incoherence.net

I had recently finished the Hong Kong drama series The Drive of Life (歲月風雲). An epic 60-episode production (each show is an hour long), the shooting primarily done in a trio of cities – Hong Kong, Beijing, and Vancouver – previously unheard of for a television series. It covers the multi-decade history of a wealthy business family through the Asian and dotcom financial crises to modern times, through relationships and business successes and failures, and the complex character interplay during tough times.

The show also spends significant time celebrating Chinese ingenuity; not a surprise considering it is sponsored by the Chinese government to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to sovereign Chinese rule, but some of its influence is blatant and distasteful propaganda and tarnishes an otherwise excellent show. I wonder if anybody watching the show really believes in the stated convection of the characters’ patriotism and love of all things Chinese.

It has been a while since I got hooked to a Chinese drama series, so it took only a week (something like 7-8 shows a day) for me to fly through the DVD’s. While the story was captivating and acting superb, I can’t help but be reminded of all the clichés by drama series since the beginning of time, plot devices overused to the point of being offensive in their dismissal of viewer intelligence:

• Men are weak, women are brittle. It stands to reason that since martial arts shows feature flying swordsmen (it’s not a question of whether you can take a sword to the chest, but how many), millenniums of evolution have turned Chinese urbanites into gentle creatures easily fainting, knocking out, and cutting themselves to a happy ending. Whether it’s falling down the stairs – and someone always falls down the stairs – or, heaven forbid, changing tires in the rain, characters will catch influenza, incur concussions leading to month-long comas, and otherwise injure themselves.
• I has a fatal disease. When, in the course of events in a typical city life, someone decides to weave the tale into a drama, expect previously healthy characters to develop serious illnesses, possibly terminal. Really, because nothing brings together or drives apart characters like watching a relative slowly die of fatal heart failure after a game of Jordan-esque basketball. I’m convinced there is a flourishing market for hospital props and set pieces, and the mark of a serious actor is his ability to play a convincing doctor or nurse, possibly both at the same time.
• I devote my life to girls and family. Well, this one may not be so far-fetched, but it’s a bit sickening to watch fine young people with tons of potential and possibility spend all their waking moments making their wives/girlfriends fall in love with them five times over and keep their kids smiling while spewing one-liners on the sanctity of the family and the importance of brotherhood. When your sole purpose in life is to make everybody around you happy, you’re either very, very depressed or about to go on a killing spree.
• Business = success. Hong Kong, being the capitalist utopia the envy of aspiring Adam Smiths everywhere, certainly houses citizens sympathetic to starting and running successful capital ventures. There’s nothing inherently wrong with deriving happiness from money, but perhaps we need something else to mark notches on the “I win at life” meter. Basically, the perfect happy ending requires a successful business; it’s usually the lifelong dream of a main character, or otherwise it’s the cherry on top of a “happy family” sappy sundae. Sure, others may dream of walking in space or holding a term in the highest public office; HK’ers dream of the day their curry fishball stand is renown throughout the lower Kowloon metro station.
• Customer satisfaction = money. An addendum to the business happiness formula above, it’s evident that an extra layer of customer service will keep your shop bustling and your cash flowing. Only that the wheel has to be reinvented every drama series as characters realize the secret sauce of success is happy clients, and heed not the stuffy MBA who speaks of mumble jumble like geographical location, market size, resource overhead, or competitive wages; smiling customers are win.
• Suffering begets forgiveness. Women in dramas have it tough. They’re not only prone to falling down strategically placed stairs, but also fit with soft, forgiving hearts collapsing under the sight of blood and the sound of music in crescendo. The remedy to a cold female shoulder lies in self-inflected pain: a cut on the palm, the business end of a criminal’s knife, a car running a speedy 20mph – all are remedies for past misdeeds. If you catch a fatal disease while falling down stairs and end up limp in a hospital bed with your ex-wife weeping for your consciousness, it’s pretty much considered a triple kill and Oscar-worthy.
• My secrets are your secrets. Lies and deceit are the spices of life, and no good drama is without a hearty serving of both. Keeping life-changing secrets from other characters makes for interesting plot development, but any secret is inevitably disclosed by talking about it very loudly – in person or on the phone – and having a third character hide indiscreetly behind a wall overhearing the essential details. All actors know the best way to reveal a prior felony and illegitimate child is in the public area outside the bathroom.

To be fair, a good number of these are employed by Hollywood, and the dramas have been successful for 20+ years so the material continues to resonate with their audience. Is it too much to ask for interesting characters and original plot devices?