[新聞] Times介紹春春的內容
Li Yuchun Loved for Being Herself BY Susan Jakes
Monday, Oct. 03, 2005
Chinese showbiz rarely produces icons. Sure, there are the dozen
or so movie actors who can carry a film, and the odd rocker who
fills a stadium. But seldom does a face on China's small screen
really stand out. Even singing, the national pastime and TV staple,
seems reserved for an interchangeable lineup of warbling coquettes,
husky crooners and jolly fellows in brass stars and epaulets belting
out odes to red flags.
Which helps explain how a 21-year-old Sichuanese music student
named Li Yuchun has become one of the most popular figures in China.
In August, Li won a televised American Idol-like singing contest
produced by Hunan province's Entertainment Channel and bearing its own
inimitable name: "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl's Voice."
(Its sponsor makes yogurt.) The show drew the largest audiences in the
history of Chinese television. As the competition narrowed, the media
covered it like a war or the O.J.Simpson trial. By the time the finale
aired, some 400 million people were tuning in.
The Li Yuchun phenomenon, however, goes far beyond her voice, which even
the most ardent fans admit is pretty weak: her vocal range drifts between
Cher territory and that place your little brother's voice went the summer
before seventh grade. As a dancer, she's not much better. Hei Nan, one of
the event's judges, told the Guangzhou Daily that Li was "the worst of the
top six in terms of singing skills," but noted that she garnered the most
audience votes.
What Li did possess was attitude, originality and a proud androgyny that
defied Chinese norms. During the tryouts—in which 150,000 contestants
were winnowed to 15—Li wore loose jeans and a black button-down shirt,
with no make-up and the haircut (and body) of David Bowie during his Space
Oddity phase. She auditioned with In My Heart There's Only You, Never Her,
an oldie made famous by Taiwan's Liu Wenzheng—a man. In the main competition
she sang other songs written for male performers and called herself "a tomboy."
For an audience reared on the bubble-gum, lip-gloss standards of Chinese girl
pop, Li's disregard for the rule book produced an unfamiliar knee-weakening.
Her fans wept openly and frantically shrieked when Li took the stage.
The show ruffled feathers among Beijing's commissars. By the final episode,
Li and her two remaining rivals had switched their repertoire to patriotic
folk songs.
Li's victory was unusual in other ways: like American Idol, but unlike China
itself, "Super Girl's Voice" is run democratically. Eight million SMS votes
flooded in on the night of the finale. For a few weeks after, the mainland
press debated the relevance of this format. "Only something that smashes
social norms could elicit such a response," Yu Guoming, a media expert at
People's University, told the Beijing News. "After all, in China the
opportunities to use votes to choose are relatively few."
An editorial in the China Daily wondered: "How come an imitation of a
democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to
carry a tune?" As Li prepares for a nationwide tour with the other finalists,
her handlers are loath to discuss the political dimensions of the program or
of Li's triumph. Hunan Entertainment Channel refused TIME's requests to
interview or photograph Li. According to one of her many agents, they were
worried the story would portray Li as more than just an entertainer.
But she is more: Li represents unabashed individuality, and that's why
she's a national icon.
http://post.baidu.com/f?kz=46585382
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