
You are one, three, five, and I am two, four, six. When comet Shen and Sheng Jiangchuan thoroughly carried out the "division of labor" in Our Marriage, they ignored their daughter’s idea of sugar and sugar, and fell into the biggest misunderstanding in intimate relationship-discussing issues is like debating, and analyzing every inch of land in detail.
Don’t say, this kind of plot is really cool at first. Sheng Jiangchuan, who has been "widowed and parenting" for many years, went out with sugar in the morning as if he were in a hurry, saying that he would buy fairy wings and forget to pay, so he had to get a DIY. As comet Shen quipped: "If you can ruin your career by taking a few hours every day, your career is too fragile."
But after a long time, the family life with meticulous division of labor will have problems. Comet Shen promised to visit the zoo at the weekend, but he didn’t finish his report, so he had to be relegated to the park to feed goldfish. Later, when the work was urgent, she entrusted the goldfish feeding to her husband who had just returned home. Sheng Jiangchuan happened to be on a business trip, which coincided with the rainstorm and even the goldfish could not be fed. When the two are pointing their fingers at Maimang, Sugar Sugar can only ask Mom and Dad if you don’t love me.
What sugar needs is companionship, but in a certain period, she was regarded as a job that had to be completed by both comet Shen and Sheng Jiangchuan. It can be seen that a good intimate relationship can make people become better themselves with each other’s company, and dig out the real needs of their partners hidden in their hearts. On the contrary, penny-pinching will lack tolerance and understanding, which will lead to the tragedy of falling apart.
The kidnapping of Sheng Tang is not so much the elaborate planning of the villain, but rather the crack in the intimate relationship between Shen Comet and Sheng Jiangchuan, which makes people take advantage of it. The quarrel of divorce by agreement shows the audience the consequences of extreme intimacy. The two met in a college debate contest, but in the end they turned their lives into debates. It’s strange to treat your partner as your opponent’s debater.
Parent-child relationship is just an incision, cutting open the essence of the problem, and the intimate relationship between the two remains in the same place. It’s really frustrating to think that the husband doesn’t know his wife’s favorite and has changed from Chilean cherries to Xianju Yangmei. I dare say that after so many years of marriage, your database has not been "updated" once in the other party.
However, some viewers will know at a glance that Shen Sheng and his wife can’t leave their marriage no matter how fierce they quarrel. First, the emotional foundation of the two people is still there, and second, the content of the quarrel is all a matter of accumulated life. Quarrel, a high emotional expression, has become an outlet for their negative emotions. It can not only urge both sides to face up to the past problems, but also mediate the mode of getting along, which has become an important catalyst to promote the relationship between husband and wife.
The year of 78, when his career took off, was also the year in which Sheng Jiangchuan missed comet Shen.It turned out that he had so much time, because of his career, he let his wife blow cold air in the restaurant on the Bund alone. After a sudden awakening, Sheng Jiangchuan changed his mind. Even if he missed the concert, the two men could find their original heart-warming feeling after a run on the road.
We see that intimate relationship is a virtuous circle system only when both sides build it together. In the play, Sheng Jiangchuan gradually changed and understood Shen Comet, increased the proportion of housework, and noticed details such as the thickness of garbage bags. Dong Sijia began to understand Yuwen Li and recognized her husband’s contribution to the family from the heart. The gratitude of the celebration banquet made people cry; Fear of marriage’s Li Xiaotian gradually learned to deal with intimate relationships, and together with Huo Liankai resisted anxiety about marriage.
All the details in Our Marriage show the optimal solution of intimacy, which is a reconciliation between the two sides without psychological burden.When the standard of intimacy is no longer either one or distribution according to work, we can all find self-identity from the identity of the other. I will become a luminous body, where your eyes stop.
A good drama is the mirror of the times.
Looking back on the shaping of female roles in domestic dramas, it is not difficult to find the changes of the spirit of the times. Housewives have experienced a metamorphosis from "enchantment" to "disenchantment". In the early days, I was imprisoned in the family and worked tirelessly. In the middle period, my family and workplace were busy at both ends, and I pressed the gourd and lifted the gourd. Later, she returned to humanistic concern and cared more about women’s own thoughts.
Liu Huifang in "Desire" is a model of the mother image in domestic dramas. She is a moral perfection and a perfect solidified imagination of women by the public. Gu Jia in Nothing But Thirty is the representative of elite housewives, and even if she is perfect, she can’t help being criticized.
In Our Marriage, it seems that the audience can empathize with the weeping comet Shen on the stairs. Because she was angry with her daughter, she remembered that her father had never been so kind to herself and doubted that she was not a good mother. At that moment, the surging remorse and grievances made people’s eyes moist. In order to fight for breath, how much pressure does she have on her head?
In fact, if women want to achieve the balance between personal values and marriage and family, they don’t have to be invincible "iron man", and any gesture of struggle is lovely.This "looseness" shows that the stereotype and prejudice against women are being disintegrated by the wave of the new era. We encourage women to be what live high wants, but there is no need to be the same, let alone the concept first.
Our Marriage reflects the marriage reality of modern people and their bewilderment in dealing with intimate relationships. However, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a multi-angle thinking for the audience. For example, in the process of getting along with her daughter, Comet Shen gradually understood that Cai Shengmei is also an interesting "good mother". In the grief and joy of his work, comet Shen realized the heavy burden that Sheng Jiangchuan shouldered alone. Huo Liankai put down his guard, tried to find a way to communicate with Li Xiaotian, and finally became a warm daddy.
While understanding the spirit of the times, Our Marriage also returned to the humanistic concern for the audience. In the pursuit of personal value, have we deviated from the channel and put ourselves above others? In the era of profit-seeking, are dreams and distant places still worth guarding?
Besides discussing the dialectical relationship between personal values and marriage, Our Marriage also reflects how an idealized personality finds a foothold in the workplace.. In the workplace line of the two parents who returned to the field, Shen Comet’s investment in Sunset Red Dark Horse Company made people shine. Yuwen Li hit a wall when he was a WeChat official account, but he got an opportunity in the live broadcast era.
Sheng Jiangchuan left the Flying Tigers and turned to work with the yellow whale to protect the ideal of entrepreneurs, which made people see the light of humanity under the commercial wave. He used to be "only talking about money but not caring" for half a year, and then he began to think about the real value of investment. This shows that the change of a person’s thinking is multi-dimensional, and Shen Comet’s return to the workplace has also helped Sheng Jiangchuan re-examine his family life and professional ethics.
Family relationships are changing, but people’s need for high-quality intimate relationships has not changed. In the process of change and invariability, Our Marriage obviously found the "greatest common denominator" of individuals and families, self-worth and social value, and made a new era annotation to this ancient proposition.
Letting his wife go back to the workplace or find herself is the real way for both sides to walk side by side. The killer of marriage is not the weariness of the body, but the alienation of the spiritual world. This kind of different frequency growth of the inner spirit will inevitably create the loneliness of two people for a long time. Our Marriage gives people a vivid sample that conforms to the times.