A Fistful of Stances (鐵馬尋橋) has once again proved martial art is a popular TV drama genre in Hong Kong. As it focused on Chinese martial art of early modern era in Canton, martial art star Yuen Qiu (元秋) was one of the main character in the drama. The story follows the flow of general Chinese martial art stories: A good family was broke down by villain, the villain become rich while the good guys lives very harsh, the villain keep hunting down the good guys and ultimately good guys defeated the villain revenge for the family.
As Hong Kong audience has already saw plenty of Chinese martial art dramas, A Fistful of Stances was not popular and wildly discussed in the earlier episodes. In addition, as it repeatedly use flash backs to explain some earlier stories in the earlier episodes, the back and forward between the story time line confused the audience and make them have no choice but shut down the TV. While the story go on to the mid stage, the dynamic performance of characters like Natalie Tong (唐詩詠) and Dominic Lam (林嘉華) start to catch the audience’s attention, and the tension of story arise, A Fistful of Stances start to receive great audience rating.
The success of A Fistful of Stances was based on following reasons. First, although the genre is very old-fashioned, the way how the story presented was twisted a little bit to make it feels like something new. For example, while traditional villains act evil without reason, the villain Wing Tak (By Dominic Lam,林嘉華)here has been given certain time to descript how he was badly treated and insulted then turn in to a bad guy. Such arrangements make the characters more solid, audience can more easily identify with their emotions.
Secondly, the characters themselves can attract certain groups of audiences. There are young actors and actress participate in this drama, like Kevin Cheng(鄭嘉穎), Natalie Tong(唐詩詠) and Kenneth Ma, they can easily attract their Fans audiences. Elder audience may wanted to see how Yuen Qiu (元秋) or Ram Chiang (蔣志光) perform in the TV drama. The interesting combination of former police Dominic Lam (林嘉華) and Jacky Heung (向佐) who comes from Heung’s family may also catch people’s attention.
Finally, the story itself fulfils the audience’s desire of moral, justice and hero figure. While living in a complex society like Hong Kong, people may have to compromise with their own moral values in order to make a living, sometimes we might seek for a strong, justice and morally correct person to rely emotionally. By watching A Fistful of Stances, since the cultural background and stories are familiar, audience can easily identify with the good guys, as they representing a good, morally correct figures.
A Fistful of Stances also showing a pattern that the Internet becomes a critical promotional tool for TV dramas. No matter it is planned by the authority or unintentionally done, many local online forums have widely discussed the drama. It resulted that many young people was stir up to follow the program. At the end of this article, here is a Kuso video made by Netizens, a fusion of the opening of A Fistful of Stances and the animation Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Your review is well organized and clearly structured, which touches upon TV genre, casting choice, character design, story plot, audience reception, etc. In general, the content is quite comprehensive and convincing. It’s good that you have observed the changing feedback of audience in different stages. However, you may need to explain more on the changes, for example, what do you mean by “dynamic performance” of the actor/actress? Can you give some concrete examples (perhaps certain incidents occurred or new characters coming up) which stimulate the ratings?
ReplyDeletePersonally I guess that the last point you made (identifying with the characters) is a major reason that has made the drama so popular. The audience can identify with the heroic figures on the one hand, as well as releasing their stress and tension (in reality) by condemning the bad characters on the other. BTW, I really hate Dominic Lam in the drama!!! I don’t think he was really “ badly treated and insulted” and he couldn’t justify what he did!!! The scriptwriter is too kind to make him die so easily in the ending!