It is said that Master Hou Baolin's cross talk is at its peak, I found some works on the Internet, and I really listened to it "patiently". In fact, I have listened to many works countless times, and I have never laughed since I was a child, and I can't laugh anymore.
It's not that Master Hou's cross talk is bad, but it's not funny. At this time, there will definitely be some "experts" who stand up and say that you haven't heard of Hou Baolin's work, so what's the case, you just don't understand! I don't understand cross talk, but I've listened to it for more than 30 years, the problem is that cross talk is originally for the people, can't I understand it, but others can understand it?
Cross talk is originally a folk street art, and the cultural level of the audience can only be lower than mine, so it is meaningless to judge the quality of cross talk from a professional point of view. Whether it's good or not, the market has the final say! Master Hou has sealed a lot of cross talk, which we will never hear, but I have heard all of Master Hou's cross talk that can be circulated among the people, and it is indeed a lack of laughter.
did not mean to slander Master Hou, but to restore a truth. What exactly is good cross talk? Master Hou was once knocked off the stage by the audience during a performance, because it was not funny. There is not a single goal in a football game, and the fans can still bear it, but there is no laugh in a cross talk, and the audience will definitely not be able to bear it.
From a business point of view, Master Hou is almost perfect, proficient in speaking, learning and singing. But in terms of the needs of the audience, we just want to have a good laugh, we don't care about the actor's skills, happiness is the goal. Obviously, Master Hou's cross talk is more than elegant, and the folk customs are insufficient, and the old man is proficient in a variety of dialects, whether it is Shanghainese or Shandong, he imitates it vividly. This kind of joke must have been very funny fifty years ago, but it is obviously not powerful in today's Internet age, after all, "pouring mouth" is not new.
Hou Baolin's opera skills are unique in the cross talk world, and his Peking Opera level can reach the quasi-professional level, even surpassing some young Peking Opera actors. Listening to Master Hou say that cross talk is definitely a pleasure, but that is the old Huang calendar, young people have no interest in opera, not so much that they are here to listen to cross talk, but to listen to jokes.
Today's cross talk is obviously lacking in laughter, and it can't do a talk show at all. Because talk shows can say anything, and no one criticizes talk show actors for being vulgar and, and there is no need to have a fixed story, as long as it makes the audience laugh. And cross talk pays attention to paving and stability, and often has to do a lot of foreshadowing for a "burden". Due to numerous restrictions, cross talk is now basically unattended.
Although Master Hou's cross talk is a high-level cross talk, it can't get rid of the basic logic of cross talk. Therefore, Hou Baolin's more significance lies in being a contemporary ancestor to make the cross talk industry more justifiable. Of course, this is not Master Hou's fault, with the advent of the Internet age, all kinds of resources have expanded rapidly, and ordinary people can see anything they want, unlike a few decades ago when they had to buy tapes to listen to a few songs, and they had to buy a videotape or CD if they wanted to watch a movie.
Every industry is competing with each other for users' energy, so it is difficult for us to quietly watch a game or listen to a cross talk. This is the choice of the times, not the mistake of a certain actor or industry. Nowadays, people are exposed to information so fast that no one will do one thing at the same time, and to attract the attention of users, the content must be explosive, to put it bluntly, nothing more than curiosity, beauty, rumors and hilarity.
Hilarious is not light humor, Master Hou's cross talk is very flavorful and has jokes, but this kind of strength cannot satisfy the appetite of the current audience at all. So Hou Baolin will be knocked off the stage by the audience, but Guo Degang will definitely not. It's not that Hou Baolin's cross talk level is not as good as Guo Degang, but that the latter is more suitable for the market.
Even people who don't understand cross talk should understand that there is still a big gap between Guo Degang and Hou Baolin's cross talk, but this is a matter in their industry, and it has nothing to do with the audience. The audience only cares about being amused, and nothing else matters. This is also the biggest problem of cross talk, which pays attention to "talking, learning and singing" all day long, and the audience doesn't care about so much at all, they only care about whether they are happy to listen to it.
So even if Master Hou learns to sing well, the audience is still not interested, because if you have to listen to opera, why don't you go to the theater to listen to it, why bother to listen to cross talk actors to learn to sing opera? The audience wants to listen to pop songs, why not go to the singer's concert, why listen to the cross talk actors singing there?
"Speaking, learning and singing" are the four basic skills of cross talk, yes, without these four skills, you are definitely not a qualified cross talk actor, but not all four things are mastered to be a good cross talk actor, with the concept of middle school mathematics called "necessary and insufficient conditions". And Guo Degang's success is exactly the same, that is, "teasing", the audience is amused, and everything else is no longer important.
It is undeniable that Guo Degang's opera skills are also very good, and his voice conditions are also deeply appreciated by his master Hou Yaowen. But the audience spent money to buy tickets to listen to Guo Degang's cross talk, and they still listened to his funny jokes. Although Guo Degang has tried his best to carry forward traditional culture and added a large number of opera excerpts to the cross talk, the audience also listened patiently. To put it bluntly, it is to give Lao Guo face, but he actually doesn't like to listen to it at all.
I remember that Guo Degang did a performance of "A Hundred Years of Cross Talk", he thought it was very interesting, but the audience was not interested, everyone didn't care about the past and present life of cross talk, and they didn't care about the so-called talking and singing, they only cared about whether it was worth the ticket price. This is equivalent to the boss not caring about what the employee does, only cares about what the result is, and it is so realistic.
It seems a bit inappropriate to compare Guo Degang and Hou Baolin together, but if you push back 40 years, Guo Degang is already an old man at this time, does anyone still think that Guo Degang is not worthy of being called a master? To put it bluntly, the reason why some people are not masters is completely because they are young, if Guo Degang and Yang Shaohua were the same age, he would have become a cross talk master long ago.
Guo Degang's cross talk is a bit vulgar, there is no doubt about it. But this is the status quo of the audience, the vast majority of the audience likes this kind of vulgar content, this is not something that can be changed overnight, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Sometimes listening to Guo Degang's cross talk is really interesting, but if you hear those ", pee, fart" content, it does affect your appetite. Therefore, whether cross talk should be as elegant as Hou Baolin or as vulgar as Guo Degang may determine the future of cross talk.