Classic and Popular Culture

“Why do people nowadays singing like they are talking, which doesn’t sound good at all.” My mother often comments like this when I listen to pop music. “But the music you like to listen to is very rustic. The tone is played for a long time and always changes between high and low.” I thought to myself, not daring to contradict my mother. When I imitated my mother singing the classical music she liked to sing, I did find it much more difficult than singing pop music, although it was not been heard as good as pop music. Music is a form of expression of culture. Can classic culture be abandoned because the number of people who like it decreases? Let’s look at two classic cultural representatives from China and the West.

Have you ever heard about Chinese Opera? “ It is a mixture of singing and speaking, prose and poetry, and even dance and acrobatics.” ( Wang and Lovrick, 2014, p. 2).  First experiences of Chinese opera will be hard to understand what the actor is expressing. Even if you are Chinese, you may not be able to understand what the actors are singing, of course not for foreigners. “Chinese opera can be hard to pin down because it is a generic term for well over 360 different styles of opera that differ greatly in music styles and dialects.”( Wang and Lovrick, 2014, p.2).  So, in addition to those audiences who have experience, understand the content of the story, and understand the dialect, how can we accept more Chinese Opera audiences? “The Chinese solution is a combination of representative props and mime. The actor implies the whole by using the part, an essential element in Chinese stagecraft.” ( Wang and Lovrick, 2014, p.80).  When I was a child, I also went to see operas with my elders. Although I couldn’t understand and hear the content of the story. I was attracted by the exquisite stage decoration. And  I also was attracted by the actors’ superb skills, such as knife skills, back flips, and loud and powerful voices. The book describes a wonderful scene, please imagine it. “One of the most spectacular battles using spears appears in the opera The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea .” “At the height of the battle, the Goldfish Fairy uses the back of her right leg to deflect a flying spear in a move called “kicking the spear”. The intensity of the attack grows until the Goldfish Fairy finds herself fending off multiple flying spears from all directions in a breath-taking, split-second display of stage-fighting technique.” ( Wang and Lovrick, 2014, p.98).  It’s really not easy for these actors to be good at singing, acting, acrobatics, and kung fu.

If you are a little strange about Chinese opera, then you should have heard of Shakespeare’s Drama. “For nearly a century and a half now Shakespeare has been generally admitted to be one of the greatest of the world’s dramatists and for nearly two hundred years certain of his readers have believed him the greatest of all.” ( Routledge, 2005,p.28)  Why are the plays written by Shakespeare so famous? I think he put the soul into his creatures. “We find Shakespeare, who speaks from within each of his creatures as it speaks. So also do they vary in the extent to which they express directly their own passion, their own perception of poetic truth, and make explicit or keep implicit their reading of life.” ( Routledge, 2005,p.7) Why Shakespeare’s drama is unique? Let’s see how does the author describes a play that lacks soul? “ Lacking the leisure and the digressive privileges of the narrative and reflective forms, drama is sometimes in danger of poverty of implication or detail. This is true even of the finest type of drama, which maintains severely its proportioning and the magnitude of its theme.” ( Routledge, 2005,p.83) Shakespeare emphasizes the input of images, and his plays are worth watching over and over again and remain popular for a long time. The author also emphasized this point in the book :“All imagery that has a functional relation with a play increases dramatic concentration.” ( Routledge, 2005,p.82). Since the audience needs to have images, first the audience needs to know the plays. The plays of Shakespeare cover Western culture, religion, and politics. These are not familiar to me. So, if I go to watch a Shakespeare Drama, if I don’t understand the development of the story, I will probably feel the same as a Westerner watching our Chinese opera.

I think Chinese Opera and Shakespeare Drama are both a type of stage show.But they focus on different styles of expression. Wang and Lovrick (2014)  explain how Chinese Opera’s performance. Actors use singing and acting to narrate the development of the story.  And Routledge (2005) also makes the point that in addition to the actors’ singing and stage performance, Shakespeare’s scripts inject soul into each character.Among so many European dramas, Shakespeare’s plays are more famous because of his scripts, character settings, and storylines. Chinese Opera in addition to choosing some classic folk tales for the script, the actors have very high requirements for basic skills such as “singing, acting, and kung fu.” Wang and Lovrick (2014)  described the fighting scene in the book, it would take many years for an actor to achieve such the high level of performance. There is a Chinese proverb: “Ten years of practice for one minute on stage.” I think Chinese Opera is China’s unique cultural tradition. But now the audiences who go to watch are all senior age. And Shakespeare Drama although it is recognized by a wide audience, there are not as many audiences as there were in the last century. I don’t want these two opera cultures due to  less audiences to be forgotten. I have seen foreigners coming to watch Chinese Dramas, and their expressions were surprise, an untouched area of culture, but still attracted by the wonderful performances of the actors. Many of our Chinese audiences are fans of Shakespeare. After understanding the development of the story, they will want to try to watch the live shock of Shakespeare’s Drama.Therefore, if the popularity is low, the actors’ love for opera will also be reduced, which will cause the loss of culture. This is a sad and regretful thing for the belonging country.

Popular culture is what people love more now, and classic culture such as Chinese Opera and Shakespeare drama also need to be preserved. In addition to the country’s continuous cultivation of outstanding talents in this field, promoting culture is also one of the ways to protect culture. Not only promote in our own country, but also communicate with other countries. The combination of Chinese and Western cultures can retain classic content and give the audience a newer experience. Have you ever seen the Chinese opera stunt: Face Changing? You can see it in Seattle now! He removed the slightly boring drum beating background music and used current popular music as the background. You can enjoy this stunt while eating Chinese traditional food. If you are interested, hurry up and try it. Search by name:  “Haidilao.”

Reference

Ellis-Fermor, U. M., & Muir, Kenneth. (2005). Shakespeare’s drama. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315018362

Wang-Ngai, S., & Lovrick, P. (2014). Chinese opera : the actor’s craft. Hong Kong University Press.