For me, this is a very interesting movie-watching experience, because a large number of clips adapted from the show and entering the world of Chinese comedy in a similar way have been familiar for a long time, but the original film, the ancestor of comedy imitation, is not until today. See you by chance.
The first is the imitation of the image of comedy characters. In TVB's "Music Interchange Student" produced in 1995, it appeared that Lu Qilian, played by Mei Xiaohui, asked a "private detective" white-headed detective to investigate the opponent's life experience.
Then there is the copying of comedy props. There is a scene in "The White-headed Detective". The white-headed detective is brought into the science laboratory. The scientists inside are showing several new inventions. One of them is the "Swiss Army Shoes", a pair of appearance and ordinary leather shoes. In the same leather shoes, tools such as scissors, nail files, fruit knives, etc. can be integrated into the soles. The "Swiss Army Knife" has been transplanted into ordinary leather shoes. Audiences with good memory will think of it soon. The pungent and satirical "Domestic Lingling Paint" in the "Domestic Lingling Paint", from the Chinese mainland police, also has several similar pairs of multifunctional leather shoes. If in "The White Headed Detective", the protruding knife in the front part of the "Swiss Army Shoes" can be used at dangerous moments or save lives, then in "Domestic Lingling Paint", that pair looks like "leather shoes". It’s actually a hair dryer; it looks like a “hair dryer”, but it’s actually the “equipment” of the razor. It takes the pure uselessness, pure spoof, and pure entertainment of the weapon to the extreme. This may also be post-modern. The negative aspect of ism in specific applications is to create something purely without any practical purpose in life. It is opposed to modernity's emphasis on "usefulness" and emphasis on efficacy, but in fact it only plays a role in making you laugh.
Immediately after the above shot, the scientist also invented a button launcher. As long as the right hand grips the left wrist, the button is aimed at the enemy, and the button is pressed, the button will fire a kind of silly bullet, anesthetize the enemy and faint. In the several actual battles of "The White Headed Detective", this button launcher can hit the enemy's neck almost every time, and then the enemy slumps to the ground obediently. If you have a certain experience of watching movies, can you remember it right away? Edogawa Conan’s magical transmitter watch, as well as the scientist who invented the watch, Dr. Akasa, and that very stupid Kogoro Mouri, who would slump to the ground every time he gets hit? The only difference is probably that the position of the transmitter has been moved from the button to the watch.
Finally, there is a transformative imitation of the comedy plot. In the "Hardcover Chasing Girls 1" released in 1992 and 1993, Doudou and Mozi were deceived into the mansion by the thief and rich man Zhao Gongzi and poured a lot of magic soup to prepare for evil. Zhun Shao and the traffic lights and others went to the rescue. In order to get into the mansion, they used the method of pretending to be a plaster samurai figure in the bathroom. The result was a lot of laughter. The clever director Wang Jing uses a technique of "reification of people" here: people look like plaster statues, but they are actually human beings and can move freely. As a result, human urination is used instead of what should be true. The bath water sprayed from the plaster statue is extremely vulgar; then he used another trick "He/She didn't know": the person in the play did not notice all the strangeness at first, and even the son of Zhao didn't know it. Enjoying the hot "bath water", he doesn't know, but the audience knows it all, so the audience will at least smile; and in "The White-headed Detective", the same plot has undergone a major change, first is the "humanization of things": The white-headed detective accidentally destroyed a large number of precious property in the villain’s house and accidentally set fire. He had to escape before the villain who was about to enter the house. He had to escape out of the window. As a result, there were naked concrete samurai statues one after another outside the window. In order to escape, the white-headed detective might fall from a high altitude, and had to catch the protrusions on the naked concrete samurai statues, such as male penises, female breasts, etc. This embarrassing process must have a comedy. The outsider who had nothing to do with this process but "He/She didn't know" came to reveal that the audience’s laughter came from the innocent female outsider watching a terrifying male intruder holding a giant concrete phallus The moment she rushed into her room from the window. She didn't know, and the audience knew all, so we laughed.
In fact, looking at the logic of my writing, you may understand that my intention to write is indeed to praise the level of imitation of comedy, from the copying of characters, to the use of props, to the transformational use of plots, from Naked and technically plagiarism, from the modification and conversion of the plot on the original basis, the judgment is made between these imitated fragments. Of course, this kind of evaluation is only limited to my experience of watching movies. It can even be said that "The White Headed Detective" may imitate some of the previous works, and it is even possible to trace the source to decades ago, but based on several groups The limited time and space data of the movie still allows me to make a limited interpretation.
If the limited interpretation is to continue, I must argue that even the final kind of transformative changes to the comedy plot are still not enough. For many reasons, movies of different regions and cultures will appear to imitate, but I believe that good imitation in comedy movies should not be limited to the imitation of characters, props, clips, and even plots, but more importantly. It is a structural imitation, a basic imitation embedded in the film, that is, an imitation of "something makes us happy to finish watching this comedy and continue to laugh."
Rene Girard put forward a point of view when writing "Scapegoat": Western society from the Socrates period to the Gulag Islands in the Soviet Union, there is widespread persecution, and this persecution is actually to prevent the outbreak of the entire social crisis. The scapegoat mechanism used is to use a kind of "constructive violence" to replace other violence, and the death of one person in exchange for everyone's life. This is a similar persecution mechanism that has existed since ancient times.
So in the history of comic movies that make people laugh, is there such an implicit mechanism or structure that makes us laugh from beginning to end, regardless of certain fragments and props? (Many movies often do There are one or two scenes that are irritating, such as "Red Cliff" and "Martial Arts", but you can't say that they are comedies)? I believe it is. Think about it in all the comedies I have seen, is there a pattern that is always repeated?
An unknowing, neither mighty, nor witty, nor a character that is not valued by the mainstream of society, who is involved in a deliberate and carefully designed mega-case of bad guys by mistake, but relies on unimaginable good luck. Relying on various accidents, accidents, and bizarre experiences, he solved the case in an unreasonable way that violated daily life habits. In the end, he received social praise and slapped the so-called normal, reasonable, and regular slap. However, without exception, these protagonists, who are exaggerated in appearance and often foolish, have an obsessive and very mainstream understanding of love.
Is there such a model? I only think of "The White-headed Detective", "Domestic Lingling Paint", "The King of Comedy", "The Pink Panther", etc...Of course, there must be more than this kind of comedy mode.
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