Second Uncle, Social Pain and the Spiritual Heartland of Contemporary China

The video "Three days back to the village, the second uncle cured my mental internal friction" submitted on July 25 by the B station up host "Yi Ge Conjecture" became a hit. It took two days to get more than 20 million views, was forwarded by official media, and caused more discussion and controversy on social media.

A key criticism points out that the hardships Erjiu endured in life were aestheticized and landscaped by the creator, and Erji himself was silenced in the video. On the one hand, this means that the personal narrative of "Second Uncle" ignores the problems at the level of social structure , and it is these problems that have caused the second uncle's life of suffering. On the other hand, the subjectivity of the second uncle himself is deprived in this video that attempts to summarize his positive personal image and tenacious life (perhaps the previous news of "the second uncle became popular and the whole family cried" is a complex implied response).

So, we can ask, what is the relationship between the second uncle and his Internet audience?

Those familiar with rural China will say that it is not uncommon, if not quite common, to suffer for a lifetime and still be stoic and optimistic. Those familiar with "content production" will say that video producers are clearly skilled in storytelling. Those who are familiar with Internet platforms will say that the content push mechanism and the cross-platform communication effect of hotspots are indispensable.

However, beyond this, the imagination of the second uncle seems to contain a unique sensory structure, which not only helped the video to become popular on the Internet at station B and even in Jianzhong (from empirical observation, its out-of-the-circle range may exceed 2020) "The Waves of Hours" in 2009), which also shows that the second uncle is closely related to our current reality.

Economic historians use the term " hinterland " to refer to areas that are damaged in so-called development and progress, in which context the development of the heartland is conditional on the undeveloped and deprived state of the hinterland. If the countryside is the heartland of (Maoist socialism and) state capitalism, Erji is nothing more than the spiritual heartland of urban audiences who are too young or soon to be young. It is by exploiting such a hinterland that the center is fulfilled and the center-periphery structure stabilized. Here, the second uncle occupies a marginal position on the chain of inequality, while the urban (young) viewers who watch the video are in a relatively central position.

Of course, there was also the unspeakable dealer who dealt his second uncle a bad hand. That's right, the so-called "bad cards" in my second uncle's life, except for relatively accidental disability accidents, etc., in most cases do not have any mysterious destiny color. On the contrary, each of them can be extended into a society. Public issues, and even the creators consciously or unintentionally pointed out the connection between certain backgrounds of the changing social times and the "suffering" that the second uncle suffered, but this "suffering" was subsequently reduced to the urgent need to overcome in the second uncle's life. Personal suffering (thus making the audience look forward to seeing a certain "civilian personal heroism" that he overcomes and obtains satisfaction), and the social nature of this suffering, and the real political and economic processes and mechanisms it produces are all brushed off or hidden. not talk.

We may believe that the creator said in an interview with The Paper that he did not mean to praise suffering, but just wanted to praise the positive spirit of ordinary people. If the second uncle's story is generally true, we can also feel sympathy and respect for his fate. However, through the above-mentioned series of "individualization", "dehistoricalization", and "decontextualization", the second uncle's life experience is aestheticized in the video and becomes a kind of personal suffering. However , the source of these social sufferings has not been discovered, and the second uncle himself has not been given the opportunity to speak.

In other words, the details contained in this story were originally of distinct social nature, such as urban and rural areas, disability, labor, migrant/floating population, social security , etc., but in front of the camera of the city's self-media creators, the second uncle is only a forbearance. Optimistic models and benchmarks appear.

The story of the second uncle was extracted from the second uncle's own life history. Its cruel plot, deconstructed language and warm ending moved the public in Jianzhong Internet, especially the young people who are not happy to praise the suffering. people. The realization of self-destiny through the comparison between "I" and the second uncle ("I should live a fuller life than the second uncle") may only be the first level of the "second uncle".

Another aspect of it is a "suture monster" that seduces viewers to identify with it, wrapping up difficult social reality, a "pre-modern" grass-roots vitality, and the symbols and myths of the Mao era that embellish it. When young viewers saw the "Houlang" lives that were different from their own in the "May 4th" promotional video "Houlang" officially released by Station B two years ago, they were angry; This beautiful story woven by the second uncle (some official media have already packaged it as a "striver" story), but put their simple empathy for the people at the bottom into a bowl of Chinese-style neoliberal chicken soup.

In the face of an atomized society that lacks protection mechanisms, the "hard life" (bad card) can only blame itself, and can only rely on itself.

Or, maybe the audience doesn't all believe in a narrative that "individuals should take responsibility for themselves", but only clearly or vaguely know that the second uncle (or someone in a similar situation) can only do so. Even if it is completely different from the second uncle’s life context, the experience of the fateful “given grand history” and “individual actions cannot change the reality” may indeed fit the sensory structure of contemporary Chinese— -Because you can't do anything, in the face of the movement of the social system, you can only assume and accept it as a given fact .

Going back to the sentence " I should live a fuller life than my second uncle " that the creator indirectly cued the audience, how will the (young) audience in front of the phone respond and fill in this sentence? If "living your life" is not a creation in the private field, if the second uncle's life is not just a comforting fairy tale, then in the life of the second uncle and "me" who is "fuller than the second uncle", and more superimposed Between various social "debuffs" or privileged lives, we should also care about how good cards and bad cards are dealt, who is shuffled and dealt, and what kind of game rules we should have .

Not only must we refuse to aestheticize and marvelize the life experience of suffering, but we must also investigate the social connection and world picture it conceals, otherwise, those things that should be " externally consumed " will never be able to get out of the situation of being forced to internalize.

And it is precisely because in the face of an almost given social reality that "external consumption" is almost impossible, the masses need a second uncle, a spiritual hinterland of the (new) era. After all, as said in the film, life is always Looking forward to some kind of "victory" .

Past articles:

"Deserved" Russia and "Deserved" Ukraine: Geopolitical Intellectual Hegemony (2022-02-26)

Nora in Chains: A Narrative of Eight-Child Women in Xuzhou and Rural Patriarchy (2022-02-22)

Orientalism, Multiple "Edges" and Aesthetic Liberation: A Review of the Chen Man Incident and Its Controversies (2021-12-22)

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