How to balance entertainment and connotation when cultural variety shows a new trend?

   National Treasure, if you don’t say it is a variety show, you will probably regard it as a documentary. Indeed, this is the name of a standard CCTV documentary. But this time, it subverts people’s cognition of the serious topic of national treasure with a young attitude. The platform support of CCTV and the endorsement of nine museums led by the Forbidden City make it one of the hottest variety shows at present. After the first program was broadcast, the Douban score of 9.3 pushed it to the top of the topic list.

   On the one hand, "National Treasure" has become a sharp weapon for harvesting traffic, on the other hand, it has also become a successful model for domestic cultural variety shows. In China, cultural variety is a tentative force. It seems to be a minority, but it can arouse a wide range of emotional resonance. Whether it is the vast emotions in the famous articles of The Reader or the emotional expression between the lines of Seeing Words, it has become a topic widely circulated on the Internet.

   China’s traditional culture has a long history. At present, it has been put on variety shows. In addition to the three mentioned above, there are "Cheer for China" with drama as the display point and "Go Up" with ancient poetry as the breakthrough point. Poetry has different influences, and the emergence of a large number of cultural variety shows has verified the general trend of cultural variety development.

   Although cultural variety is sought after, if you think calmly, you will find that there are not many successful cultural variety like National Treasure. Although a large number of sponsors have begun to enter the market, the development of cultural variety still faces some difficulties, and even becomes the bottleneck of the development of cultural variety.

   First of all, cultural variety needs to give consideration to both culture and entertainment. With the increasing aesthetic needs of the audience, it is difficult to satisfy them simply by entertainment, but it is inevitable that they will be particularly upright if they are too cultural. How to balance the two is a problem that all cultural variety shows should seriously consider.

   Secondly, cultural variety needs to conform to the aesthetics of young people. The success of "National Treasure" is largely due to the early preparation of two topics that are deeply loved by young people: "Taobao in the Forbidden City" and "Duan Zi in the Forbidden City". How to be close to young people without flattering them has become a proposition for the development of cultural variety.

   Thirdly, cultural variety needs to grasp the transmission of values. Society needs positive energy, and cultural variety shows have variety properties first, and need to consider entertainment and satisfy young people. However, before considering these two points, it is even more necessary to convey correct values and positive energy skillfully.

   The development of domestic variety shows, from the gathering of stars to the voices of amateurs, to the setting up of variety shows and cultural singing, highlights the pursuit of feelings in modern society. But at the same time, we should also see that the capital injected into the program has more commercial attributes, avoiding being trapped by capital and being influenced by the likes and dislikes of a few people, and always maintaining feelings from traditional culture is an important guarantee for the long-term development of cultural variety. (Wen Yang Jing)